This is the last week of the baseball regular season. I'm enjoying it as much as I can, spending long evenings in front of the tube magically teleporting between eight different stadiums. Next week, it's the playoffs, which means there's only one game on at a time. That just seems like such a technological regression -- trading in satellite dishes for bunny-ear antennas. So that's usually when I tune out, unless the Twins are playing.
The true joy of baseball from April to September is watching a continent-sized mass of colorful chaos slowly working itself into a perfectly ordered state in 162 phases, a concept that doubles as a positive model for a benevolent universe. The regular season also allows for simple joyful moments that the know-it-all national announcers simply won't have time for next month, when everything's on the line right now. Last night in Detroit, for example, I saw a dude barehand a foul ball -- while holding a baby in the other arm. They replayed it six or seven times, it was awesome.
Catching a baseball at the baseball game... yeah. It's one of those pleasures that seems really ridiculous when taken at face value, but there's enough magic in it that everyone acts like morons whenever one comes screaming in their direction, and some kids even lug their gloves to the ballpark.
I've caught three myself, over the years. My most recent came this summer, at an independent league game hosted by the unfortunately-named Brockton Rox. It was Oil Can Boyd bobblehead night, and I was sitting far down the right-field line just minding my own business. In the third inning, a zinging liner careened off a row of seats and came directly at me at highway speed. I barehanded it with my left (glove) hand, and man, it stung. The dozen or so kids in my section didn't care about that, though -- they arrived a second too late and loudly demanded compensation for their failed efforts.
Instead, I gave it to a cute little six-year-old girl sitting three rows in front of me. I'd overheard her talking about how much she wanted to catch a ball, and I'm committed to do anything I can to bring young female fans into the game so they don't grow up to be as baseball-averse as my wife. What I didn't expect was that she'd stalk me for the rest of the game, coming up to my seat every few minutes to thank me again and again. "No, really, you're very, very welcome," I kept saying. For a few days I checked around the corner before going out the front door, just in case she was standing there like Heather O'Rourke.
My only major-league catch was in May 1998, at the old Vet Stadium in Philadelphia during a Phillies-Diamondbacks game. I was sitting with my longtime friend Roni in my old firm's season seats, there in the 10th row behind the home dugout. He's not that much of a fan, so he was asking me about the mechanics of throwing a curveball, the breaks of which were very evident from that viewing angle. A minute or two later, a stray foul bounced up an aisle and into the seat next to me. "See," I said, without missing a beat. "You put your forefinger and middle finger along the seam, like so..."
It's the only foul ball I kept for myself, the only one I didn't end up giving to a girl. It sits in a case in our "sports room" at home, lengthwise pine-tar smear and all, displayed alongside a baseball card of the man who hit it: Tyler Green, who was a pretty decent hitter for a pitcher. But he sure didn't have much of a curveball.
I caught my first foul ball when I was 19. I was going to school in Oregon back then, and I'd spend my summers at Civic Stadium watching the single-A Eugene Emeralds play. I can't remember many of the players or games from all those years ago, but I do remember the mid-week July evening when I stood in the grassy concession area behind the press box. There was a "plonk" on the stadium's roof, then an instant crowd of trajectory-judgers waiting for the ball to hit the ground outside. It took one high bounce off the grass and into my hand.
Later that evening, I walked back towards the University, where I rented a campus-area housing pod. As I often did back then, I stopped by Tracey's house for a short visit. Tracey was a sad-eyed, freckled girl with shoulder-length strawberry hair, who was trapped inside a long-term relationship in which she'd long since been taken for granted. I played the role of the lurking dark horse team, consistently winning seven of each ten in the summer months to pull within striking distance of the division leader.
There were, as always, mugs of instant coffee drawn from a tricolor International Foods can, and Soundgarden's Superunknown on the CD player. Tracey launched into a teary, stream-of-consciousness monologue about her lover's aloofness, about unmet needs and desires, of feeling discarded and forgotten. I absorbed her pain, hurting to see someone I secretly loved so hurt.
"Here, I want you to have this," I said at one point, pulling the official Northwest League orb from my fanny-pack, placing it in her hand.
Tracey furrowed her brow, tilted her head to the side quizzically as she examined the dirty baseball. She thanked me politely, placed it on the coffee table, but I knew she was too far outside the item's context to understand its value. Yet I knew I couldn't simply ask for it back.
Baseballs are mass-produced items, and are always available at the souvenir stands for eight or nine bucks (about the same price as a hot dog and beer). But you don't see people crawling all over each other to get to those, do you? Foul ball madness has nothing to do with the value of the object itself, it's the rarity of the experience: studies have indicated that you have roughly a 1 in 1189 chance of catching one. No wonder complete strangers clap for you.
