picture of Bud Smith getting interviewed on the field by reporters. I had dinner with those reporters in the same dining room 3,000 miles ago. It felt like that had been an hour earlier, even though it was actually about 10 hours earlier.
And, now, I’d unwittingly changed flights and walked out of the only no-hitter I might ever see in my lifetime, especially now that I don’t really go to a lot of baseball games, only a handful a year since my Camden Yards exodus.
Bud Smith made 24 starts in his career. He was 7-8 over two seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals. He made one postseason start and pitched a gem against Schilling’s Diamondbacks a few weeks later. He had 132 2/3 lifetime innings pitched in the major leagues. He threw nine un-hittable innings in a row that night in San Diego.
I saw three of them.
I walked OUT of a no-hitter in San Diego four months after my son, Barry, walked IN to one at Camden Yards.
I’m 38 years old and have attended — conservatively speaking, here — well over a thousand baseball games. I really have.
I never heard of Bud Smith before that day and I’ve never heard of him again. And I never heard from that girl in San Diego either.
Maybe they ran off together after that game.
I dunno. I just don’t think it’s meant to be: me and that no-hitter, especially in light of the near fiasco on Labor Day down at RFK two weeks ago!
But between my son, Barry, and my wife, I really don’t know where we’re going with baseball into the future. I’ve been married for more than three years and I’ll make a public admission here that I’ve never made before.
I have NEVER been to a baseball game — any game, anywhere — with my wife AND my son at the same time.
Now, how weird is that?
Both are confirmed for The Rally tomorrow.
I honestly hope it’s the first of many nights for the three of us at Camden Yards.
