By Emily, of Pittsburgh, PA

Meeting Ryan Doumit! How can anyone describe this event? It’s practically impossible! Meeting a baseball player that’s not only amazing on the field but off of the field to!

 A day like this is just amazing through and through and each time the memory is retold it stays fresh in that persons mind. A memory that can be so clearly remembered is always a good memory.

So back to the original topic meeting Ryan Doumit!

This particular Saturday (May 10th, 2008) started off somewhat normal for my kind of Saturday. A beautiful day perfect for some baseball! After some things I had to do for softball I finally headed down to PNC Park to a photo fest with the Pirate players!

You can’t not believe to imagine how over joyed I was when Ryan’s name was on the board along with Adam LaRoche’s! But the downer was he wasn’t scheduled to come out for another half an hour! So what did I do to kill the time? Of course I went and met more players! After meeting John Grabow and Jeff Andrews and telling John Russell that he took my advice to play Doumit a lot. This got a lot of laughter from Zach Duke and John Van Benshouten it was finally time to meet Ryan or at least close. Now the plan to meet him in case the line was to long at the booth was stand by the Hall of Fame Club entrance where several players were coming in and going out through the gate right next to it.

To be honest I’m not always the calmest person in the room but I can be and unfortunately about 5 minutes before he was supposed to come out my nerves skyrocketed. Part of me felt like I was going to chicken out and make a run for it! I knew I couldn’t though and luckily for me I didn’t and I calmed down. Going into the whole day I had a mission that I was going to complete and that was get my picture taken with Ryan, my all star softball shirt signed, and then his autograph on his dad’s book. Oh man I almost forgot to mention the book! You see Ryan’s dad Pete Doumit wrote a book called What I Know about Baseball Is What I Know about Life. I found and read the book after Christmas and I immediately fell in love with the book and its message. Since reading the book I began corresponding with Mr.Doumit through email and that’s how I managed to get his signature on the book as well. He also let Ryan know about me and that I was going to try and meet him during the course of the season.

Getting back to meeting Ryan -- as soon as I see him heading towards me my heart is literally jumping out of my chest! My mouth is dryer then dry and luckily my dad opened his mouth and said his name or I might’ve never met Ryan without my dad’s help! So we told Ryan that we had been emailing his dad and he immediately recognizes us just because his dad told him about my dad and I. Obviously we asked him to sign the book and he did! My picture with him was probably one of the best moments of my life to date and I game him a hug which was just indescribable. In the few moments after my heart rate was way above the average level! I was jumping up and down like an idiot and I’m still wondering why my dad didn’t just take me to a hospital or better yet a psyche ward! Right after we met Ryan I met Freddy Sanchez for the 4th or 5th time I’ve lost track.

So we had a major decision to make meet Adam LaRoche and Ryan (again!) and then head home or stand in line to meet Brian Bixler and Matt Capps. Without I choose hesitation meeting Ryan (again) and Adam LaRoche. Halfway through the line I remembered my all star shirt for softball when I choose #41 Ryan’s number. I told my dad and he told me he isn’t fast enough to get to the car and back to get the shirt. I quickly respond your not but I am! I ran no I sprinted to the car I swear I don’t think my feet ever touched the ground! I was back in the line with my dad and the line had barely moved 5 maybe 6 feet. So finally I get up there and I jokingly say to Ryan that he’s going to get so sick of me. He just smiled and nodded his head and I then showed him the shirt with my last name and #41 on the back.

I explained to him that I choose his number for my all star softball team last year and I asked him if he would sign it. He thought it was really cool and he would sign it for me. Adam LaRoche then said is that your number? And Ryan tells him it is and I tell LaRoche that I’m wearing his jersey that day so it was all good. So I got my picture taken with my 2 favorite players (How weird is that?). So we decided to wait and have Ryan sign the shirt but unfortunately he was mobbed by fans so we decided that it was better to just wait and have him sign it some other time. So that’s what happened when I met Ryan Doumit.