I’d been looking forward to this game for several days because my first ball of the day was going to mark the 900th consecutive game at which I’d snagged one — a streak dating back to September 10, 1993.

When the stadium opened at 5:10pm, I headed to the left field seats with a clear vision of how I wanted things to play out:

1) Snag a baseball.
2) Get someone to take a photo of me with it.
3) Label it and stick it in a special compartment in my backpack.

Simple enough, right? Well, after several minutes had passed, my friend Mateo (who just returned from his freshman year of college in Minnesota) got Mets coach Tom Goodwin to throw him a ball. Unfortunately for him, it sailed a bit too high and barely eluded his glove. I didn’t bother going for it at first because Mateo was standing one full section to my right, but when I realized that he had no idea where the ball was, I ran over and grabbed it. (Sorry, Mateo, but you would’ve done the same thing to me, right? And I wouldn’t have blamed you.) At the very instant that I got that ball, I heard another one slam into the seats near me. First I flinched. Then I saw it rattling around in my row five feet away. Then I grabbed it. Five seconds later, it occurred to me that I had no idea which ball was which. D’oh!! I’m pretty sure that the second ball was a Justin Turner homer, and I’m positive that if I’d seen it coming, I would’ve caught it on the fly. I felt kinda bummed about the haphazard, semi-botched milestone, but what I could I do? I photographed the two baseballs . . .

. . . and got on with my day.

The worst thing about BP (aside from the fact that this was Citi Field) was the steady flow of fans getting wristbanded on the way to the Party Deck:

Sure, I could’ve moved to a different staircase, but (a) there were other ballhawks on my right and (b) hitters rarely reach the seats on my left.

My 3rd ball was another toss-up from Goodwin. (He hadn’t seen me get the first one.) My 4th ball was a homer by a right-handed batter on the Mets that I caught on the fly in the front row. (I gave it to man standing next to me, who handed it to his very thankful daughter.) My 5th ball was a home run by a left-handed batter on the Reds that I caught on the fly in the 3rd row. (My friend Mark was in the 2nd row and got a bit tangled up and couldn’t quite reach it.)

I should’ve caught another homer late in BP, but *barely* misjudged it. Basically, as the ball reached its apex, I drifted down the steps and hurriedly picked a spot because there were several other fans closing in from various directions. The ball ended up drifting about a foot farther than I’d predicted, and when I jumped and reached for it, it tipped off the end of my glove. That really pissed me off — and that was it for BP. Meh.

A little while later, I caught up with a young fan named Zach, who’d brought his copy of Watching Baseball Smarter for me to sign. Here we are with it:

Zach and I have crossed paths at a bunch of Mets games over the last few years. Despite usually showing up late for BP, he usually finds a way to snag a ball or two, and this game was no exception. He made a nice grab on a home run (hit by Brandon Phillips, I think) that was rattling around the left-center field seats.

I also caught up with a guy named Jon, who’s an expert autograph collector and has been reading this blog for years. He’d gotten Votto and several other guys outside the team hotel earlier in the day, and he got a few more signatures behind the Reds’ dugout.

Here’s a photo that shows where I sat for the 1st inning — directly behind a guy wearing the best jersey I’ve seen all year:

In the second inning, I moved one section to my left, and in the 3rd inning, Mark caught a Marlon Byrd homer two sections to my right. It was a nice play, mainly because he’d been half-paying attention when the ball was hit and had to scramble to get ready for it, but even he would admit that it was lucky. He was sitting on the end of a row, and Byrd drilled a line drive RIGHT at him. I tweeted a congratulatory message and hoped I’d get some home run action of my own, but it wasn’t meant to be.

During the middle innings, I gave one of my BP balls to a little kid sitting behind me.

After the game, which the Reds won, 4-3, I gave away another ball at the dugout and then got one tossed to me by Reds coach Billy Hatcher. Look how beat-up and gorgeous it is:

Then I caught up with Mateo and another ballhawk named Aaron (aka “Howie”). The three of us posed with Mark and his home run ball:

Aaron initially posed with the ball that he’d gotten, but I was like, “Nope, gotta put it away. None of us are showing our baseballs. It’s all about Mark.”

Mateo ended up with three. A few other guys each managed to get one or two.

Tough day.
Tougher stadium.

BALLHAWKING STATS:

• 6 balls at this game (three pictured here because I gave three away)

• 218 balls in 28 games this season = 7.79 balls per game.

• 900 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 14 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Angel Stadium, PETCO Park, AT&T Park, Safeco Field, Kauffman Stadium, Rangers Ballpark, Minute Maid Park, Great American Ball Park, Progressive Field, PNC Park, and Camden Yards

• 6,677 total balls

CHARITY STATS:

(For every stadium this season at which I snag a game-used ball, BIGS Sunflower Seeds will donate $500 to Pitch In For Baseball, a non-profit charity that provides baseball equipment to underprivileged kids all over the world. In addition to that, I’m doing my own fundraiser again this season for Pitch In For Baseball.)

• 26 donors for my fundraiser

• $1.63 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $9.78 raised at this game

• $354.34 raised this season through my fundraiser

• $7,000 from BIGS Sunflower Seeds for my game-used baseballs

• $28,760.34 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

Finally, one of the balls that I kept has an invisible ink stamp. Here’s a side-by-side comparison in regular light versus black light:

It’s been nearly 20 years since I’ve gone to a game and *not* snagged at least one ball — and my streak nearly ended at this one. No matter where I went or what I did, it seemed to be the wrong choice. Bad luck. Bad ricochets. Lots of competition. Rude players. It was amazing.

I started in left field . . .

. . . and watched helplessly as another fan caught a home run that sailed right to him in my regular spot. No, I don’t own that spot, and yes, he’d gotten there first; I can’t complain, but it still bummed me out.

When I saw that Curtis Granderson and Travis Hafner were getting ready to hit in the next group, I raced to the 2nd deck in right field:

As you can see, there wasn’t a whole lot of competition. ANY home run that landed anywhere near me would’ve been mine, but there were none. Hafner pounded nearly a dozen grounders and line drives in my direction. All he had to do was elevate! But no. Nothing. Unreal.

When the Blue Jays started hitting, I headed back to left field:

In the photo above, do you see the big/square area on the lower right, blocked by railings? It’s also blocked by chains in the front row. See the guy wearing black shorts? There are chains just to his right. That space is sometimes used for TV cameras, but even when it’s empty, fans (for some reason) are not allowed to be there. Keep that in mind. I’ll be talking more about it in a bit.

I figured that there’d be lots of action in left field. Jose Bautista? Edwin Encarnacion? J.P. Arencibia? Brett Lawrie? Hell, even Henry Blanco and Mark DeRosa. All these guys bat right-handed, but they combined to put on a pathetic display. There seriously would’ve been more action in the left field seats if *I* had been hitting (with a metal bat). I knew I was in trouble, and I tweeted about it. One home run sailed 10 feet over my head and was grabbed several rows behind me by another fan — the ONLY fan, it should be noted, who was behind me. Another homer landed 20 feet to my right and deflected back to the exact spot where I’d been standing before I started chasing it. Another one landed 30 feet to my left and unexpectedly deflected AT ME and tipped off my glove as I scrambled for it. I was having THE worst luck. Around that time, I tweeted another update, and let me tell you, I was nervous as hell. Getting shut out during BP at just about any other stadium wouldn’t be the end of the world, but here at Yankee Stadium, where *every* staircase is fiercely guarded throughout the game? Oy vey. I knew I wouldn’t be able to head into foul territory for a pre-game toss-up or a 3rd-out ball. Somehow, I was gonna have to find a way to snag a ball in the outfield, but BP was winding down, and to make matters worse, the Blue Jays pitchers in left field completely ignored me. They had no problem tossing baseballs to other fans (a) in Blue Jays gear or (b) who were female, but for whatever reason, it’s like I didn’t exist to them. I’m talking about Casey Janssen, Brett Cecil, Esmil Rogers, Chad Jenkins, and the worst of the worst . . . Brad Lincoln. I was making the nicest and funniest and most polite requests of all time, but none of these last-place bozos even looked at me. (And to think that I actually rooted for them at the beginning of the season!)

Something lucky happened at the end of BP, and I do mean THE END. On the 2nd-to-last pitch, the batter hit a deep line drive in my direction. It was hooking a bit to the right of my staircase, and I could tell that it wasn’t going to reach me in the 4th row, so I scurried down the steps and hopped the chain to get into the camera well, and I reached out for the ball as Brett Cecil was jumping up for it . . . and BAM!!! I felt the impact on my glove, but what caused it — the ball or his glove? I opened mine, and the ball was there! I actually thumbed my nose at him as he jogged off, though I’m sorry to say he didn’t notice. Then I got scolded by security for entering the precious camera well, but it was worth it. I’d extended my 898-game streak to 899, and no one could take that away from me. Moments later, I photographed the ball . . .

. . . and if you look closely, you can see the last-place Blue Jays jogging back to the dugout in the background.

I tweeted another update with this photo:

It’s weird to be simultaneously stressed and relieved.

After I posted that tweet, my friend Todd Cook responded with this, and he was correct. It was indeed “Harkey time.”

Yankees bullpen coach Mike Harkey tosses half a dozen balls into the crowd before every game, and I’d already gotten seven from him this season. In fact, I’ve gotten one from him every time I’ve tried, except once, and that was when a security guard kicked me out of the bleachers (despite the fact that I had a much better 100 Level ticket), so it almost doesn’t count. If I ever needed a ball from Harkey, this was the time. Yeah, I’d managed to keep my streak alive, but I had another one on the line: 423 consecutive games with at least two baseballs. The last time I “only” snagged one ball was at the 2007 All-Star Game.

Long story short: Harkey hooked me up. I don’t think he recognizes me because I always change my appearance and position myself in different spots. Sometimes I work the 100 Level seats. Other times (when security isn’t being insane) I play the bleachers, and occasionally I go here:

I took that photo from a terrace, which has lately been closed quite a bit for “private events.” Thankfully it was open at this game, and I took advantage. In the photo above, you can see Harkey walking on the bullpen mound, about to disappear from view. The ball I got from him was the last one that he threw. Phew!

After that, I hurried down to my ticketed section, which just so happened to be adjacent to the last-place Blue Jays’ bullpen. Here’s what I saw when I got there:

Pitching coach Pete Walker was talking to starter Mark Buehrle. Walker, as you can see, was holding a baseball in his right hand, which he ended up tossing into the bleachers. But wait! Did you notice the 3rd guy in the bullpen? See his head poking up on the left? That was bullpen catcher Alex Andreopoulos, whose pockets were stuffed with baseballs. He tossed them all into the crowd, and I snagged one.

I sat in straight-away left field for the entire game. This was the view to my left . . .

