Sunday afternoon, Meri, Aaron and I went to a Memphis Redbirds game at Autozone Park. We got some free tickets from Servicemaster. We got there about an hour into the game because the whole family was snoozin for a bit. The seats we had were nice. We were in the upper deck over-looking the firstbase line. We had the entire section to ourselves. There were a bunch of foul fly balls in neighboring sections. Well one of the fly balls actually came into our section and being the only occupants of the section, I went down and got the ball. Well Aaron was just walking around the section and happened to be on the bottom row when I picked up the ball. I knelt down and showed him the ball and he came running up to me, excitedly screaming the entire way. Since he was so very excited to see the baseball, I handed it to him and then it happened: he threw the ball over the edge! I didn’t make any move simply because I was so stunned. When I got the ball and temporarily handed it to Aaron, the people in the club house above us applauded. When Aaron threw the ball over the edge, all of 20 or 30 people in the club house went “awwwww”. I just sat there. I think I laughed. I think I shed a tear inside. One thing that I do remember doing is teaching Aaron how to throw that fateful day at the duck pond. I remember him mockingly saying “good throw” everytime he would throw a piece of bread for the ducks. I remember Meri saying “Do we really want to teach him how to throw?” and I replied “Of course! He’s a little boy and boys have to learn how to throw!”. Well there we were, sitting at the baseball game, foul ball-less with a whole lot of people saying “awwwww” as my son tossed the ball over the edge. All that was missing from that moment was him saying “good throw!” in his high-pitched very excited voice.
I know he wanted that ball as much as I did. After being back at our seat for about 10 or 15 minutes, he physically moved Meri and I and said “ball back”. We just told him that the ball was gone and he seemed content with that fact. Oh well. It would have been an awesome souvenir. We had a lot of fun. Aaron was great at the game. He got to eat a snowcone and had one hell of a sugar high! It was pretty funny.

The memory of losing that ball will probably stand out more than actually having been able to keep the ball. I’ll just keep telling myself that at night before bed ;) .

Filed under: Family

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