An Improbable Foul Ball

Well I have a lot of favorite baseball stories as is befitting someone whose favorite thing is baseball. The game and its inherent epiphanic highs and lows is a road map of my emotional history. I fell in love with it as an 11 year old kid in Baltimore in 1975. I've grown up into a man who lives and dies by what my beloved Orioles do each and every game for six months a year complete with my 1968 "Angry Bird" tattoo but in that October I was consumed with the Boston Red Sox. My team by birthright hadn't been a post season threat for a few years and I was too young to even really remember the run from '69 to '71. And so I was free to back another team as the season ended. Carlton Fisk was my little league catcher idol and their eventual epic loss of the Series to the abominable Reds taught me the true meaning of "Baseball is a game designed to break your heart". So yes, I have a lot of cherished moments framed by the game but one stands out in its relatively low level of emotion but seeped in the magic that can only occur in one of the 30 cathedrals of my chosen religion.

All I kinda ever wanted to be when I was a kid was either a baseball player or Rock Star. It never occurred to me to be both and as neither actually came to pass that's fine. I did, however, come closer to one than the other simply because one was much lower a goal and thus much less precious. I became a singer and guitarist and benign despot of a band who, for a while in the mid 90's, had a record deal and some of the perks that sorta thing brought with it. I, of course, spent those markers on free baseball tickets from so many major label and associated law firm season ticket plans. That the tickets were all for Dodger games and not Orioles' wasn't an issue. I lived in Los Angeles and any chance to go to any baseball game was still magic then. It actually still is.

By the time the late 90's rolled around my band Lifter had run the course of releasing and touring for our first record. It certainly didn't make me a rockstar but it was a damn beautiful concept of an album about HER and the heartbreak she ultimately wrought on me. Our deal with Interscope records was tenuous at best and we found ourselves writing and recording demos for a second record which never came into existence. But we still were entitled to baseball tickets for the asking. The label had put us in the hands of a producer named Bob Marlette. A great guy with a fair amount of credits none of which suggested he'd be a good fit for my kind of songs. All metal and hair and Marshall stacks. But, he was a truly good guy and we really had little say in the matter if we wanted to remain in striking distance of record industry Dodgers season tickets. And by "we" I mean myself and our second drummer Tony. Tony was a die hard Mets fan when he joined the band a year earlier filling the spot created by the exodus of our original drummer Johnny. Johnny was the first to read the writing on the wall about our true chances with Interscope and after the years of touring and the complete lack of promotion simply and rightly so, bailed on the whole deal. So in comes Tony. 

And as is the case with so many NY baseball fans, he became, all of a sudden, a die-hard Yankees fan after just enough seasons of glory to commit the ultimate sin of switching alliances, mid-life. That's a topic for a whole other essay but suffice it to say, you keep the team you were born into and that's that. No matter where life takes you, you keep YOUR team. But don't get me started on the Yankees and their fans. 

So there we are, in the DEEP San Fernando valley, recording songs in Bob's home studio. One day a friend of Bob's stops by by the name of John. John 5. Turns out his little rocker fellow is the guitarist for Marilyn Manson. Not particularly my favorite band but it's still pretty cool and he's a nice enough guy. The thing that I remember most about meeting him and apropos of nothing is his wearing of his wallet in his front pocket. A crazily overstuffed wallet jammed into his front pocket and looking like a tumor on his thigh.

Tony and I have four lower field-level tickets to a Dodgers game for the next day and it occurs to me to ask Bob and John if they want to go with us. Bob says sure but it's John's reaction that kills me. He literally lights up like some Christmas morning 8 year old. Eyes widened and mouth agape. Hell YES he wants to go! He tells us he's never been to a baseball game. That seems crazy to me just on the face of it. How can any late 20's American male have escaped even a single trip to a baseball game?? But his excitement is so visceral you just have to believe him.

At the time, and really always, I lived very close to Dodger stadium. As a decidedly East Side Angeleno, the stadium is always within a short but traffic-filled drive from wherever I happened to be living. So we four meet at my place and head over. Tony and I are simply transfixed by the level of excitement exuded by John. And Bob is his normal jovial self and we're going to a baseball game and the night is yet another perfect Los Angeles night and we have great seats and life is great. 