. . . and this was the view to my right:

Why did I draw a red circle around that little kid? Because (a) it would’ve been tough to point him out without it and (b) I gave him the BP home run ball that I’d caught. He was sitting there all night with his glove, staring at everything super-attentively. Every time a vendor walked down the stairs and shouted, the kid turned and looked. Every time there was a video on the jumbotron, he watched it. He was *so* into the entire experience, but of course there was one thing missing. It was the middle of the 4th inning, I think, when I walked over to him and said, “Hey, you look like you could use a baseball. Am I right?” Then I held out the ball, and man-oh-man, the way his face lit up might’ve been the highlight of my day.

The lowlight was when I missed a David Adams ground-rule double in the bottom of the 7th inning by an arm’s length, and you know what? If I hadn’t been skittish about the camera well, I totally would’ve caught it. Basically, I was standing next to the chain as the ball was approaching. I didn’t think it was going to clear the wall, so I didn’t bother climbing over. Catching a ball in a restricted area is bad; jumping into a restricted with NO ball is worse, so I hung back and reached out pathetically as the ball skimmed over the wall by mere inches. It deflected off some fans and unfortunately, rather than plopping down into the camera well where I could’ve grabbed it, it bounced deeper into the section. These are the folks that ended up with it:

As they posed with the ball, I thought, “They’ve snagged as many ground-rule doubles in their life as I have — and who knows, maybe more?” (My one ground-rule double was hit by David Justice at SkyDome in 2000; I would’ve caught another two years ago at Coors Field if I hadn’t been on frickin’ crutches.)

The game itself was . . . pthpththpththh!!! Hiroki Kuroda limited the last-place Blue Jays to two hits and a walk in eight scoreless innings — his ERA is now 1.99 — and the Yankees won, 5-0. There were no home runs.

After the final out, I hurried over to the last-place Blue Jays’ bullpen and tried unsuccessfully to get one final toss-up. I ran into a fellow ballhawk named John Lisankie (whom I’d seen on and off throughout the night), and we chatted for a minute. He’d managed to get one ball during BP — tough day all around. When he and his father left, I lingered in the seats for another minute, first to chat with a few other fans that I recognized and then to say goodnight to the security guard, who’s actually really cool. That’s when I noticed this:

You have no idea what I’m talking about, right? See the big blue advertisement below the bleachers? See where it says “AgeWell”? See the little white rectangle on the dark blue wall below it? That was the last-place Blue Jays’ lineup card. They were nice enough to leave it behind, and the groundskeeper was nice enough to peel it off the wall and hand it to me. Here’s a closer look:

Here’s an even closer look, and if you want to see all my lineup cards, click here.

Getting this lineup card (or “LINE-UP CARD” as the last-place Blue Jays call it) kinda almost made the whole day worthwhile. Here I am with it before leaving the stadium:

This is where the story would normally end, but in this case, I have one last thing to share . . .

While waiting for the downtown No. 2 train at the 149th Street station, look what I saw on the tracks:

See that little round white thing? Yep, that’s a baseball, and check it out — it definitely came from a major league stadium:

That’s a “practice” stamp on the sweet spot. How do you like that?! (I hope that’s not the ball that I gave to the kid.) Upon seeing that ball, my thoughts went something like this:

1) I could jump down there and get it!
2) Oh, wait, it wouldn’t even count because I’m not IN a stadium.
3) Screw it — probably not the safest thing to do anyway.
4) Oh! I could glove-trick it.
5) Oh, wait, I don’t have any of my glove trick materials on me.
6) Those were some big rats.
7) Here comes my train.
8) Maybe the ball will still be there next time I’m coming home from a Yankee game!
9) Oh, wait, that’s gonna be at least two weeks from now.
10) What would I do with that ball anyway?
11) Who cares? I’d enjoy the challenge of snagging it.

I just thought of one more thing that I need to share . . .

Before the game, I was talking to a friendly guard in the bleachers (yes, they do exist), who told me something interesting: last season, his shifts started at 4:30pm for night games, but this year, his clock-in time has been pushed back to 4:45pm. He said it’s because ticket sales are down and the Yankees are losing money — and he’s going to quit as a result. Every four days, he loses an hour of pay, which he can’t really afford, but it’s not even about the money. He said the Steinbrenners have added a bunch of rules that he now has to enforce, so his job has become more annoying and difficult. I asked him to give an example, so he pointed out a white stripe on the pavement behind the last row of bleacher benches. He said it wasn’t there last season, but now he’s being instructed not to allow fans to stand in front of it. As you might expect, fans get pissed off when they’re told to move (when they’re already standing 500-plus feet from home plate), so he’s constantly forced to be the bad guy. Many guards enjoy wielding their power, but for the decent folks who work at The Stadium, the rules are a real burden.

BALLHAWKING STATS:

• 3 balls at this game (two pictured here because I gave one away)

• 212 balls in 27 games this season = 7.85 balls per game.

• 899 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 424 consecutive games with at least two balls

• 32 lifetime lineup cards (or pairs of lineup cards)

• 14 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Angel Stadium, PETCO Park, AT&T Park, Safeco Field, Kauffman Stadium, Rangers Ballpark, Minute Maid Park, Great American Ball Park, Progressive Field, PNC Park, and Camden Yards

• 6,671 total balls

CHARITY STATS:

(For every stadium this season at which I snag a game-used ball, BIGS Sunflower Seeds will donate $500 to Pitch In For Baseball, a non-profit charity that provides baseball equipment to underprivileged kids all over the world. In addition to that, I’m doing my own fundraiser again this season for Pitch In For Baseball.)

• 26 donors for my fundraiser

• $1.63 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $4.89 raised at this game

• $344.56 raised this season through my fundraiser

• $7,000 from BIGS Sunflower Seeds for my game-used baseballs

• $28,750.56 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

I realize that I’ve started a few recent entries with photos of baseballs, so for a change, here’s a shot that I took while waiting in the shade for the gates to open:

Nothing special — just a different look at a lesser-seen part of Yankee Stadium.

As for the baseballs . . .

My 1st of the day was my 200th of the season. It was thrown by Phil Hughes in right-center field, and here’s a photo of it:

Moments later, I caught a Brett Gardner homer on the fly (which came right to me) and soon after that, I ran to my left and grabbed a Curtis Granderson homer that had landed in the seats. Check out the beautifully smudged logo on that one:

The next/final group of Yankees had one lefty (Travis Hafner) and three righties (Ben Francisco, Alberto Gonzalez, and Austin Romine), so I went to left field. I figured it was a good decision, but as it turned out, Hafner hit more balls into the right field seats than all three righties hit to left.

This was my view:

I caught one home run there on the fly (I’m not sure who hit it) after drifting down the stairs and reaching over the wall beside the TV camera. That was my 4th ball of the day.

In the photo above, the player wearing No. 38 is Preston Claiborne. Several minutes before I caught the home run, I had asked him for a ball. His response went as follows: “Didn’t you get about six yesterday?” (No, Preston, I got eleven. Pay attention.)

When the Mariners started hitting, I headed back to right field and battled the sun. The following photo kinda shows how hard it was to see:

My 5th ball was a Jesus Montero homer that I caught on the fly. I drifted 15 feet to my right and jumped a few inches to reach it.

My 6th ball was a Kendrys Morales homer that I should’ve caught on the fly. I expected it to slice more than it did, so I headed down the steps, and it ended up landing on my right. I felt stupid about that one, but hey, at least I got the ball, and by the way, a bit later, Morales hit an opposite-field homer into the second deck in right field! He also went oppo into the right field bleachers. Very impressive.

My 7th ball was a line-drive homer that I caught on the fly in the front row. I’m not sure who hit this one, or either of the next two. Maybe Dustin Ackley?

My 8th ball was another line-drive homer that I caught on the fly, this time looking directly into the sun. I had seen the ball go up in the air, and I knew that it was heading to my left, so I began drifting in that direction. Then I completely lost sight of it, so I stopped moving and looked to the  to the side and waited for it to reenter my line of vision. At the very last second, I saw it flying toward me, so I lunged to the left and somehow managed to glove it. There were people all around, but no one else had even flinched. We were all temporarily blinded, and I ended up seeing spots for next minute. Look what number ball this was for me:

How appropriate that the ball with “666″ — and then some — nearly ruined me.

My final ball of BP was another homer that I caught on the fly. I had to run 40 feet to my right and jump as high as possible in order to backhand it. I’m sure it looked impressive, but the previous ball that had ended up in the sun was much more challenging. Anyway, I gave the ball to the nearest kid and discovered later that someone had tweeted about it:

Thank you, Joey Bag of Donuts. Much appreciated.

When I headed through the tunnel and reached the concourse, I was recognized by two guys named Sean and Tom. They’ve been reading my blog and wanted to say hey, so we chatted for a few minutes and eventually asked a cop to take our photo. I would’ve spent more time with them, but I needed to meet up with a friend who had access to the Audi Club.

Ooooh-hoooo! The Audi Club! Let’s all say it together: “OWW-DEE CLUB.” Wow!! Sounds fancy, right?!

The first thing I did was show my friend’s ticket to a security guard to go here:

Did you see the elevators under Babe Ruth? I rode one to the “250 Level,” and when I got out, this was the view:

Yawn.

In the photo above, did you notice the “suite level” sign on the right? The guard standing below it let me take a peek inside. There was some sort of office directly behind him . . .

. . . and a mosaic-lookin’ thing from the Old Yankee Stadium on the wall nearby:

Here’s what the suite level itself looks like:

The word “sterile” comes to mind. It was nice to see all this stuff for the first time, but I wouldn’t want to be there for an entire game.

Back in the elevator area, I took a photo of the entrance to the Audi Club:

I wasn’t sure if I was gonna be able to get in. Why? Because the Audi Club page on the Yankees’ website says, “Appropriate attire is required at all times. Attire will be deemed appropriate at the sole discretion of the New York Yankees.” And here I was wearing sneakers, jeans, a sweaty t-shirt, and a baseball cap.

The guard let me in, and I wasn’t the least bit underdressed. (“Appropriate attire” my ass.) Here’s what it looked like when I headed inside:

In the photo above, the metal stand on the left has Audi pamphlets.

Give. Me. A Break.

The club has a bar, of course:

On the other side of the bar, two guards were blocking a dining area:

They told me that for $65, I could go in there and enjoy the buffet. (Ha-HAAAAAA!!! Good one, Yankees.) It was the least baseball-y atmosphere that I’ve ever experienced in a stadium, and given the location of this club, I’m not surprised. Check out the view:

Yeesh.

Here’s a photo of the seating area:

The Audi Club feels like an airport (although that’s an insult to some lovely airports out there), and of course it’s in the worst location imaginable — just below the upper deck, all the way out past the left field foul pole. It strikes me as a place for people with crappy seats (who think they have good seats) to go and feel special. I can wrap my brain around some of the most heinous crimes that people have committed throughout history, but I really don’t understand why anyone would want to spend time in the Audi Club at Yankee Stadium.

