The Day I Met Brad Miller and Greg Ostertag At a Donuts Shop

Back in 2004, I was a pimple faced sophomore attending Colusa High School. Colusa is a tiny town off of highway 20 about an hour to the north of Sacramento. There are only two things that make Colusa relevant. The Colusa Casino and duck hunting.

In fact, duck hunting was the reason why my dad attended a wedding that my first sports hero, Will Clark, also attended. Will Clark, along with former Giants manager Dusty Baker, used to travel to Colusa to duck hunt with a fella my father knows. So when this guy got married, Will Clark actually showed up at his wedding. That's another story for another day.

Back to duck hunting and Colusa. In December of 2004, I was driving to school when I decided to stop at the donuts shop. I'm fat and this place makes delicious donuts. When you walk into this shop you'll normally see a group of old people huddled around a table drinking coffee and eating their old fashioned.

Only on this particular day the old people weren't huddle around the table. They were huddled around these two tall men. I couldn't see who these two men where until I started to move a little closer. When I was about five feet away was when I realized it was Brad Miller and Greg Ostertag.

I couldn't tell if Miller or Ostertag bought donuts but if I had to guess Miller is fan of donuts with sprinkles and Ostertag likes Maple bars. I could see that both guys were covered head to toe in camouflage and that they were heading out to duck hunt in the flooded rice fields north of Colusa. The guys chatted about hunting and basketball. Ostertag talked about how hunting relaxed him. He just wanted to be outdoors. Miller said he liked to hunt because of the thrill of the hunt. And then were on their way. They couldn't have been nicer. Which was surprising because I always thought both guys were huge pricks.

I later found out both guys actually hunted on the field that my father leases to farm rice. I also found out they killed a couple of geese and a few cinnamon teal.

Yes this story isn't as exciting as it sounds but there's a lockout and nothing else to talk about.