Angel Stadium is one of my least favorite ballparks, but I was still excited to be here:

This was the first game of my first road trip with Neal Stewart from BIGS Sunflower Seeds. Neal, as you may recall from my entry about being sponsored, is the Director of Marketing for BIGS and will be spending quite a bit of time with me this season. (I’m happy to report that he’s a whole lot of fun to be around.)

Look who showed up a little while later:

In the photo above, the guy on the left (who, it should be noted, brought his own bag of BIGS seeds), is a legendary ballhawk named T.C. In fact, he’s so legendary that I featured him on pages 281-282 of The Baseball as one of the Top Ten ballhawks of all time.

Soon after that, I photographed T.C. getting Joaquin Benoit’s autograph:

Neal, meanwhile, had brought two flavors of BIGS seeds to give away as free samples — buffalo wing and dill pickle. Here he is handing them out to everyone:

Neal will usually be the only BIGS representative with me at games, but here in Los Angeles of Anaheim, we were joined by a woman named Bianca Cadloni, who does social media for the company. Here she is (in the white t-shirt and green shorts) handing out free samples of seeds as well:

The stadium was supposed to open at 11am, but get this: at around 10:40, a security guard announced that the right field gate would open at 10:45, so everyone hurried over there:

The extra 15 minutes made a difference. When I first ran inside, Max Scherzer was playing catch along the right field foul line:

He finished five minutes later and threw me the ball . . .

. . . and for the record, he threw it hard (compared to the gentle lobs that fans typically receive) — probably about 50 miles per hour.

In the photo of Scherzer playing catch, did you notice the white chain barricade on the warning track? It was Little League Day, which meant three things:

1) no batting practice
2) a zillion kids
3) lots of stress

Day games tend to suck in general; day games on weekends are the absolute worst. Everything that I normally try to avoid at stadiums was happening here. It was my ballhawking nightmare, so I was relieved to have kept my streak alive.

I noticed that one of the Tigers was throwing a bullpen session, so I ran over. It was Justin Verlander, and he was just finishing up. He signed exactly one autograph for another fan . . .

. . . and headed toward the dugout.

Then all the Little Leaguers came out and started walking around the field:

An hour later, I got my 2nd ball of the day from Scott Pickens. (Getting a pre-game toss-up from a bullpen catcher isn’t terribly exciting, but I was proud of myself for this one. I was in right field when I saw him playing catch on the other side of the stadium, so I raced over and got there just in time.) Here I am with it:

Just before the national anthem, I went here . . .

. . . and got Austin Jackson to throw me my 3rd ball. Because it was so crowded, I had to stand on a seat and wave my arms to get his attention. His throw fell several feet short, but the guy pictured above with the straw hat wasn’t paying attention. (None of the other fans seemed to notice the ball either.) If he had been, he could’ve easily reached up and caught it.

This was my view for the first pitch of the game:

Bianca was still handing out seeds to random people, and for a little while, Neal had my camera. Here’s a photo that he took of a nearby family with their free samples:

As part of the BIGS Baseball Adventure, my challenge is to snag a game-used ball at all 30 major league stadiums this year; for every venue where I succeed, BIGS will donate $500 to Pitch In For Baseball. Therefore, I hung out near the Tigers’ dugout in the hope of snagging a 3rd-out ball.

The 1st inning ended with an Albert Pujols strikeout; Tigers catcher Brayan Pena kept the ball. The 2nd inning ended with a Hank Conger groundout; Tigers first baseman Prince Fielder tossed it to a grown man 20 feet to my left. The third inning ended with a Howie Kendrick groundout — Doug Fister, an extreme ground-ball pitcher, was on the hill — and this time Prince Fielder hooked me up. Here he is about to toss it to me while walking toward the dugout . . .

. . . and just like that, I’d raised another sizable chunk of change for my favorite charity.

I ended up giving away my Austin Jackson ball to the nearest kid. (I would’ve preferred to part with the Pickens ball, but it had a black marker streak on the sweet spot, so I decided it was too ugly to give away. The Tigers do that to some of their baseballs. It’s annoying.) Then I changed out of my Tigers gear and into my official BIGS attire for a photo:

Do I mind wearing that clothing with the BIGS logos? Hell no! I actually think it’s pretty cool. Did you notice my shirt in the photo with T.C.? Take another look. Underneath the BIGS logo, it says:

1 SEASON . . . 30 STADIUMS
SNAGGING BASEBALLS FOR CHARITY IN 2013

What’s not to like about that? And wait’ll you see the back of the shirt. It’s mostly visible in the photo of Bianca handing out seeds, but I’ll post a better shot in just a bit. Even if I hated the shirts, I would still wear them because BIGS is paying for *all* my expenses as I travel to all 30 major league stadiums this year. My taxi to the airport two days ago in New York City? The $25 fee to check my bag? All the tickets to games and all my food? Yes, yes, and yes. This is a dream come true, so I want to help them as much as possible.

Speaking of food, look what I ate in the later innings:

That’s orange chicken (on the upper right) and honey shrimp with walnuts (on the left). I have a weakness for crappy Chinese food. And hey, did you notice where I was sitting? I was in the “front row” in left-center — 50 feet behind the outfield wall with an obstructed view of the field. (Why, exactly, does anyone claim to like Angel Stadium? I like the weather and the easy-to-circumvent ushers, but that’s about it.)

