An Encounter With Greatness

First off, I have to say that I'm flattered that people have actually noticed my drop off in posting. Just today, I had two people comment about wanting a new blog post. There's plenty to talk about. Benjamin's t-ball season and swimming lessons. Sarah's second birthday. My church softball season (well, actually, there's not much good to talk about there....) I'll get to those at some time.

Right now, though, I want to relay a story from our just-completed Ohio vacation. If you have Facebook, you've already seen the picture and know a little of the story, but I wanted to lay it all out here for you. Seems appropriate to get back into the swing of things with a good baseball story.

As we did two years ago, we went to Ohio via St. Louis instead of the direct path there. This time, we timed it so that we could attend the first day of FanFest, the baseball extravaganza that goes along with the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, which the Cardinals were hosting this year. The FanFest is yet another story, though we enjoyed it quite a bit.

This time, we stayed with our friends Andy and Kristi Stroud instead of a hotel. Andy and Kristi both graduated with me and live up there with their two kids. When we left FanFest, we gave them a call and all of us met at Ozzie's, the restaurant owned by the former Cardinal shortstop and Hall of Famer. When we got there, Andy and Kristi had already gotten us a table, so we sat down, tired and exhausted from a long day. The wives were on one side of the table, facing the interior of the restaurant, Andy and I were facing outside, and the kids were at the ends.

As we are talking, Meron looks up and gets our attention. We look over our shoulders and, amazingly, there comes Ozzie Smith himself, talking on his cell phone. He walks toward our table and greets us ("How are you guys tonight?" or something in that vein) and goes into a private room that sits behind our table.

However, he doesn't close the door behind him. When he finishes with his call, he can see Benjamin at the end of the table and Meron looking at the room. So he asks if we've been to FanFest and then asks Benjamin what he did and whether he hit while he was there. A nice little conversation, but then apparently the people he was waiting for arrived and they did close the door.

As you can imagine, that made for some nice dinner conversation. We thought it was very neat for him to even be there, much less start talking to us. I just wished that I'd been able to get a picture, but with the closed door, that didn't seem to be an option.

We kept eating and talking. We happened to notice that the waitress came out of the room with two autographs on the back of her shirt. One of them was Ozzie's, the other Willie McGee, an outfielder and fan favorite who played for the Cards in the '80s. So now we knew there were two former players in the restaurant with us!

I expected that we'd be done well before he was and our opportunities were over. As we were finishing, though, I felt a hand on my back and a

voice saying, "Thank you for coming." Ozzie was standing there between Andy and I! It was the closest thing to a religious laying of hands you can get without being in church.

Quickly, I asked if we could get a picture with him and Benjamin and he said, "Sure!" Benjamin came around the table while I fished out the camera of the diaper bag. As I'm getting situated, he picked up Benjamin and put him on the chair so they'd be closer to the same height and continued talking to him about FanFest. I took one shot and then thanked him profusely for his time and patience.

Some people have asked if we got a picture of Sarah with Ozzie. Sarah's not exactly big on strangers and especially not with strange men. In fact, she was still recovering from her wailing spell when Andy had tried to make her smile. So with limited time, it didn't seem the best idea to try to push that one.

We made sure to give a copy of this to Meron's baseball-loving dad, who showed it off quite a bit to customers that came in his store that week (and, probably, still is). Benjamin has the other copy in his room, but we'll be making more soon!

I'll try to get some more stories from our vacation and the early summer up before it's time to start talking Christmas!