Ballpark Figures

 While I can honestly say that I have done my part on all of the group assignments/projects I had been assigned in school, there is one "team effort" I claim that I in fact had little to nothing to do with.

I was probably about eight years old, and we went to visit family in Michigan. My Uncle Bob stopped being a loser for once in his life (don't worry about it) and took us to a Detroit Tigers game. The Detroit Tigers were playing the Tampa Bay Rays at the now extinct, Tiger Stadium. In the sixth inning, the Tampa Bay Rays hit a ball deep to left field which was right where we were sitting. Now, I have gone for a ride on some respiratory system roller coasters in my life, I have seen Braveheart, watched the Red Sox come back from being down 0-3 in the ALCS and seen the Patriots emerge victorious after being down 28-3. This moment was more of an emotional "El Toro" than all of them. I got excited as a player connected with the ball and hit it deep, I got bummed out when I remembered it was a Tampa Bay Rays player and I got really afraid as the ball headed right for our section. My dad put his hand up and knocked it down (a pain he complains about to this day.) The ball proceeded to fall between a folded-up seat in front of us and my brother and another family's chosen fighter dove for it. The Wootang Clan emerged victorious. To this day, my brother will not talk about what happened underneath those seats on the floor planted with popcorn and budding with beer stains that night. Every time I ask, "What was it like, Michael?" He sits still, appears to look right through me, takes a drag on cigarette that seems to have appeared out of nowhere and says "...don't worry about it." What was I doing, you ask? I was sipping on my $12 water, and I am happy to say I only have three payments left on the hot dog, the reason for the markup on the dog I was eating was due to the fact that the pork used in these particular bundled up bunches of meat were from Ancient Egypt and had been blessed by Isis and much like that quote, the meat had aged very poorly. I get to tell people this happened, but as far as my involvement I was not a main character, a supporting character or anything like that. I figured for my part in all of this I would stick to being who I am, an author.