Stopped by my parents today; had to help them put in the AC… an annual tradition of sorts. We started talking about old stuff; my Mom saves everything. Well, they started cleaning some stuff out. It’s tough sometimes, to make that decision. There’s so much “stuff”… you have to draw the line somewhere. We know the drill. There’s a pile of everything my son brought home from 1st grade sitting in his closet; we need to sort through that… soon… because that pile is only going to get bigger. Then I started talking about some of my stuff, sentimental stuff if you may, that I still have. I’ve been thinking about it… what good is it doing sitting in some bin? When will we ever get to enjoy this sentimental stuff? If I can’t enjoy it, then somebody else should, right?
Well, I started to follow that theory… baby steps. I have a bunch of league balls in my dresser drawer. I’m not going to touch the ones my son got at the games he’s been too… yet. No, but when it came time to play catch with a real league ball, I decided to dip into my collection. The first one I grabbed was from this league I played in one year near Calumet City. It was from the home run I hit, that was signed by the entire team. I had saved it… had to be like 20 years now. Well, it ain’t doing me any good sitting in my drawer, so we played catch with it; now the signatures have all rubbed off, but that’s OK. Next up was a Ronnie Woo Woo autographed baseball I had got at Wrigley back in the day. Yeah, I know, I’m sure it’s worth thousands of bucks (haha), but now it’s in our playing catch collection. I only had the tip of the iceberg in my dresser drawer. I knew my parents had a bag of balls at the house…
First one my dad tossed me was from Wrigley back on August 9th, 2005; it says it’s a “Mark Prior warm up ball”. I loved it. That will replace the Ronnie Woo Woo autographed ball in my dresser drawer; ain’t going to play catch with that one… yet. Then came the more sentimental value stuff, that bag of balls I was talking about. It was from my baseball playing days at Harrison Park. I knew he kept all of our game balls, and wrote with a sharpie on there, the date and our stats from that game. I told him they were in this blue bag. He looked, and found a plastic bag… with a blue bag inside… full of baseballs. I wanted to look at them right then and there; we did.
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I remember that night clearly, as I stood on the mound, striking out the last batter looking, which kicked off a crazy celebration. We ran around the park that night for what seemed like hours, before we made it home. I remember the Giants and Cowboys were playing on Monday Night Football that night too… I did recall that before looking it up to confirm. For good measure, the Cubs had beat the Phillies earlier that day at Wrigley in front of 6,857 people (see, it wasn’t always packed) 7-4 with a lineup of Dave Martinez, Chico Walker, Ryne Sandberg, Keith Moreland, Leon Durham, Jody Davis, Rafael Palmeiro, Shawon Dunston, and at pitcher Ed Lynch. But it’s what happened that night, on that field, that I would remember most. It’s great to have that ball in my hand right now. It’s tough to save everything, but it does pay to save something. Thanks for the memories.
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