Robyn Anderson called me last night in a panic, just as we were geting home from practice, she couldn’t find her wedding ring. We held practice at Curt Flood field – I’ve been bounced around about 3 times in the last couple weeks, but we’re finally back at Laber field (Owen Jones).
I lined up a pitching workout for Nat and Josie with Sara Adams, so while Annie and Jim worked with pitchers, I asked Robyn if she’d help me run infield defense. Robyn’s game to help just about any time I ask, this was no exception. After assigning players to positions, I absent mindedly get ready to hit grounders when it occurs to me that she may need a glove. I glance over and she’s using mine – no problem. We go through a number of drills, I’m shouting instructions and coaching in my usual fashion (old Yeller), things are going OK. During a water break, Robyn and Mary Ann are in the 3rd base dugout chit chating and watching my niece Elizabeth, at some point they made a comment about the size of my mitt and how it was sometimes difficult to catch with it – Mary Ann’s used it once or twice.
Water break over, we’re ready to resume and apparently Robyn can’t get her hand all the way into the glove. She manages to work it out and we continue, by now we’re doing a fly ball drill where they can finish up and come in for a popsicle. I anticipated a much warmer afternoon, earlier in the day it had been hot, but now there was a breeze coming in off the bay. Robyn, Kera and Shauna had to leave early, they were hosting 30 people for dinner, so they’re driving off by around 5:45. The usual routine, I have people helping take equipment up to the car, I lock the gates as we wait for the last of the parents to pick up their daughter.
Now I’m home and on the phone with Robyn, looking through equipment bags, examining the mitt in which she thought she lost her ring. As she’s describing the situation from an hour earlier, I have the glove in my hand, pushing my fingers as far as the can possibly go into the glove, squeezing, bending, shaking it, I’m certain there’s not a ring to be found inside it. I have emptied equipment bags, buckets, searched the floor of the van – nothing. She calls again 30 minutes later to tell me she can’t get into the field because it’s locked up, so she slides herself under the gate somehow (she’s slender enough to do this), and before long I’m off the phone again.
Enter Mary Ann. She asks for the glove, puts her hand in, then starts kneading the fingers. “Aha!” I’m thinking, how can that possibly be? I missed it, the ring was there in the ring finger of my glove the whole time. We call Robyn as she’s sitting dejectedly in the dugout at Flood and I’m almost positive she shed a tear of joy. Hey, I guess it took a woman’s touch.