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Meet one of the world's grade-A shmucks. Namely, me.

Last night, Officer Jim and I went to see the final home game of the season of the Slippery Rock Sliders, a Frontier League baseball team that's in its first (and possibly last) year in the Butler County borough.

Since it was the last game of the year, both the team and the sponsors were trying to unload leftover swag, mainly by throwing it to the crowd at Jack Crutchfield Park on the Slippery Rock University campus. Around the second inning, some promotions people from WBUT (1050) and WLER-FM (97.7) radio started throwing T-shirts into the stands.

Naturally, as a radio guy, I wanted me a T-shirt. But they didn't toss them anywhere near our section.

Two innings later, they walked through the stands again tossing WISR (680) T-shirts. And when they tossed some into Section D, right behind home plate, where we were sitting, I stuck my hand up ... and son-of-a-gun if one didn't fall into my grubby palm.

I was feeling like a big man until I heard someone say, "Sorry, sport, but that guy grabbed it right in front of you." When we had taken our seats before the game, no one was sitting behind us. Now I turned around to see a slightly stunned 10-year-old in his Little League uniform and holding a regulation Rawlings catcher's mitt.

Gulp.

"Geez, I'm sorry," I said. "Here's the T-shirt. I didn't know you were back there." He shook his head, "no."

"Aw, c'mon," I said, "are you sure?"

He nodded.

I slunk down into my seat. Officer Jim thought this was hysterical, especially since my own two years as the worst Little League player in the history of the Liberty Borough Athletic Association proved that, as he said, "you couldn't catch a cold in a driving rain storm."

He kept nudging me throughout the game: "Want to go down the concession stand? Maybe you can take some candy from some babies ... Hey, look at those little kids chasing foul balls. Go get one. You're bigger than them."

Luckily, in about the seventh inning a batter from the Sliders hit a pop-up foul right over the backstop that caromed off of the roof of the grandstand and fell int our section. Thank God the kid caught the ball, which he liked a lot better, I think, than a T-shirt from an AM radio station.

The final score, by the way, was the Chillicothe 9, Slippery Rock 6, and the game wasn't that close; the Sliders spotted Chillicothe three runs in the first inning and were down 9 to 3 before scoring three runs in the bottom of the ninth. The Chillicothe batters were using the starting pitcher as batting practice; according to the statistician in our section who was measuring the pitches with a radar gun, the poor guy's fastballs were coming across the plate at a leisurely 78 mph.

. . .

To Move or Not To Move: The Sliders were an expansion team put into Slippery Rock primarily because SRU had a nice, new baseball field, but the season has been a long slog of losses (they're 28 and 62 counting last night).

And it's apparent the town really doesn't have the population base to support even a semi-pro club. Either attendance last night was poor, or else a lot of people came disguised as empty seats.

The Sliders don't have a local owner, and played most of their games on the road this season, and speculation has been the team will be sold to someone and moved out of Slippery Rock.

But someone from the club said there's actually a "90 percent chance" the team will stay in Slippery Rock next season. He might have been whistling through the graveyard. I guess it all depends whether Slippery Rock can afford a bidding war to keep the Sliders from moving to Evans City or Chicora. (Actually, Pullman Field in nearby Butler has been mentioned as a possible site.)

I'll say this: We had a very good time, even when I wasn't roughing up fourth-graders. If the Sliders return to Slippery Rock next season, you might want to plan a visit to the ballyard. It's only about a 90 minute drive; you could spend that long trying to get out of the parking lot at PNC Park.

. . .

Low Crime Area: We exited the stadium to discover the driver's side window of my car was open. Officer Jim looked inside. "No broken glass," he said. Sure enough, I had left the window down. "How many beers did you have before the game?" he asked.

My CD player was on the front seat and two new CDs were unmolested; my toolbox was still in the trunk. Nothing had been touched.

"They must have honest people up here," I said.

"Either that," Jim said, "or you don't have anything worth stealing."




Posted by jt3y at August 30, 2007 07:32 AM