Neil and Bianca were sitting on my right:

The most annoying kids of all time were climbing all over the place on my left:

I think kids are great and would love to have my own someday (if I ever happen to meet a woman who, shall we say, embraces my oddities), but these little guys were hard work. Really, I blame their parents, who were sitting 15 rows back and letting them run wild.

Little League Day. Awful.

Check out the back of my shirt:

Neal told me that he had 72 of these shirts made! I’m not sure what he’s planning to do with them all, but don’t be surprised if you see me wearing them for years to come.

Speaking of shirts:

Yeah, so anyway . . .

Bianca was scheduled to fly out of San Diego at 8pm, which wouldn’t have been a problem under normal circumstances, but when the game dragged into the 12th inning, she and Neal started scrambling for other options. Here they are changing her flight to a closer airport:

Bianca had already checked out of her hotel room, and she had all of her stuff in the car, so Neal left the game with her and took her to the airport. All of our phones were about to die — not only did the game last more than four hours, but we were out in the sun for most of it, so we had to crank up the brightness, which drained the batteries — so Neal and I made a plan: I was going to stay at the game until it ended and then meet him at the big A in the parking lot.

Soon after they left, Mark Trumbo led off the bottom of the 13th inning with a 425-foot blast to straight-away left field. Game over. Final score, Angels 4, Tigers 3.

Here’s where the walk-off home run ball ended up:

It had short-hopped the back wall of the Tigers’ bullpen (less than 40 feet to the right of where I’d been sitting) and then rolled back toward the field. Jeff Kunkel, the Tigers’ other bullpen catcher, was the last member of the team in the bullpen. I asked him for the ball, but he ignored me and walked off. (It really WAS a walk-off homer.) Everyone was screaming and begging the nearest usher to go get it, but he said he wasn’t allowed.

Take another look at the photo above. See the kid hanging on the fence and leaning over the railing? Well, it occurred to me that if I waited long enough (for some fans and ushers and guards to take off), I might be able to glove-trick the ball from that corner spot — you know, fling my glove way out at it and get the glove to land beyond it and then tug my string in order to knock the ball closer. Just as I was starting to set up my glove and head over there, a teenaged kid in Yankees gear jumped out of the stands and ran into the bullpen and grabbed the ball and tried to make a quick exit . . . but didn’t get very far.

Here he is standing on a nearby staircase, surrounded by stadium security:

I was glad he got busted because he’d ruined my chance to snag a game home run ball, and also, ball or no ball, YOU DON’T JUMP INTO A MAJOR LEAGUE BULLPEN. Seriously, what a jackass.

I was also glad that one of the ushers confiscated the ball, and if you look closely at the photo above, you can see it. Check it out:

After the kid was hauled off, I politely asked the usher for the ball.

“Sorry, can’t do it,” he said, “It’s going to a challenger.”

“A what?”

“A child in a wheelchair,” he explained.

I couldn’t argue with that. Of course, I never did see the usher give the ball away (and believe me, I kept my eyes on him for a while), but who knows what happened? Chances are he kept it, but maybe it did end up in the hands of a kid who will always treasure it. I’d like to think so, anyway.

I headed toward the big A and photographed the three balls that I’d kept:

With my last remaining shred of iPhone power, I read the previous day’s box scores until Neal showed up.

BALLHAWKING STATS:

• 4 balls at this game (three pictured above because I gave one to a kid)

• 61 balls in 9 games this season = 6.8 balls per game.

• 881 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 406 consecutive games with at least two balls

• 4 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, and Angel Stadium.

• 6,520 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.)

• 23 donors for my fundraiser

• $1.26 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $5.04 raised at this game

• $76.86 raised this season through my fundraiser

• $2,000 from BIGS Sunflower Seeds for my game-used baseballs

• $23,482.86 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

If I hadn’t been planning to meet a friend at this game, I probably would’ve skipped it. The weather was iffy, and I was tired, and I had a lot of other stuff to do, and blah blah. I just wasn’t feeling it, and when I heard that the tarp was coming out, I was pissed. Check out my reaction on Twitter. ”I wish I were home,” I said.

When I headed inside Yankee Stadium at 5pm and actually saw the tarp, this was how I felt:

The day before, I’d snagged nine baseballs during batting practice (plus a 10th right before the game). Now that it was drizzling and the teams weren’t hitting, I feared it would be a struggle just to keep my streak alive — 879 consecutive games with at least one ball.

Sure enough, there was *no* action for nearly an hour. I didn’t see a single player on the field until Heath Bell, my friend and favorite player, came out at 5:55pm. Even though there were only a few hundred fans in the entire stadium, I had to beg the security guards to let me down into the seats to talk to him. Yankee Stadium has more rules than the other 29 stadiums combined.

