C'mon, imagine catching a ball hit by Ted Williams, or Hank Aaron, or Johnny Bench.
Even if you hate the other team, what a prize that would be.
When I was young, my father won some “man of the year” award, and his prize was to take his boys to a Yankees game, where we would meet them all in the locker room. Even though we were Orioles fans, we definitely were thrilled by this.
Sadly, the Yankees were in a horrible losing streak, and when it was our time to visit the locker room, the entire team was in a team meeting. They sent out two players to meet us and autograph our baseballs. Still I treasured that ball.
In order to fit into New York, I took to the Mets, who lost all the time. Until one year they didn’t. My most memorable game was watching Tom Seaver set the then-record for strikeouts in a game, and strikeouts in a row. We made a poster of that.
I stopped following baseball the year they went on strike. I was just graduated college; they lost a fan who would have spend thousands of dollars going to games, all because for one month, they stopped playing — that was the month after I graduated college. I had actually scheduled the start of my real job by a month, so that for one month I could do nothing but go to ball games.
So I re-arranged my LIFE for that game, and they repaid me by striking because they felt they didn’t make enough.