Sometimes the best and worst of baseball happens outside the foul lines. In the stands, where a 12-year-old boy and his mother sat watching the Atlanta Braves take batting practice before a game at Dodger Stadium some years ago.
The boy had been looking forward to this game for months, ever since his mother surprised him with tickets for getting good grades at his Simi Valley elementary school.
Down at the left field foul pole, a group of men and older teenagers who brought their gloves to the games had gathered in hopes of catching a ball during batting practice. The boy and a few other younger kids joined them with their mitts. They were much smaller and shoved aside by the bigger teenagers leaning over the railing.
It’s a shame, the boy’s mother thought, that the Dodgers don’t have a section for just little kids to catch a batting practice ball. At least give them a chance.
Then, it happened — the perfect, high-arched foul ball heading their way. A dozen arms shot up to catch it, but it sailed past the outstretched gloves of the big kids and adults, and landed smack-dab in the middle of the 12-year-old boys glove.
His mom jumped up from her seat and started cheering. “Great catch, Travis!” Lisa Martin yelled. “Great catch, son!”
Travis searched the stands for his mother and held his glove high above his head. Lisa watched in disbelief as a man reached into the glove and stole the ball.
I don’t know his name. I wish I did. We’ll just have to call him the Jerk. It fits. He stood there smiling, holding the ball up as if he had caught it.
“Hey, mister, that’s my ball, I caught it,” Travis pleaded. The Jerk shrugged his shoulders. Tough luck, kid. You can’t do anything about it. You’re only a kid.
By then, Lisa had worked her way down to her son. “Hey, buddy, I’m proud of you,” she said to Travis. “I saw you catch that ball.” Then she turned to the Jerk with a withering stare and said, “How are you going to sleep tonight knowing you stole a baseball from a little boy?”
The Jerk just looked at her and shrugged his shoulders again. It was the best answer he could come up with — a shrug.
Travis went back to his seat as the game started, but he kept thinking about that ball that should be in his glove right now. It wasn’t fair. He had caught it. “It ruined the game for him,” Lisa would tell me later.
After the last inning ended, Travis tried to salvage the evening by joining some other kids gathered at the railing outside the Dodger dugout to hopefully get an autograph from the players as they ran off the field.
It was no use. The big kids shoved the little ones aside, screaming and begging the players to stop. Travis and his mom stayed awhile longer then finally left. Out in the parking lot, a group of older teenagers and a few adults were waiting for the players to leave.
They ran after a few and yelled, demanded really, that they stop and sign an autograph. “Let’s go home, Travis,” Lisa said.
This was the kind of fan behavior that was the reason more Dodgers didn’t stop after the game to sign autographs — the reason they needed security guards to walk them to their cars, she thought.
Tears welled up in her son’s eyes as they drove home. He was angry. A night he had been looking forward to for months — a night he earned by working hard and getting good grades — had turned into the worst night of his young life because of a Jerk who stole his ball.
After my column ran, the Dodgers gave Travis and his mom box seats for the next game and let them sit in the dugout to watch the team take batting practice. Then, all the Dodger players autographed a baseball for Travis. It was the best night of his life.
I don’t know how the Jerk slept that night he stole the kid’s ball, but I do know this. Travis Martin made a great catch outside the foul lines for the Dodgers that night.
He was the best of baseball.
The Jerk? Give him a shrug.
Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.