Or, the World's Shortest First Bagger
See? She's almost too short even to play catcher!
Ann and I met playing mixed slo-pitch in the summer of '89 in Fort St. John, B.C. Our team was a mixture of cast-offs, has-beens, never-were's and fumblerooskis - but we sure could drink beer!
She had contacted our manager, Marion, by responding to one of those hand-made, take-a-number ads you see posted on grocery store bulletin boards.
Ann showed up for a game at Duncan Cran School, and while most of the single guys on the team - myself included - were always on the lookout for new "talent" (Hey, it's a baseball term!), I remember one of the first things I thought when I saw her as we took the field, was, "She's WAY too short to play first base!"
My subsequent thoughts after seeing her miss a few balls thrown her way don't bear repeating, here. (Some kids might log on to this site.)
In other words, she fit right in with the rest of the team.
That night, after the game, we sat in Casey's Neighbourhood Pub drinking beer. It turned out Ann was interested in old movies. Well, anyone who knows me realizes I have a Remington Steele-like habit of pulling movie titles, stars, dates and even quotes out of thin to suit the occasion.
I invited her over to see my ... Casablanca video (Ha! You thought I was going to say "etchings!" I don't know any guy who actually has etchings. I had two Calico housecats ... beer ... about 300 videos ... Borje Salming's autograph ... a program from the 1980 Super Bowl ... 10 years' worth of Playboy magazines ... two or three different volumes of the complete Sherlock Holmes adventures by Arthur Conan Doyle ... and a set of golf clubs - but no etchings)
Anyway, she came over and that led to the next story, one I never tire of telling over and over again ...