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MOMENTS, MEMORIES and MADNESS with STEVE CAMERON: The night Rush Limbaugh forgot to pack a baseball to the mound

| July 12, 2020 1:10 AM

Would you really want to wake up at 4:47 a.m. when it really wasn’t necessary?

Wait …

How about waking up at 4:47 a.m. and thinking almost immediately about Rush Limbaugh?

To explain how this slightly disturbing event wrecked a good night’s sleep, you need a brief geography lesson.

Like, a mini-map of my bedroom.

The key issue here is that Sammie the World’s Greatest Cat spends a good share of the night wedged against my chest.

Or my leg.

Like all cats, though, she maintains the right to come and go as she pleases — for a few bites of food, for some water from her fancy new kitty fountain, for …

Well, for whatever else cats might want to do in the middle of the night.

GRAB A workout on her giant scratching post, maybe, or curl up on one of the ballcaps I leave lying around?

Whatever.

OK, Sammie is no kid these days, so I put a clothes basket upside down near the end of the bed — making it easier for her to hop up beside me.

The two-easy-jumps method.

The point is, Sammie routinely lands on the bed by my feet, and if it happens to be at some odd hour, I just sleep right on through her arrival.

Except that this time …

Somehow, SWGC managed to get on top of a dresser, and decided to join me with a leap that is usually beyond the skill level for her age group.

This airborne stunt brought her skidding against my neck — which WILL wake you up, even at 4:47 a.m.

Once my heartbeat slowed to a reasonably normal level and I realized the time, it dawned on me (sorry, bad pun) that in just a few more hours, I needed to write my Sunday column.

Yes, this one.

And I remembered that it was going to feature Rush Limbaugh.

Seriously, now …

What a time and what a subject.

Even Rush’s several wives probably weren’t thrilled by the thought of him at 4:47 a.m.

ANYHOW, Sammie’s dive left me wide awake and thinking of Rush.

For any of you who have written to ask how I come up with column ideas, this is NOT the normal procedure.

So …

Rush Limbaugh.

Not the kind of guy I’d want for a next-door neighbor.

That has nothing to do with his particular politics, by the way — except that anyone who is all-in, all-the-time, on EITHER side of America’s political divide surely has to be full of enough manure to match a full herd of cows.

I mean, the other side has to be right some of the time, no matter which group we’re talking about.

Rush knows this, incidentally, even though you’ll never hear it on the air.

But I’ve known Rush Limbaugh for about 40 years now (including a stint when I was making more money than he was, believe it or not), and on some of the occasions that I’ve seen him …

Ah …

We have mutual friends in the bar and restaurant business, and occasional get-togethers have gone right on past closing time.

It wouldn’t be fair to quote Rush from these late-night affairs, kind of the same way you don’t go public with something you hear in a sports locker room or clubhouse.

You don’t do it unless you ask permission.

I wouldn’t want some of the idiotic things I’ve said in similar circumstances repeated to the general public.

No thanks.

Everyone is entitled to SOME kind of private life.

Besides, Rush has gifted me with some very expensive cigars from time to time, and that guarantees you all sorts of goodwill.

NOW, LET’S move on to the reason I’d been thinking of Rush Limbaugh.

Most people aren’t aware that Rush used to work for the Kansas City Royals in the group sales department (his temporary “no-way-to-get-rich” career move).

Rush and I, along with Royals Hall of Famer George Brett, are more or less in the same age bracket — which is how Rush and George became lifelong friends, and how I wound up writing two books about George.

I wish I could fly Brett in to tell this story, because he embellishes it even more than I can (which is a heck of a statement).

Without our star third baseman, though, I’ll try to do my best.

Now then …

If you’ve been to enough baseball games, you’ve probably come across a promotion where customers from a certain suburb or region are placed in the spotlight.

See, as the group sales guy, Rush would set up these special nights for Royals fans from out in the ’burbs.

WE’LL JUST pick a town around Kansas City, because during the course of a full season, Rush and the group sales staff would have gotten to all of them.

Let’s go with Olathe, a city on the outskirts of the metro area.

Right, so it’s “Olathe Night” at the ballpark.

The mayor, of course, is handed the honor of throwing out the ceremonial first pitch, and maybe a city councilwoman was on the field to catch the toss.

Those details are fuzzy, but they really don’t matter.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the upper deck, a few hundred Olathe residents cheered the mention of their presence on the P.A. system — and prepared to hoot and holler when their mayor stepped up on the pitcher’s mound.

Group sales guru Rush Limbaugh was in charge of this short celebration, and carried a microphone to the mound — all set to introduce the mayor and then congratulate him on a swell pitch (even if it bounced to home plate on three hops).

Both teams, you should know, were waiting to take the field once the Olathe excitement — and the mayor’s two minutes of fame — had come and gone.

Ballplayers have seen all this a hundred times.

SO GET that picture of Rush Limbaugh fixed in your mind.

He’s the master of ceremonies, and briefly, the star of the show at Kauffman Stadium.

Here’s what happened …

Rush escorted the mayor out to the mound, introduced him with great fanfare, and asked for a round of applause for all the good folks from Olathe up in section 223.

Rush announced that the mayor would be whizzing in that ceremonial pitch on behalf of his community, and then …

Our hero realized something was missing.

Rush had no baseball.

He’d forgotten to grab one and put it in his coat pocket.

Suddenly stuck on the pitcher’s mound, with a mayor and perhaps 25,000 fans waiting on him, Rush made a godawful decision.

Instead of just trotting to either dugout and simply grabbing a ball, Rush did what comes naturally to him.

He went to the microphone.

“Hey, we need a baseball,” he said to the entire stadium. “Can somebody help us out here?”

PLAYERS spend about eight or nine months together each season, and most of that is down time — during which they have little to do but think of childish pranks.

So, imagine when the perfect screwball situation is just handed to them.

You guessed it.

In seconds, Rush (and that poor mayor) were pelted with baseballs from the Royals dugout.

Hey, he’d ASKED for a ball, so…

Here ya go.

In the years since that night, Rush has thundered on the radio most every weekday, hammering away about serious political topics — and making millions of dollars.

Hundreds of millions.

But you’ll have to excuse me for giggling whenever I hear his voice.

Quick, somebody throw him a baseball.

Or several dozen.

It’s one of my favorite moments at the ballpark.

Ever.

I just wish Sammie the World’s Greatest Cat hadn’t yanked it into my mind before 5 o’clock in the morning.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. “Moments, Memories and Madness,” his reminiscences from several decades as a sports journalist, runs each Sunday.

Steve also writes Zags Tracker, a commentary on Gonzaga basketball, once per month during the offseason.