Little Girl Throws Ball Back Video: Phillies Foul Ball Catch

Fifteen years ago I was sitting in the front row of a half empty upper deck of the Twin Cities Metrodome with my 3 year old son.  I had been doing this for some 30 years, first with my own father at Yankee, Shea, and Fenway for we were more baseball fans than rooters for any one specific team.  My dad and I had seen some memorable games: a no-hitter thrown by Bob Moose for the Pirates against the Mets (September 20, 1969)—Roberto Clemente made the obligatory  late game-saving catch in right field every no-hitter needs; saw Mickey Mantle hit his last home run (September 20, 1968): saw Luis Tiant pitch the opening game for Boston against the Reds in the 75 World Series: and saw Bud Harrelson and Pete Rose mixed it up at second base after Rose slid hard in Game 3 of the 1973 National League Championship series —Willie Mays was sent to left field in the next inning as the venerable emissary to get the fans to stop chucking things at Rose so the game could continue.  But, in all those games, I had never come even close to getting a foul ball.   So here I was with my son on my lap, a beer in one hand and a dog in the other adding one more memory to 30 plus years of base ball spectating.  Dave Winfield was up; now back in his hometown in the waning days of his career, having reached the 3000 hit milestone the previous year. There was a swing and the ball arched higher and higher until I realized it was coming right for us.  I quickly slid my son off my lap and emptied my left hand of its beer.  The ball bounced once and I neatly snagged it.  Incredulous that this Holy Grail of baseball fandom has finally made it to me I reached down to share the prize with the other gem in my life.  My son, who was already schooled in the ways of the game, did what anyone should do with a baseball—he threw it—right off the upper deck to some unsuspecting fan below.  Of course, everyone behind us saw what happened; one of them walked by me soon after and said, “You got robbed”.  I wrote a letter to Mr. Winfield via the Twins fan mail office but was never sure he ever even received it.  So the story has lived in the recesses of our family history, surfacing every now and then when prompted.   I share with you now one of the more bizarre prompts.  Here I am in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />Dakar, Senegal doing some overseas work.  My son is now 18 and has just started his freshman year at Cal Berkeley half a world away.  Last night (ironically enough on September 20, 2009 –see dates above) my younger son was engaged in a Skype conversation with his brother and, as usual, was flitting around with other sites on the Internet as the two brothers spoke.  “Hey, Dad, check this out!” and there was the story of the dad and his little girl who “threw back the foul ball”.  Given the marvels of the Internet, our eldest was able to simultaneously read the story and see the clip of the event and the segment on the Today show.  We commiserated that we had missed out on our fifteen minutes of fame because TV cameras didn’t document his toss back then.  If a tree falls in the woods,……?   I write this somewhat for catharsis, but also because I thought you all might get a kick out of the serendipity our pre-Internet tale and its post-Internet revival.  If you could, please share my story with Mr. Monforto.  Tell him I know exactly how he feels.