Shortly before game time, I returned the club-level ticket to my friend and headed out to my normal spot in straight-away right field. That’s where I snagged my 10th and final ball of the day — a pre-game toss-up from the bullpen by Yankees coach Mike Harkey, which I handed to a group of fans seated nearby. I’ve gotten more than half a dozen from him this season.

This was my view during the game:

The good thing about it was that the Yankees lost, 3-2. The bad thing was that the security guard was out to get me. As I tweeted in the middle innings, I had a ticket in the middle of Row 12 (which is the 3rd row in that section). I wanted to move back to an end seat in Row 16, but the guard wouldn’t let me. He told me that I had to sit *in* my seat, yet he didn’t stop anyone else from moving around. The section was two-thirds empty. There was plenty of room, especially as the game dragged on, but the guard wouldn’t let me budge. Eventually, I moved down one row (where there was lots more space), and when he saw me, he said, “Now you’re just trying to play games with me,” and he ordered me back to my seat. This is the same guard who (a) spends half of every game on his phone, (b) has no problem with fans cursing loudly at the players, and (c) told me during the previous home stand that I’m not allowed to leave my section to catch home runs, yet never enforced that rule with any other fans. This guard (who, by the way, is 19 years old) is out of control, and I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve given him baseballs. I’ve talked at length with him. He knows about my collection and the charity. He even tried out for the baseball team at George Washington High School, where I’m great friends with the coach. What’s the deal? Can anyone offer some advice? I don’t need special privileges in right field. I just want to be left alone.

I’m so pissed at the Yankees that words can’t begin to describe it. The way their employees treat people is sickening, yet I keep going back. Why? Because I love baseball more than I hate their stadium, but I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.

During the game, I learned that my segment had aired on the MLB Network. It would’ve been nice to get some notice, but whatever. This is the piece that was taped on 5/7/13 at Progressive Field, and I think it turned out pretty well. It’s only a minute and a half, so check it out:

Anyway, here are the eight baseballs that I kept . . .

. . . and here’s the one with the best invisible ink stamp:

Did I mention that I’m pissed off?

BALLHAWKING STATS:

• 10 balls at this game

• 209 balls in 26 games this season = 8.04 balls per game.

• 898 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 14 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Angel Stadium, PETCO Park, AT&T Park, Safeco Field, Kauffman Stadium, Rangers Ballpark, Minute Maid Park, Great American Ball Park, Progressive Field, PNC Park, and Camden Yards

• 6,668 total balls

CHARITY STATS:

(For every stadium this season at which I snag a game-used ball, BIGS Sunflower Seeds will donate $500 to Pitch In For Baseball, a non-profit charity that provides baseball equipment to underprivileged kids all over the world. In addition to that, I’m doing my own fundraiser again this season for Pitch In For Baseball.)

• 26 donors for my fundraiser

• $1.63 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $16.30 raised at this game

• $339.67 raised this season through my fundraiser

• $7,000 from BIGS Sunflower Seeds for my game-used baseballs

• $28,745.67 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

The good news is that I caught seven home runs on the fly during batting practice. The bad news is that there’s not a single photo of me in action, so I’ll have to describe how it all went down . . .

I snagged my first three baseballs fairly quickly in right field:

The first was thrown by Brett Marshall, and I’ll admit that I didn’t deserve it. My friend Ben Weil had called out to him, but when Marshall looked up, he saw me first.

The second was a Brett Gardner homer that I caught on the fly. I drifted about 25 feet to my left and jumped as high as I could for it.

The third was a Lyle Overbay homer. It was pretty much hit right to me — I might’ve ranged 10 feet to my left — but the challenge was the sun. In the late afternoon, visibility in right field at Yankee Stadium is brutal.

For the next/final group of Yankee hitters, I went to left field and caught two more homers on the fly. I’m not sure who hit them, but I remember exactly what happened. The first was a lazy fly ball that barely cleared the wall, just to the right of the TV camera. A gloveless man was standing there, so I climbed down over a couple rows of seats to get behind him, and at the last second, I flinched (so as not to get hit in the face by a potential deflection) and reached across my body and blindly stuck out my glove in the spot where the ball was heading. The next home run, a well-hit ball heading roughly 20 feet to my left, appeared to be falling short of my row, so I took a step down before cutting across. Stupid me — the ball ended up carrying into the row where I’d started, and I had to jump high to catch it.

When the Mariners started hitting, I went back to right field and got my 6th ball of the day tossed by Aaron Harang. My 7th ball was a towering homer (possibly hit by Michael Saunders) that I caught just behind Ben in the 2nd row near the bullpen. My 8th ball was a line-drive to straight-away right field (possibly hit by Endy Chavez) that bounced off the warning track and skipped over the wall and hit an unsuspecting fat guy in the belly. I picked up the ball with my glove and handed it to him.

Take a look at the following photo, and then I’ll point something out:

Do you see the fan who’s using his glove to shield his eyes? See the baseball in his right hand? That was my 9th ball of the day — another homer that I caught on the fly. It was hit *right* to him, but he lost it in the sun. I caught it after climbing down into the camera well and pulling another flinch-job. I think the ball actually tipped off his glove on its way into mine. I didn’t need to give it to him — grown men with gloves don’t get much sympathy from anyone — but it just seemed like a nice thing to do. He was so thankful that he offered to buy me a beer. I thought about asking for a milkshake instead, but ultimately declined.

My 10th ball was a homer by a right-handed batter that I caught on the fly in right field. There was nothing fancy about it. I was standing one and a half sections away from the bullpen, and it came right to me in the 3rd row. Then I handed the ball to the nearest kid.

Even though I was catching balls all over the place, no one (except Ben) was pissed off because I gave a bunch away. In fact, I later gave away a fourth ball to a kid sitting in the front row.

Now I’ll fess up about the home run ball that I absolutely butchered. Man, it hurts to even write about it, but anyway, when I was in left field, I somehow wasn’t paying attention when a deep fly ball started sailing in my direction. I was in the 4th row, and by the time I looked up and saw it, I realized that it was barely going to clear the outfield wall. In my attempt to climb down into the camera well, I took a bad route and got tangled up on the railings. Still, I might’ve been able to lunge for the ball and catch it on the fly, but the camera was kind of in the way, and I got nervous about taking a deflection in the face, so I pulled back and planned to grab it after it landed. The ball ended up deflecting perfectly to me — a nice, chest-high bounce straight into the air, but in my rush to snag it (which involved swiping at it with my bare hand), I managed to swat it back onto the field. GAH!!! If there’s one good thing about the whole situation, it’s that the ball ended up getting tossed to a little kid, but wow, other than flat-out dropping a ball that comes right to you, it’s not possible to mess up worse than I did.

Just before the game got underway, I got my 11th ball thrown from the Yankees’ bullpen by coach Mike Harkey.

Look what happened in the top of the 1st inning:

The Mariners scored SEVEN runs off Phil Hughes, including a grand slam by Raul Ibanez, which ended up here:

In the photo above, do you see the ball on the dirt strip on the right? Well, after it sat there for 15 minutes, Yankees bullpen catcher Roman Rodriguez eventually picked it up and tossed it into the ball bag with all the other balls. That was painful.

Here’s a random piece of trivia for you, courtesy of the jumbotron:

I know I complain a lot about Yankee Stadium, but there *are* some good things, including the random/interesting facts that get displayed during the game. Thanks to the jumbotron, I also learned that Ibanez (who, by the way, later hit an opposite-field two-run homer) is one of four players with three different stints with the Mariners. I can’t think of the other three. Can you?

This was my view late in the game:

I really thought I was going to catch a home run, but other than the Ibanez granny, nothing came close. The game was so lopsided by the end (final score: Mariners 12, Yankees 2) that Joe Girardi brought in a position player — infielder Alberto Gonzalez — to pitch with two outs in the 9th. Throwing 83mph fastballs, he got Robert Andino to fly out to right fielder Ichiro Suzuki.

Fun stuff.

BALLHAWKING STATS:

• 11 balls at this game (seven pictured here because I gave four away)

• 199 balls in 25 games this season = 7.96 balls per game.

• 897 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 14 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Angel Stadium, PETCO Park, AT&T Park, Safeco Field, Kauffman Stadium, Rangers Ballpark, Minute Maid Park, Great American Ball Park, Progressive Field, PNC Park, and Camden Yards

• 6,658 total balls

CHARITY STATS:

(For every stadium this season at which I snag a game-used ball, BIGS Sunflower Seeds will donate $500 to Pitch In For Baseball, a non-profit charity that provides baseball equipment to underprivileged kids all over the world. In addition to that, I’m doing my own fundraiser again this season for Pitch In For Baseball.)

• 26 donors for my fundraiser

• $1.63 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $17.93 raised at this game

• $323.37 raised this season through my fundraiser

• $7,000 from BIGS Sunflower Seeds for my game-used baseballs

• $28,729.37 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

Finally, of the seven balls that I kept, five have invisible ink stamps. Here’s a side-by-side comparison in regular light versus black light:

If I had more time (and more space in my luggage on road trips), I’d post black light pics in every entry.

This will be brief. Just because. Yankee Stadium is a tough place to watch a ballgame. Let’s leave it at that . . .

My 1st ball of the day was thrown to me by Ichiro Suzuki after I asked him for it in Japanese. Here’s a photo of that ball with The Man in the background:

After the first group of hitters, I headed over to left field and stayed there for the rest of BP — not because I wanted to, but because I had to. That’s how it is at Yankee Stadium; you go where your ticket tells you to go, even during BP.

My 2nd ball of the day was a home run that I caught on the fly. I think it was hit by Ben Francisco, but I’m not sure.

This was my fabulous view when the Mariners took the field:

My 3rd ball was a home run that landed near me in the seats. (I should’ve caught it on the fly, but that was the ONE pitch I didn’t see all day, so of course the batter hit it right near me.)

My 4th ball was thrown by Hector Noesi. (Right after I caught it, I realized it had been intended for my friend Ben Weil, who was positioned three rows behind me.)

My 5th ball was a Jesus Montero homer that smacked off the back wall. (It took a fantastically lucky ricochet off a seat and bounced in my direction.)

My 6th ball was another toss-up from Noesi. (Once again, he was aiming for Ben, but this time, rather than throwing it too short, he airmailed him. The ball hit the back wall and bounced off a seat *away* from Ben and deflected right to me as he came charging through an empty row. He was ready to kill me, but you know what? He’d already gotten four balls, including one or two that I certainly would’ve snagged had he not been there.) (The outfield sections at Yankee Stadium only have ten rows; there’s very little room to work with, so inevitably we end up getting in each other’s way.)

