Passed ball/strikeout story

With the major league baseball season starting tonight, this is as good a time as any to relay my passed ball/strikeout story from last year at Comerica Park. I will confess a guilty pleasure in telling this story as it has a good guy/bad guy theme with the good guy coming out on top. Well I think so anyway.

I share in a Tiger season ticket package with some friends at work. We are in the section behind home plate about 25 rows up. Nice seats.

Now with the exception of the 2006 Playoffs, the section is never more than 2/3 full. I think many of the seats are corporate owned and at many times, the corporate people are not entertaining clients so the tickets go unused. A shame, really. Also some Tiger wives sit in the section and they are not always there so those seats go empty. What this means is that from about the 4th inning on, we get a steady stream of people coming down from the cheap (relative term) seats and sitting in the vacant seats. I think the ushers are supposed to check ticket stubs for people coming down and sometimes I see them do this but for whatever reason, by the 5th or 6th inning on, the section fills up with people who seats are elsewhere in the park. I really don't care as it does not really affect me and I also did my share of this type of seat improvement in my younger days.

Anyway, Computer Boy and I are at a game last year and around the 4th inning, a raggedy-looking couple (sorry but it was true) in their 30's claimed two empty seats in front of us. They were drinking and I don't know if this had any affect on what happened or not but they were drinking and the guy seemed just a little bit off. For the time being, I had no problem with that. Go Tigers!

The Tigers load the bases and Brandon Inge comes up. He gets 2 strikes on him and then swings through strike three. The catcher however does not catch the ball and it rolls to the backstop and Inge advances to first and all runners advance with one scoring. Actually this is pretty typical of light-hitting Inge and it was no surprise that he was swinging at a pitch that even the catcher can't catch.

I used this opportunity to tell Computer Boy that Inge would still get a strikeout for this and would not get an rbi on the play. Actually, he said he knew this. The (new) guy in front of us turns around and angrily said, "That was a hit!"

I said that Inge actually struck out and it would be scored a K but a run scored on the play and that was a good thing but Inge did not get a hit.

He responded that "You just do not like Inge. That was a hit!" Again, he is angry.

I did not want to escalate this thing but I just couldn't leave it like that so I tried logic and said "Actually, I like all of the Tigers but you can't get a hit without hitting the ball. You just can't."

The guy shook his head angrily and then stood up and faced the field and began clapping and yelled very loudly "Great hit, Brandon! Great hit!" and then he turned around and looked at me.

I would have let this go but he did turn around and look at me so I guess a response is needed.

I said to him "The next time Inge bats, take a look at the scoreboard and the scoring for his last at bat will come up and it will show a K. Let's leave it at that."

He said "You don't like Inge" and that was the end of it (for then anyway).

The game continues on and frankly I forgot about the whole thing until I see Brandon Inge step into the on-deck circle. The other guy must have too because he then says to his date ( I did not get the sense that they were married but who cares) "Let's go." She says "Are you sure? You want to leave now?" and he says "Yeah, let's go" and they leave.

I said to Computer Boy "Do you think you know why they left?"

He thought about it for a while and said "No".

I said to him "Look who is on deck."

"Oh yeah!"

Score one for the good guys.