By the time I made it down to the front row, Heath was already talking to some fans. Take a look at the following photo, and then I’ll explain:

See the phone on the edge of the wall? Heath was watching video footage of that kid’s Little League at-bats and giving him pointers. As it turned out, that was no ordinary kid. His name is Tyler, and he reads this blog, and he’s friends with Heath too. (Heath should run for public office; all he’d have to do is get his friends to vote for him, and he’d blow away the competition.) It took a few minutes for Tyler to realize that I was standing there, but once he did, we all ended up chatting. It was pretty cool to stumble into that random triangle of connectedness, so in a way, my day was already a success, and get this: there was footage of our interaction on the Diamondbacks’ pre-game show:

Soon after that, several kids appeared out of nowhere and asked Heath to sign autographs. One of them had a snazzy sliver marker, so I figured I might as well get Heath to sign my cap with it. I felt kinda funny asking because I don’t really collect autographs anymore, and if I wanted, I could’ve gotten him to sign a thousand things for me over the years, but anyway, here’s how it turned out:

Can we all agree that Heath Bell is THE nicest guy in the major leagues? Seriously.

I got a photo with Tyler . . .

. . . and then went to meet my friend Jeremy, who had just arrived. Our seats were in straight-away left field, which was convenient because Diamondbacks coach Glenn Sherlock started playing catch nearby:

Game time was only 25 minutes away, so you can imagine how relieved I was when Sherlock finished throwing (with Miguel Montero) and hooked me up with this:

In the photo above, that’s Jeremy in the light blue shirt. He’s the guy who was with me on 4/21/11 at Citi Field when I caught Mike Nickeas’s 1st career home run, so if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, he might look familiar.

Jeremy went to get a beer. I wandered back into foul territory and got two more baseballs thrown to me. The first came from Cliff Pennington, and the second came from Cody Ross. I ended up giving both of those balls away to a pair of little kids. More on that later . . .

Just before the national anthem, I got a call from another friend who had an extra ticket out in Section 104 and said I should drop by. Normally, I’d never leave a good home-run area — not even to visit my own mother — but I considered it because he was in straight-away right field (and because I hadn’t seen him in a while). Of course, I didn’t want to abandon Jeremy, so I said I’d think about it and try to find him before the night was through.

I must’ve been in the middle of tweeting or emailing when the starting lineups were announced because I remember asking Jeremy to look up one of the players on his iPhone: Didi Gregorius, batting 8th and playing shortstop for the D’backs. I vaguely knew that name . . . or did I? Was he a rookie? Had I seen his name last year in a few box scores? Most importantly, had he ever hit a home run in the major leagues? And did he bat right-handed? The answers to the last two questions were NO and NO. Zero home runs. Left-handed batter. Hmm.

I decided then that I’d wait to visit my friend in Section 104 until Gregorius was coming up to bat. That way, in case he happened to go yard, I’d have a chance to catch it. I didn’t expect him to go oppo at Yankee Stadium; left-handed batters rarely do that.

Meanwhile, this was my view from left field:

The D’backs sent four batters to the plate in the top of the 1st inning, which meant that Gregorius was due to bat fourth in the top of the 2nd. As much as I wanted Arizona to win, I was hoping that they’d go down in order so that Gregorius would lead off the top of the 3rd. If that happened, it would give me some extra time to head to right field and find my friend. I told all of this to Jeremy and asked if he was okay with being on his own for half an inning. There were two more lefties due to bat after Gregorius, so I told him I wanted to stay out there for all three. Jeremy was cool with it, but first we had to see how the 2nd inning would play out.

Cody Ross led off with a routine fly ball to Ichiro Suzuki. One out.
Eric Chavez followed by striking out. Two outs.
With Gregorius on deck, A.J. Pollock went down swinging. Inning over.

While the Yankees batted in the bottom of the 2nd, I made a plan with Jeremy: I was going to leave my backpack with him — cell phone and everything — and be gone for five minutes; if, by some miracle, Gregorius went deep and I happened to catch it, Jeremy’s job was to grab my backpack and come find me ASAP.

“I’m gonna be on the exact opposite side of the stadium,” I told him. “See the tunnel between those two Modell’s ads, one section away from the Yankees’ bullpen? That’s the staircase where I’ll be. Look for me.”

The moment that Eduardo Nunez struck out to end the 2nd inning, I bolted up the steps and jogged through the concourse past Monument Park and over to the right field side. I arrived as Gregorius was walking to the plate, so I quickly explained my situation to the security guard, or at least part of it. I didn’t mention anything about home runs. I just told him that I had a friend in his section with an extra ticket. He didn’t want me walking down into the seats, though. He didn’t want me to block anyone’s view, and of course he needed to see that there WAS, in fact, an extra ticket for me. Time was running out for me to get my friend’s attention. I had wanted to surprise him by shouting his name from the back of the section, but he was in the middle of the third row, and it would’ve been a big production, and Phil Hughes was about to throw the first pitch to Gregorius, and then it happened:

Gregorius connected on a knee-high fastball and rocketed a deep line drive in my direction. Part of my brain was like, “You gotta be kidding me,” but the other part didn’t care about the improbability of the situation. My instincts took over. That’s all I can say. I knew right away that it was going to be a home run, but (a) it was going to fall well short of the tunnel where I was standing, and (b) it was heading several seats to the right of the staircase.

