My Charmed Life Continues

Thanks to an amazing friend with great connections, I managed to have another awesome sports experience in the incredibly charmed life I am lucky enough to lead.
This time I found myself standing behind home plate at CitiField, just taking in the sights, for the hour or so before the August 25 game against the Tigers.

Instead of going through the regular gates, we went in a special gate, and walked under the stadium to the field entrance. And we ran into this lovely couple in the hallway.

We spent a lot of time talking to LaTroy Hawkins before the game.

Someone even snapped this picture and posted it on twitter.

I'm pretty sure that is my nose in the far right of that picture, but Mrs. Poop says it's not big enough to be mine.

LaTroy was a great guy (though not a great pitcher on this day) and had a lot of fun joking around with us. I asked him about getting hit in the nuts.



He said no one in the majors wears a cup. It's too uncomfortable to do the normal windup with a cup between your legs. He did admit though "my dick hurt. My right nut hurt for a week." At some point during this conversation a young girl sidled up near us, waiting for an autograph, I hope she didn't hear most of it.

We asked him about facing his best friend, Torii Hunter (they broke in together with the Twins in 1993), and he said he faced him twice and got him out both times.
The third time was a charm for Hunter whose hit was part of a 7-run 9th inning that game the Tigers an 11-3 win.

But I did get to see Travis D'Arnaud's first major league home run.

I stood a few feet from Jim Leyland.

I saw a weak swing from Ike Davis.

Here was the view from our seats a few rows back of the Tigers dugout. I was close enough to tell Miguel Cabrera that I still prefer Mike Trout.

Here's my view from home plate, unfortunately because it was a Sunday in August after an evening game, neither team took batting practice. The Tigers didn't even come out to warm up, most players didn't emerge from the clubhouse until 15 minutes before first pitch.

I am a little disappointed that when I was standing on the field there wasn't enough activity. An awesome experience would have been legend -- wait for it - dary! had it occurred on a day of normal on-field pregame activities.

How lucky am I that I can even say such a thing!