After 50 years, finally a foul ball

WASHINGTON -- On a brilliantly sunny weekday afternoon at RFK Stadium, in the top of the fourth inning of a game between Colorado and the Washington Nationals, Rockies rightfielder Brad Hawpe, unaware of the history he was making, hit a towering foul ball into the third base stands.
The ball plummeted into section 223 where it bounced off the upper left chest of an affable looking guy in a University of Maryland cap, rolled into the aisle toward section 224 where the muscular hand of Matt McFeatters clamped down on it with an authority that brooked no tussles or lawsuits over possession of this particular ball.
In a single, seamless motion, he swept up the ball and stuffed it into my hand. "Here," he said. "Your 50-year drought is over." Well, actually closer to 60.
I attended my first baseball game in 1947, Pirates vs. Cards, and have been a semi-regular attendee ever since despite some years overseas and such obstacles as having the Senators wrenched out of my new place of residence in 1971.
Foul-ballwise, Pittsburgh's Forbes Field was not a promising place. The cheapest seats were not the bleachers but the rear of the lower level, well beneath the overhang of the top deck. The experience was akin to watching a game through the firing slit of a pillbox, much like the view the German coastal defenders had of the allied invasion fleet.
As finances improved, so did my seats, but Forbes Field was so huge that statistically the chances of getting a foul ball were slim; nonetheless, I expectantly carried my Mel Ott glove with me, unaware that the baseball fates had decreed my own chances were nil.
This day wasn't starting off so promising either. Two elderly men two rows in front of me were sheltering from the sun under a large black umbrella that blocked out a large swath of left field, a venue that the Nats' Alfonso Soriano made more of an adventure than most. But I had the afternoon off, a ballgame, a beer, my younger son with me and couldn't summon the bile or energy to complain.
I really caught up with baseball when my older son fell in love with the game around age 10. We journeyed often up I-95 to see the Orioles. And we saw the Pirates when we visited my parents and the Reds when we visited my wife's. And we saw lots of minor league games.
Never even close
Not only did I never get a foul ball, I was never even close. The Hagerstown Suns' Municipal Stadium is to foul balls what the constellation Perseus is to meteor showers. The staff even warns you off certain parking places and tips you off to hitters prone to vicious line-drive fouls. Nothing. I was a human force field against foul balls.
And now I had one: "Official Major League Baseball Allan H. Selig Commissioner." Who knew Bud Selig was Allen H.?
Being totally unschooled in the etiquette of foul balls, I was unaware of certain phenomena. Little boys ask for the ball and fully expect that you'll comply. A mother appeared at our row and announced to her sons, in a voice loud enough for me and everyone around me to hear, "Maybe the nice man will give you the ball."
Said Matt, "Kid, when you put in your 50 years like he did, you can have a ball." The lad took that to mean no.
Now that I was a celebrity in the 200s section, the head usher came over and said, "Sir, if that umbrella is bothering you, I'll have them take it down right now."
"Nah," I said. "I'm used to it by now. They're a couple of old duffers. Let's let them be." I was magnanimous. I had a fly ball.
The affable looking guy in the Maryland cap was still rubbing his chest four innings later. It was a small enough sacrifice for him to make.
In the eighth inning, the old duffers, one white, one black, got up to leave and I was glad the usher and I had left them alone. They were clearly on day release from some nearby assisted living facility, and they painfully climbed the stairs, with one grabbing the railing and then reaching back to haul the other up the steps like mountain climbers belaying each other.
A foul ball had made me a better person. But if one of them had asked, I wouldn't have given the ball to him either. Matt has first dibs on it in my will.
Scripps Howard