METS VS. PHILLS 7-12-03
JEN and I went to a Mets game (the box seats against Arizona, my cousin Jeff gave to us-Thanks again Jeff and Judy). If you don't care about baseball, this could still be interesting to you, because I don't care about it either. I hadn't been to (or sat through on TV) an entire baseball game in a decade, so I was just out for a spectacle and the fresh air. The Mets, as a team, suck hard. I mean, It was a double header and on the car ride home from Shea after the second game I heard a guy on the radio say that the Mets made a new major league record that day for the most strikeouts in a double header ever in Major League History. Like I said, they suck.
One thing I wanted so badly was a foul ball. I don't know why, I just wanted to catch or retrieve one. I couldn't care less about the teams, or which team hit it, or which player, or even who won (I guess I was routing for the Mets, because they were the underdog and it's always fun to see the underdog win and they are one of our home teams, so how could you not route for NY?). I don't know any of the players by name (except the ones who speak with Alf in Collect Call commercials) but I just wanted to bring home a ball as a souvenir.
Late in the day, we were getting tired. It gets boring watching one team kill the other team, especially when the team you are routing for is the one getting slaughtered. We were now half way through the second game of a double header, and the sucky Mets were getting creamed. Top it off with the disappointing fact that we have the best seats ever, and no balls were coming anywhere near us. We were sitting two rows away from the grass, just to the right of the first base line, in foul territory and the sun had finally gotten up past the stands so we were no longer in the shadow of the upper decks, so now it was beating down on us.
That's when it happened. From out of nowhere a screaming line drive shot straight at us and whizzed just above our heads. The ball was traveling so fast, if we actually attempted to catch it barehanded it would have crushed bones. It smacked with a strange thud into the piles and piles of garbage under the fifth row box seats. All the wrappers, plastic bottles, spilled beers, half melted $5 Italian ices (retail at supermarket 50 cents), and any other scrap of cracker jack and soda goo fans had crammed under the seats of the 5th row had caught the ball and eaten it. The ball didn't bounce out, it burrowed into the garbage. So me and about 20 other people were frantically digging through all this mess to find the ball, and then everyone just gave up figured it wasn't worth it I guess, and went back to their seats. It made me think of that tree in Peanuts that eats kites. Does this happen often at ball games? Five minutes after we had gotten back to our seats, a guy sitting a few rows back of me apparently had kept digging and found it. Weird.
It was a double header so we watched the Mets get their ass kicked twice in a row. LET'S GO METS GO!
Just another day in the life of an Art Juggernaut.
-Cojo