After BP, I gave a baseball to a little girl sitting near the bullpen, and during the game, I gave two more to the kids pictured below at the bottom of the stairs:

They’d been sitting right in front me, and I noticed that before each inning got underway, they went down there in the hope of getting a toss-up from Yankees left fielder Curtis Granderson. The most they got from him was a smile and a subtle head-nod (which is more than most players would’ve offered), so I waited until the 6th inning and hooked them up. Half an hour later, one of the boys’ fathers scolded him for playing with the ball. I didn’t say anything, but it really pissed me off. The kid wasn’t tossing it in the air or distracting anyone. He was simply pounding the ball into his glove and practicing different grips, and oops! He happened to drop it at one point, forcing the folks in front of them to retrieve it from under their seats. Big deal. The kid was having fun, and I wanted to hand his father a “Parenting 101″ book for thwarting it.

Anyway, that’s where I sat for the entire game. I hate staying in one spot, but that’s just how it is at Yankee Stadium. The Mariners (behind Felix Hernandez) blew a 3-0 lead, and the Yankees (behind CC Sabathia) ended up winning, 4-3. There was one home run. It landed in right field. Bleh.

BALLHAWKING STATS:

• 6 balls at this game (three pictured here because I gave three away)

• 188 balls in 24 games this season = 7.83 balls per game.

• 896 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 14 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Angel Stadium, PETCO Park, AT&T Park, Safeco Field, Kauffman Stadium, Rangers Ballpark, Minute Maid Park, Great American Ball Park, Progressive Field, PNC Park, and Camden Yards

• 6,647 total balls

CHARITY STATS:

(For every stadium this season at which I snag a game-used ball, BIGS Sunflower Seeds will donate $500 to Pitch In For Baseball, a non-profit charity that provides baseball equipment to underprivileged kids all over the world. In addition to that, I’m doing my own fundraiser again this season for Pitch In For Baseball.)

• 26 donors for my fundraiser

• $1.63 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $9.78 raised at this game

• $305.44 raised this season through my fundraiser

• $7,000 from BIGS Sunflower Seeds for my game-used baseballs

• $28,711.44 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

Day games are awful because there’s usually no BP.
Weekend games are rough because of all the little kids.
Weekend day games are the worst thing ever — yet here I was.

It was Mother’s Day, and I was here for one reason: to snag one of the “pink baseballs” that were supposedly going to be used during the game. I’d heard about these balls from my friend Zach, who runs the website bigleaguebaseballs.com. He’d managed to get his hands on a few of them ahead of time and would’ve sent a photo had I’d asked, but I wanted to be surprised. Were the stitches pink? What about the stamping? Was there a special commemorative logo? Was the cowhide itself tinted pink? I had no idea what to expect.

When I entered the stadium, I was glad to see that the batting cage was set up:

The Mets weren’t yet doing anything — just standing around and BS’ing — but it was a good sign.

Twenty minutes later, after Dillon Gee and Shaun Marcum finished their bullpen sessions, I got Dan Warthen, the Mets’ pitching coach, to throw me a ball from the bullpen. Then he walked out onto the field (with bullpen coach Ricky Bones), and I took the following photo:

When BP got going, I ran over to left field and promptly got a ball from 3rd base coach Tim Teufel. He was roaming the outfield with a bat, so when he scooped up a ball, I called out and asked him to hit me a fungo. His aim was way off. The ball sailed 20 feet over my head, glanced off the facade of the 2nd deck, and plunked down into the seats behind me. I ran up the steps and had a mini-panic attack when I couldn’t find it. What the hell? It’s not like there was an open drain anywhere. The ball couldn’t have disappeared, but it wasn’t anywhere on the ground.

?!?!?!

After five full seconds of searching (which is a dreadfully long time in situations like that), I discovered it here:

Jeez, no wonder I had a hard time finding it.

Here’s what my view looked like from left field:

There were several lefties hitting at that point, so I ran back to right field . . .

. . . and got a ball from bullpen catcher Dave Racaniello without asking. “Rac” (as he’s known) has recognized me for years and knows about my baseball collection, and as a result, he’s pretty much stopped adding to it. He’s perfectly nice and always says hello, but in terms of actually giving me baseballs? Not anymore, so I was surprised when he fielded this one, gave it a quick inspection, and chucked it to me. The word “practice” was stamped on the sweet spot, and the whole thing felt a bit soft.

“This ball is soft!” I shouted. I wasn’t annoyed, and I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know. I was just making conversation.

“That’s why I threw it to you!” he yelled back.

(Well, okay then.)

Two minutes later, I caught a home run on the fly, and five minutes after that, I grabbed another home run ball that landed behind me in the seats. I’m not sure who hit them, but if I had to guess, I’d say Jordany Valdespin and Lucas Duda.

Back in left field, Duda threw a decent knuckleball to me, and then I caught a home run on the fly. (No idea who hit it. Maybe Anthony Recker?) These were my 6th and 7th balls of the day.

I was hoping that the Pirates would hit. If they had, I probably would’ve ended up with 15 to 20 balls, but no, that was the end of BP. Several Pirates, however, did come out to stretch and run and throw. I managed to get a toss-up from Jeff Locke and then got five players to sign my ticket:

From top to bottom (and then left to right), the signatures are:

1) Mark Melancon
2) Jason Grilli
3) Jeff Locke
4) A.J. Burnett
5) James McDonald

When Matt Harvey took the mound, I was sitting in the 5th row behind the home-plate end of the Pirates’ dugout:

I felt great about my chances of snagging a game-used ball, and on the 2nd batter of the game, I got an opportunity. Travis Snider hit a towering foul pop-up that initially appeared to be heading right for me. As it turned out, though, I had to drift down to the front row, but hey, whatever. Fifth row, front row . . . it was all the same, and I couldn’t believe my luck! When I reached out for what should’ve been a routine, waist-high catch, another fan reached out and bumped my glove. We both ended up dropping the ball and watching helplessly as it trickled across the dugout roof and dropped out of sight. But wait! Pirates manger Clint Hurdle turned around and looked up into the stands. I figured he had the ball, so I asked him for it, and he tossed it to me, and ohmygod, when I opened my glove and looked at it, I nearly jumped out of my shoes. Check out this beautiful specimen:

All I can say is WOW. The folks at Major League Baseball nailed it. I can’t imagine how they could’ve possibly made this ball look any better — and what a cool idea. A pink ball for breast cancer awareness? Outstanding.

I *really* wanted to snag another, but I didn’t want to hog everything in that section, so I moved two staircases over past the outfield end of the dugout. I would’ve moved one staircase over — that was clearly the next best spot — but my friends Ben Weil and Chris Hernandez were there, and since I already had one, I wanted to stay out of their way. In fact, we’d all agreed beforehand, along with Greg Barasch (who was sitting behind the Mets’ dugout), that we’d all try to make sure that we each got one. If one of us didn’t have one at the end of the game, for example, then we’d let that person take the first shot at getting an umpire ball.

Chris ended up getting a 3rd-out ball from Garrett Jones early in the game, so he was all set. Now we just needed Ben and Greg to get theirs, and it would be a totally successful day. That said, I almost felt bad when Jones tossed this to me after the 5th inning:

I said “almost” because Ben was quick to make an obscene gesture at me from the next section.

As you can see, that ball was kinda beat up. I’m almost positive that Jones pulled a switcheroo and tossed me the infield warm-up ball on his way in, but even so, it was still a game-used ball, right? Not only was it mud-rubbed, but these balls were never used during batting practice. MLB intended for them to be used during games on this day only.

An inning or two later, Ben got a 3rd-out/strikeout ball from Pirates catcher Michael McKenry, and around that time, Greg got a 3rd-out ball on the Mets’ side from rookie outfielder Juan Lagares. By the end of the 7th inning, all four of us had gotten a commemorative Mother’s Day ball, so I didn’t feel bad all when I snagged this in the bottom of the 8th:

I’m not sure who threw it or which ball it was, but I can tell you this: I got it after Daniel Murphy hit a one-out double down the left field line. That ball ended up getting tossed out of play into the Pirates’ dugout, so I walked down to the front row and got the attention of one of the players. I didn’t think he had the ball — I didn’t know who had it at that point — but I still asked him for it. I figured he might be able to get it from one of his coaches or teammates, so why not ask him? Well, it just so happened that he already had a ball (although I don’t think it was THE ball that had been hit for a double), and he tossed it to me. As you can see above, the ball he gave me was grass-stained and scuffed; I’m quite certain that a pristine gamer wouldn’t sustain that amount of wear on one play. Anyway, the one I got was probably another warm-up ball that *had* been used during the game. I’m thinking that I’ll give it to BIGS Sunflower Seeds for their end-of-the-season charity auction. I’ve promised to give them a game-used ball from every stadium, so I want to make sure that this one counts as a gamer before I hand it over. What do you think?

Speaking of seeds, look at the wonderful mess I made over the course of the game:

Matt Harvey had another solid performance — two runs on five hits in seven innings — but had to settle for a no-decision. He came out of the game with the score tied, 2-2; the Pirates took a 3-2 lead in the top of the 8th and held on for the victory.

Home plate umpire Andy Fletcher didn’t toss any balls into the crowd. Ben somehow got a pink wristband from one of the umps, which he should’ve been wearing in this photo:

That’s Greg on the left, Ben in the middle, and Chris on the right.

I ended up giving three balls away — one during BP, one right before the game, and one during the game. Here are the eight balls that I kept:

Now, if only Major League Baseball would design a special ball for Father’s Day . . .

BALLHAWKING STATS:

• 11 balls at this game (eight pictured above because I gave three away)

• 182 balls in 23 games this season = 7.9 balls per game.

• 895 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 54 different commemorative balls; click here to my whole collection

• 14 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Angel Stadium, PETCO Park, AT&T Park, Safeco Field, Kauffman Stadium, Rangers Ballpark, Minute Maid Park, Great American Ball Park, Progressive Field, PNC Park, and Camden Yards

• 6,641 total balls

CHARITY STATS:

(For every stadium this season at which I snag a game-used ball, BIGS Sunflower Seeds will donate $500 to Pitch In For Baseball, a non-profit charity that provides baseball equipment to underprivileged kids all over the world. In addition to that, I’m doing my own fundraiser again this season for Pitch In For Baseball.)

• 26 donors for my fundraiser

• $1.63 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $17.93 raised at this game

• $295.66 raised this season through my fundraiser

• $7,000 from BIGS Sunflower Seeds for my game-used baseballs

• $28,701.66 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

This was my 14th stadium of my BIGS Baseball Adventure, and once again, the media was all over it. Check out the following photo of my 1st ball of the day (which was thrown by Alexi Casilla), and you’ll see what I mean:

Did you notice the photographer in the background? He was there to get shots of me for a Sports On Earth article. (Sports on Earth is a newish website that launched last year; it’s affiliated with USA Today and MLB Advanced Media, so this was actually a pretty big deal.)

