Give it to a KID!

I really want to know…if an ADULT catches a foul ball, is is necessary for said adult to hand it over to a kid who wants it?  I’m not talking about a parent who catches it and hands it to their own kid, I’m talking about an adult with no kids in tow, who hands it to some stranger’s kid, because the kid WANTS it.

We were at a New Hampshire Fisher Cats game on Wednesday night, actually, it was a double-header.  During the second game, a foul ball was hit into the stands, and a young woman caught it.  She wasn’t there with any kids, she was just there with a girlfriend.

Anyhoo, this kid a couple of rows behind her started crying and screaming bloody murder about how HE WANTED THAT BALL.  The correct answer to this is to quote the great Mick Jagger…”You don’t always get what you want”.

But what did the woman do, but go back, and give the ball to the little screamer.  Delightful.  Now that brat is going to learn that if he screams and cries for something, he gets it.  Unless it’s something he’s already learned, from his own parents.

Maybe the woman didn’t want the ball, and gave it to the kid because she wanted the screaming to stop.  Or did she feel some sort of moral obligation to *give it to a kid*, because, after all, baseball is just for kids, even those who aren’t old enough to have a clue as to what is happening on the field?

Sorry, but if that ball came my way, I would have kept it.  First of all, I’d want to keep it, if I caught it, it’s mine, too bad.  Second, by denying it to a screaming brat, I am helping to do the world a favor by showing one little kid that you can’t always get what you want.  Just like Mick Jagger sings.
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I think there are some people who get it, though. Several years ago, we were at a Portland Sea Dogs game.  We were sitting in the first base line, the second row directly behind the Sea Dogs’ dugout.  The row in front of us consisted of this rather obnoxious family…the most annoying one being a boy of about 7 or 8 who constantly nagged the Sea Dogs first base coach with “CANIHAVEABALL?  CANIHAVEABALL?”

He did not give this kid a ball, and I suspected that this kid was annoying him as much as he was annoying me.  Anyhoo, the whole fam damily got up to go to the bathroom, get food, whatever.  When the first base coach saw this, he went into the dugout, came out with a ball, caught my eye, and rolled it over the roof of the dugout in my direction.  I went and got it and said thank you.

I still have that ball…a genuine, official Eastern League ball, game-used.  I wish I could remember the name of the guy who gave it to me, though.  For a while, I was thinking that it was Ron Johnson, who managed the Sea Dogs at the time, and now manages the PawSox.  But don’t managers in the minors act as third base coaches, rather than at first?  I think so.  But I don’t remember who was the first base coach back then, it was eons ago, back when the team was still affiliated with the Florida Marlins.  I need to look for the old programs from that period and see who it might have been.  I probably looked it up in the program at the time, but then forgot.

Anyhoo, I thought that this was cool, that someone actually thinks adults at games should get a used ball or something once in a while. I think he felt bad for us, having to listen to that annoying kid nonstop, and since we weren’t being annoying, we’d get what the kid was demanding.  I also thought it was cool that he did not reward the kid for being annoying.  I wish more people were like that.  Then we’d have fewer annoying kids and more respectful ones.

The annoying kid in front of us did come back with his family.  His dad had bought him a ball in the pro shop (way to go, Dad, for encouraging your kid to be a brat by buying stuff for him on demand).  But the kid STILL wanted a game-used ball, and started up with the “CANIHAVEABALL?” stuff again.

Oh, and finally…in case you don’t know…THE BAT/BALL BOY/GIRL IS NOT ALLOWED TO GIVE BALLS TO PEOPLE IN THE STANDS.  So quit asking them for it when they retrieve one.  Only the players and the coaches are allowed to toss balls to fans, not the bat-people.  Okay?