Tell us about your experience as “ball dude” for the San Francisco Giants.
I’ve been a Giants fan since I moved to California in ’59, and I saw the Giants play at Seals Stadium and followed them to Candlestick. I grieved with Giants fans when they lost the World Series to the Yankees. Willie McCovey hit a ball to low, and it got caught by Bobby Richardson at second base. But I’ve been a Giants fan all my life. A lot of people ask me, “How did you get to be a ball dude?” and I tell them my mother-in-law was one of the very first ball dudes in 1993. The Giants started this as kind of a gimmick, and they had these two women on the sidelines dressed up in uniformNow it’s caught on to the whole country. There’s always ball shaggers, or ball dudes at all the stadiums. But over the years my mother-in-law brought in a couple of my sister-in-laws, and then I was really lucky because she knows I have been a die-hard Giants fan all my life. One time when the management from the Giants called her up and set it up, she told them the day before that she was really sick but her son-in-law could take her place. That was six years ago. So since then, I’ve had the chance to be the ball dude many times. I got hit a few times with balls. Almost got run over by players going for balls. I’ve been with some pretty crazy fans, and I guess probably my two greatest highlights, one being the World Series, but the other being back in 2007. Barry Bonds was in pursuit of his homerun record, and at that time they had baseballs with computer chips so they could tell which ball actually went into the stands for a homerun, since the homerun balls would sell for so much on ebay.That’s the way they could track if it was the real ball. Well he hit a foul ball down the first base line, and I went over to make this text book play and of course,