Meanwhile, there were three important people in the seats behind me:

In the photo above, the guy on the left is a Camden Yards regular and very successful ballhawk named Tim Anderson. The guy sitting in the middle is a reporter from Sports On Earth named Mike Tanier, and the guy on the right is Neal Stewart from BIGS Sunflower Seeds.

The first half-hour of BP was painfully slow — so slow, in fact, that I still had just one ball when the Royals took the field.

My 2nd ball of the day was the result of an errant throw from Aaron Crow to Greg Holland. The ball skipped past Holland and somehow stayed at the base of the wall in foul territory. It must have gotten caught in the tiny space below the padding, thereby allowing me to reach over and glove it. Holland didn’t have an extra ball, so I tossed him the one that I’d just grabbed. He said, “Thanks,” and continued playing catch with it. That’s when I took the following photo:

According to my own ballhawking rules, I could’ve counted the ball at that point. I mean, I always count balls that I snag and give to kids, so the fact that I gave this one to a major league pitcher shouldn’t have made a difference. That said, I stuck around and waited until they finished, and then Crow threw it (back) to me.

Do you remember when I missed a chunk of BP on 5/7/13 at Progressive Field for an MLB Network interview? Well, unfortunately, the same thing happened here at Camden Yards. This time I was scheduled for a 5:30pm interview on WBAL-TV Channel 11. Why do it then instead of after BP? Because the segment was going to air on the 6pm news, so I had no choice.

In a strange twist of fate, this interview actually helped me snag a ball (although I probably ended up missing out on several others). While I was walking through the seats along the left field foul line (to get to the interview location on the 1st base side), a left-handed batter on the Royals sliced a foul ball that rolled onto the warning track. I ran down to the front row and leaned over and grabbed it.

This was the painful view as I headed through the seats behind home plate:

Whether or not I’m getting to be on TV, I really really REALLY HATE MISSING BATTING PRACTICE. I don’t care if it’s the MLB Network or a spot on the local news — it drives me absolutely crazy.

Before this particular interview got started, I photographed the reporter and camerawoman:

His name is Dan. Her name is Bridget. They were cool, and he mainly asked me about the BIGS Baseball Adventure and my charity stuff, so I guess it *was* worth missing out on a few extra baseballs. (But it still drove me crazy.)

When the interview got started, the Sports On Earth photographer (whose name is Evan Habeeb) was there to document it:

When the interview ended, several lefties were hitting, so I headed to the standing-room area (aka “The Flag Court”) in right field. Things were so crazy out there that I didn’t get a chance to take any photos, so I’ll describe what happened . . .

1) I caught a home run on the fly at the edge of the Flag Court, leaning out over the side railing.

2) I snagged another home run ball that flew completely over the Flag Court, landed on Eutaw Street, and bounced up onto a slanted platform 10 feet high. There was one other guy who was waiting for the ball to roll off and drop down. He didn’t have a glove, so he tried to box me out, and by the way, he looked like he belonged in a motorcycle gang. After several tense seconds, the ball rolled off. He scampered to get underneath it. I jumped and caught it above his hands.

3) I gave a baseball to a little girl. The story behind it is that I’d been interviewed at around 4pm on WBAL-Radio 1090AM and had said that I’d give a ball to the first person who approached me at the game. An usher in the Flag Court recognized me, but rather than claiming the ball for himself, he told the girl to go ask me for it. She was *so* shy. It was adorable, but also awkward. I imagined myself at that age and remembered how much I hated talking to strangers/grown-ups, so I crouched down to get at eye-level with her and cupped my ear as she barely managed to mumble a request for the ball.

4) I caught another homer on the fly — a line drive that I backhanded as I ran forward and dodged a table.

I wasn’t sure who hit any of these home runs. The usher told me it was Eric Hosmer, but there’s no way to be certain.

I headed back to left field and stayed there for the rest of BP. Mike continued to interview me and take notes . . .

. . . and I snagged one more ball — a toss-up from James Shields.

In the photo above, do you see the fan in the blue shirt standing behind me on the stairs? That’s another Camden Yards regular named Alex Kopp. He had caught a Mike Moustakas homer the night before.

I ran to the Royals’ dugout at the end of BP . . .

. . . but got no love. Still, I was pleased with how the day had gone so far. I felt that I’d given Evan and Mike plenty of material to photograph and write about.

During the lull between BP and the game, I caught up with two fans who’d brought copies of my books for me to sign. We met in deep left field, and as I sat down to get started, a man walked by and yelled at me for diving over his female friend during BP to get a ball.

I was like, “Umm, I think you’ve got the wrong guy here — it wasn’t me,” but he insisted that I’d done it. He was really pissed off and told me that he recognized my face. Thankfully, the confrontation didn’t last long. He stormed off after five or ten seconds, but it left me feeling rather unsettled. Mike and Evan were there, along with Neal and several other fans.

“You guys have been following me around all day,” I said. “Did any of you see me dive over anyone at any point?”

They all shook their heads.

That’s when an usher approached me from behind and told me that she knew I hadn’t done it.

“We have the culprit,” she said. “It wasn’t you. I guess a few of you guys kinda look alike.”

Here’s a photo that Neal took during that exchange:

I was trying to laugh the whole thing off, but I also had a feeling of WTF.

“I wish you would’ve said something to the guy while he was here,” I told her.

“Well, he was clearly upset,” she said. ” I didn’t want to set him off any more by telling him he was wrong.”

“Yeah, but he saw the ‘Zack Hample’ on the back of my shirt, so now he’s gonna go on the internet and post some crap on an Orioles forum about what a dickhead I am.”

The point is: I don’t dive over people or knock folks down. EVER. It’s not my style, and yet I get accused of it all the time. I’ve even been accused of doing it at a game that I didn’t attend! No joke. Two years ago, I got a nasty email from a guy who blamed me for stealing a ball from his son at a specific Orioles game; I knew he was wrong right away because I simply don’t do that, but when I looked at the list of games that I’d attended, I discovered that I wasn’t even there that day.

Ugh.

Anyway, when things settled down, I began signing the books:

Both of these guys had brought copies of Watching Baseball Smarter and The Baseball. Here I am with them — Edison on the left and James on the right:

(No, they’re not related.)

Remembering how I’d signed The Baseball for a fan named David on 9/20/11 at Busch Stadium, Well, James asked me to do something similar in his copy:

Then he asked me to sign one of the balls that he’d snagged during BP:

Around that time, I gave one of my baseballs to a friendly usher to give to a kid, and then something odd happened:

As you can see in the photo above, the grounds crew partially pulled out the tarp despite the fact that it wasn’t raining. There was even an announcement about the the start of the game being pushed back half an hour due to “rain in the area” or some kinda nonsense like that. Did you notice the two fans in the previous photo with their arms out and palms turned upward? That was their “WTF” reaction to the announcement.

It never did rain, yet the game was delayed 31 minutes. I didn’t mind. It gave me time to use the bathroom and get some chicken tenders with fries . . . which leads to my one gripe about Camden Yards: it’s nearly impossibly to get a fork. How are you going to sell a man chicken tenders and fries and NOT offer him a fork? Seriously. Some people like to eat with their hands, but I don’t, especially at stadiums where my hands get dirty and/or I’m touching my glove and baseballs and don’t want to get grease all over. I had to walk through the concourse all the way from left field to 3rd base just to find a gosh-darned fork, and it nearly cost me a ball. Let me explain. Before I left the seats to go get food, there were half a dozen baseballs sitting in the Orioles’ bullpen — home run balls that had landed there during BP. I took a chance that they’d still be there when I returned, and if I’d been able to get a frickin’ fork with my meal, everything would’ve been fine. Here’s what happened: when I emerged from a tunnel on the left field foul line with my food, I noticed that Orioles pitching coach Rick Adair was heading toward the bullpen with two other guys. They were less than 100 feet from it, yet I was more than 300 feet away, so I ran (and I do mean RAN) through the empty rows with my tray of chicken tenders and fries and *barely* reached the edge of the bullpen as Adair began tossing all the balls into the crowd. Neal had been with me when I got the food, but he didn’t bother running with me to the bullpen. Instead, he pulled out his camera and happened to get a shot of one of the balls in mid-air:

I did get one of those balls, and for all I know, it might’ve been the one pictured above. That was No. 8 on the day, and I was completely out of breath and sweaty and dehydrated. Stupid Orioles and their lack of forks.

My 9th ball was thrown by Salvador Perez. In the following photo, which was taken moments later, you can see him standing in the small cluster of Royals in deep left-center field:

I had gotten his attention by standing on a seat, and when he lobbed the ball to me, I had to jump several inches and extend fully to reach it. Try standing on a seat and jumping some time (with a heavy backpack draped over your shoulder). It’s a bit scary.

Just before the game started, I headed here:

(Gorgeous, no?)

Jeremy Guthrie was warming up, and when he finished, he tossed the ball to pitching coach Dave Eiland, who tossed it to me. That felt good because I’d reached my goal of double digits, but there was still one more very important thing for me to try to accomplish: snagging a game-used ball. (Those of you who read this blog regularly might get sick of hearing me say this, but since there are always new readers stumbling upon it, it needs to be said: BIGS Sunflower Seeds is sponsoring me this season and donating $500 to Pitch In For Baseball for every stadium at which I snag a gamer.)

When the bottom of the 1st inning was winding down, I headed to the Royals’ dugout:

As you can see, Evan was there with his cameras, and as you can’t see, Mike was sitting right behind me. The 3rd-out ball ended up being tossed to the next section, so I switched over to Plan B, namely snagging a foul ball behind home plate.

This was my view in the top of the 2nd inning . . .

. . . and in the bottom of the 2nd, I got my chance. Adam Jones sent a foul ball shooting back in my direction, but it was about 20 feet too high. I didn’t give up on it, though, because at Camden Yards, when you’re playing for foul balls behind the plate, there’s always a chance of a ricochet.

Sure enough, the ball smacked off a metal support beam (on the side of the club level) and bounced down into the seats behind me and to the left. It then glanced off some fans and conveniently dropped into the cross-aisle. As several fans converged on it, I tried to swat at the ball with my glove. I should’ve been able to grab it at that point, but I didn’t come up with it cleanly. I was the closest person to the ball, but because it was still rattling around, I didn’t want to simply reach down and try to pick it up, so I dove on it. Keep in mind that I didn’t dive on anyone. I just kinda collapsed (in a safe, controlled manner) straight down on the ball so that I could trap it with my body and grab it with my bare hand. And it worked! I was super-excited, but my joy diminished when I learned that a middle-aged man sitting above the cross-aisle had gotten hit in the head with it. He wasn’t bleeding or unconscious or anything — just shaken up a bit — and his friend immediately started asking me for the ball. I felt bad saying this, but I told him that I had to keep it because it was going to be auctioned off at the end of the season for charity. That wasn’t a lie. The folks at BIGS have asked me (and I’ve agreed) to give them a game-used ball from every stadium this season for charity, but when I told that to the friend of the guy who’d gotten beaned, he was like, “Yeah RIGHT!!” I was in a tough spot so I tried to find the middle ground that would make everyone happy: I grabbed the ball that Salvador Perez had thrown me — it was mud-rubbed and looked game-used — and tossed it to the guy. Everyone applauded and felt warm-n-fuzzy, and someday, the poor sap who got drilled can give the ball to his grandson and tell him about the time that he caught an Adam Jones foul ball way back in 2013.