I’ve drawn a red circle around myself in the following screen shot:

As you can see, I was at the very back of the section — but not for long. I hurried down the steps, and as the ball was approaching, I knew I had no chance to catch it on the fly. It was too far away, and when I saw a tall guy in the second row reach up for it with his glove, I figured I had no shot. Thankfully the ball sailed a foot over his glove (he didn’t even jump) and landed in a small cluster of gloveless fans. The seats around them were crowded, but not packed, so I had a bit of room to maneuver. I scooted into a row that had some open space at the end, and incredibly, I saw the ball rattling around in the row directly behind me. The following screen shot shows what happened next:

Do you see the fans marked with the small red numbers? Here’s what was going on:

1) This guy (the number is on his head) was in the row where the ball landed. He was bending down and reaching for it.

2) That’s me. Remember, I was in the row below the ball, so I was facing away from the field and lunging back over the seats for it.

3) This woman was sitting in the row where the ball landed. She barely went for it — probably didn’t notice that it was at her feet until the very last second, by which point I had grabbed it.

Now, just to set the record straight, it was a totally clean snag on my part. I didn’t bump into anyone. I didn’t grab the ball out of anyone’s hands. I got it fair-n-square. I’ve gotten a few nasty tweets from people who saw the game on TV and accused me of diving on top of that woman, but if you look closely at the screen shot above, you can see that I didn’t do that. See how she’s sitting in the second seat in from the stairs? See the end seat next to her? Well, it’s empty. You can see that I was not in that row. I was in the row below her, and when I lunged for the ball, I went to the side of her.

The first thing I did after grabbing the ball and holding it up was to look for Jeremy across the stadium. “Please!” I thought. “Get up out of your seat and GO.” And he did. He stood up and grabbed my backpack and flew up the stairs and through the tunnel. Yes!! Obviously, I was VERY excited, but as for the sea of Yankee fans surrounding me? Eh, not so much, and they all got pissed as I continued holding the ball up. If you watch the replay (which I’ll link to later), it might appear as if I were taunting someone. Indeed, I was making a “c’mere” gesture and clearly mouthing off about something, but it’s not what you think. I was shouting (in the general direction of the Diamondbacks’ dugout), “That’s his first home run! Come and get it!” Everyone around me was yelling at me to “throw it back,” so I defiantly repeated the part about it being his first. Then, while I was still holding up the ball, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that someone was lunging at me from the side:

Somehow I managed to move my hand away just in time, and he whiffed. Then, perhaps inspired by the new Geico commercial featuring Dikembe Mutombo, I gave the guy a condescending finger-wag:

Here’s some more TV footage that everyone (including the “SportsCenter” hosts) misinterpreted:

Again, I’ll link to all the replays and highlights later, but for now . . . does this look familiar? In the screen shot above, the guy in the gray jacket was telling me to calm down, but he wasn’t trying to start a fight. I’ve seen him at lots of games, and he’s cool as hell. We have a great relationship, and he’s always looking out for me. He was just trying to keep the peace, which he did by escorting me back up to the tunnel. The security guards didn’t know what was going on. They thought this guy was trying to mess with me, so when they saw us heading up the steps together, they asked me if I was okay. The whole thing was crazy.

I decided to wait in the tunnel for security. I had no doubt that they were gonna come looking for the ball, and since I was planning to give it back to Gregorius, I figured I’d take a picture of it:

By the way, that ball represents an additional $500 for Pitch In For Baseball; for every stadium this season at which I snag one during a game, BIGS Sunflower Seeds is going to donate that amount of money to the charity.

It took security about a minute to arrive, and Jeremy showed up 30 seconds later. Here’s a photo  he took that shows me talking to them:

One of the TV cameras was getting a shot of me at that moment:

Moments later, my friend Tony Bracco (who happened to be sitting nearby) took this photo:

My biggest concern was that I was going to get in trouble for being in a section where I didn’t belong, so when the security supervisor asked where my seat was, I had a mini-heart attack.

“You ARE in this section, right?” he asked.

“Well, see, that’s the thing,” I began and then told him the story about visiting a friend and how I was only here for ONE pitch. I apologized profusely and said I was nervous about getting in trouble because I go to lots of games and don’t want to cause problems and–

“It’s okay,” he said, “you’re not in trouble.” He explained that he wanted to know where my actual seat was so he’d know where to find me later.

I showed him my ticket — that’s what was happening in the photo above — and he took down my info. He and the other security personnel were very nice to me, perhaps because they realized that I wasn’t going to make their job difficult. One of the first things I told them was that I wanted to give the ball back to Didi Gregorius and that I didn’t need him to give me anything in return. I explained that I simply wanted to meet him after the game and hand the ball to him myself. (This was the third time that I’d snagged a player’s 1st major league home run. In addition to the Nickeas ball, I caught Mike Trout’s 1st career homer on 7/24/11 at Camden Yards, and I’d always asked for the same thing: to meet the player so that *I* could be the one to hand it over.)

To complicate things, the Diamondbacks’ roving TV reporter appeared in the tunnel and asked if she could interview me. Why was it complicated? Because the security people wouldn’t let her! Naturally, she wanted to do the interview in the seats, but the issue had nothing to do with my seat location. The issue was that the Yankees don’t allow the media to enter the seats during games. Unreal.

