Reader here!
I’m a big sports fan. Always have been, and it doesn’t matter what sport we’re talking. My Mom says even when I was little, I’d plop myself down in front of the TV and lock in watching golf.
Whether it’s you’re traditional spectator sports, like hockey, football, baseball, basketball, or curling, I also enjoy watching auto racing, track and field, and much more.
And as a fan, there’s always things you’d like to do, and during my vacation, I checked one of those things off my fandom bucket list.
Over the years, during my time in Yorkton, I made it to Jubilee Park a few times, to catch the dear, departed Cardinals in Western Canadian Baseball League action.
I’ve been to Major League games in Toronto (where I got to see Roy Halliday pitch), in Detroit (where I saw Cleveland’s Carlos Santana hit an inside-the-park home run) and Minneapolis (where I got to watch the Twins and Jays duke it out while enjoying a delicious pork chop on a stick!)
All those times, I always hopes I’d catch a foul ball, but it never happened.
However, that changed during my recent vacation, when on August 12th, my brother Ward and I went to catch the Saskatoon Berries’ semifinal game against the Moose Jaw Miller Express at Cairns Field in the Bridge City.
After waiting in the Wiener Wednesday line, loading up on $2 hot dogs (and I do mean waiting – we missed an inning and a half, including the bottom of the third, in which the Berries scored five runs to take the lead for good), Wardo and I returned to our seats behind home plate (shoutout to my sister-in-law Aimee, for scoring us some great seats!).
Not a bad vantage point for a ball game!
We’d only been back in our spot for a few minutes, when one a Berries’ batter fouled one off directly behind him.
It rose up…up…up… until it cleared the backstop, and I could tell it was headed my way.
I couldn’t stand up, as I had a tray loaded with four Dugout Dogs, loaded with mustard, onions and sauerkraut, so I reached up with my right hand, and the ball (which still had a lot of velocity and spin) careened off the tip of my right thumb, down to my left thumb, that was holding the tray, and then came to a stop in my tray full of dogs!
I never thought to get a photo of that, but I did snap a photo with my prize!
My hot dog tray really made the catch more than I did, but I got myself a foul ball!
In the end, the Berries tacked on a couple of insurance runs, to finish off Moose Jaw with a 7-4 victory, to advance to the WCBL championship, where they swept the Sylvan Lake Gulls in two straight, to capture their first ever league title.
The Saskatoon Berries’ victory celebration after finishing off the Moose Jaw Miller Express.
So what’s next for the bucket list? Maybe I can catch a stray puck at a hockey game… as long as it doesn’t catch me unaware and smack me in the face!
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