Then I ducked into a tunnel (out of view of the aforementioned fans) and took a photo of the ball:

That’s the 154th foul ball that I’ve ever snagged during a game.

I spent the rest of the night in the Flag Court, hoping for a home run. This was my view:

In the photo above, the three arrows are pointing to Neal (who had kindly offered to hold my backpack for a few innings), Evan, and Mike.

In the top of the 4th inning, Alex Gordon launched a two-run homer to the back of the Flag Court. I had no chance to catch it on the fly because of the new-ish picnic tables that blocked my path. Then, after the ball landed, I had no chance to grab it because it ended up on the wrong side of some gates. Click here to watch the highlight; you’ll see me standing around helplessly:

Alex was out there too (pictured below in the orange shirt). He and I were both stunned at how close we’d come . . .

. . . but I told Mike that I wasn’t upset. I said something like, “I’ve misplayed home runs that were far more significant, so I’ll continue to be pissed off about those and not worry about this one.”

Before he and Evan took off in the 5th inning, I showed them the glove trick:

Several innings later, Neal, who was sitting just below the press box, missed a foul ball by one row. Here he is:

In the photo above, Neal is the guy with his arm on the back of a seat. Note the woman wearing blue, holding the ball. I feel bad for Neal, but not THAT bad; if he weren’t constantly threatening to rob me of baseballs, I might actually help him snag one. (Actually, I did help by suggesting that he sit there in the first place.)

After the game, I caught up with an old friend named Avi and a new friend named Larry. I owe them both a big thank you, along with Tim and Alex and a bunch of other Camden Yards regulars. I barged in on their world for a day with several folks from the media in tow, and they all put up with me. Same goes for Rocco in Cincinnati, Tom in Cleveland, Garrett and Bob in Kansas City, Trent in Arlington, Leigh and T.C. in San Diego, and probably more people in other cities that I can’t think of right now. This whole season is bonkers, and believe me, I feel VERY lucky to be doing this. I just hope I’m not pissing off too many people in the process.

That said, some people will inevitably be pissed off by what I found in the garage:

(“That damn Zack Hample! He knocks over kids and dives over ladies and has all the luck! Catches every home run. Never gives anyone else a chance! Gives fake foul balls to fans! Complains about forks when there are starving children in the world who don’t even have hands. And he probably put that $5 bill there himself. What a douche!”)

UPDATE: Mike’s article has been published, and it’s amazing. Here’s the link.

BALLHAWKING STATS:

• 11 balls at this game (eight pictured here because I gave three away)

• 171 balls in 22 games this season = 7.77 balls per game.

• 521 balls in 55 lifetime games at Camden Yards = 9.47 balls per game.

• 894 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 14 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Angel Stadium, PETCO Park, AT&T Park, Safeco Field, Kauffman Stadium, Rangers Ballpark, Minute Maid Park, Great American Ball Park, Progressive Field, PNC Park, and Camden Yards

• 6,630 total balls

CHARITY STATS:

(For every stadium this season at which I snag a game-used ball, BIGS Sunflower Seeds will donate $500 to Pitch In For Baseball, a non-profit charity that provides baseball equipment to underprivileged kids all over the world. In addition to that, I’m doing my own fundraiser again this season for Pitch In For Baseball.)

• 26 donors for my fundraiser

• $1.63 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $17.93 raised at this game

• $277.73 raised this season through my fundraiser

• $7,000 from BIGS Sunflower Seeds for my game-used baseballs

• $28,683.73 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

PNC Park is glorious . . .

. . . but I wasn’t thrilled about the circumstances of this particular game:

Not only was the first pitch scheduled for 12:35pm, but it was “Weather Education Day,” which meant there were hundreds of kids inside the stadium by the time I arrived:

One good thing about the slow pace of the day was that I had time to catch up with some friends, including Todd Cook and his sons Tim (age 7) and Kellan (age 2), who were here to see their beloved Mariners. Now . . . do you remember when I got a fist-bump from Tim on 6/3/09 at Nationals Park? And when I tried unsuccessfully to get a double-fist-bump from both boys on 4/14/13 at Yankee Stadium? Well, it finally happened here in Pittsburgh:

(It’s all about the small victories in life.)

At PNC Park, the visiting team occupies the right side, so that’s where I headed when the seating bowl opened at 11am. Unfortunately, by that time, only two Mariners were still playing catch:

Because Todd and his adorable kids were there, I knew I had no chance to snag any baseballs from the Mariners, so I headed to the left field side:

As you can see in the photo above, several pairs of Pirates were warming up. Five minutes later, I got Tony Watson to throw me a ball:

It was a huge relief — I’m always nervous about getting shut out when there’s no BP — and ten minutes later, I got another ball from Mark Melancon near the foul pole.

Several Pirates signed autographs before the game, including Jason Grilli . . .

. . . and Russell Martin:

“Hey, Russell,” I said, “everyone tells me that I look like you. What do YOU think?”

He looked up briefly and replied, “Yeah, I see it a little bit.”

Moments later, a middle-aged women who, shall we say, wasn’t entirely there, started shouting, “Russell!! You’re CUTE!!” You’re CUTE, Russell!!”

It was awkward, and Russell didn’t respond, so I said, “Hey! That means I’m cute too, right?!”

That didn’t make things any less awkward.

Several minutes later, I met a ballhawk that I’d heard about and caught up with another whom I’ve known for several years. Here I am with them:

In the photo above, that’s Robbie Sacunas (aka “Scoonz”) on the left and my buddy Zac Weiss on the right.

There was lots of time to kill, and I knew exactly how I wanted to spend it. Two words: donut burger. Several weeks earlier, I’d read about it on Cut4, and I knew right away that when I visited PNC Park, I *had* to try it. Zac and Robbie told me that the Hall of Fame Club served it — that’s the restaurant at the back of the second deck in left field — and they led me through a secret shortcut to get there:

I took a photo of them when we reached the club’s entrance . . .

. . . and by the way, this was the view behind me:

PNC Park is so beautiful that it hurts.

Here’s what the inside of the Hall of Fame Club looks like:

In addition to Zac and Robbie, I was joined by Todd and his kids as well as Neal Stewart from BIGS Sunflower Seeds. Here’s a group photo of us:

As for the burger . . .

. . . I’d describe it as “very good but not life-changing.” (It had bacon and cheddar and a fried egg; somehow I only gained three-quarters of a pound on this nine-day trip.) As I bit into it, my thoughts went something like this: “Hey, that’s a pretty good burger, and whoa! There’s something desserty going on. That’s weird. And tasty. Hmm. Okay.” Officially, this thing is called a “brunch burger,” and it’s definitely worth trying. Just know that the novelty is better than the quality; it IS ballpark food, after all.

When the game got underway, I was sitting here:

A.J. Burnett was pitching for the Pirates, and Felix Hernandez was on the hill for the Mariners. With these two hard-throwing righties, I figured there’d be lots of lefties hitting foul balls behind the plate. Good logic, right?

Yeah, well, there wasn’t ONE foul ball hit anywhere near me all day.

Meanwhile, my actual seat was in the middle of the 4th row behind the outfield end of the Mariners’ dugout, but get this — the usher wouldn’t let me move to any of the open seats beside the stairs. I didn’t want to sit on the outfield end of the dugout anyway. I predicted that Felix was gonna rack up lots of strikeouts, so I lurked behind the home-plate end . . .

. . . and attempted to run down the stairs at the end of each inning. Not surprisingly, a different usher scolded me and said I wasn’t allowed to do that, so I gave up on the Mariners’ side altogether.

As the innings ticked by, I got increasingly nervous. BIGS Sunflower Seeds, for those who don’t know, is challenging me to snag a game-used ball at every stadium this season, with $500 going to Pitch In For Baseball for every venue at which I succeed. Not only was this was my one shot at PNC Park, but I’d completed the challenge at each of the previous 12 stadiums.

Anyway, when I tried entering the seats behind the Pirates’ dugout, I was intercepted by an usher. I was screwed, or so I thought. How the hell was I going to get down there? And if I couldn’t get down there, how was I gonna snag a gamer?

I sat here for an inning and pondered my next move:

Eventually I noticed that there were three staircases behind the dugout, but only two ushers. Ha! I watched them carefully and waited until they both had their backs turned to the middle staircase, and then I went for it.

Great success! They never saw me, and I grabbed an end-seat in the second row. Check out my view:

It took a couple more innings, but eventually I snagged my gamer when Felix Hernandez grounded out to end the top of the 7th inning, and Garrett Jones tossed me the ball on the way in. Here’s a photo of it:

The man sitting in front of me was glad that I got the ball. He was actually annoyed at several kids in the section, who had each snagged about three or four (infield warm-up balls included). When he saw me photographing it, he offered to hold it for me so I could get a better shot of the field in the background. I was like, “Thanks, but I’m fine,” but he insisted, so I was like, “No, really, I appreciate it, but I got the photo I need,” but he kept insisting, so eventually I let him hold the ball for me:

Gee, sir, thanks so much.

I spent the 8th inning in left field . . .

. . . and the 9th inning in right-center . . .

. . . but no one went deep while I was out there. The only home run of the game was an opposite field shot to right-center by Jesus Montero in the top of the 7th. Even if I’d been in the outfield at the time, I wouldn’t have caught it because it landed in the middle of a crowded section, so whatever.

Final score: Mariners 2, Pirates 1.

After the game, I met up with Todd and the kids and tried to get another double-fist bump:

Stupid me. I should’ve quit while I was ahead, and by the way, that’s not blood on Kellan’s right calf. I asked Todd about it, and he said, “It’s chocolate.”

I also met up with a gentleman named Evan who’d brought two of my books — How to Snag Major League Baseballs and The Baseball. Here we are just before I signed them:

I chatted with Evan and Robbie for a while . . .

. . . and took one final photo on the way out:

Did you notice all those people in right field? Those were season ticket holders, who were getting to play catch on the field. I know what that’s like, and I wished I could’ve joined them.

BALLHAWKING STATS:

• 3 balls at this game (pictured on the right)

• 160 balls in 21 games this season = 7.6 balls per game.

