We were in our seats with waiter service at the Angels game in 2002.  It was spring and the Angels were performing as usual, not very well.  We brought our 6 year old son Reed to the game and 10 year old daughter Caroline.  Caroline was a real ham and outside of the stadium she sang “God Bless the USA” at full vocal capacity for the AM Disney Radio Channel’s Karaoke contest.  She did an outstanding job, the crowd loved it and I was so proud of her.  She was a chip off the old block, not afraid to stand up before a crowd and perform at the drop of a hat.  After all, she had been the baby on the “Murphy Brown” show for two seasons and was no stranger to show biz.

We ordered food and drinks from our funny looking waiter.  He had a strange haircut and a great personality.  Almost like a character from a movie, he did his job well, but you could tell that he was only there to watch his favorite team, the Angels.  The Angels were losing and we made some sarcastic remarks about their lousy hitting.  Our waiter then told us the creepiest thing.  He said that the Angels were cursed and that the reason they will never win the World Series is because they built the Angels Stadium on an Ancient Indian Burial Ground.  I told him, “Well, it is a good thing that we can undo that curse with these Indian Rocks.”  My son and I had just been to Sacramento, our State Capitol, and we had purchased some authentic souvenir rocks from the Sacramento River up there.  Reed was obsessed with rocks in those days and he carried them in a little leather pouch in his pocket.  I handed our waiter, I think his name was Bobby, a river rock and told him that it would lift the curse from the Angels.  No kidding, right then David Eckstein was up to bat and he immediately hit a home run!  It was so weird.  Apparently Eckstein was a small guy and usually was not known to hit home runs on a regular basis.  It was amazing and we all jumped for joy.  The Angels continued on to win that game and  the rest is history. The Angels went on to win on a regular basis, hitting run after run and WINNING THE WORLD SERIES THAT YEAR!

We went back to a game the next year and we ran into our waiter Bobby.  He agreed that Reed and his ancient Indian River rock did indeed remove the curse on the Angel’s stadium.  He had kept the rock in his wallet and he removed it to show it to us. It had broken in half and the Angels were actually struggling a bit, but no worries.  They had won the World Series and could move up in the ranks of Major League Baseball as a legitimate team.  Old Gene Autrey would have been proud of his team.  I am going to try to dig through our attic and find that little bag of river rocks in the leather pouch.  I rarely throw things away.  We also used those rocks to get rid of a long dry spell at the lake house of my in laws in Texas!