Chicago Cubs vs. Seattle Mariners

March 30, 2007

Cashman Field, Las Vegas

I was honored to be asked to throw out the first pitch of this year's Las Vegas baseball season, before an exhibition game between the Chicago Cubs and Seattle Mariners.

Actually, the asking part isn't true. Dean White, marketing director for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, begged baseball officials -- quite desperately -- to let me throw out the first pitch, as a promotion for the newspaper. They conceded.

And, let me tell you, I was honored by their concession.

I originally intended this to be a column. It was to include a phone call to the White House, asking the president for first-pitch throwing advice, a history of first pitches ... You know my shpeil. Unfortunately, I had less that a week's warning before the game and the deadline was too tight.

Baseball is like every other sport, at least in the sense that I know nothing about it. Except that, for two brief and shining years in my childhood, I knew everything about it. I can still recite the starting lineup of the world champion 1977 and 1978 New York Yankees by heart -- although I couldn't tell you the name of a single player on today's team (other than someone named A-Rod, whose nickname always makes the cover of The Post).

It is precisely my lack of knowledge about today's baseball that led to one of my biggest thrills -- meeting a 1977/78 Yankee in person, completely by surprise. I had no idea Lou Piniella was the manager of the Cubs. And I'm quite honest when I remark in the video that, compared to throwing out a first pitch, meeting Lou is even cooler. (But to have both events occur on the same day was a true "Wayne's World" moment.)

The memory of the first Yankee game my father took me to, when I was 11, is still crystal -- especially the moment when he asked, "Why is everyone booing?" They weren't booing, I explained, they were "Lou"-ing, because Piniella was at bat. (Like me, my father had been a fan for exactly two years in his childhood, and didn't know the names of a single current Yankee.)

The audio of my on-field meeting with Piniella is indecipherable, and I must profess some relief. I'm usually good at meeting celebrities. In my former career, as an entertainment journalist, I interviewed Steven Spielberg, Eddie Van Halen and Tom Hanks without breaking an unprofessional sweat. But actually meeting a 1977/78 Yankee was different for me somehow. It literally transformed me into Chris Farley's "Saturday Night Live" interview character -- that total moron who asked celebrities if they remembered a moment in their own careers (obviously, they did) and then found himself with nothing to say but an awkward "That was so cool!" (The career moment I hit Piniella with was a 1978 game in which he dove for a line drive and got knocked unconscious for several minutes. I explained that I was "so rooting for him.")

Watch Lou's body language change from tentative as I introduce myself, to "call security" as he backs away.

This character is Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman. When I once asked to take over his job for a few hours, he replied: "The only way I'd let you take over any portion of my responsibilities, for any amount of time, would be if you ran for mayor against me and won."

What a guy.

Anyway, Goodman threw out the first pitch at the same game as me. But notice in the video how he takes the mound after I do. Technically, he threw out the second pitch of the Las Vegas baseball season.

So ha.