As you might imagine, the TV reporter, whose name is Jody Jackson, was bewildered by the resistance she was facing.

“Why can’t I go out there and interview him?” she asked the supervisor. “I’m just trying to do my job.”

“And I’m just trying to do mine,” he said. They weren’t yelling at each other, but they were both getting a bit annoyed. He couldn’t let her down into the seats without clearance from *his* supervisor, and Jody couldn’t understand why. (“Two words,” I told her. “Yankee Stadium. That’s why.”) She asked if she could interview me right there in the tunnel, but the answer was no. In fact, we were told to move to the concourse because we were in the way. Here we are, trying to figure out what the hell to do next:

We had to rush because (a) she needed to move on to her next assignment, and (b) security was eager to whisk me off and make a plan. At the last second, she told me her phone number, and I frantically scribbled it down, and as I was being led away by a different security guy, she told me to text her and let her know where I was gonna be.

Jeremy and I followed the security guy through the center field concourse and eventually toward a locked door with a sign that said something like, “employee lounge.” Here’s what it looked like on the inside:

He led us through the lounge and into a back office, where I met with a man who had appeared briefly in the tunnel when I first snagged the ball. I don’t know if he’s the head of stadium security or one of the top guys, but he’s gotta be up there somewhere. I’ve seen him around a lot, and I’ve always been scared of him because it’s clear from his demeanor that he means business. Our meeting began with him telling me that I couldn’t take photos.

Jeremy and I were probably in there for 10 minutes. The reason why it took so long is that he made several calls to the Diamondbacks’ clubhouse. Basically, he told them what I wanted, and they told him what THEY wanted. He said they wanted to get the ball from me right away and that I could go meet Gregorius after the game and take a photo with him. As politely as was humanly possible, I insisted on holding onto the ball until the end of the game and giving it to Gregorius then. Our discussion dragged on because he was trying to get me to change my mind, and I was explaining why it was important for me to hold onto it.

“Didi Gregorius is going to own this ball for the rest of his life,” I said. “I just want to enjoy having it for the next four or five innings.”

In case there was any suspicion of my pulling a switcheroo, I showed him a distinctive mark on the ball. It had been rubbed with quite a bit of mud, yet there was a light-ish streak above the Rawlings logo.

Eventually, I was told that I could return to my seat in left field with the ball.

“We’ll keep an eye on you,” he said. “You should be easy to spot with that red hat, and we’ll come and get you after the game and escort you down to the visitors clubhouse.”

“Thank you very much,” I said, “and just to make sure, I’d like my friend Jeremy to be able to join me.”

“That won’t be a problem,” said the security guy. And that was it.

As Jeremy and I headed back to left field, we had the whole, “Is this really happening?!” conversation. What are the odds? Jeremy’s been to three games with me, and I’ve snagged a player’s 1st career home run at two of them.

In the bottom of the 5th inning, Jody tried to find me in left field, but was once again stopped by security. Check out the following photo. It shows her trapped in the corner tunnel past the State Farm ad:

As the Diamondbacks came to bat in the top of the 6th, I headed over to say hey. Here she is with the guard (whose name is Nigel):

Being out of my seat made me antsy. I had a good spot in straight-away left field, and there was a half-empty row on my right, but whatever. I was only gonna talk to her for a minute or two.  It was a nice thing to do. She was there to interview me, and I felt bad that she was still getting hassled.

WELL . . .

Within a minute of walking over there, Martin Prado hit a home run that landed in that gosh-darned empty row, ten feet to the right of where I should’ve been sitting! Can you believe it?! I watched helplessly from afar as some gloveless Yankee fan picked up the ball and chucked it back onto the field. I was stunned and heartbroken. If I’d been in my seat, it would’ve been THE easiest home run catch of all time, and I knew that I’d missed a tremendous opportunity. Instead of this whole thing being a nice local story for the Arizona media, it would’ve blown up and gone viral/national. I’m telling you, I practically felt sick to my stomach. The joy I’d experienced with the Gregorius homer was pretty much wiped out. That might sound silly, but I can’t help it. That’s just how my mind works. I’m an all-or-nothing kinda guy, and I couldn’t trick myself into being happy about the one that I’d caught.

I remember thinking, “What are the odds that there’ll be another home run hit to the same spot tonight?” Obviously, the odds were crappy (and then some), but I believed it was possible. Last season, when I was sitting in right field, I missed a Robinson Cano homer by six inches when another fan lunged in front of me at the last second and caught the ball in front of my glove. I was so upset at the time that I thought about going home, but I stayed and ended up catching a game-tying solo homer by Derek Jeter IN THE SAME SPOT in the bottom of the 9th inning. I wasn’t going to leave this game because I was all set to meet Gregorius after the final out, so I just sat there in left field with Jeremy and hoped for another chance.

