When I was younger, I collected baseball cards, and whenever I was in a place other than Mechanicsburg, I always sought out new baseball card stores to visit.

My grandmother lives in Lancaster, PA, and on one occasion when I couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old, my family and I stopped by her place for a visit.  For some reason—maybe it was a holiday or something—many of my relatives were also visiting my grandparents that afternoon.  The group of us was so large, I remember, that we had to eat in the basement instead of the dining room.

Now, my grandmother is an excellent cook.  She was born in southern Italy, and to this day, her gnocchi is my favorite food.  As a youngster, I had a sensitive stomach, but I had never had an adverse reaction to my grandmother’s food, though I usually only ate her pasta and not the cooked meats.  On this occasion, however, I decided to eat some kind of beef she had made.  It was delicious, and I remember that it had slivers of what I think were grilled onions in it, which I wasn’t sure if you were supposed to eat or not, but I ate anyway.

After our big mid-day meal, I talked my Dad into taking me to a nearby baseball card store.  Before we left my grandmother’s house, I remember two things: My Dad’s younger cousins were fighting over who got to use their new BB gun first, and my stomach had begun to bother me.

My Dad and I pulled up to the baseball card store and went inside.

“Dad,” I said, “my stomach hurts.”

I don’t remember what my Dad said to this, but he probably wasn’t too concerned because complaints about my stomach were typical.

At one point, while I was standing next to my Dad, I pulled on his sleeve—he was talking to the salesman about some aluminum trashcans emblazoned with the Phillies’ logo I think—and told him again that my stomach really hurt.  He told me to be quiet.  Part of my memory says that he even went so far as to put his hand in front of my mouth to get me to shush.  In any case, I remember with great clarity what happened next: I barfed all over the floor.

Now I had everyone’s attention.  My Dad told me to go outside while the salesman told his co-worker to get a vacuum.

I went outside by the sidewalk and continued to barf.  I threw up all over some leafy plants.  I threw up on my shoes as well.  My barf was pink in color and I saw the bits of grilled unions in there.  I threw up with such force that the vomit came out of my nose and my mouth simultaneously.  I have never thrown up so forcefully in my life.  A mother and her two kids walked by, aghast.  They quickened their pace away from me, the human barf machine.

Eventually, I stopped throwing up and went back inside the store.  I remember that I purchased an old Willie Stargell card and went home, my Dad and I thoroughly embarrassed I’m sure.

So, I did manage to get a baseball card out of the whole ordeal, but even that satisfaction wouldn’t last, as when I got back to Mechanicsburg, I somehow managed to accidentally sit on the baseball card and it got a big crease in it, thus rendering it worthless.  The End.

When I was a kid, man, did I love baseball! Loved everything about it. I studied stats for hours. I stared at pictures of great players. I collected baseball cards. I dreamed of playing baseball, dreamed of the sound of the ball smacking an oiled mitt, the crack of a bat, the cheers.

Unfortunately, when it came to actually playing baseball, I stunk. I was so small I could barely hold the bat off my back shoulder. My swing was awkward, as was my gait around the base path. I couldn’t catch for a damn, either. And despite hours of practice with my usually impatient father, I wasn’t getting any better. However, my father and I persisted. Take that boy out of right field, we dreamed! Put him at the top of the order! Let him smack a few dingers over that chain-link fence!

One afternoon while my family was visiting my grandparents in New Jersey, my dad took me out into the backyard for some baseball practice. That day’s lesson: learning how to dodge an errant pitch. Now, despite the fact that I rarely connected with the ball, I still got on base frequently, mostly due to the fact that the pitchers were wild and my strike zone was practically nonexistent. But I was getting hit by a lot of pitches. And to make matters worse, I usually cried after I got beaned; and that was embarrassing for all involved.

So, there I was in the backyard, my bat on my shoulder, dodging pitches from my father thrown intentionally at my person. Now, around this time I had the strange penchant for placing a blade of grass in between my lips and occasionally chewing on it. I guess this was my substitute for chewing tobacco or sunflower seeds. Anyway, my dad threw a wild pitch, which headed straight for my helmetless head. I jerked away, stumbled, and fell on the grass. It just so happened that when I hit the ground, I managed to swallow that blade of grass in between my lips. Except, I soon realized due to a peculiar scratching in my throat, that I didn’t completely swallow the grass. In fact, as I soon realized upon going inside and looking in the mirror, that the blade of grass was stuck, yes stuck, to my uvula (usually referred to by many as “that hangey thing in the back of your throat”).

And no matter what I did, I couldn’t get the grass unstuck. I tried drinking copious amounts of water. I tried eating and swallowing excessively. I even tried to pull it out with my fingers, but, of course, this proved impossible because doing so made me gag. Unbelievable, my family collectively groaned. Another embarrassment, another baseball failure.

Ultimately, I had to go to our family doctor who, after proclaiming he had never seen anything like it, took out a pair of lengthy tweezers and effortlessly removed the blade of grass from my uvula.

I never did get any better at baseball, and I hung up my cleats for good after one last embarrassing season where I batted a mean .000 (yes, I never actually got a hit).

P.S. Go Phillies!