I went to the Barnstormers game(s) the other night and Carl Everett became one of my new favorite baseball players of all time. Here’s more or less how it went down.

I walked in a few minutes late, at the beginning of the second inning, and as the first batter I saw on the opposing team came back to the dugout, I thought to myself, he looks familiar; he looks like Carl Everett. So I looked it up in the game program, and sure enough, he was in fact on the roster. I made this known to the others. Now, Carl was the designated hitter, which means he doesn’t play in the field. During innings when he was not hitting, he’d stroll down to the bullpen to chat with the relief pitchers. This gave us ample opportunity to yell his name at the top of our lungs, being right behind the dugout as we were. We also yelled when he batted. One time he got a double. Then, since his team was the enemy, we all cheered for his teammates to get out.

Anyway, the one time when he was walking we were so persistent in our yelling that he looked into the crowd, and while not seeing us in paricular, gave a two-finger wave/salute in our general direction.

This was like pouring gas on the fire for us.

It was a double-header the other night so between games I walked home to put on a jacket since it got chilly when the sun went down. I also went on Wikipedia and printed out the page about Carl. Good golly, there’s some wild stuff on there, namely his controversial quotes about dinosaurs and the moon and homosexuality, and his tendency to get in fights.

So from then on when he would bat or walk past we would yell and hold up a page from the print-out. I gave Wendy page four, with references and other boring stuff. Sorry Wendy. We also began yelling things about dinosaurs, using the nickname he got in Seattle, “C-Rex.”

Paul had caught a foul ball, so later in the second game we agreed to move a few rows down and take some seats right behind the dugout in hopes of getting Carl’s autograph. Paul had earlier been reprimanded for sitting on the steps down by the field, so props to him for still agreeing to go down towards the field again. As Carl made his way back to the dugout for his final at bat, we got his attention. Paul had to ask for the autograph on the ball first, since it was a slightly more reasonable request than my own, even though Paul is in his mid-twenties and is asking a minor league player for an autograph, which is funny. But Carl agreed to sign Paul’s ball and at this point I moved in and presented him with the Wikipedia print-out.

Me: “Could you sign this too?”
Carl: “A piece of paper?”
Me: “It’s Wikipedia.”
Carl: “You don’t have nothin’ better to do with your time?”

I’m still figuring out how to frame the autographed Wikipedia print-out. As you can see, it’s pretty epic.