The Worst Catch
Thinking about the mouse and my "best catch ever" reminded me of another catch — or attempted one — and one I would definitely like to forget.
We had gone to Las Vegas for a baseball tournament — two long weekends of baseball in capital of sin. How could we resist?!
From the way things started, resistance would have been a good thing. Our flight from Paris found us seated in the middle of a "destination wedding" party of about two dozen young people. The bride-to-be wore a veil throughout the 11-hour flight. Her bridesmaids and the groom and his attendants all had matching t-shirts. They laughed and jabbered nonstop the entire flight. Air travel is bad enough but this took it to a whole new level.
Finally, we landed. What a relief!
Except for one thing: it turned out the owner of the apartment we had rented had given us directions to the wrong apartment, resulting in our having to drive up and down the Strip . . .
. . .and around the city for hours, our only break being a pit stop at Pete Rose’s Sports Bar where ordered a pizza and tried to get into the baseball spirit.
After a call from the apartment owner giving us the right address, we were soon off to our humble abode for a good night’s sleep. Or so we thought. The idiot owner had also given us the wrong entry code. We tried to call but only got a recording. So it was back in the car and back to the Strip.
It was now approaching midnight. We’d been up more than 24 hours and were ready to drop so we checked into the first place we saw. It was a dump. Before collapsing, however, we called the landlord and left a message. "Meet us at the right apartment with the right code at 10 a.m. tomorrow or else!" we said.
Miracle of miracles, he was there, along with a complimentary fruit basket, a bottle of wine and a thousand apologies. Finally we were able to relax and start thinking about baseball.
Because there were still a couple of days before the tournament, I got in some practice at the batting cages.
My team was the Tri-Valley Giants, a club from San Francisco. All I can say is that the Giants lived up to their name. Our manager was Donny de Cordova, a great guy but not great hitter if the ball was below his belt.
As for myself, Las Vegas was a tournament I probably should have skipped. A year earlier, I'd undergone surgery for a torn rotator cuff and still wasn't 100 percent. But I’d missed the Men's Senior Baseball World Series in Phoenix and was desperate to play some baseball.
It started well. In my first at bat I got a hit that drove in a run.
In the field, I played first base, and that's where the manager should have left me.
Unfortunately, he decided he wanted some extra speed in the outfield and moved me to left. "You okay with that?" he asked. "No sweat," I replied.
Confidence is a wonderful thing but when one hasn't had much experience playing the outfield, well. . .
After taking up my position, the first batter launched a high fly ball in my direction and I immediately began back peddling.
And back peddling some more.
The pictures tell the story. What they don't tell is what was going through my mind. Oh shit, I'm going to miss it. As I tried to catch up to the ball, I began falling.
When I first saw this picture I couldn’t stop laughing. But it was no laughing matter at the time. I hit the ground hard, whacked my head and ended up with a concussion. Play was halted as teammates rushed over to see if I was okay. I was so embarrassed.
Give the photographer credit, though. She caught it all…while I caught nothing. When I showed a friend the picture, he suggested I Photoshop the image and move the ball into my glove. “That’ll make it the best catch ever!”
Judge for yourself.
One other thing. Not only did I fail to make a good impression in left field, I also failed to impress Petie. When I asked her to take a picture of me with some show girls, she just rolled her eyes and kept on walking.
