Man-ny! Man-what? Hey, Free Souvenirs!

I had the joy of being at the Dodger game tonight. Kind of historic in the sense that it was the first of 50 games the Dodgers will play without Manny Ramirez thanks to his suspension for taking performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) as indicated by a positive test by MLB. While this is obviously a concern for the team, not having his services and all until early July, I am not too worried about the Dodgers and how they will do without him. Tonight's game confirmed my thoughts about that (more details following). After all, one player does not make a team, and it's very hard to win when your bullpen gives up 10 runs.

It was obvious right away that the Dodger did not need Manny to score runs tonight. They scored 6 runs in the first inning alone to go up 6-0, 4 of which came on Matt Kemp's grand slam. Randy Wolf pitched a great 6 innings giving up only one run on a home run that I almost caught! The ball was caught by the guy sitting one seat over and two rows down from me. (You might be able to see me and my friend Martin if you pause the video at the just the right time. At the 0:12 mark of the video, you will see a guy in a yellow shirt bend over to get the ball. From there, look slightly up and to the left. Martin is in a blue shirt almost on the edge of the video and I am right next to him, in a light gray shirt with my blue Dodger hat.) Also in the game was a wicked crazy double play turned by the Nationals' Christian Guzman that spoiled the major league debut of Xavier Paul for the Dodgers. (It actually is ESPN's #1 Web Gem for Thursday.) Ultimately, the Dodgers lost 11-9, their first home loss of the season in their 14th home game. Not bad. So now they are only 21-9 with a 5.5 game lead in the division. Exciting game, but wrong results as we left two the tying runs on base to end the game.

Now, as to how I actually caught a ball during batting practice. The Nationals were taking their pre-game batting practice and many players were in shagging fly balls in the outfield. Once in a while one of them would toss a ball into the crowd, either into the left field pavilion or our area of the field level. One of the players had a ball and was looking towards the crowd in our section like he was thinking about throwing it to us. So I stood up and held up my glove in hopes he would see me. He did and threw the ball towards me. It started hooking away from me towards Martin (who did not have a glove was willing to let me defend him with it) so I leaned in front of him and caught it. Good thing too as he didn't realize the ball was coming our way...he was still watching the batter. So since they were giving away little radios in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Dodgers first world championship in LA (beating the White Sox in 1959), I walked away with two free souvenirs for the night. And yes they were truly free as the tickets to the game were free as well!

Below are a couple of pictures. One is with me and the ball I caught. The other is me re-enacting me catching the ball. (Very realistic, I know.)