I like to watch Canadian Football League games. There are no superstars with stratospheric salaries that would be the envy of finance ministers of small countries. The players probably all have other employment in the off-season. It is good quality football that is typically engaging and often exciting to watch as an apparent loser overcomes a substantial deficit to win in the final seconds of the game.

Recently, I was fortunate to be the recipient of three tickets to an Edmonton Eskimos game. The tickets were for seats in Row 6 behind the bench of the home team and facing an expanse of fabric-challenged cheerleaders, several of whom sported navel piercings.

I mention that detail, of course, to illustrate how close our seats were to the playing field and how much was evident to the naked eye. I did not dare use the binoculars I had with me lest I appear to be zooming in for a close up of what stood, as well as leaped, danced and otherwise gyrated, between me and the play-by-play action we were being encouraged to support in an exuberant manner.

I invited my stepson Michael and nine-year-old granddaughter Sullivan to accompany me to the game. I was aware that small green and gold footballs were thrown into the stands each time the Green and Gold Eskimos scored a touchdown. I hoped that maybe we would be lucky enough to snare one for Sullivan as an exciting souvenir of the game.

As the touchdowns mounted up and the souvenir footballs rained into the stands, we quickly realized that Row 6 fell between easy, gratuitous lobs offered up by stadium staff into the first few rows and the balls they threw hard and high to challenge spectators sitting in the higher rows as well as their throwing arms.

Sullivan asked me to come with her as she moved down the steps adjacent to our seats into a position where she might catch an easy lob. The staff person tossing the balls took that opportunity to test his arm and randomly fire a ball on a line coming right over my head.

Some instinctual reflex remaining as a relic in me from past glory days as a high school footballer expressed itself as a leaping grasp (not remarkably high by most standards) and knocking the ball out of air. Sullivan scrambled quickly to recover it from beneath the frantic grasping of several full grown spectators making bigger fools out of themselves than me.

I might have actually caught the ball but unfortunately I was holding a cup of coffee in one hand, not having anticipated this level of competitive action. Who knew? I did the best I could, considering the circumstances. I unceremoniously lost my balance in the process of obstructing the natural flight of the ball but managed to break my fall and stay on my feet without a significant loss of dignity or coffee.

Flushed with this success and fleeting memories of past playing days, I was now pumped for further action. Unfortunately, I took my eye off the action. I was settling into my seat, sipping my coffee, only to be brought abruptly to my feet by balls whizzing into the stands, one of which I could see was coming again, right over my head.

I leaped, rapidly bringing up both hands, so intent of catching the ball this time, forgetting about the coffee cup, and inadvertently launching it to about the height of the ball which was unfortunately and hopelessly beyond my grasp. The cup splashed down on the concrete luckily without causing any serious collateral damage other than a flush of embarrassment on my part. Someone several rows back easily caught the ball that would have otherwise hit him in the chest.

So ended my brief return to football glory, where the prizes were sadly, only little plastic footballs of no value beyond catching one at a CFL game. They are probably produced in the thousands somewhere in China by workers who knew nothing of a game that did not involve gold medals in the Olympics.

© C O P Y R I G H T   2 0 0 8.  Gary Holdgrafer ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.