This was one of the low points in my sporting career...but it was just kind of the perfect storm of bad circumstances. I was a younger guy playing on a 14-15 year old all star team, and had just recently realized that I could no longer see the catcher's signals when I was pitching, so I had been to the eye doctor and gotten both glasses and contact lenses. I wore the glasses as needed during the day, but had planned to wear contacts for sports.

Anyway, to make a long story short, the first time I wore contacts during a game was in a night game, and when I was starting in right field, which was the first time in my entire life that I had tried to play outfield. I'd always been a pitcher, catcher, or infielder, so this was a really terrible combination of inexperience at the position coupled with unfamiliarity with playing in contact lenses, mixed with a lot of fear about how it was all going to play out. I knew I was in deep trouble in pre-game warmups when I couldn't get a bead on any fly balls until it was too late to react.

Of course, the first inning featured a deep drive over my head which I horribly misjudged once I was able to see the ball, and then another high, shallow ball in right center which I should have easily caught, but I still had trouble tracking it and ended up getting handcuffed and I dropped it. Talk about wanting to crawl into a hole....I told the coach to pull me out after the top of the first inning, because I knew it wasn't going to get any better. That was the last time I ever played outfield.

I finally got used to wearing contacts, but it took some time.