All I would want is something I once had.
This is a true story:
When I was 13 in 1969, late in the days of Crosley Field, I went to a Reds game with a neighbor kid one hot summer night on our Straight A tickets.
This kid was totally obsessed with Pete Rose, way beyond any fandom of mine. There were just a few thousand people at the game that night, and by the late stages we'd made our way all the way to the seats right next to the Reds' dugout. At Crosley, there was a row of seats that was just slightly elevated above the dugout to the right of it, and you could see down into where the Reds sat. The kid I was with who was a couple years older starts saying how much he wanted a Pete Rose bat, and I started egging him on, figuring he was all talk. I even dared him to grab a bat, telling him if he would I would.
The Reds were ahead and in the field for the top of the ninth. A guy hits a lazy fly for the final out. The Reds players in the dugout have already started heading for the clubhouse. Suddenly the kid I'm with leans way over into the dugout, and grabs a bat out of the first slot -- lead off hitter Pete Rose's slot. I freak out, and without thinking, do the exact same thing.
We start making our way out of the stadium like a couple bank robbers. But no one apparently saw us. No one says a thing.
On the way home, I start admiring my bat: It was pure white ash wood, no grain, with pine tar about 18 inches up. It seemed very heavy. Rose was still using Louisville Sluggers then. On the knob in green magic market was the number 14.
We made it home with our bats, and I stuck mine under my bed. But the sissy kid with me crumbles, and confesses all to his dad. Who tells my dad. Who starts ripping into me for being a thief, and so on, threatens to make me go back to Crosley so I can personally apologize (that never happened obviously) and he takes my bat.
It was many years before I got the courage to ask for the bat back. I had moved away from home years before and figured dad had mellowed about the whole thing.
My father looked puzzled at first when I brought it up, then remembered the episode. But he could not remember what he'd done with the bat. We looked around the house, but found nothing.
It has never resurfaced.
That's all I'd want by way of sports memorabilia. But I don't think it'll ever happen.
