Grandma, 91, catches foul at baseball game

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Anne Kenyon and her ballpark prize

Anne Kenyon was born July 1, 1920, the same day the great Walter Johnson pitched a no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park.

Nearly 92 years later, Kenyon delivered a baseball highlight of her own.

The grandmother of 10 and great grandmother of 15 snagged a foul ball at a recent San Jose Giants game, hanging with a high popup even as her less courageous family members scurried for cover.

Kenyon was sitting in general admission seats slightly up the first-base line on June 15 at San Jose Municipal Stadium when ... well, let's let turn it over to her for the play by play:

"I see this foul ball going up in the air and I thought, 'Oh, my goodness, this thing is going to come right down on my head.' So I sort of moved over just a notch, a couple of inches to my left.

"I don't know whatever possessed me, but I put my arm out, automatically. And before you know it I looked and the ball fell right in my hand. I caught the ball.

"And that was it."

The ball took a high carom off the seats first, a very lucky bounce. "Otherwise it would have crushed her," daughter Anne Marie Barletta said.

The original foul off the bat of the Modesto Nuts batter had soared so high that the seven other family members in attendance ducked. "When we came up from cover, my mom had this ridiculous smile on her face," Barletta. "And she says, 'I caught the ball!'''

The fifth-inning defensive gem made Kenyon a celebrity

by the time she left the park. Even as she was being escorted down the stadium stairs, other fans kept asking, "Are you the lady who caught the ball?"

"And she was beaming. 'Yes, I am,'" Barletta said. "It was priceless."

Kenyon continued her show and tell back at the Atria Senior Living community in Willow Glen, where she has lived for the past six years. She brought the ball down for breakfast. Then brought it out again at dinner.

Kenyon, turns 92 on Sunday ? making her the near equivalent of two Jamie Moyers. She's been trying hard to make a late-life conversion to being a Giants fan, but the East Coast native still prefers her New York Yankees.

"The only thing that would have made this better," Barletta said, "is if it had come off of Derek Jeter's bat."

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/giants/ci_20964877/92-year-old-grandmother-catches-foul-ball?source=rss_emailed

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