Monday, November 17, 2008

Great Moments in Dumpster Diving

They say a pack of piranha can skeletonize a cow in 20 minutes. That's about how long it took a bunch of Central Ohioans to pick old Cooper Stadium to the bone on Saturday:
Memories walked out of Cooper Stadium yesterday, tucked under the arms of fans who had waited in the rain for the opportunity to buy keepsakes from the old baseball park . . . The Columbus Clippers triple-A baseball team will move Downtown to the new Huntington Park next year, leaving the venerable Franklinton stadium built in 1931. Within 20 minutes, the most coveted mementos -- the banners that had hung throughout the stadium ($10), the signs marking the grandstand sections ($9), the outfield fence footage markers ($100), even the stadium turnstiles ($75) -- had been claimed . . .

. . . Over in the home-team dressing room, George Robinson, the Clippers' director of baseball operations, was trying to hawk a table full of game-used uniform pants. "Look," he said, pointing to the name written on one of the waistbands. "This is Kevin Long, who's now the New York Yankee's hitting coach. "You don't know whose pants you're going to find in here."
Other guys whose pants could have been on that pile: Steve Balboni, Hensely "Bam Bam Meulens," Stump Merrill, Creighton Gubanich, Drew Henson, Otis Nixon, Deion Sanders, Hideki Irabu and, via a rehab start or two, David Wells.

Know what? I think I would have passed on the pants.

2 comments:

Mark S said...

The Balboni, Merrill, Irabu and Wells pants will be seen down the street at the softball mecca of the Midwest - Berliner Park. For those not in the know - Berliner has well over 30 softball diamonds and lots of guys looking for some XXXL pants.

The Drew Henson pants stand no chance of a sale in Buckeye land.

Anonymous said...

Just hope those pants didn't belong to George Brett.