I have a Rheal Cormier story I'd like to share.
It must've been in the 99 season, I was 10 years old and an absolute baseball fanatic - I knew all the players on all the teams and would watch every Sox game as well as watching Baseball Tonight most nights. I couldn't get enough of it. And my nextdoor neighbor who was my best friend was the same way. We had the kind of friendship where we would just show up to eachother's houses without even a phone call and our parents would say, "Oh hey slamminsammya is here" and it was usually to watch a game or play outside or whatever. We had this guy who lived down the street from us who had season tickets and caught wind that we were both obsessed with baseball, so he invited us to a game along with my Dad. I think it was a Royals game.
The tickets were in right field just a few rows behind the Sox bullpen. Maybe around the sixth inning my friend and I spot Rheal Cormier starting to warm in the bullpen. My friend and I hatched a plan to get his attention by shouting his name at the same time, we yelled "Rheal!" between one of his warmup pitches. He heard us, turned his head, and without thinking tossed the ball he was using up to us.
This moment was basically the greatest moment of my life up to that point. A baseball obsessed kid got the attention of one of his favorite team's players and was going to get an actual baseball from an MLB game which I had never experienced. Rheal being a major leaguer had perfect accuracy on his toss and the ball's trajectory was headed straight for me, baseball glove ready of course, when all of a sudden from nowhere comes the outstretched hand of the neighbor who had brought us to the game intercepting the toss for himself. My friend and I were shocked. This grown ass man, I think in his 50s, had just stolen a ball from us. My dad said nothing because he says at the time he thought the guy was just messing around with us and would give us the ball back.
Nope. Dude kept the ball and me and my friend were on the verge of tears the rest of the game.
Anyhow, its a minor thing but it was a really nice gesture from a professional athlete that meant a lot to a little kid at the time. RIP Rheal.