My creamy white baseball with 108 seams that I see perching on my bright white desk has more memories than any other baseball ever, that’s a guarantee. Whenever I stare at those 108 seams, I think back to a beautiful July day.

With temperatures in the mid- 70’s, it is everyone’s dream to go to a Red Sox versus Yankees mid- season classic. Tim Wakefield was on the mound for the Red Sox, and Andy Pettite was on the mound for the Yankees.
It all started when my family and I were lost. My family and I were in the crowded main entrance pleading to the person who rips the tickets to let us into the wrong gate because that would mean that we would have to walk around the whole stadium looking for our gate. Fortunately he didn’t let us in. We probably looked like a bunch of headless chickens, walking around in circles in no apparent direction, and trying to stay calm as best as a antsy nine year old could while wanting to see the first pitch. Everyday I think of this moment, I can’t believe my luck. When I think back to when I saw that creamy white ball with 108 seams sailing over the famous Green Monster, which by the way stands at an incredible 37 feet in the air, my heart skipped a beat.
You know that feeling when you play a sport, especially baseball, and you don’t even remember seeing the ball of jumping or anything, but you do something amazing? Like making a diving catch or hitting a home run. Because that’s what happened to me when I saw 108 seams come at me in a blur, but the five ounce ball seemed more like a five hundred pound boulder at the time.
To this day, I like to think of this moment as all me, it really wasn’t. My mom, all five foot six of her with jet black hair that sometimes has streaks of red in the sunlight, stood there, not knowing what was coming at her, but neither did anyone else in my family except for, thankfully, me. Today, I still think I am in debt to her because I wouldn’t have my very own Major League Baseball with out her. I’m not sure that I yelled to her heads up or not, because I was already in that my-brain-doesn’t-know-what’s-happening-but-my-body-does mode.
The ball came soaring over the Green Monster, over the standing room line, and almost over the street. I have a feeling that the 108-seam ball wanted to be caught and brought home by someone. I know this because the creamy white ball did a kind of desperate move, like someone before they get pushed into a pool with their clothes on. A last millisecond grab at the first thing the victim sees. The 108-seemed ball’s last millisecond grab was at my mom’s nose. I guess the ball went for the nose because the three dimensional triangle with two holes puncturing it is like a loose piece of clothing. Like a football player on defense, the ball made a grab at random, but hit a funny looking body part that protrudes from the head to save itself from the dark, damp, and putrid garage with only the red eyes of rats, instead of the multi colored humans’ eyes gazing at it in a way gods are looked at, piercing the creamy white skin and popping some of the 108 red seams.
My mom got a bruise, but I got a five-ounce, creamy white, 108-seamed baseball. When the ball bounced off her nose and I played off of my mom like I was Manny Ramirez playing the ball off the Green Monster. I still remember when a drunken guy said to me, “you played [the 108-seamed, creamy white, five ounce sphere] better than Manny. You should replace him.” When caught it everyone in the standing room line, which is under the Emerald Troll which doesn’t look like a spring chicken from the back side anymore and looks exactly as old as it is, 97 years young hollered “hip, hip, hurray!” I felt like the king of the world sitting on a throne of creamy white, five-ounce spheres with 108 seams.