• 39 balls in 6 lifetime games at PNC Park = 6.5 balls per game.

• 893 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 13 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Angel Stadium, PETCO Park, AT&T Park, Safeco Field, Kauffman Stadium, Rangers Ballpark, Minute Maid Park, Great American Ball Park, Progressive Field, and PNC Park

• 6,619 total balls

CHARITY STATS:

(For every stadium this season at which I snag a game-used ball, BIGS Sunflower Seeds will donate $500 to Pitch In For Baseball, a non-profit charity that provides baseball equipment to underprivileged kids all over the world. In addition to that, I’m doing my own fundraiser again this season for Pitch In For Baseball.)

• 26 donors for my fundraiser

• $1.63 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $4.89 raised at this game

• $259.80 raised this season through my fundraiser

• $6,500 from BIGS Sunflower Seeds for my game-used baseballs

• $28,165.80 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

My day at Progressive Field was supposed to start with two local TV interviews outside Gate A. Forty-five minutes before the first one, while I was rushing through lunch at a nearby sports bar, I got a call from the woman who produced both shows.

“I’m sorry that we’re gonna have to cancel,” she said, “but I’m sure you’ve heard the news.”

“What news?” I asked with a sinking feeling in my gut.

Three weeks earlier, I’d been bumped from “SportsCenter” because of the Boston Marathon bombings, so this time around I assumed the worst. Was there another attack somewhere? Were lots of people killed? Hopefully not in New York City. The new World Trade Center?! My mind was racing, but as it turned out, it was good news, albeit with a heinous backstory: three women who’d been kidnapped ten years ago IN CLEVELAND had *just* been discovered and rescued. Talk about bad timing, huh? I mean, couldn’t they have waited one more day?! I’m kidding. That type of news is obviously much bigger than my quest to snag baseballs, so what could I do? I felt happy/sorry for the women, but ultimately I just shrugged it off and ate a leisurely lunch. Life goes on, right? (Fifteen years ago, when my dad was on “Oprah,” his segment got bumped because of a plane crash. We Hamples are used to this. Maybe we’re bad luck? Next time I have a big interview planned, perhaps you should stay home and lower the blinds and barricade the door, just to be safe.)

Anyway, one nice thing about Progressive Field is that it opens two and a half hours early; the not-so-nice thing about it is that everyone has to stay in right field for the first 90 minutes. Thankfully, though, the stands out there are expansive, and because it wasn’t terribly crowded, I was able to take advantage.

My 1st ball of the day . . .

. . . was a ground-rule double to right-center, and I owe a hearty “Thank you!” to my friend Rick Gold. For some reason — perhaps because I’d been fiddling with my camera — I hadn’t seen the ball coming, and if he hadn’t been charging in my direction through an empty row, I wouldn’t have known to look up. At the last second, I saw the ball bounce into the seats near me. Rick scrambled to get there, but it trickled away from him under a seat, and I grabbed it. (Sorry, Rick. Can we still be friends?)

My 2nd ball was thrown by Chris Perez, and we briefly played catch with it. At one point, I tossed him a pretty good knuckleball, to which he responded: ”Now you’re just getting fancy!”

Neal Stewart from BIGS Sunflower Seeds was at the stadium with me, but neglected to photograph my throwing session. That’s because he was on the phone, going over some last-minute details for my 6pm interview with the MLB Network.

Neal was still on the phone when I snagged another ball that Perez randomly flipped into the stands in right-center . . . and when I snagged this one with my glove trick from Indians’ bullpen:

While I was reeling in that ball, an usher walked over and mumbled through his thick gray moustache, “I don’t think you’re supposed to be doing that.”

As it turned out, he didn’t realize that the glove belonged to me; he assumed it had been sitting on the bullpen mound and that my string simply had a hook on the end. I explained that the glove was mine and that I was simply trying to snag a baseball.

“Is that okay?” I asked.

He shrugged and said, “I guess so.” Then he stood next to me and watched what I was doing.

The ball itself, in my opinion, was mud-rubbed to perfection, but the usher didn’t see it that way. “That’s not much of a ball,” he remarked when I pulled it from my glove.

When the A’s took the field, Yoenis Cespedes tossed me my 5th ball. Neal found me after that and got a few cool photos of me snagging my next ball — a Brandon Moss homer that landed in the seats. When the ball was hit, I happened to be walking through the second row with my backpack. I determined quickly that the ball was going to land deep in the seats, so I climbed back into the third row:

I don’t know why I did that. It would’ve been easier to just keep heading through the second row and then turn right at the stairs. Maybe I assumed that the people in the front row would climb back into my row? As you can see in the photo above, they hadn’t yet moved.

Here I am running up the stairs . . .

. . . and grabbing the ball from the folded-up portion of a seat:

In the photo above, that’s Rick on the right. He had snagged 10 balls the day before, and he ended up with seven at this game, so don’t feel bad for him.

My 7th ball was as cheap and flukey as it gets, but nevertheless, it counts. Basically, it was tossed to a little kid in the front row by A’s pitching coach Curt Young. The kid dropped it, and it trickled to the far edge of the platform that separates the outfield wall from the stands. The kid couldn’t reach it, so I leaned out and gloved it and handed it to him.

My 8th ball was thrown by Michael Taylor, my 9th ball was a Josh Reddick homer that I grabbed in the seats, and my 10th ball was tossed by Evan Scribner (thanks to Rick, who doesn’t go for toss-ups and identified him for me).

Now, do you remember what time I said my MLB Network interview was scheduled for? That’s right: 6pm. Do you know when batting practice typically ends before a night game? Yep, usually around 6:20pm. Do the math. NOT GOOD. But what was I supposed to do? NOT do the interview? Obviously I was gonna do it, so at around 5:55pm, I made my way to the very back of the right field seats . . .

. . . and met up with Neal, who had arranged for a security guard to take us to the interview. Here they are, heading toward the concourse in center field:

We rounded the batter’s eye and passed through these fans, who were waiting to run into the bleachers at 6pm:

Here’s what I saw as I walked through the standing room area in left field, aka “The Home Run Porch”:

Normally, when the gates are about to open, I’m on the outside looking in, so this change of perspective was rather odd. (And fun!)

I followed Neal and the guard into foul territory . . .

. . . and ended up here:

Actually, that’s not where I ended up. In the photo above, do you see the woman whispering into the man’s ear on the warning track? She worked for the MLB Network, and he was a security guard. I assumed they were talking about me — something along the lines of, “This clown is telling me he’s got an interview with you guys.” Anyway, THIS is where I ended up:

Booyakasha!!

Neal was allowed to join me on the warning track, and he took lots of photos. Here I am adjusting my headset:

Did you notice BP taking place in the background? It pained me not to be in the bleachers, but I tried not to think about it.

Here’s the woman from MLB Network (I forget her name) showing me a little screen on which I could see myself:

The following photo shows the setup from my perspective. The arrow indicates the camera that I was instructed to look at, and the circle shows me on the little screen:

Here I am pre-interview looking wistfully at the bleachers:

Finally, after ten minutes of setup and prep, my interview began. Unfortunately it wasn’t live. It was taped for the show “Intentional Talk,” which meant that anything I said could (and probably would) be edited. I’d been hoping that Kevin Millar would conduct the interview — I was prepared to joke about his home run off Mike Mussina that I caught on 7/28/08 at Yankee Stadium — but instead I was interviewed by some random guy in the studio in Secaucus, New Jersey. I was told to include his questions in my answers because the whole segment was going to feature my words combined with MLB’s video footage.

I’m not sure when this segment will air, but I’ll post an update on Twitter (@zack_hample) when I hear anything.

Most of the interview was straight-forward, so at one point toward the end, I tried to shake things up a bit by juggling:

In the photo above, did you notice that BP had ended? I’d been hoping to get back out to the bleachers and snag a few more home run balls.

So much for that.

Here’s another photo that Neal took during the interview:

I mentioned BIGS Sunflower Seeds twice. Hopefully that’ll make the cut (I predict it won’t), but at least the logos were visible on my hat and shirt. Helping to promote BIGS this season hasn’t been a burden. I’ve enjoyed helping promote them. They’re doing so much for me and for Pitch In For Baseball that I want them to get as much publicity as possible.

Here I am just after the interview ended . . .

. . . and here I am walking off the field:

Neal took a photo of the base that was sitting on the edge of the warning track . . .

. . . and that was it. I hope the interview turns out okay. The thought of the entire thing being my voice seems awkward, no?

When I made it back into the stands, I caught up with a local ballhawk named Tom. Rather than sharing a generic photo of us posing together, here’s a candid shot:

Tom has only been ballhawking for a couple of seasons, but he’s snagged about 500 balls.

Before the game, Neal/BIGS treated me to a waffle cone with an absurd amount of vanilla custard:

I spent the first few innings going for foul balls here . . .

. . . along with 3rd-out balls behind the Athletics’ dugout on the 1st base side. I really wanted to go for home runs, but first I had to try to fulfill the charity challenge — $500 for Pitch In For Baseball for every stadium this season at which I snag a game-used ball.

When Drew Stubbs took a called third strike to end the 3rd inning, I finally got my chance. Decked out in A’s gear, I drifted down the steps and waved to get the attention of catcher Derek Norris. Check out the the following photo. It shows him throwing the ball to me:

Look what happened next:

As I reached up for the ball (which was clearly intended for me), the fan in the red cap tried to push me and my glove out of the way.

I’m glad to report that I made the catch, and when I returned to my seat, I took off the A’s gear and posed with the ball:

I spent the rest of the game in the outfield.

This was my view from left field . . .

. . . and as you can see, I had lots of room to run:

Despite that glorious cross-aisle, I decided to hang out on the Home Run Porch. Look how much room I had over there:

Moments after I took that photo, a police officer approached me.

“Is that your backpack?” he asked.

“Yes it is. Is there a problem?”

“I need you to stand near it.”

“You don’t think I’m already near it?” I asked. (I wasn’t being a smart-ass — just trying to understand what exactly I needed to do in order to not be hassled.)

“Don’t argue with me,” he said calmly. “Given recent events, we’re on high alert over here.”

(The world sucks. That’s really all there is to say.)

Things got better on the Home Run Porch after that. First I ran into a friend from Ohio named Dan, who hung out with me for a couple innings, and then I got a visit from a young ballhawk named Kyle, who asked me to sign a baseball:

I also met a guy named Bob, who works in the press box at Progressive Field as an attendant. He’s been reading my blog for a while, so when he spotted me on the Home Run Porch, he came over and introduced himself.

I didn’t snag any more baseballs for the rest of the night. That’s what happens when you’re chasing home runs and the final score is 1-0.

