"A grand prize".
My father had always been a pack rat, and like most pack rats every piece of junk that he owned had a unique and very long story attached to why he could not part ways with it. Amongst the hover craft, cases of pezz dispensers and 3d peep show magazines there was one thing that caught my eye...the snake skin baseball. The origins of the baseball changed from time to time but the basic plot remained the same. One faithful night in NYC, my father, along with the social elite of New York, was invited to attend Clint Eastwood's birthday party. He never got into too much detail on how he was invited or if he just showed up but I'm assuming that he snuck in if any of the story is true. So, while mingling and cock tailing he eventually makes his way to talkin with the man of the hour, big Clint. Some time goes by and the two become smitten with each other, my old man's got him in stitches, "He was dyin, I was on fire that night, I told the elephant in the bathtub joke" he explained, which on a unrelated note is my mothers least favorite jokes.
The night winds down, Clint wishes everybody off and then before my dad can get to the door Mr. Eastwood presents him with a gift. The gift, which he received from a celebrity on said celebrity's birth day, was a Snake skin baseball signed by Babe Ruth, and more importantly a symbol of there newly discovered friendship. "It's one of a kind" my dad explained, "and if there are others out there, there aren't that many", hmmmmm. I had heard the tale so many different times. I hated baseball, but something about that baseball called to me, it was my leg lamp. After years of begging, he finally caved in and gave me the baseball. It was one of the happiest days of my young life, I held it and smelled it and thought "this is the greatest moment of my life". Two weeks later however, I had found yet another siren call in the form of a sack of pogs and a tattered playboy magazine, roughly estimated the conversion rate from middle school street cred to us dollars is about $1 million, so I gave up the ball to hopefully finally drop mine. Upon hearing that the ball was missing, my dad was pretty upset and a little skeptical of the story I came up with. Though He had never seen the movie, my dad did know that I never hung with any kid named yeah yeah, I didn't have a tree house and there was no ball eating dog named the "beast " that lived near by, that and he over heard me watching The Sandlot with my friend and discussing the lie.
