In an effort to distract myself from my ongoing mental breakdown, I got the bright idea to read my excruciating old diary entries. That obviously was dumb, but I did write other stuff down, too, like the time I met Kurt Browning. I used to love watching figure skating growing up, and he was my first favorite skater. Years later I was working in baseball and worlds collided.
It was the very beginning of the baseball season, and Stars on Ice was in Houston, and the skaters came to the game. The ballpark entertainment staff wanted Todd Eldredge to throw out the first pitch, but I guess they asked Kurt instead because he had done it at other venues. (Obviously he's the best so he should have been the first choice anyway. Ha.) Then SOI gave the ballpark entertainment folks tickets to the show the following night, which was getaway day, so they could go. Shockingly they did not use all their tickets, so they gave an extra one to me.
So we went to the show (where Browning and Eldredge "recreated" the first pitch but on ice) and afterwards we got to go backstage and meet Kurt Browning (!!!). He had a signed picture for the ballpark entertainment staff, which he has signed "I had a ball!" which is just the cutest thing ever. The SOI pr guy says the skaters really enjoyed the game. "Well...the girls got tired of it around the fourth inning, and they left, and the Russians didn't really get it... But the American men had a ball!" (Not so cute that time.)
"Oh yeah!" Kurt says. "It was great. You know, I thought I was gonna throw out the first pitch, get accosted by a fellow Canadian and then they were gonna lose. But I was a good luck charm! And your third base coach, I don't know why he held up the runner. I thought it was all over right there. That was the tying run." (He apparently was rooting for his fellow Canadian and the opposing team, lolz.)
Kurt Browning talking baseball is awesome! Then he posed for a picture and shook everyone's hand. The ballpark entertainment staffer went and got Katarina Witt's autograph. "I'm a dork," he said, "but it's okay because I know it."