After the game, I gave two baseballs to a pair of little kids and got a photo (with a mouthful of ranch-flavored sunflower seeds) with Rick:

Neal and I gave him a ride to his hotel, and on the way back to ours, we stopped for food. I don’t know if I should be proud or ashamed of what I ate, but either way, I need to share a photo:

That’s a cheeseburger with mozzarella sticks. Oish.

BALLHAWKING STATS:

• 11 balls at this game (eight pictured here because I gave three away)

• 157 balls in 20 games this season = 7.85 balls per game.

• 68 balls in 7 lifetime games at Progressive Field = 9.7 balls per game.

• 892 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 12 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Angel Stadium, PETCO Park, AT&T Park, Safeco Field, Kauffman Stadium, Rangers Ballpark, Minute Maid Park, Great American Ball Park, and Progressive Field

• 6,616 total balls

CHARITY STATS:

(For every stadium this season at which I snag a game-used ball, BIGS Sunflower Seeds will donate $500 to Pitch In For Baseball, a non-profit charity that provides baseball equipment to underprivileged kids all over the world. In addition to that, I’m doing my own fundraiser again this season for Pitch In For Baseball.)

• 26 donors for my fundraiser

• $1.63 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $17.93 raised at this game

• $255.91 raised this season through my fundraiser

• $6,000 from BIGS Sunflower Seeds for my game-used baseballs

• $27,661.91 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

A funny thing happened as I entered Great American Ball Park: the scanners weren’t working, so one of the employees tore the barcodes off everyone’s tickets. Here he is about to tear mine:

I loved it. It was such a non-New York solution. At Citi Field or Yankee Stadium (or hell, at most other places), fans would’ve been forced to wait while the scanners got up and running.

Anyway, the highlight of the day was that two different TV stations sent cameramen to film me during BP:

In the photo above, the guy on the left was from FOX Channel 19, and the guy on the right was from ABC Channel 9.

Thankfully, despite some seriously iffy weather, there WAS batting practice. My 1st ball was a home run that I caught on the fly in the front row. (I have no idea who hit it.) My 2nd ball was a homer that landed in the seats. Here I am reaching for it:

That photo, along with all the others of me, was taken by Neal Stewart from BIGS Sunflower Seeds. And by the way, do you see the guy wearing shorts who’s climbing down over a row of seats? That’s my buddy Rocco Sinisi, a regular at Great American who has snagged approximately 800 baseballs. More on him in a bit . . .

My 3rd ball was a homer that I caught on the fly by reaching out over the wall in the front row, and my 4th ball was a homer that landed in the seats. I was glad to be putting on a decent show for the cameramen, who were following me everywhere:

I used my glove trick to snag my 5th ball off the warning track in right-center. Then I made a nifty play for my 6th ball — a homer that landed 15 feet to my left and more than half a dozen rows back; I climbed/jumped to my left over a railing, ran through an empty row, and caught the ball as it ricocheted down unexpectedly right to me. I handed it to the nearest kid (who ended up snagging a couple more baseballs on his own).

My 7th ball was thrown by Aroldis Chapman after I asked him for it in Spanish. Several minutes later, a ball rolled onto the warning track, and I set up my glove trick again.

“That’s not gonna work!” yelled Homer Bailey from right-center field.

“Wanna bet?!” I yelled back.

He stood there shaking his head, so I shouted, “If I can get that ball, then I deserve to play catch with you! Do we have a deal?!”

As I pulled out my camera, Bailey turned his back on me. (Hmph.) Meanwhile, his teammate Sean Marshall gave me a little wave with his glove:

Then I went to work . . .

. . . and snagged the ball within 10 seconds. I shouted at Bailey, but he didn’t even look at me — but hey, at least he (and Marshall) were nice enough to have left the ball there. Many players would’ve jogged over and grabbed it, so I tip my cap to the Reds (and to stadium security) for being so cool.

My 9th ball of the day was somewhat of a milestone for me: No. 6,600 lifetime. It was a home run by a right-handed batter on the Braves. I caught it on the fly in the front row and then took the following photo of it:

My 10th ball was a towering home run — possibly hit by Freddie Freeman — that carried perfectly to my spot in the front row. I caught it on the fly, and soon after that, I got my 11th ball tossed by Julio Teheran. My 12th ball was a *DEEP* home run that must’ve landed 15 to 20 rows back; luck, evidently, was on my side because it ricocheted right down to me as several other fans were converging on it.

When the whole stadium opened at 5:40pm, I headed over to left field. (I’d been confined to the right field seats for the fist 70 minutes.) In the following photo, I’m standing near the bottom of the stairs:

That photo was taken just after I climbed/straddled a railing to catch a line-drive homer on the fly — my 13th ball of the day. Unfortunately, the cameraman from ABC had already taken off, and the guy from FOX hadn’t quite set up his camera in this new location. This was the fifth home run that I caught on the fly, and I’m not sure if the TV cameras captured any decent footage. I know that on several occasions, one of the cameramen appeared in the other guy’s shot, rendering it useless.

Here’s a random/candid photo of me that Neal took. Look closely and you’ll see a microphone clipped to my shirt:

After BP, I did a sit-down interview in right field, but before that got started, I took a photo of a little kid with a baseball:

That wasn’t just any random kid, and it wasn’t a random ball. Check it out:

As you might’ve guessed, that kid’s name is Nate. That was a ball that he’d snagged during BP, and his father Jim (standing behind him two photos up) had recognized me. Jim had something else for me to sign, but I had to ask him to wait for a few minutes because it was time for the interview. The following photo kinda shows the setup. Take a look and then I’ll explain:

The guy in the blue shirt was the cameraman. His name is Matt Coiner.
The guy in the white shirt was the reporter. His name is Brian Giesenschlag.
Nate was chillin’ on the right, and you can see me sitting several rows up. I was still miked, so I didn’t need to shout for the camera to pick up what I was saying.

The interview itself was typical, as far as these things go, and I don’t mean that as a diss. The whole segment was probably only gonna end up being two or three minutes, so Brian had to ask all the basic questions: how did you get started, what’s the best ball you ever caught, what are you doing this season with the charity, et cetera. He and Matt both did a solid job and were great to work with. Here they are:

The other cameraman from ABC was named Lanny. (Yes, Lanny. Not Lenny.) He did a fine job too, but I didn’t get to talk to him much off camera because he had to go film some other stuff. He ended up getting some shots of me going for 3rd-out balls early in the game, but then he had to leave for good at around 8pm. His piece was going to air at 11pm that night, whereas Brian (from FOX) was going to take more time to edit the footage and run the segment a few days later.

Once my TV obligations were done, I signed Jim’s copy of The Baseball:

Then I signed Rocco’s copy of Watching Baseball Smarter . . .

. . . and got a photo with both guys and their books:

I don’t know why Rocco wasn’t smiling; he’d snagged eight balls during BP.

Did you notice the photo-bomber in the previous shot? That was a young fan named Tyler, who asked me sign a baseball for him:

I don’t have any photos from the first two hours of the game. That’s because I spent the time running back and forth between the left field seats and the Braves’ dugout; Neal was watching my backpack for me, so I didn’t have my camera. Basically, I tried to catch a home run in the top half of every inning, and when when the Braves took the field, I headed into foul territory to try to snag a 3rd-out ball.

Six innings. That’s how long it took. That’s when Devin Mesoraco went down on strikes, and Brian McCann tossed me the ball on his way in. Given the fact that this was gonna be my only game in Cincinnati this season and a $500 donation for Pitch In For Baseball was riding on it, it was a *huge* relief.

I ran back to left field and posed for a photo with the ball:

I emailed that photo to Lanny, who ended up using it in the segment.

Neal brought his laptop to the game — something that’s not allowed at Yankee Stadium — and got some work done:

In the 8th inning, I gave one of my BP balls to a little kid in my section. Then, in the bottom of the 9th, I headed back to the 3rd base side. Look how much room there was to move around:

Earlier in the game, when I was standing there for one of Joey Votto’s at-bats, an elderly usher approached me and asked if I was waiting for someone.

“Yes,” I said, “I’m waiting for Mister Votto to hit me a foul ball.”

The usher chuckled and told me that I could stand there for a minute, but then I had to find my seat.

In Votto’s next at-bat, when I was sitting 380 feet from home plate in left-center field, he hit a foul ball to that EXACT spot. I’m really trying hard to snag some non-3rd-out gamers, but other than that April 18th game at Yankee Stadium, luck has not been on my side.

Anyway, Votto was up again when I made it down to the dugout with two outs in the bottom of the 9th:

As good as he is, it seemed like he had no chance against Craig Kimbrel. He managed to hit a foul ball on the first pitch, but ultimately went down swinging. Final score: Braves 7, Reds 4.

I’ve been to several games at which Kimbrel has gotten a save. He always seems to toss the game-ending ball into the crowd, but when I asked him for it here in Cincinnati, he gave me a Dikembe Mutombo finger wag. You see, Kimbrel recognizes me (as does his teammate Kris Medlen) and refuses to toss me baseballs. I can’t blame him, although I wonder if he knows about my charitable efforts — and if that would change his mind. If anyone knows him or gets a chance to talk to him or feels like tweeting him (@kimbrel46), do me a favor and let him know that I’m not the worst guy in the world. I mean, it’s not like he’s rude or anything. I think it’s cool that such a talented and popular player knows who I am, but still, I wanna set the record straight.

On my out, I gave away another ball to a little kid and caught up with Rocco to say goodbye. I wish I could spend a solid week at all of these stadiums instead of one game. Everything feels so rushed.

Given the fact that we had to be in Cleveland the following day, Neal and I hit the road and drove two hours to Columbus, Ohio. We stopped along the way at Waffle House . . .

. . . which is truly one of my favorite places to eat.

We checked into our hotel at around 1:30am, and I went to sleep three hours later. What can I say? As a general rule, I have too much energy and too little motivation to get into bed.

BALLHAWKING STATS:

• 14 balls at this game (eleven pictured here because I gave three away)

• 146 balls in 19 games this season = 7.68 balls per game.

• 87 balls in 6 lifetime games at Great American Ball Park = 14.5 balls per game.

• 891 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 11 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Angel Stadium, PETCO Park, AT&T Park, Safeco Field, Kauffman Stadium, Rangers Ballpark, Minute Maid Park, and Great American Ball Park

• 6,605 total balls

CHARITY STATS:

(For every stadium this season at which I snag a game-used ball, BIGS Sunflower Seeds will donate $500 to Pitch In For Baseball, a non-profit charity that provides baseball equipment to underprivileged kids all over the world. In addition to that, I’m doing my own fundraiser again this season for Pitch In For Baseball.)

• 26 donors for my fundraiser

• $1.63 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $22.82 raised at this game

• $237.98 raised this season through my fundraiser

• $5,500 from BIGS Sunflower Seeds for my game-used baseballs

• $27,143.98 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009