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My One and Only Grand-Slam Homerun
This past weekend, my wife and I visited a local high school to see our grandniece Sarah perform in a summer production of Peter Pan. She was one of the pirates, and while she didn’t have any lines, she did have a patch over one eye, and she did a fantastic job singing and dancing along with the rest of the ensemble. I have to admit, I was a bit distracted during the play, though, because just outside the auditorium was the baseball field for that high school, and on that field, 50 years ago, I hit my one and only grand-slam homerun.
As we waited with other family members for the play to begin and waited again afterwards to congratulate Sarah on her performance, I was tempted to tell my homerun story. I resisted, however, because, after all, it was Sarah’s special night, and, quite honestly, I knew no one really wanted to hear about one crazy afternoon during the glory days of my misspent youth. I’m not sure anyone really wants to read about it either, but if I do say so myself, it is an interesting and funny story.
We have to go back to 1972, the summer between my junior and senior years of college. I worked during the days cutting lawns, and I played baseball on the weekends in a traveling league composed of mostly college ballplayers. We usually played two games on Saturday and two more on Sunday. On this particular Saturday in late August, we were…
