Two months ago, I decided to join some friends in an adult baseball league for geezers 45 and older. This represents a huge leap of faith for me. I haven't played on any organized team, in any sport, in at least 15 years, and that was slow-pitch softball. I haven't played baseball on a team since I was 12. I've never swung at a breaking ball, never gotten a sign from a third-base coach, never tried to hit the cutoff man from the outfield.

My friends tell me I'll do okay -- I'm in decent shape for a 52-year-old, and it's not like the pitchers are going to buzz 90-mph fastballs under my chin. My biggest fear is that I'll go the entire season without a hit, but they assure me that nobody's that bad. 

I hope they're right. My sports career includes some moments of epic suckitude, and I'm too old to revisit them. 

But that's not actually the subject of this post.

Since I haven't played baseball in 40 years, I'm missing some basic equipment. It's a wood-bat league, so I needed one of those. I also needed an aluminum bat for hitting in cages. Plus a helmet. And spikes. And pants. And a belt. And a cup. 

Yesterday was shopping day. Harrison and I had to run an errand anyway, so I made him tag along with me while I loaded up on baseball gear.

I should note here that I never pay full price for anything. Kimberly got me in the habit of bargain shopping when we got married 15 years ago, and since then we've rarely made a purchase that didn't involve a sale, a coupon, or both. We sometimes compete to see who can get the best deal on whatever we have to buy. For example, the last pair of jeans I bought had a retail price of $45. It was on sale for $35, and I bought it with a $10-off store coupon. But that barely gets me in the game against my wife, who'd laugh at my inability to score the jeans at less than 50 percent off the original price.

We started at Modell's, where I had a terrific coupon -- 15 percent off anything baseball-related. But before we could find anything on my list, another customer's cell phone went off with the loudest, most obnoxious ring tone I've heard in recent memory. Rather than being embarrassed, he seemed pleased with himself. He let it go on until everyone in the store was staring at him, then had a loud, leisurely conversation with whoever loves him enough to set off that brain-cell-mutating ring tone. Since this guy was blocking the aisle with the baseball equipment, Harrison and I agreed that it was time to move on.

That brought us to Sports Authority, where I had two coupons, each good for $10 off a $50 purchase. I know from past experience the store lets you divide up your purchases and use multiple coupons, and I knew I'd easily spend over $100 on baseball gear. What I didn't know is that the process would take more than a half-hour, and leave a long line of people stranded behind me while two different kids working the registers tried to figure out how to make it work.

The problem is that the coupon excluded UnderArmour gear, and the $75 spikes I'd chosen happened to be UnderArmour. I didn't even know they made shoes until yesterday. More important, I had no idea the coupon excluded that brand, for a pretty simple reason: In the Sports Authority circular, the UnderArmour logo was directly beneath "save $10 on $50 purchase." (I tried to scan the image, but for some reason my computer and my website aren't playing nice today.)

I didn't discover this glitch until one cashier had rung up everything and used one of the coupons. This was after I'd waited several minutes in line to check out. (Quick recession-related note: The local shopping district had as much traffic as I've ever seen there. A lot of bargain shoppers, I guess.) 

He sent me to a different register, which meant waiting in another line. The cashier, pleasant but math-challenged, couldn't figure out how to add up the non-UnderArmour purchases to get to $50 twice. It took three of us, including a manager, to get it right. (We ended up throwing a couple of pieces of gum on one of the orders to make the math work, which was good news for Harrison.)

There was a long line behind me while all this was going on, and I apologized to the people closest to me. They were nice about it, and agreed with my point that not using a $10 coupon was like throwing a ten-dollar bill on the floor and walking away.

For all that, I was glad I stood my ground and used both coupons. I know the time I spent getting it done was worth something, but most of it was a sunk labor cost anyway -- by the time I realized how long it was going to take, it had already taken longer than I'd expected. So I was left with the choice of giving Sports Authority $10 it hadn't earned, or continuing my quest to get the discount, without the promise of which I wouldn't have shopped there in the first place.

On the bright side, I think I taught my son one of life's most important lessons: Hang in there long enough, and eventually someone gives you some gum.

Tags: baseball , personal , shopping , sports authority , cell phones