Opening Night
Mets at Cards, Tom Glavine vs Chris Carpenter, the first of 162 x 16, Jon Miller (the best!) and Joe Morgan on ESPN2.
I take Opening Day off every year -- human resources has yet to accept this as my personal religious holiday -- but the O's open on the road this year, so that's next Monday. THIS Monday, we have Alan Schwarz on the show (and give him a cheer -- our regular baseball pal is, as of today, no longer a contributing writer to The New York Times, but a full-fledged staff member!) to preview the season, yes a bit, but mostly to talk about his new book Once Upon A Game, Baseball's Greatest Memories. He gets a slew of great players (Berra, Clemens, Ripken, Garciaparra, Griffey, Jr etc. -- and check out the picture of Yogi reading 3-D comics) and some famous fans (Kevin Costner, George H.W. Bush) to write brief accounts of their most vivid memories on the field. Yes, a few game-winning dingers, but many more personal moments. I especially liked (and will ask the author of The Numbers Game about) Dom Dimaggio's parenthetical note that he batted .298 for his career, and would have reached that magical .300 with twelve more hits ... one a year over his career.
So OK. Last summer, Camden Yards, Yanks-O's, in the fantasic seats of a friend just past the visitor's dugout on the third base line, seats so fantastic that the pitcher's mound blocks your view of part of the infield, when the immortal Craig Wilson rolls a dribbler foul. I've attended a lot of major league games -- I was going to say a million, but I'll settle for hundreds. Many hundreds. And never got a sniff of a foul ball. (I've attended hundreds of minor league games, too, and got two -- one a liner back into the broadcast booth -- Calvin Pickering -- another a pop fly chased down in near-empty stands in Portland, OR off the bat of Jack Howell. Both future major leaguers, and I still have them both.) But now, there's this twenty-seven hopper heading RIGHT AT ME. So I elbow a small child and a gradmother out of the way, lean over AND I GOT IT! And prompty dropped my cellphone out of my shirtfront pocket. Larry Bowa, the Yank's third base coach comes over and picks it up and hands it to me. MY CELLPHONE HAS LARRY BOWA'S FINGERPRINTS!
I got a new cellphone a week later, but I still have that ball, too.
So, what's your story?
9:20 PM ET | 04- 1-2007 | permalink