Jody eventually made it down to my section and interviewed me:

The highlight was when she asked about my Diamondbacks gear, and I admitted to having a “man-crush” on Heath Bell. (Two days later on my way to the airport, Heath texted me and said, “Man crush????” I texted back and told him I hoped he wasn’t getting too much [crap] about it from his teammates, and he said it’s all good.) The whole interview lasted about 90 seconds, and by the way, I don’t blame Jody at all for the Prado homer that I missed. I blame myself for getting out of my seat, and I blame the Yankees for having so many rules at their stadium. If they had let her interview me when I first got the Gregorius ball, I would’ve been sitting in my seat for Prado.

Remember those two pre-game balls that I said I’d given away? Well, here I am with the recipients:

In the photo above, that’s Nicolena (age 9) on the left and her brother Deklen (age 6) on the right. Cool names. They’d been sitting in front of me all game with their parents, and when they overheard me and Jeremy talking about the Gregorius ball, Deklen asked to see it. I felt bad about saying no, but I had to because he was eating ice cream and his hands were sticky. (You’re welcome, Didi.) His parents understood, and it’s not like Deklen was upset or anything, but still, I wanted to do something nice for them. I usually give a few baseballs away at each game, and since I hadn’t given any away yet, it was the perfect opportunity.

When Gregorius came to bat in the 9th inning, I took the following photo:

The Diamondbacks were winning, 2-1, and J.J. Putz was getting ready to come in and close it out, so Jeremy and I took a bunch of final photos with the ball. Here he is with it:

Here I am with it . . .

. . . and here I am some more:

I admit it: I’m a dweeb. I can’t help it. This is what I do. I love baseball, and I catch baseballs, and I take photos, and I get excited, and I act weird.

Just before the bottom of the 9th inning got underway, Tony took a photo of me and Jeremy from right field:

I was getting more and more excited about meeting Gregorius, but as fate would have it, it was gonna have to wait a bit longer. With one out in the bottom of the 9th, Putz hung a 1-2 slider, and Francisco Cervelli crushed it in my direction:

Let me clarify: it was hit RIGHT in my direction. I jumped out of my seat, paused for a split second to gauge the distance, and then scooted down to the front row. The ball was coming closer and closer, and I knew it was coming right to me as if I were a magnet. The whole thing was too good to be true, but it WAS true, and as I reached up and opened my glove . . .

. . . the man on my left (in the blue hoodie) bumped my arm. I felt the ball hit my glove, and for an instant, I didn’t know whether I’d caught it or dropped it. I opened my glove, and THERE IT WAS!!! Somehow, against all odds, I’d snagged my second home run of the game after all. (For the record, I got bashed that night on Twitter for reaching over the wall and “interfering” with the ball, but as the screen shot above clearly shows, my glove was well above the wall. I may have reached a few inches forward, but this was not a towering fly ball. It was more of a line drive, so it wasn’t falling at a sharp angle. Also, consider this: if I’d interfered, Diamondbacks manager Kirk Gibson would’ve come out to argue, and the umps would’ve gone into the video room to review it on instant reply, and then they would’ve reversed their call, and the whole stadium would’ve wanted to kick my Bartmanesque ass, and then I would’ve been ejected. Of course, none of these things happened, so y’all can relax. Both of my home run snags at this game caused a bit of controversy, but I’m telling you I did nothing wrong.)

I couldn’t believe my luck at the time, and I’m still having a tough time grasping it now as I’m typing this, but anyway, the first thing I did was hold up the Cervelli ball and try to grab the Gregorius ball from my zipped jacket pocket:

Then I felt someone yank my glove . . .

. . . and try to grab the ball:

I was SO ANGRY about it (for a number of reasons), but all I could do was try to prevent him from stealing it. I grabbed his hand and yanked his arm down below the edge of the wall:

I was losing my grip on the Cervelli ball, and I didn’t want it to fall onto the warning track. Thankfully, when it did fall out, it landed at my feet, and I was able to re-snag it before anyone else around me could snatch it. Unbelievable. Two home run balls; two attempted robberies.

My rage quickly turned to jubilation as I faced the nearby camera:

Jeremy took a photo of me at that moment . . .

. . . as well as this short video, and when things calmed down a bit, I posed with both baseballs:

Did you notice the guy in the background in the previous photo? Gotta love New York.

Most of the fans in my section were actually very nice, and lots of them asked to take photos with me. Here I am with one of them . . .

. . . and here I am with another:

This went on for several minutes, during which time my phone was ringing, and people were texting and emailing and tweeting at me. There was total chaos in my world, and I loved every second of it.

The game went into extra innings, which was good because it meant I’d get to enjoy my special night a bit longer.

Here’s a closeup shot of the two home run balls:

In the photo above, the Gregorius ball is on the left — easy to tell the difference because it was darker.

My buddy Mark McConville got a toss-up from the bullpen in the 10th inning. Here he is with it:

When Cervelli came up to bat again in the 11th inning, I took a photo of the jumbotron:

It’s always fun to see “HR” up there after I’ve caught the ball.

The TV cameras kept checking in on me . . .

. . . but unfortunately, there was no more action — too bad because my section was practically empty:

Heath Bell pitched the 11th inning, and although he gave up a couple of hits, he escaped the jam and sent the game into the 12th. Then Arizona put up a four-spot, making him the winning pitcher. Final score: Diamondbacks 6, Yankees 2.

That’s when a security guard came to get us. First he took us here:

Then he led us toward the suite entrance . . .

