It’s Mother’s Day, 2024. We were watching the Angels game this afternoon and of course all of the players were being interviewed and talking about their mothers. I was thinking about my mother, in particular in terms of all of the Angels games we saw over the years, and rememberd the time she tried to have me arrested at an Angels game.

I should note that my mother, and her wacky sisters, were all world-class practical jokers. While many of the more legendary jokes were elaborate collaborations which involved costumes and cross-country travel, they never passed up a chance at improv. Some time I might tell the story of the Mother’s Day  1974 story in the DC area at the big plantation brunch with my aunt, uncle, and cousins…

Anyway, in this particular case it was probably Mother’s Day, or some other Sunday afternoon game in Anaheim. I think by that time Mom was living back in Vermont again, but she was visiting and so we had made arrangements to all meet up for the Angels game. So that we would all  be sitting together, I had bought a block of about 15 or 20 tickets. We had gotten there plenty early, and my wife had taken the kids up to the seats, leaving me standing out in front with a handful of tickets for all of my relatives.

One by one, several brothers, sisters, in-laws, and kids wandered up, got a handful of tickets, and gave me wads of cash to reimburse me to for their share of the ticket purchase. Then they would wander off into the stadium to meet up with the rest of the family.

Finally, Mom came up, handed me cash, got her tickets, and we both looked at the large and menacing figure of an Anaheim police officer who had suddenly appeared behind me.

The cop looked at me, looked at my mom, looked at the tickets, looked at the cash, and said, “Scalping tickets is illegal, and I’ve watched you sell at least a dozen. Please tell me that this nice lady is your mother.”

To which Mom replied, with a totally straight face, “I’m sorry, officer, I’ve never seen this man before today. I just responded to an ad I saw.”

“Mom, that’s NOT funny. Officer, this is my mother, visiting from Vermont, the other people were my brothers and sisters. I bought the tickets so we could all sit together and I’m not scalping tickets.”

The cop glanced over at my mom, who looked at me and said, “YOU SHOULD SEE THE LOOK ON YOUR FACE!”

Mom finally fessed up that yes, I was her son and yes, we were all family members meeting for the game, and no, it wasn’t necessary to arrest me, at least, not right at that moment for that particular crime.

The cop had a sense of humor, some common sense, and it was pretty obvious what was actually going on, so we all laughed and went our separate ways. A good time was had by all.