It was a wonderful time, just as it was supposed to be – being nine years old. It was a time of innocence, a time of adventure, a time of exploring the vast world – as long as I was home by dinner time – most of it done on my bicycle. It was a time when the most important day of the week was Saturday – the day when Little League games were played.

For me, being nine was perhaps the greatest time in my life. I was blessed to have a father who would often take my brothers and me to Dodger games – first at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum and later to a brand new place called Dodger Stadium. It was there that I first saw (or at least first remembered seeing) Don Drysdale, Johnny Podres, Larry Sherry and, of course, the great Sandy Koufax live and in person.

As a youngster I was absolutely blessed to have seen Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax pitch in person. I took this photo of him warming up before a game on July 23, 1966 with my trusty Brownie Hawkeye camera (Google it). It would be the final season for the greatest left-hander of all-time.

One particular day the Dodgers were playing the Chicago Cubs, my father’s favorite team, as he had been born and raised on Chicago’s north side. We had arrived early and, as luck would have it, the Cubs were still taking batting practice. Lo and behold, a seldom used back-up catcher by the name of John Boccabella hit a ball into the Left Field Pavilion that a group of adults tried to catch barehanded, which they did not. I, as a rather small youngster, simply reached down and picked up the ball that had literally landed between my feet.

I was ecstatic. I had just gotten a baseball – an actual real major league baseball – just like the ones that Don Drysdale, Johnny Podres, Larry Sherry and, of course, the great Sandy Koufax used. It was the greatest day of my life!

But alas, as it always does, time marched on. I grew up, went to high school and college and began my long career in law enforcement. Along the way I married, bought a home in Santa Clarita, raised a daughter and son, all the while maintaining my loyalty to the Dodgers (sorry dad).

Although I attended quite a few games each year, it wasn’t until I became a season ticket holder in 2004 – in the Left Field Pavilion, of course – that I began to relive my youth by arriving early before every home game to take in batting practice. Unlike the adults in my childhood, I always brought my glove with me and, through the years, I have caught upwards of 500 batting practice home runs balls – perhaps even a thousand – along with four live-game home run balls.

At first I kept all of the BP HR balls as trophies of my efforts, but as you might imagine, they began taking up a lot of space. But what the heck was I going to do with all them? And then, in a flash, I remembered that feeling I had when I got my very first major league baseball when I was nine.

From that day on I would always bring a couple of my many BP HR balls with me to Dodger Stadium and would give them to youngsters at the ballpark. They loved it and I enjoyed doing it simply to see the excitement on their young faces. Eventually, I gave away nearly all of the BP HR baseballs that I had caught over the years, keeping only those that had special meaning to me.

Even to this day I still arrive early for every Dodgers home game to take in BP – albeit only the Dodgers’ BP now. And though I still catch a few balls every now and then – maybe two or three per homestand – I no longer run all over the pavilion trying to catch them (those hard wooden bleachers take their toll on aging knees). If they hit ’em directly to me, fine, I’ll try to catch them, but if they don’t, that’s fine too; I’ve certainly caught my fair share of them. And those that I do catch I give away to kids.

Giving away batting practice home run balls to kids makes catching them all the more fun.
(Video capture courtesy of dodgerfilms. Click on image to view video)

One day about three weeks ago, I happened to catch a couple of BP HR balls – one from Justin Turner and the other from Andre Ethier. I immediately gave the Turner ball away but hung onto the Ethier ball because all of the kids around me had already gotten several balls – some on the bounce and others tossed up to them by the Dodger players shagging BP balls.

When the game started there was an older couple – Dodger fans – sitting behind me. As the game progressed we began talking about the Dodgers and other baseball-related things. I learned that their names were Bob and Cinda and that they had driven down to watch the game from their home in Lompoc, California – a small community about an hour north of Santa Barbara and three and a half hours from Dodger Stadium. I also learned that they have a grandson who is (you guessed it) nine years old. They told me that he is a huge Dodger fan and that they occasionally bring him to games at Dodger Stadium. Unfortunately, he had already started the new school year and because of the distance and travel time involved, they couldn’t bring him this time.

Needless to say, I now had the perfect kid to give the Ethier BP HR ball to. As I handed the ball to Cinda, I asked her to please give it to her grandson and told her that I had caught it during BP and that Andre Ethier had hit it

“Oh my gosh, Andre Ethier is his favorite player!” Cinda said excitedly. “He’ll be so happy. Thank you very much.”

As Bob and Cinda were leaving the game for their long drive home, I gave them one of my ThinkBlueLA business cards and told them to check out the site – if they were so inclined – and that was pretty much it.

…or so I thought.

This past week I received a letter in the mail in a small envelope with my address hand-written on it. The return address was from Santa Maria, California, yet another small community even farther north of Santa Barbara. I had completely forgotten about the Ethier ball and didn’t connect the dots until I opened the envelope. Inside was a hand-written letter – obviously written by a youngster – that immediately connect the dots for me. It was a letter from nine-year-old Tyler Villard, Bob and Cinda’s grandson – a boy who I had never met – thanking me for the baseball.

In a time when all of us are so ridiculously preoccupied with our own seemingly most important little worlds, it took a simple little handwritten letter from a nine-year-old boy to make me remember what’s really important in life – our own youth and, more importantly, the youth of today.

Thanks for the flashback Tyler.