Near-Death Experiences and Baseball

I have a lot of memories of A's games. I can remember walking down the aisle to check out the seats I would have all season in 2006 (I won them in a card-game tournament.) I remember seeing Justin Duchscherer throwing a no hitter into the 8th inning. I think my earliest memory though, along with my most traumatic one, came from when I was younger than ten years old.

I can't even precisely remember the year, to be honest. I was a kid, and that's all I remember. It was my parents' anniversary and they decided to go to an A's game and let me tag along. Perhaps back in the day my parents alternated anniversary activities every year and it was my Dad's turn. Perhaps also my parents rotated which kid would accompany them on said activities. Regardless, I was at an A's game with my parents. It was a beautiful weekend day during late June, and I was just a little kid enjoying the game. Like most kids, I probably had no real idea what was going on in the game, other than I wanted to see the A's win and a lot of balls to go over the fence. As I contemplated the complexities of the game, I leaned in to get some soda out of the cup. After taking a sip, I leaned back into my seat. Mere moments after I put the soda back into its cup, a baseball sent from the heavens decided I should be content with the amount of soda I'd already consumed, and flew down right into the soda cup.

We sat there perplexed. Where did the ball come from? It didn't come from the field; we obviously would have noticed that. It must have come from above. We were sitting along the first base long about 20 rows back or so. Maybe someone had dropped it from above? Man, that would be some rough beats. I mean, dropping a ball from that high onto a kid's head could seriously hurt him; we're talking at least 100 feet or so. There's no way whoever did that would show their face. We hadn't taken into account, though, that the mind who would lose such a ball would probably be just as oblivious to the consequences of such an action. Suddenly, a young child not too much older than myself came down asking for the baseball back. He didn't fool around with pleasantries; he simply asked for his ball back. The logic probably all worked out in his mind.

It did not work out in my Mom's mind, though. She lost it on that poor kid, and with good reason. She almost saw her child's head get seriously hurt by a stray baseball tossed down by a goofy kid, and now this kid had the gall to come asking for the ball back without so much as a "Whoops, my bad, bro." She let the kid know what she thought of the whole situation; how dangerous it was to let a ball fly like that, why he should apologize, and the huevos it must have taken to come down there and ask. After giving him that lecture, I believe she ended up giving him the ball back. She got her peace of mind, I got to keep my head, and that kid got his ball back. Like any good Mom, at the very least I know I can count on her to go to bat for me, in the face of overwhelmingly oblivious children hellbent to leather on allowing my head to be caved in. Thanks, Mom.