While the rest of the Baltimore professional sports viewing public was probably at Camden Yards Friday night to watch yet another Orioles/Red Sox match-up, I, my kid and about 1,000 others did our own thing and took in an indoor football game pitting the Baltimore Mariners (2-8) against the Florida Stingrays (0-10).

It was the second time I’ve taken the boy to see the Mariners, and we got there early enough to catch the tailgaters outside of the arena. I don’t begrudge any man, woman, or child his or her fun, but good lord the Mariners tailgaters are a sorry lot. There were like four cars and everyone was there in their Mariner gear looking a little gloomy for a game day. No one was even tossing a ball around. But really, you have to imagine the type of person to cast his or her lot behind a semi-pro indoor football team.

Anyway, the Mariners won, but the game was pretty lackluster. I have to admit it was non-stop lackluster though. I like that the clock doesn’t stop running on incomplete passes. Even better, it seemed the guys on these teams didn’t like each other and there was a lot of smack talking and pushing and shoving going on. Pretty intense considering both these teams are pretty sorry and the players only make a couple c-notes a game. I also like that for less than the cost of one ticket in the upper nosebleed sections for Ravens games you can get two tickets at midfield and five rows off the field for Mariners games. That soothes the jew soul.

This time the boy had his heart set on leaving with a game ball. They probably toss out 20-30 or so a game in addition to the ones that bound into the stands after field goal attempts and errant passes and whatnot. They’re red, white and blue, have the Mariners logo on them and are the same size as regulation NFL balls (best that I can tell with my naked eye).

After halftime it didn’t look like it was in the cards for him to get a ball, but while I was headed to the men’s room to return the beer I rented I saw the merchandise table was selling balls and I asked how much one cost. $40. Shyeah, right. So I broke the news to the boy when I got back that a ball just wasn’t in the cards for that night. He was bummed.

But as the clock wound down to about two minutes to play, I noticed all the people in the row behind the guy who managed the game balls had their own. I was like WTF. There were a bunch of empty seats over there, so I told the boy to come with me and we got into the second row right behind the ball guy. I shouted “ball guy!” to no avail. Again, “ball guy!” Nothing. Finally, “BALL GUY!!!!” Dude turned around and made dead-on eye contact with me. I pointed to my kid with my thumb and shrugged my shoulders as if to say, “come on, mah brutha.” He looked over at the boy, hesitated for a moment, and then tossed a ball to the boy. I gave the ball guy a thumbs up, said thank you and we hauled ass back to our seats a few rows back with my kid giddy as a school girl.

To say that made my kid’s week is an understatement. He slept with the ball that night and has spent all weekend playing with it and pretending to be a Mariner and making plays. If he wants to play football I think I’d rather he set his sights a little higher up the pro football food chain, but it was good to see him so happy about a ball. I just hope the Mariners make it to play another year. Who knows how fly-by-night the AIFA is.

To sum up, this was a very long post to provide evidence of my superior fatherly hero skills. That is all.