My Personal Beef with Rod Carew

OK, not really, but he did disappoint me.

 I'm sure he's a lovely person and if I ever met him I would shake his hand and tell him how awesome it was to meet him. Rod Carew had an awesome career. I would be incredibly honored to meet him.

I played softball from when I was about 8 and I played on my first team The Foxy Sox until I got to high school and decided boys were more fun. I was never very good, but I had a good time and got the job done. When I first started, they stuck me out in right field, but then when they could see that I had a good arm, I was moved to catcher and left field. I had no bat, but I had an arm.

Growing up my folks took my sister and me to a lot, and I mean a lot of baseball games. Sometimes we would go to Dodger Stadium but most of the time we would usually go to Anaheim Stadium to see the California Angels. My mom was a bigger Angel fan and Anaheim was closer to us than going all the way to LA. I loved watching Rod Carew play first base. He was my 2nd favorite Angel.

We never bought programs at games. My mom would very rarely buy us one. One time she actually caved and bought us a program. There was a page in the program with a profile on Rod Carew. It listed his birthday; same as mine. I was so freaking stoked when I found out Rod Carew and I had the same birthday. I used my own money to buy him a birthday card and with it, I sent him a picture of me from my softball team, a 5x7 picture, and even autographed it. I must have been about 10 or 11 years old.

I had it all played out in my head. He would receive my card, chuckle that a 10 year old girl sent him an autographed picture of herself and then race off to the post office with a complementary package to send to me.

It never happened. So bummed.