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« on: August 10, 2007, 08:35:23 am »
As most of you know my son Jarrett has battled through numerous medical challenges... open heart surgeries, a tracheostomy, and cancer. By God’s grace he has beaten them all. At several points during these times, I always had a vision of taking him to his first Astros game. It was a milestone of sorts that I knew in my heart I would be able to do with him. That memorable night finally came back on May 18th vs. the Rangers.
In all the games I went to in the Dome growing up, I never once caught a foul ball. Never even came close. Ten rows was about as close as I ever came. I was hopeful we could get one hit our way, but didn't really expect anything. Our seats were in the 1st row of section 313 right on the rail. In the bottom of the 1st, Lamb fouled one up right toward us. The ball came right to me and I had it in my hands. Then I got "Bartmaned". A forty-something guy with a glove lunged about four seats over, smacked the back of my hands and knocked the ball out down to the field boxes below. Isn't it a man law that no one over the age of 12 is allowed to bring a glove to the game? Seriously.
Then in the 8th inning, Lamb came to bat again. He sent another one up toward our section, this time a little to our left. Jarrett was sitting on my lap and the ball caromed off of the guy two seats over and landed right in my hands. Our section was cheering because they knew we had gotten jobbed by Bartman. I handed the ball to Jarrett and was overjoyed because he gotten a ball at his first game. The guy who the ball had rebounded off of asked reached out to shake my hand and I turned toward him...then I heard the gasps and groans. The guy’s girlfriend shouted “He threw it back!”
Yes, Jarrett had thrown the ball back.
It landed back down in the field boxes, much to the confusion of the masses below. I guess he had been to too many of his sister's basketball games. He always tries to get the ball when it goes out of bounds so he can throw it back to the ref. I felt a mixture of joy/loss that I have never felt at a ballgame before. Everyone in the section was laughing and we joined in. Jarrett was all smiles.
Now that I have had some time to think about it, I wouldn't change a thing about that the way things happened. If we had kept the ball the story would have ended there. The ball would have ended up on a shelf, or been played with and lost. This way, the memory of the night is what I will carry forever. I later found out from some of the guys at the guys at work that they showed us on TV a couple of times.
This season I have been able to take two of my other sons to their first ballgames. I now get to sit on the couch at night as the boys put on their plastic Astros helmets and race around the living room practicing their slides and using any long object within reach as bat.
I have the joy of watching them become Astro fans. I had to put on the Oswalt/Zambrano game I had TIVOed because they would not accept the fact that the Astros were not playing last night.
But I guess none of this matters because the Astros aren't good this year.