Back in 2004, my wife and I both decided to become realtors, a decision that eventually proved to be a disaster from a financial viewpoint, but did give us some insights into the business world.
We attached ourselves to a firm in Richmond, and were invited to a training class being held in Washington D.C. One night, a banker who was associated with the realty firm (Remember I mentioned insights?) bought a luxury suite at Orioles Park at Camden Yards for the trainees. Kris was tired and decided not to go, but I rode a charter bus to Baltimore with about twenty other neophyte realtors.
I had never been in one of the luxury suites before. We were actually along the left-field corner, but there were chicken breasts and hotdogs in steamers and lots of beer. I don't drink beer anymore, but did enjoy the sandwiches. There also was a television in the suite. It was June, and the other realtors were more interested in the NBA final game to be played later in the evening between the LA Lakers and Detroit Pistons. I moved to the front of the box to watch the baseball.
The Orioles were playing the Arizona Diamondbacks that night, and their starting pitcher was Daniel Cabrera, a very tall righthander who by reputation was very good, or, more often, very very bad. He's out of baseball now.
Anyway, that night Cabrera was very good. Innings passed and the D'backs could do nothing with him. He reached the sixth inning without permitting a baserunner of any sort.
I've never seen a no-hitter, not even on television, so this was getting interesting. Not to the other realtors, who were paying no attention to anything except the beer, but to me. Cabrera retired the first two Arizona batters in the sixth. He had now set down the first seventeen men he had faced. The O's had scratched out a run and clung to a 1-0 lead.
As Cabrera began to work on the next Snake (as headline writers call them), Janet entered the story. Janet was in her twenties, quite attractive, and on this night she was wearing shorts. Not terribly provocative shorts, but she had long bronzed legs that did catch a fellow's eyes. Janet was putting together a betting pool on the NBA game. She circulated through the suite, taking names and bets, and finally stood directly in front of me.
Meanwhile, Cabrera had run the count full on the Diamondback batter. His next pitch would either preserve or lose the perfect game. As Janet stood in front of me, no farther away than I am from this laptop I'm typing on, I found myself looking around her to find out what would happen in the game.
And then I realized what I was doing. Baseball had become more important to me than female legs. It was my final last farewell to youth.
Cabrera retired the batter. A few minutes later, Steve Finley led off the Arizona seventh with a homerun, so the perfect game, the no-hitter, the shutout and the Orioles' lead all vanished at the same time. Eventually, the Diamondbacks won the game, 2-1.
Most of the realtors backed the Lakers in the pool. Just to be different, I put five bucks on the Pistons. Detroit won the game, so I made something like $40. I think it was one of my best paydays as a realtor. Everyone but me and the busdriver was drunk on the way back to Washington. (I'm sure about me, not so sure about the driver.)
I never saw Janet again.
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