My son's first baseball game

I just posted the schedule for Auburn University Baseball's 2008 season. It brought up a memory that I'd like to share. He's 6 now, but when my son, Landon was slightly over a year old, I took him to his first baseball game. Now, I'm not an idiot. I know that a baseball game is no place for a one-year-old. But I was running out of ideas for distractions for this screaming child and thought, "what's the harm, we'll sit behind the barricade."

Well, we got behind the net along the first base line above the visitor's dugout. However, we couldn't get close enough to home plate where the top, above-us was netted because the ballpark was packed. It was an SEC game against Florida. Beautiful day, 80 degrees, mostly sunny and a late afternoon game with the sun behind us. I had gone to J & M bookstore earlier in the week and bought matching AU hats for Landon and me. Hey, I bleed orange and blue and my son will be raised an Auburn Tiger just as I was.

3rd inning, and Landon is in my lap, quiet as a church mouse just taking-in all the noise, movement, and excitement. TING! Batter hits a foul ball......

I've been to thousands of baseball games and never caught a homerun or foul ball. This time, the one time a ball is hit seemingly straight to me, I have my one-year-old son in my lap. In a split second, just as if I had done it a million times before, I took my cap off my head, and caught the ball 2 feet from Landon's head. YES!

I calmly, as cool as I could be, held up the ball to the small cheering crowd around me. It was one of those great father/son moments that I'll take to my grave. We go to as many games we can every since.