. . . which looked like this inside:

I’d been there once before on May 23, 2011. That’s when I was treated to a game in the Legends Seats by a generous friend (who paid $550 per ticket).

Then we took an elevator down to the Service Level, and the guard told us to wait here:

Jeremy and I were alone there for a minute, and we took a bunch of pics. Here’s one that shows the Service Level concourse through the window:

When the guard came back to get us, he said we were no longer allowed to take photos or videos unless we asked and got permission. (I forgot to mention that two other guards had insisted that I delete photos of them that I’d taken earlier in the night. What IS it with this place?) Naturally, I asked if I could take a couple photos of the concourse. The answer, I’m happy to say, was yes. Upon passing through the glass doors, this was the view to the right:

This was the view to the left:

That’s the direction that we headed. (See the “visitors clubhouse” sign in the photo above?)

The guard asked us to put away our phones and cameras, and he reminded us that we had to ask for permission to take photos. He said we could ask Didi Gregorius to get a photo with him, and if he was okay with it, then it was fine. Everything was so strict and methodical — almost surgical. It wasn’t like that at all when I caught the Nickeas ball at Citi Field or the Trout ball at Camden Yards.

As soon as we reached the area outside the clubhouse, a different security guard got on his walkie-talkie, and within a matter of moments, Didi Gregorius walked out with a Diamondbacks staff member. We said a quick hello, and I congratulated him for hitting the home run. Then I asked if we could get a photo of us both holding the ball with the “clubhouse” sign in the background, and he said sure. Here we are:

I was hoping that Didi would give me a bat in exchange for the ball, and you know what? I certainly could’ve gotten one if I’d initially told security that that’s what I wanted. Hell, I probably could’ve gotten two or three if I’d insisted, but that’s not my style. I really just wanted to meet him, and I wanted him to have the ball, and if he gave me anything in exchange, cool.

As it turned out, he gave me a ball and signed it for me:

That’s probably the last thing I would’ve wanted, but whatever, it’s all good. (By the way, Mike Nickeas gave me this bat in exchange for his home run ball, and Mike Trout gave me this signed ball. I might need to request something totally different next time. Hmm. Oh, and if you look closely at the photo above, you’ll notice that Didi is holding his home run ball between his left arm and his ribcage. See it tucked in there, barely peeking out? You’ll see the ball in his hand in the next photo.)

Didi and I chatted for a minute or two. I told him about my baseball collection, and then he asked me what exactly happened with the fan who tried the snatch the ball out of my hand. Evidently, he had already seen the highlights, so I told him the whole story, including the part about the finger wag, which made him crack up:

There were several professional photographers taking pics of us, including someone with the team and another from the Associated Press:

I forgot to mention that I’d gotten a call from a reporter with the Associated Press during the game. It happened while Jody was talking to me in the concourse, which was happening while stadium security was rushing me along. You have NO idea how crazy things were for a few innings, but anyway, this reporter was like, “Hello, this is Ron Blum from the AP. Is your age 34 or 35?” At the time, I didn’t even know that the AP was doing a story on me, and I had no idea how this guy got my cell phone number.

It was clear that Didi needed/wanted to get back into the clubhouse, so we wrapped up our conversation:

Just as security was about to lead me back through the service concourse, the AP reporter showed up and started asking me a zillion questions. When he’d first called me during the game, I was only going to get a brief mention in the game story, but now that I’d caught a second home run, he was doing an entire feature piece on me. Security wouldn’t let me stand there and talk to him. They told him we had to go and that he could follow us and talk near the elevators, so he walked with me and asked questions and scribbled notes. When we reached the fancy room with the elevators, he came inside and continued to interview me. Here I am looking up my home run stats for him:

So crazy.

When Jeremy and I exited the suite area, I took a pic of the ball that Didi gave me . . .

. . . and when I got home, I photographed the other two baseballs that were still in my collection:

In the photo above, the brand-new ball from Glenn Sherlock is on the left, and the mud-rubbed Francisco Cervelli home run is on the right.

I examined both balls under black light and discovered an invisible ink stamp on the home run:

At around 1am, I started combing through the hundreds of tweets and emails that I’d received. One person told me I was on the front page of MLB.com, and sure enough . . .

. . . there I was.

I was also written up on Cut4. Here’s a screen shot of the first part of that story . . .

. . . and if you want to read the whole thing, click here.

At 1:46am, the New York Daily News posted a story about me on its website. Here’s the first part of it . . .

. . . and here’s the link to the whole thing.

Less than two hours later, the Associated Press published its feature story on me. Here’s a screen shot of the first part . . .

. . . and if you want to read the whole thing, just do a search for the opening line: “Zack Hample leads the majors in hogging home run balls.” I was really pissed off when I saw that. Why the negative slant? Using a word like “hogging” is unnecessary and makes me look bad.

More and more articles were appearing, including this one on MSN . . .

. . . which you can see here in its entirety.

