Batboy-Turned-Lawyer Returns to His Role for 100th Birthday
A batboy who went on to become a lawyer in Hartford, Conn., will get to reprise his boyhood role on Saturday in honor of his upcoming 100th birthday.
Arthur Giddon will handle batboy responsibilities during batting practice for the Boston Red Sox, the New York Times reports. Liability issues bar his participation during the game. He turns 100 on Sunday.
Giddon became a lawyer based on a suggestion by baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis during a game in 1922, when Giddon was a batboy for the Boston Braves before they moved to Milwaukee.
“He said to me, ‘What are you going to do when you grow up?’ ” Giddon told the Times. “I didn’t know—I wasn’t even in high school. But he said, ‘You ought to be a lawyer’—he’d been a judge, you know.” Giddon did as he was told, according to the Times.
Giddon went to Harvard Law School, worked in private practice, and then became a public defender in Hartford for 19 years before retiring in 1985 as chief public defender, the Hartford Courant reports.
Giddon recently moved to an assisted living facility with his wife, Harriet, whom he married 61 years ago. His vision is impaired by macular degeneration, but he sees well enough to imitate his beloved Sox players, the Times says.
What will he do as honorary batboy? “I’m going to do whatever they tell me to do, like any good batboy,” he told the Times.
