For years I have gone to baseball games, on several occasions almost retrieving a foul ball but never quite managing to do it. One would have thought the odds were with me as I attended so many games, but no luck.

Then, a few years ago at Fenway Park, sitting down the left field line on a sultry Boston evening, a player on the visiting team, a left handed hitter named Nelson Lariano, smacks a hard line drive. It’s one of those curving banana shaped clouts. The ball was barely launched in the air, when, for no discernible reason, I knew it was coming directly to me. It was as if I were somehow directing its flight. With complete calmness I stood up, waited the briefest of moments, caught it, and just as calmly sat down again.

Everyone around me was utterly befuddled. “Where’s the ball?” they started to shout, looking under the seats. “What happened to the ball?” Softly I announced, “I have it.” Hey,” they're all yelling, “Dr. Tom's got the ball.” “Hey, Dr. Tom. Give it to the kid over here. C’mon, he’s a kid.” But I shook my head. This was my baseball.

In all of my life, in all of my experiences, I never got the trophy so I was hardly about to give it away. With all the desire, with all I tried to do, with all the ways I positioned myself, reasoned it out, I never caught a ball. I should add that I paid a price for the catch, as three fingers on my right hand were severely sprained from the shock of the impact. They healed, finally, after ten months.

As the game ended–who even remembers now which team won–I felt as if I were walking in the midst of a short story. My friend and I walked to our car that evening, me holding tightly to the ball inside my light blue jacket pocket so that no one would snatch it from me. Leaving the park, we noticed smoke rising over the grandstand as an enormous fire consumed a restaurant across the street from the stadium. Sirens were blaring as police and fire fighters sought to make their way through post-game traffic in order to reach the flaming building. The scene caused me to feel as if heaven herself was saluting my catch, and the fact that after all these years the ultimate prize was at last in my possession.

Lying in bed last evening, I felt I wanted someone to have that ball. At my age, after all, there will never be another one. After all the planning and efforts, all the working and playing, this is the only baseball I shall ever have to give away. And you, my precious grandchild, are the only one I would ever want to have it.

If you feel self-conscious about receiving such a gift, you can say you found it somewhere. Who would ever know? If you don’t wish to play with it, you can always use it as a paper weight. But don’t do what I did on a few occasions as a child: throw it through a neighbor's window and then run like crazy.

If someone were to ask, “is this really a ball from a Major League game?” you could say with assurance that it is. And they would inquire, “yeah, but how do you know?” And you would answer, Papa said in the Major Leagues before they are put into play, all the balls are dirtied slightly with mud from some bog in New Jersey. At least I think this is true. They are not the pristine balls that come directly out of neatly packaged boxes. They are, in a word, one might say, slightly aged, slightly marred, noticeably imperfect. They look a little old, a little worn, but they are, inside, fresh, young, eager for action.

When I imagine you having this baseball, no matter where you might store it, you who are so beautiful, I know I would smile the smile of a child who just got his first baseball at a Big League game. And if I learned that you lost it, or even chose to give it away, it wouldn’t matter, for at least there was that moment when you held it. Which means you held, even for an instant, a tiny piece of me, and my history.