Have you ever got a ball at a game before?

[novakjr]

I've gotten one ball from a game before. It was back in '92 and I was 12 at old Municipal Stadium. I was at the game with my parents and a few kids from my little league team with their parents as well. We had crap seats. Well, that was always the plan at Municipal. Get crap seats, and usually by the 4th inning the ushers kinda just stopped working, so you could always move closer. Luckily this time the place was almost empty, and we ended up in the first row of the box seats on the first base line, right above the Indians dugout. They were playing the Tigers that day, luckily the Indians were winning, and the final out was an easy ground-out. The team quickly celebrated and started heading for the dugout. First baseman Paul Sorrento glanced up and tossed me the ball(which I ended up getting signed by Sandy Alomar after the game). I was the happiest kid ever at that moment. To make things even better, he then went into the dugout, and then came back out and tossed the managers line-up cards on top of the dugout also. Well, I ended up with those too.. Which works out even better, because in the home dugout, the visiting teams lineup card was always the actual copy, while the home team kept the carbon copy of their own. So I ended up with Sparky Anderson's autograph as well.

At a game later in the year, I also ended up with the lineup cards from a game against the Orioles. But Johnny Oates' autograph really doesn't quite measure up to Sparky.