A couple weeks ago, I missed a call from both of my parents while I was at the office. My mother also sent a couple texts to me that both read “Call me before 6pm. It’s important!” As I was walking out of the building at 630pm, I checked my phone and saw the missed calls, texts and voicemails. I checked my mother’s voicemail first which basically said the same thing as her text. “Call me before 6! I have to talk to you!” My dad’s, on the other hand, was over 2 minutes long. So I decided to skip his and call them immediately.
“Hello?”
“Hi mom. What did you need?”
“Are you home?”
“Ummm, no. On my way now. Why?”
“Your father caught a foul ball at the Tigers game today and you need to watch the reply at 7. The Freep was there interviewing people too about foul balls so he should be in the newspaper!”
“Wait… what? That’s the emergency?”
“Here, talk to your father.”
She handed the phone to my dad who told me the story how he caught the ball in the top of the 4th off Yunel Escobar’s bat so I needed to be home to see it on FSN Detroit at 7. The Freep just happened to be there doing a special piece about the people who caught foul balls that day. He then proceeded to tell me about how life is hard when you’re famous. I asked him if he’s inside the house because his head is so big I wasn’t sure he could get in the door.
Today, the Freep ran that piece with two pictures of my dad’s heroics. He’s apparently the old, emotionless one (page 3 of the article).
(As an aside, the very next Saturday my family had our annual Tiger game outing. We all head downtown and catch a game together. Our tickets this year were one section over from where my dad caught his ball. In the bottom of the first, Austin Jackson hit a rocket right at my dad. This time, my brother-in-law - sitting directly in front of him - jumps up and deflects a perfectly catchable ball for my dad. It hits off my brother-in-laws fingertips and sails off course to the right of my dad, bouncing off the steel handrail and ricocheting right back into my head. My dad could’ve had two foul balls in 4 days.)