So here comes the little moment, the little baseball memory that ultimately got me involved in this book, to begin with. And I really do have a lot of great baseball memories. There are the foul balls I've caught which are statistically more than my share. The list includes the one I gathered up from the peanut shells at my feet after it glanced off a carried infant’s head and rolled, unmolested, some thirty feet as all eyes were trained on the baby. And, by the way, as our seats were well up into the upper decks of Dodgers Stadium, the ball was at its improbable apogee upon impact and thus had little enough energy to actually hurt the kid. He was fine and had he not have been I guess I would have given the ball to his shocked father. And then there was the homerun ball that I reached up for in the left-field bleacher seats of a still new Camden Yards and, forgetting the simple fundamental of using two hands, glanced off my hand into the lap of a kid behind me. And while that's not much of a story in and of itself, the fact that it was a Sunday day game against the Twins and that homerun accounted for the only run scored by either team, the only highlight of the game shown on both evening and late night news was perfect zoomed-in footage of my FAILURE. My lazy, one-handed, reach for a ball and my immediate suffering of the fate of one who denies baseball fielding fundamentals. And of course, other stories of loss and redemption in the form of balls to the stands and autographs. Like the ball I had signed by not only Cal Ripken at an Angels game but also, on the other side of the same ball, by one of baseball's greatest writers and thinkers, George Will who was inexplicably sitting a few rows in front of me. This coming a day before the game ( I, of course, go to any and every Oriole game that brings them anywhere near Los Angeles) whereupon returning from a hotdog run I see my girlfriend holding a ball and pointing to the dent it left on my emptied seat. So many of these kinds of stories and more about actual moments in the game.

But this little story isn't so much about a clutched ball to the stands as it's about the pure stunned amazement of a guy, decked out in black heavy metal gear, attending his first Major League Baseball game and a little stunt I pulled to put him over the top.

So we get to the stadium and head in through the left-field lower box entry. It's, of course, well early. The Dodgers are still taking batting practice. I mean, if at all possible what fan misses batting practice. If Major League Baseball players are doing anything baseball related anywhere near you, and you have the time and a ticket to watch them, you simply go. And so we do.

I remember walking in and the four of us just standing there behind the seats of the foul side of the left-field foul pole. Clearly, it was up to Tony and me to gloriously guide John through this seminal moment in his life. I needed him to understand the emotional history and romance the game held for me. He needed to understand the heartbreak and the beauty and bittersweet sadness of the retired numbers on the outfield fences. He needed to understand that 32 was the wholly iconic number worn by The Left Arm of God. And he also needed a ball.

I led us down into the first section of seats still pointing out different relics of my religion housed in this sacred cathedral. And then I decided to fuck with him a little bit. And by now he's fully prepped. He's truly taking all this in in a manner that anyone would wish for as you take them to his first real baseball game. And of course, his heavily metalled outfit and ridiculously overstuffed wallet on his right thigh are making all of his childlike awe even more beatific to behold. I mean the guy’s just amazed in the purist sense and he brings none of the faux coolness one would expect from a member of such a wildly different tribe.

I turn to John and tell him I'm gonna get a ball and to wait for a second while I go grab one. I tell him this like it's the most mundane errand imaginable. "How are you gonna do that?!?!"  He fairly exclaims. He really does look like a little kid save for that Slayer t-shirt and inane wallet. I tell him, with no idea of how to actually end this joke, that I'm just gonna walk into the seats and grab a foul batting practice ball. I make a big show of inspecting the rows of still empty seats and ascertaining exactly where to stand to get the next ball. "Ahh! Right there should do it" and I casually walk down to and into a row of left-field foul seats. At this point, Tony is simply watching and humoring me as he takes in the incredulous wonder of John's face. All furrowed brows and lunched lips. He doesn't want to miss a tick of this. The wallet doesn't move as he's planted in his feet and focused intently on me.

So I make it to my chosen spot and, of course, baseball being the magical game that it is, the very next ball bounces about 20 feet in front of the wall where in a game it would be a ground rule double, and travels perfectly, magically, epically into my hands.

The true religious aspect of the moment is that I'm divinely granted a moment of inner strength that allows me to, instead of giving into the sudden flood of adrenaline and literally shitting myself, I simply turn back to the guys and say in a soft almost lazy voice " Ok, I got one, let's check out our seats" to which John, all transfixed like he's seen God, bellows, "get me one!!!"  I tell him I'm sorry but it really only works for one ball a game. He's crestfallen but still riding on the rush of a glimpse of the beautiful unknowable. Tony whispers to me just how in the hell did I do that. I'm literally shaking as I tell him to just keep cool and we turn to walk towards our seats. 

So we take in the game with our newly converted baseball fans. We explain all manner of the rules and traditions of the sport as the game unfolds. These kind of games where we get a chance to share this beautiful alchemical mix of magic, exultation, heartbreak and epiphanic punishment and reward to someone utterly new and open to its experience are truly rare gifts to us already shackled by its soul wrenching power. To be able to give away what makes this game so intensely romantic and perfect is ultimately why we keep coming back. It's a transformative experience in being given the opportunity to guide a new soul through the open gates of being consumed by a love of the game. We can feel the wonder of our first game, maybe with our Dads or maybe just someone else, anyone else acting as a shepherd of the magic of baseball. For that night I was the 8 or 9 year old little boy who sat and watched an early 1970's Oriole game from the cheap seats up above the first base line. And I was the kid who, before life would ultimately lead me away from and finally back to the game I loved; before all the rock music and drugs and darkness set in, I was just a kid filled with wonder about what was unfolding on that beautiful green field so far below me.

And whether or not John 5 ever watched another baseball game in his life, I know I got a chance to share magic with him in the form of a ridiculously lucky caught foul ball. And I got to feel like a little boy again.