Northbound

Sunday night, a day in the life.  One of the few really depressing things about minor-league baseball is how it reduces ordinary middle-class New Jerseyans to the level of beggars in Calcutta.  All you have to do is put some unpaid interns out on the field with a slingshot and some Hanes Beefy-Ts with the local team’s logo silk-screened on them and — pow — the normally-sensible people around you erupt in a frenzy of me me me me me fling it to me.  And you all of a sudden have to be careful, because nobody wants to die as the result of an errant T-shirt.

And so it was last night.  Two rows in front of us, and there were these three hefty middle-aged beer-swilling louts, and they wanted a baseball.  And they weren’t getting one.  There weren’t any foul balls hit in our direction.  That left two sources for balls.  There was the visiting Camden RiverSharks, and they were directing any balls they had towards the Little League group sitting behind the dugout.  And then there was the local ball boy, who — as a matter of principle — never tosses anybody any balls.  He just doesn’t.  It’s not his job.

About the fourth or fifth time the ball boy blew off the idjits, they started getting wise.  So every time he passed by, they started to erupt in sarcastic applause.  “Hey, ball boy, you’re doing a heckuva job,” etc.  This was maybe a tiny bit cute the first time they did it; not so much after several idiotic repetitions.  And the game ended (the good guys won, 4-0) and still, nobody tossed these guys a baseball.  They were ticked.

The ball boy came over for the last time, and the lead heckler went over to take one last shot at him.  And the ball boy tossed him something, white and flashing in the evening air.  It was a baseball.  But it wasn’t just any baseball.  It was a tiny little foam baseball, a toy, what you’d put in a baby’s crib.

It was a great comeback, and I can’t describe how pleased I was.  Of course, it was wasted on the idjits, but the really great comebacks usually are.