MalteseFalcon
Bronze Member
- Aug 17, 2005
- 1,338
- 100
Back in the 1970s I lived in a fair sized Mid-Western city with a AAA Farm club for a major league baseball team.
My best friend and I were about 14 and were baseball fanatics.
One day I found out my "friend" had taken it upon himself to break into the clubhouse of the AAA team one night with some other guy, and made off with a whole lot of their gear. Bats, gloves, balls, etc.
He ended up getting caught, and of course got into a whole lotta trouble over it. But not before he gave me a bat owned by one of the players, a man whose name was Wayne.
I had no intention of returning the bat, as (in my teen-aged mind being fearful of parental retribution) I figured I would get punished severely if I admitted where it came from.
30 years went by.
One day about 2 years ago, I was looking at the bat, and asked myself "Why do you still have this? You never play ball, and it does not even belong to you".
So I decided to find out if I could locate Wayne and get it back to him.
I did some searching, and found out he was still alive, and had enjoyed quite a career back in the 70s with several major league teams. He was now working as a coach at a private sports academy, where there were several other former major league players in coaching positions.
I made a couple of phone calls to the place, and finally got him to call me back.
I asked him if he ever remembered there being a break-in at the clubhouse in the city where I grew up, and he said yes, and I then told him how I knew about it, that I still had one of his bats in my possession, and told him I wanted to return it to him, as it belonged to him, and I figured it may have had some sentimental value to him as it came from his time in the minor leagues when he was still trying to get to the "big show".
Needles to say, he was stunned. He then said that he would love to have it back, and he thanked me profusely.
I shipped it back to him in a cardboard tube the next day, and received an email after he got it, thanking me once again.
With the amount of experiences I have read about on this board that many of you have had in returning lost items to their rightful owners, I just felt compelled too offer my only slightly irrelevant story.
We all only have one planet to live on right now, and it is stuff like this that makes life better for us...even if it is only reading about these incidents.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled program.
8)
My best friend and I were about 14 and were baseball fanatics.
One day I found out my "friend" had taken it upon himself to break into the clubhouse of the AAA team one night with some other guy, and made off with a whole lot of their gear. Bats, gloves, balls, etc.
He ended up getting caught, and of course got into a whole lotta trouble over it. But not before he gave me a bat owned by one of the players, a man whose name was Wayne.
I had no intention of returning the bat, as (in my teen-aged mind being fearful of parental retribution) I figured I would get punished severely if I admitted where it came from.
30 years went by.
One day about 2 years ago, I was looking at the bat, and asked myself "Why do you still have this? You never play ball, and it does not even belong to you".
So I decided to find out if I could locate Wayne and get it back to him.
I did some searching, and found out he was still alive, and had enjoyed quite a career back in the 70s with several major league teams. He was now working as a coach at a private sports academy, where there were several other former major league players in coaching positions.
I made a couple of phone calls to the place, and finally got him to call me back.
I asked him if he ever remembered there being a break-in at the clubhouse in the city where I grew up, and he said yes, and I then told him how I knew about it, that I still had one of his bats in my possession, and told him I wanted to return it to him, as it belonged to him, and I figured it may have had some sentimental value to him as it came from his time in the minor leagues when he was still trying to get to the "big show".
Needles to say, he was stunned. He then said that he would love to have it back, and he thanked me profusely.
I shipped it back to him in a cardboard tube the next day, and received an email after he got it, thanking me once again.
With the amount of experiences I have read about on this board that many of you have had in returning lost items to their rightful owners, I just felt compelled too offer my only slightly irrelevant story.
We all only have one planet to live on right now, and it is stuff like this that makes life better for us...even if it is only reading about these incidents.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled program.
8)
