I've covered sports in East Texas since 1987, starting as a 21-year-old sports editor at the Kilgore News Herald before spending seven years at the Lufkin Daily News and the past 23 years at the Longview News-Journal.

A man named Timothy Roeckel from Parker, Colorado, made the news this past week when he decided to sue a Major League Baseball team after he was struck in the face with a foul ball while sitting in a Coors Field luxury box.

Unfortunately, despite the league's efforts to make the games safe for spectators, fans are still injured by baseballs, bats that slip out of a hitter's hands or overzealous fans who don't think twice about running over a kid or an old person so they can catch a foul ball and earn three seconds of facetime on television.

Most teams have wording on the back of tickets letting fans know the teams aren't liable for injuries during the course of the game, but that usually doesn't stop people from at least trying to turn a game ticket into a lottery ticket.

What makes Mr. Roeckel's case so interesting is he isn't just suing because he believes the Colorado Rockies didn't make the luxury box he was visiting -- for free thanks to a friend -- safe from foul balls.

He's suing because the Rockies are such a lousy team he wasn't paying attention to the game.

"Defendant's long standing poor performance on the field (has) contributed to a game-day environment in which spectators, particularly those in luxury suites, are less engaged with the action on the field," the lawsuit states.

I'm keeping an eye on that last part, because if Mr. Roeckel walks away with a chunk of money due to the fact his favorite team plays like the entire roster needs to be sent back down to T-Ball, I'm going to lawyer up and see if I can cash in for years of suffering as a fan of the Atlanta Braves and Dallas Cowboys.

I realize the Braves have turned things around and actually won a couple of World Series titles, and I've witnessed the Cowboys win five Super Bowls in my lifetime.

But I'm not sure that makes up for the lean years.

I started watching the Atlanta Braves in the early 1980s when the team's motto was "Go Braves ... and take the Falcons with you."

It wasn't safe to drive in Atlanta during that time, because if you got pulled over by a police officer for speeding, they gave you Braves tickets.

I typically watched on television, but was able to attend a few games in person at old Fulton County Stadium. I always thought it was odd that when you entered the gates they handed you a game program, a card that included the phone number of the nearest exorcist and a barf bag.

As for the Cowboys, I remember watching them lose the 1970 Super Bowl to the then-Baltimore Colts. I wasn't a big fan yet, so that loss didn't scar me too much.

But Dallas won the big game the next year, and led me to believe it would be a regular thing. They lost in 1976, won it all in 1977, lost in 1979 and then won three times in the span of four seasons (1992, 1993 and 1995) -- setting me and all Cowboys fans up for what has become the longest running joke in the National Football League.

Not only have the Cowboys not sniffed another Super Bowl since 1995, they are on their ninth coach since owner Jerry Jones fired Tom Landry -- the man who coached for 29 years, made the playoffs 18 times and won two Lombardi Trophies.

Last season's 7-10 debacle and third-place finish in the NFC East was the final straw. It was so bad I left two tickets in my truck for a game between the Cowboys and the Giants -- the only team in the division with a worse record than Dallas -- and someone broke in and left three more tickets.

Jones and the Cowboys still pack 90,000 fans into the "Y'all Mahal" for home games, and the Atlanta Braves moved into a new stadium just a few years ago.

I figure both teams have plenty of money, so my legal team is going to sue both organizations for $100,000 apiece.

That should buy a lot of barf bags.