The Under Review - Issue 4 | Summer 2021

58 TAYLOR
Detroit Tigers World Series team. We have a ball signed by four of the most famous Baltimore Orioles
that is worth nothing because Frank Robinson botched his signature and turned the whole thing into
garbage. My husband calls it The Frank Ball. We have a Home Run Derby ball signed by Mark Teixeira. It is
not one of the only two home run balls he hit during the 2005 Home Run Derby, though my husband did
catch one of those home runs. He then pestered Teixeira into signing the ball when the Rangers returned
to Detroit the following year.
That ball was stolen from our bedroom during a house party in college. It was replaced years later after we
moved to Baltimore. Teixeira was a guest of honor at a charity function connected to my husband’s work.
My husband purchased a 2005 Home Run Derby stamped ball through eBay and asked Teixeira to sign it.
It’s an adequate replacement, but it isn’t the same. The value of the original Teixeira ball was the story it
carried. My husband’s tale of how the Comerica Park ushers shooed people out out the section of the
stands where he had been watching batting practice before the Derby started. They sent everyone back
to their ticketed seats, but somehow my husband managed to go unnoticed and maintained his spot
against the upper deck wall. In the footage from the Home Run Derby, you can see a glove reach out
across the tunnel at the back of right field, snag the ball out of the air, and then lift triumphantly above my
husband’s head, a lifelong baseball fan with the ultimate reward for his efforts.
I prefer the story of the second Teixeira ball. After the theft, my husband went searching for information
about Teixeira’s autograph-signing events. That search led him to a job posting that became his first career
out of college. A job that eventually brought him into contact with Mark Teixeira. A job that brought us to
Baltimore where we have built a life, set down roots, welcomed a child. A child who sometimes likes to
point to all the signed baseballs lining our bookcase and ask where they came from. These are the ones
from various Hall of Famers, I tell him. These ones are Tigers players. Here is The Frank Ball. Here is the
one signed by Mark Teixeira, I say and I tell him the whole story.
My son’s favorite ball is the one covered in blue writing. The only somewhat notable signature on there is
Raúl Mondesí. I had my husband look it over to be sure. I had him research the game and take a look at the
team roster. What he found was not the presence of something significant, but its absence. About a month
before the foul ball nearly fractured my cheekbone, Mike Piazza had been crouching behind home plate in
San Antonio. He was promoted to the Albuquerque Dukes (now the Isotopes) before moving up to play for
the Dodgers and going on to have a Hall of Fame career. One month.
What a bummer, my husband said when he discovered this news. So close. But actually, I prefer it this way.
It makes for a better story.
THE UNDER REVIEW