A Baseball Story

My father remembers feeling like the ball was traveling in slow motion and he was frozen in place. My mother remembers it was Father’s Day; every dad through the gate was gifted a pair of boxer shorts. My brother remembers watching old episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show in the waiting room while eating a Whatchamacallit candy bar. My sister was too young to remember anything at all. And I remember thinking, in the split second after the ball smashed into my cheek, “Wow, that hurt. I should probably cry now,” and then I burst into tears. 

The June 21, 1992 meeting between the San Antonio Missions and the Wichita Wranglers was halted somewhere around the third or fourth inning when a foul ball rocketed into the stands behind home plate and collided with my seven-year-old face. I had bent down to take a sip from my oversized soda and when I lifted my head back up, a ball was flying toward me with such alarming speed that neither my father on one side of me nor my brother on the other, baseball glove already on his hand, had a chance to reach out and prevent the impact. For a moment, the entire stadium was stunned into silence, and then just as suddenly, the air was pierced with the sound of my scream. There was blood. Confusion. The stitches of the ball formed a bruised imprint on my cheek. Later, a doctor would tell us that another inch higher and the ball could have blinded my left eye permanently. 

My dad scooped me up and carried me down through the stands, past the hushed crowd with their palms covering their shocked mouths. Out through the silent stadium to the parking lot where we piled into our car and drove straight to the hospital. I recall sitting in a hospital room with ice on my face. I recall taking X-rays, the weight of the lead apron. I recall feeling outraged that my brother and sister got to eat candy bars and watch TV while all of this was happening. After the hospital, we went to a burger joint whose name I can’t remember but whose booths I can still picture in my mind as if I were sitting in one right now. I ate french fries that I squished flat between my thumb and forefinger to make them thin enough to push through the thin opening of my sore, swollen jaw. At some point that summer, a baseball arrived in the mail for me, signed in blue marker by all of the players on the San Antonio Missions. Every inch of the ball is covered in illegible signatures. It is an unsightly, worthless token that I have nevertheless continued to carry with me from place to place throughout my life. 

Sixteen years after this incident, I married a man who collects autographed baseballs. For a while he attempted to collect the signatures of every living Hall of Famer, which is how we came to have signed balls from Monte Irvin, Ernie Banks, Yogi Berra, Al Kaline. We have balls signed by members of the 2006 Detroit Tigers World Series team. We have a ball signed by four of the most famous Baltimore Orioles that is worth nothing because Frank Robinson botched his signature and turned the whole thing into garbage. My husband calls it The Frank Ball. We have a Home Run Derby ball signed by Mark Teixeira. It is not one of the only two home run balls he hit during the 2005 Home Run Derby, though my husband did catch one of those home runs. He then pestered Teixeira into signing the ball when the Rangers returned to Detroit the following year. 

That ball was stolen from our bedroom during a house party in college. It was replaced years later after we moved to Baltimore. Teixeira was a guest of honor at a charity function connected to my husband’s work. My husband purchased a 2005 Home Run Derby stamped ball through eBay and asked Teixeira to sign it. It’s an adequate replacement, but it isn’t the same. The value of the original Teixeira ball was the story it carried. My husband’s tale of how the Comerica Park ushers shooed people out of the section of the stands where he had been watching batting practice before the Derby started. They sent everyone back to their ticketed seats, but somehow my husband managed to go unnoticed and maintained his spot against the upper deck wall. In the footage from the Home Run Derby, you can see a glove reach out across the tunnel at the back of right field, snag the ball out of the air, and then lift triumphantly above my husband’s head, a lifelong baseball fan with the ultimate reward for his efforts. 

I prefer the story of the second Teixeira ball. After the theft, my husband went searching for information about Teixeira’s autograph-signing events. That search led him to a job posting that became his first career out of college. A job that eventually brought him into contact with Mark Teixeira. A job that brought us to Baltimore where we have built a life, set down roots, welcomed a child. A child who sometimes likes to point to all the signed baseballs lining our bookcase and ask where they came from. These are the ones from various Hall of Famers, I tell him. These ones are Tigers players. Here is The Frank Ball. Here is the one signed by Mark Teixeira, I say and I tell him the whole story. 

My son’s favorite ball is the one covered in blue writing. The only somewhat notable signature on there is Raúl Mondesí. I had my husband look it over to be sure. I had him research the game and take a look at the team roster. What he found was not the presence of something significant, but its absence. About a month before the foul ball nearly fractured my cheekbone, Mike Piazza had been crouching behind home plate in San Antonio. He was promoted to the Albuquerque Dukes (now the Isotopes) before moving up to play for the Dodgers and going on to have a Hall of Fame career. One month. 

What a bummer, my husband said when he discovered this news. So close. But actually, I prefer it this way. It makes for a better story.

CLAIRE TAYLOR is a writer who likes a good pitchers' duel and thinks the Biathlon is the most underrated sport. She grew up playing soccer and softball but now sticks to short runs where she tries her best not to pull a hamstring. Her writing has appeared in a variety of publications and has even been nominated for a few awards. Claire lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and online at clairemtaylor.com and Twitter @ClaireM_Taylor.