FROM THE DESK OF: Spring Training and My John Smoltz Baseball

BY: Taft Matney

There are a lot of things that mean “Spring” to me. The Carolina Cup in Camden, the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head, and baseball are high among them.

I’m a big baseball fan. Have been since I was a kid, and I’m still waiting for my invitation to throw a first pitch — or be the oldest bat boy in league history.

With pitchers and catchers having reported for Spring Training last weekend and position players coming in now, Spring Fever is starting to kick in.

As I do every year, I started thinking about what it is about baseball that I get so excited about. I love the game itself. I love watching new players who have the potential of becoming their own chapters in the sport’s history books. I love the hotdogs. I love the smell of the freshly cut grass. I love hearing a wooden bat crack against a perfectly thrown fastball. I love going to the ballpark with the wife and son and just taking time for us to spend as a family and leaving everything else at home or the office for a couple of hours.

What’s not to love?

Last year I was lucky enough to win an autographed baseball at a charity auction. I wrote some thoughts about it and thought with Spring Training now underway, it might not be a bad thing to share them again.

Play ball.

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Originally Published on March 29, 2011

Remember in February when the 7 yr old and I went to the Greenville Drive’s “Hot Stove” event and I got the autographed John Smoltz baseball? Yeah. I was pretty excited. After all, we’re talking about John Smoltz.

Well, thanks to the Drive’s front office, I was also able to get a letter authenticating the signature. It reads, “This letter certifies that John Smoltz signed the baseball you purchased on May 31, 2009 when he was with the Drive as part of a Major League rehab assignment.”

When I read the letter, I thought about it for a few minutes, and it dawned on me that we were at that game. Not only that, but as the wife reminded me, the 7 year old still had the tickets in his room. Now, one of the tickets is in the case with the ball, and the other is with the authentication letter.

I love baseball because it’s something I grew up watching with my grandfather. I remember how he romanticized about playing Textile League ball for Gluck (pronounced “Gluke”) Mill in Anderson. He talked about Tommy Lasorda (who I was fortunate enough to meet once when he spoke at an assembly when I was in high school) and his time with the minor league Greenville Spinners in the late 1940s. Growing up, when my grandfather and I watched the Braves and TBS was the only “Superstation” and it was on channel 17 just like in Atlanta, the attention he paid to that game was as focused as the attention he’d give to the sermon on Sunday morning.

At 38, those memories are as fresh to me as they were when I was a kid, and frankly, my boyhood love of baseball and annual anticipation for the season helps keep me sane. They’re the kind of memories I want to pass on to the 7 year old so he can look back with his son and say, “I remember when.”

Now, after nearly two years, we unintentionally have a complete set from May 31, 2009 — the day John Smoltz signed a baseball in Greenville. The wife and I took the then 5 yr old to see a future first ballot Hall of Famer I loved watching with my grandfather when I was in high school and college. We kept the tickets and the picture to prove we were there, and now we have a letter that brings it all around.

So, as I told the wife, when Smoltz goes in to Cooperstown and I die an old man, my son will have something he can take to Vegas and say to the guys on PAWN STARS, “My dad got this ball for me when I was 7. Here’s the paperwork to prove it’s real. How much will you give me for it?”

NOTE: By the way, if you aren’t familiar with it, Textile League baseball was a regional big deal during the early to mid 1900s. Click HERE to learn more.