No Harm No Foul.

I am pretty sure that there are not too many people who can say they have been hit by a line drive foul ball while attending a Major League Baseball (MLB) game. I can and it happened to me not just once but twice and both times it was a very painful experience to say the least.

The first time I was hit was back in 1977. I was working as a vendor during the Toronto Blue Jays inaugural season at Exhibition Stadium. Being a vendor was a pretty cool first job and I did get my fair share of those much coveted Rawlings baseballs during that first season. I gave all of them away to my friends who were Jays fans.

I would quite often sell peanuts at the games and I would always troll the single aisle between sections 25 and 27 at the far end of the Jays dugout. That is where the players who were in uniform but who were not in the lineup always sat. During the game I would holler out ‘peanuts’ just a little louder as I walked down the stairs towards the field level. Sometimes a player after hearing I had peanuts would wave his hand and yell ‘hey peanut man’ around the top of the dugout wall.

And that would be my cue.

There was a little camera well I would walk down into and I would quickly trade him a bag of my peanuts for a Rawlings baseball. Never once did a player pay me cash for my peanuts. There was the one time when there wasn’t a ball around and the player handed me a game used cracked bat for the bag. I gave the bat away to a kid sitting behind the dugout. His father then bought four bags of my peanuts and gave me a pretty hefty tip after I gave his son the game used souvenir.

For the most part Rawlings baseballs were the currency of choice inside the Jays dugout for all of us peanut vendors. It always amazed me how littered the Jays dugout floor would get by the late innings from all the sunflower and peanut shells. I never once traded a ball for peanuts over at the visiting team’s dugout.

On one afternoon I was selling hotdogs in the lower level sections along the third base line. I was crouched down serving a customer with my back facing the field. I heard the loud crack of the bat and instantaneously I knew from the fans reactions around me there was a foul ball heading right towards our area. It wasn’t a pop up fly ball either as everyone in my vicinity sought immediate cover. I too placed my hands up and over my crouched head while kneeling down as low as I possibly could.

Within a couple seconds of the ball hitting the bat it was all over. The ball hit me flush on the baby toe of my right foot and then careened about five rows up into the seats where it ended up inside a woman’s purse. The sharp throbbing pain in my right foot felt as if my baby toe had been hacked off. I would spend the rest of that afternoon and the following week walking around with an awkward limp due to my workplace injury caused by a Rawlings baseball.

It sure would have been nice to have gotten that ball as a memento. The lady whose purse it had landed in was just so overjoyed with her newfound treasure courtesy of my throbbing right foot. She like everyone else knew that the ball had hit me first, but there was absolutely no way she was giving it up and she didn’t even buy a hotdog from me.

Bitch!!!

Fast forward 26 years later to September 3rd 2003. I am at the Skydome, the Jays new home since 1988 for a game against the New York Yankees. And no I am no longer a vendor, but I am a Yankee fan.

A Yankee fan?

Yes, I wasn’t even a baseball fan when I was a kid, but ever since that first season back in 1977 I have been a Yankee fan. I think a lot of it has to do with I earned my highest commissions while working every Yankees game during that summer.

The Yankees by far always drew the biggest crowds with hundreds of Yankee fans making the trek up from Western New York State and the Buffalo area. I will say one thing for sure, American fans were much bigger tippers than the locals and they all paid in US dollars. And with the likes of owner George Steinbrenner, manager Billy Martin and slugger Reggie Jackson always feuding, the 1977 World Series Champions were always very controversial and entertaining.

In September 2003 my favourite Yankee player Derek Jeter was not in the lineup after already missing a good part of the season with a shoulder injury. Replacing Jeter in the lineup was utility switch hitting infielder Enrique Wilson. I was sitting with a friend along the first base side about twenty rows up from the field. At approx. 9:20 pm Enrique hit a screaming line drive foul ball and its trajectory was heading exactly to where I was sitting. Everyone in the area immediately took cover except for me. I stupidly attempted to catch the incoming Rawlings rocket barehanded as I stood up from my aisle seat. My friend who was sitting to my right was almost hiding under his seat and was very well shielded by my six foot four frame.

Not surprisingly I was unable to catch the insanely spinning ball. I was in excruciating pain as the ball struck my left wrist dead on. My watch’s metal band which had taken the brunt force of the very hard Haitian made rawhide leather projectile was now busted. Everyone sitting around me began looking for the ball, but it was nowhere to be found. I noticed my wrist was bleeding as I felt something inside my Yankee pullover jacket just under my left armpit.

It was the ball.

I reached inside and pulled it out much to the amazement of not just me but everyone else that was sitting around me. I held up the ball to show the TV cameraman who was working at the back of our section. As I took my watch off to put in my pocket I noticed that my watch was also broken and the time was frozen at 9:20.

Even to this very day twenty years later while writing this memory I still have absolutely no idea how that ball ended up inside my loose fitting Yankee jacket. It would be physically impossible for a ball to have entered through the snug elasticized sleeve cuff and then run up my left arm. The only other option for entry would have been the unzipped chest area beside the NY logo. With the force that the ball hit my wrist you would think I would have received a pretty good jolt to my chest area before the ball came to rest under my armpit, but I felt absolutely nothing at all.

I guess it will forever be one of those life’s little mysteries.

For a good month after the game my wrist was very sore and I debated about having an X-ray, but I never did. I also debated about getting my favourite watch fixed, but I never did. It was just a cheap Timex and it was much cheaper just to buy a new one, which I did.

Although I do wish that I had been hit by a Jeter foul ball, it was just nice to finally keep the ball that hit me. It is a true game used memento and will always be a great memory. But had that ball hit someone else before striking me I would have given the ball up to that person in a heartbeat.

I can't say exactly how many of those Rawlings baseballs I had in my hands during the two summers I worked as a vendor; it would be at least a couple dozen for sure. If I could have just one ball back, it would be the one ball that I never even had in my hands. I think it would be so cool to display both of the Rawlings baseballs that I was hit with twenty three years apart.

I know one thing for sure, I will never be hit by another line drive foul ball ever again. In 2020 MLB made it mandatory that all major league ballparks install protective 24’ high netting to protect the fans from errant foul balls. The reason being is that too many fans were being seriously injured from foul balls because they are too busy looking at their cell phones and not staying alert during ball games. People now need to be protected from their own stupidity.

These days you can leave your ball glove at home. Sadly, take me out to the ball game will never be as fun or as painful anymore.