Throwback Thursday

I was looking for something in a storage box today at lunch and happened to find a baseball that I had feared was long gone.

This ball was a could ball from a Birmingham barons game in 1982.  We were on the third base side kinda low, when a pop fly landed two seats away from my dad and into an open seat.  I’ve never seen my dad move with any sort of cat-like quickness, but he did that night.  Of course, our dream was to catch a foul ball at all the games we had attended that summer and summers past. (I’ve written about Barons baseball and my dad here.) Here was our chance.  The ball landed, dad leapt to action, and he beat several people to the ball.  And there we were with an authentic piece of Barons Baseball.  This was 1982, remember, the gift shop didn’t sell “authentic” items from the team. You couldn’t get an “on the field” type of hat or jersey, and you for sure couldn’t get an “authentic” baseball used by the Southern League. This ball was like gold.  And that I found it after all these years makes me smile with the happy thoughts of summers of Barons baseball with my dad.