I Threw a Home Run Ball Back

I arrived a bit late to last night’s game, miss­ing the first inning, but I was there for the fol­low­ing 15. What hap­pened in the top of the 4th is some­thing I’ll prob­a­bly remem­ber — and maybe regret — for the rest of my life. I talked to Enri­co over at The 700 Lev­el about it ear­ly this morn­ing. He post­ed our chat in full here.

It was a pret­ty amaz­ing, if con­fus­ing expe­ri­ence. I knew the ball was head­ed direct­ly at me from the moment it left the bat. It just loomed large as it approached. It seemed to be mov­ing slow­ly right before it com­plete­ly explod­ed into the seats next to me. Even though it end­ed up being a beau­ti­ful night, I’m hap­py Helen and Char­lie weren’t with me because I don’t know what we would’ve done as the ball approached. Duck and cover!

Instead it land­ed harm­less­ly in a cuphold­er. I grabbed the ball and tossed it back onto the field. It near­ly rolled to the infield. Should I have turned and hand­ed it to the young girl keep­ing score behind me? In ret­ro­spect, yes, I prob­a­bly should’ve. But I’m not sure any­thing will feel quite as euphor­ic as hear­ing a sta­di­um full of peo­ple cheer the one time you throw a ball inside a major league ball­park. That was amazing.

I’m con­fi­dent that if we hang on to our seats in left field we’ll prob­a­bly get anoth­er shot in the future. We don’t have many right­ies who pull or hit for pow­er, but I’m going to guess that sit­ting in the heart of the low­er left field seats gives me as good a chance as any of catch­ing one in the future. (As I wrote this, Jayson Werth hit a ball that snuck over the left field wall. See!?)

You can help the poor Astros out by watch­ing this video of Car­los Lee’s homer here. Look for me at the :18 and lis­ten to the cheer go up. Tell me that isn’t awesome!