Three Signed Balls

So we are out early at the ball park to get a good seat behind home.  We are all covered in red to fit in with the minor league Red Sox crowd.   The kids say they want to get the balls signed.  I had three that I had bought for 500 Up and the kids wanted to bring them just in case and away I go, off on a fool’s errand, thinking that I would get some old guy selling programs to sign when a nice lady in a staff shirt tells me to stand over there.  “Over there” is a little pen with guys with big cameras and other guys with binders of memorabilia.   So we stand and we wait and after a few minutes the kids start to complain.  A lesson in patience or a lesson in dashed dreams.  I know not which but either is good for a kid in grade three.  Then a Reading player comes over, a memorabilia guy shouts Michael, he signs and turns and his back says “Garciaparra” – Michael, not Nomar however.  The kids aren’t satisfied.  They don’t want no stinking Reading players autograph.  So we wait.  Nothing.  Then a guy walks out.  A kid.  A tall skinny kid with 11 on his back.  He lifts a finger and then walks away.   “Awwww” the kids say.  I hear “awwww” again and a huff for good measure.   But then Mr. 11 comes back, signs a memorabilia thing for a memorabilia guy and I hear myself say from the back “can these three kids get their balls signed?” and he says sure and a path opens to the front.  Three red dressed kids are scooted forward and he signs each one with a neat and natty signature but I can’t read the name and he walks away in one direction and the kids and I go in another.

Back in the stands, we show the balls and say who is number 11?   Apparently Clay Buchholz was Boston’s Minor League Player of the Year in 2006 and he beat Roger Clemens in his last start.   More ball cases now needed.