Casey At The Bat: Putting my foot in my mouth

I can honestly say that I have never been someone to get really star struck. I am very fortunate that in my line of work, I have met a ton of athletes and celebrities. There has been only one time can I really say I was star struck and that was when my friend John Rallo introduced me to Tommy Lee of Motley Crue, which probably tells you everything you need to know about me.

Well last week in Texas, that changed.

While getting ready for the broadcast our first night in Arlington, I had mentioned to Joe Angel and Fred Manfra that Nolan Ryan was one of my favorite players growing up. So Fred and Joe proceeded to tell me that Nolan is usually in the media lunch room and is a nice guy.

While I was getting ready for the game, Joe and Fred told him about me, and asked him to stop by and say hello. He told them he would be glad to.

The first night goes by, and Ryan doesn't make it to the booth — no biggie. The following day, I stopped in the Texas Rangers team store to look around. I have always wanted a photo of Nolan either pitching with a busted lip or putting Robin Ventura in a headlock. The store did not have either one of those, but they did have one of Ryan recording his 5,000th strikeout. I own about 75 Nolan Ryan baseball cards and thought this would be cool to add to my collection.

Later that afternoon, I was told that Ryan was in the media cafeteria, and I should go meet him. Honestly, I was shy about doing that, so Joe says, "Come on, and let's go say hi." I can honestly say I was star struck to be standing there about to shake hands with Nolan Ryan. He apologized for not coming by the first day, which was very nice of him to say since he only has a baseball team to run.

Ryan finds out that I had bought the photo from the team store, and he offers to sign it for me. So here I am about to get a personalized signed photo of Nolan Ryan getting his 5,000th strikeout. So while Nolan is signing this picture for me — which I can not believe is happening — I told him how my parents took me to Six Flags the day after he won his 500th game, and that I still have a picture of the sign out in front of the stadium. As soon as the words left my mouth, my foot went right into it. Ryan turns to me and says, "I was good, but I was not that good."

I felt like the single dumbest person on the face of the earth. I honestly can say I was in total awe of meeting him and the number five was stuck in my head for some reason. I blame my goof on that. Nolan laughed, patted me on the back, and he said it was a pleasure to meet me.

Needless to say, Joe and Fred got a big laugh out of it when they retold the story a couple of nights later on the air during the game.