Baseball Revelations

Ah, the lazy days of mid-summer, when the sun beats freckles into your face ... the municipal pools are cloudy with overcapacity ... the Mothers Without AC roam the cool aisles of Wal-Mart towing toddlers ... the boys of summer rest their bats while texting their agents ....

... Once upon a time, there was a sports department in a newsroom of a county daily which covered the local AAA baseball games. Ok, it wasn't actually a sports department. It was a comedy team masquerading as a sports department ....

The name of the paper, after mergers, was The Chronicle Independent Digest Nation. Everyone called it The Chronic Indigestion ....

The local team was named after a bird; don't recall which. The Yellow-Bellied Cutthroats, maybe ....

Each summer, the paper ran circulation promotions tied in with the ballgame scores. You know -- if the score adds up to a certain number, some fan/subscriber wins a Really Cool Prize.

Maybe the score had to add up to 100 by the second inning. Or had to be evenly divisible by pi. Maybe you had to be related to someone running the promotion or be stepping out with them. Possibly all of the above. Regardless, the joke on the sports desk of The Chronic Indigestion was there was a greater chance of the Second Coming than anyone actually taking home that Really Cool Prize.

So perhaps it was predictable if not inevitable that one hot Sunday afternoon after the All-Star break, it actually happened. As the newsroom story goes, it was the top of the eighth, score tied at 5, two outs, bases loaded, home team pitcher on the mound and one strike away from ending the inning. While the loudspeaker blared 'Louie, Louie,' Jesus Christ descended from heaven, landing gracefully in an empty box seat smack dab behind home plate.

Inspired by this turn of events, the pitcher coolly caught the batter looking with a halo of a curveball.

When the home team batted, it quickly ran up the score another 90 runs to ensure victory. The fans were enraptured. Once the birds took the field again, the P dispatched his final three batters with nine perfect fastballs.

It was a big win for the home birds and a special, lucky attendee. However, even though the final score met the contest criteria and Jesus miraculously produced a ticket and a subscription, the scoring happened in the wrong inning, so He wasn't eligible for the Really Cool Prize.

He didn't look mad or anything. They gave Him the game ball. He took it, tipped His hat, and ascended back into heaven in a cloud of home plate dust.

They gave Him special credit in the official stats book for 756 saves, though ....



The team made the playoffs that year and changed its name to The Angels the next season.



And they all lived happily ever after .....










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