Baseball

I was on XM Radio's baseball channel a little while ago. The hosts were talking to Lee Smith, who was until recently the all-time Major League leader in saves, and he couldn't have been nicer and more charming, so I called in with a story of when I saw him play in the minor leagues (a true story in fact, not that I'm above making things up from time to time).

I was driving across the country by myself. I was moving to Philadelphia to go to school and didn't want a car there, so we sold it to my aunt who lives in Sacramento. To amuse myself, I stopped and saw baseball games everywhere I could along the way. First Cleveland, then Chicago, and then I was intending to see an afternoon game in Minneapolis, but it was raining there, so I headed south because I was going to visit my brother in Colorado on the way to California (another story to attach here at another time).

I got to Des Moines (actually pronounced demoyne, to my disappointment) around 8 PM and was scanning through the radio dial and hit on a minor league game in progress, and saw on my map a place called Sec Taylor Stadium so I headed over there and watch the last 5 innings of the game. There are 3 things I remember about the game. First, every time someone hit a foul ball back over the stands, the PA announcer would say "And there goes another one into the mighty Raccoon River." Second, it was foggy, almost too foggy to see the outfield fence from behind home plate. Third was Lee Smith.

Iowa was up by a couple of runs in the 9th inning and they called for their closer, announced as "Lee Arthur Smith." And out of the fog comes the biggest baseball player I've ever seen. Smith is about 6' 8" 275 pounds and solid as a rock. He threw about 100 mph. And even from the stands you could tell the batters were terrified about this huge guy throwing so hard out of the fog. But he didn't hurt anyone. He struck out two and the other guy popped out. He was in the majors about a month later and I've never forgotten the moment.