Drew Kerekes

Saturday I celebrated my 31st birthday, and while it’s difficult to keep track of every since thing I did on my 31 birthday celebrations, there are a few memories that stand out.

There was my eighth birthday, which was my last birthday as a resident of the state of New Jersey — we moved to Alabama several days later, which stunk, because New Jersey residents ended school in June, while Alabama started back in August, so I had a shortened summer. There was one birthday several years later when I returned to New Jersey and saw all of my old friends. One birthday was spent at Fort Walton Beach, several were spent at Hilton Head Island, and there was at least one birthday spent at church camp.

Some of the best memories, though, involve going to sporting events for my birthday, and I was reminded of one of them a couple of weeks back when I was going through a shoebox that had random items I’ve collected over the years that hold sentimental value. Two of those items were baseballs with signatures on them.

Slowly, things began flooding back. My mom had taken me and some friends of mine to an Alabama college baseball game. This was back in the late 1990s, back when Jim Wells was coaching the Crimson Tide and the team was regularly making the postseason and going on College World Series runs. For the National Anthem, I had gotten to run on the field with Andy Phillips, who was probably the best player on the team that year and would later go on to have a brief career with the New York Yankees. I even got a baseball that was signed by Wells and members of the team, which was one of the baseballs I found in the old shoebox.

“Wait a minute, Drew,” you’re probably wondering, “If your birthday was Saturday — in July — how in the world did you do a birthday celebration with the Alabama baseball team. The season would have been long over.”

It turns out, we planned it in the spring as my official birthday celebration that year. “They didn’t ask for a birth certificate,” my mom explained. So me and my friends were treated to an Alabama baseball game while we pretended I was born several months before I was. 

I mentioned finding two baseballs in that shoebox. One was the baseball the Alabama team signed. It was still as pristine white as it was back then. Unfortunately, the ink has long since faded, and I can barely make out any of the players’ names on it. The other ball, though, has signatures that are as fresh today as they were the day it was signed, and I theorize it’s because of how worn out the ball was when I found it.

See, this particular baseball was from the same game I attended for my birthday celebration. During the course of the game, a player had knocked a ball foul, all the way back in the concourse behind the stadium seating. Usually this meant all the kids at the game would rush down there to try to find, so of course me and one of my friends did just that. My memory is a bit hazy, but I believe the ball had managed to fall into a gutter of some sort. I do know we had to fish it out of something, but we were so excited when we got it.

The ball was an official SEC baseball that was brown, obviously worn from use. A perfect baseball to have all my friends sign as memorabilia. When I found the baseball several weeks back, I found the signature of one of my friends who signed it “No. 24, see you, Seattle Mariners.” If you were a baseball fan growing up in the ’90s, there was a good chance you were a Ken Griffey Jr. fan, much like many basketball fans idolized Michael Jordan. 

I have other good birthday sports memories, like attending a Braves game for my birthday in 2012 and getting to see Chipper Jones in person one last time before he retired. There was the time our family went up to New Jersey in 2014 and my dad took me to my first game in Yankee Stadium. Both were fun, but there’s just something about getting to stand on the field with your favorite player as a kid and then chasing down a foul ball from a real, live baseball game that stands out.

Hopefully, the ink with the signature of all my friends doesn’t fade over time.

Drew Kerekes is the sports editor at The Meridian Star. He can be reached at dkerekes@themeridianstar.com.