I gained more than 300 new twitter followers overnight, and so many people emailed me that it’ll take weeks to respond to everyone, if I get around to it at all. I truly appreciate all the positive messages that people have sent. I’ve read every single one, and while I do hope to answer everyone individually, I can’t make any promises. This blog entry is more than 6,000 words and has taken me four days to write. Now I’m in Anaheim, having just attended a game here, and in the next five days, I’ll be seeing five more games in San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle (and writing an additional 10,00o to 20,000 words). Under normal circumstances, I spend about two to eight hours a day answering emails; lately it’s been none, so keep that in mind if you’re waiting for a response.

Of all the articles and images and messages and videos that I received, this is probably my favorite:

Someone saw it on their Facebook feed and sent it to me.

Now, as for the video footage that I’ve been promising, it seems that MLB.com has most of the action in one compilation, which you can see here. In addition to that, I was No. 5 in the Top Ten plays on “SportsCenter,” which also featured me in the opening. Remember the guy named Tony who took a photo of me in the tunnel with security? Well, he also made it onto “SportsCenter” (because of a Derek Jeter sign that he’d made), and he copied and edited the opening of the show. Click here to check it out. I was also featured on “Quick Pitch” on the MLB Network, and the following day, I had people calling and tweeting to say that Kevin Millar and Chris Rose were talking about me on their MLB Network show, “Intentional Talk.”

I could link to a dozen more articles and tell you 100 more things, but I think it’s time to wrap this up. You get the point. I’ll leave you with some stats in case you’re interested.

BALLHAWKING STATS:

• 5 balls at this game (not counting the one that Didi Gregorius gave me; I gave three of the five away — two to kids and one to Didi)

• 57 balls in 8 games this season = 7.1 balls per game.

• 880 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 405 consecutive games with at least two balls

• 24 lifetime game home run balls (not counting the five that were tossed to me; click here to see the complete list)

• 3 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field, Fenway Park, and Yankee Stadium.

• 6,516 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.)

• 23 donors for my fundraiser

• $1.26 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $6.30 raised at this game

• $71.82 raised this season through my fundraiser

• $1,500 from BIGS Sunflower Seeds for my game-used baseballs

• $22,977.82 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

As you may have heard, I snagged two home run balls tonight (April 18th) during the game at Yankee Stadium. (As you definitely heard if you were there, I got called all sorts of names for not throwing the first one back onto the field, but c’mon, that was Didi Gregorius’s first major league homer. I’m not stupid.) I’m just getting started on a big blog entry about it, so here’s a quick photo for now:

Stay tuned. Lots of details and photos coming soon . . .

Remember all those sunflower seeds that I received the other day? Well, I brought a couple packs to this game at Yankee Stadium, and my friend Chris was the first person to try them. Here we are outside Gate 2 with the “Sizzlin’ Bacon” variety:

Chris appears to be unenthused, right? Well, look how his mood brightened once he popped a handful of ‘em in his mouth:

Here’s his official critique:

The other pack I brought was the “Original” flavor. Several hours later, I tried both during the game (and made a fabulous mess with all the shells), and I was quite pleased. It’s a good thing I’m not being sponsored by an asparagus company.

When the stadium opened at 5pm, I rushed to the left field seats and promptly got Adam Warren to toss me a ball. Here it is:

For the Yankees’ 2nd group of hitters, I headed to the 2nd deck in right field . . .

. . . and eventually caught a Lyle Overbay homer on the fly. I had to climb down over a row of seats while that ball was in mid-air.

That was it for the first half-hour. Not great. Not terrible.

When the Diamondbacks took the field and started playing catch, I headed into foul territory . . .

. . . and eventually got J.J. Putz to throw me a ball. I keep using the word “eventually” because things were happening slowly; although I seemed to be getting baseballs everywhere I went, there was a whole lot of dead time in between each one.

My 4th ball was a homer that landed in the last row in straight-away left field, just below the State Farm ad on the right in the following photo:

Did you notice the little kid above the tunnel? That was a two-year-old girl. I gave her that ball by tossing it up to her mother.

My 5th and 6th balls were home runs that I caught on the fly. (I never knew who was hitting for the D’backs.) The first came *right* to me, and the second required me to drift down the steps and make a back-handed catch in the front row, directly in front of the TV camera.

That’s when I noticed something weird happening. Check out the photo below, and then I’ll explain:

See the coach near the warning track with the bat? That’s Steve Sax, and he was hitting EVERY ball back to the bucket as a fungo. Heath Bell was shagging in right-center field — you can see him out there — and whenever he fielded a ball, he chucked it over to Sax. Sax must’ve hit 50 of them back to the bucket. Maybe more. Maybe 100. I have no idea. I wasn’t counting, but I can tell you that I’d never seen anything like it.

I got one more ball in left field — a home run that I grabbed in the second-to-last row — and then headed to right field, where the visibility was brutal:

In the photo above, the guy wearing red is my friend Greg. He narrowly missed catching a homer, which sailed a foot over his glove and landed in my row. I snagged that one and then grabbed another home run ball that landed deeper in the seats. That gave me nine balls for the day, and I gave away two more.

Shortly before game time, I got my 10th ball from Yankees bullpen coach Mike Harkey. I promptly handed it to a father for his little boy and noticed them photographing it soon after:

Back in left field, I took a photo of Heath Bell with his teammates in the bullpen:

I sat in straight-away left field during the game . . .

. . . and got a lengthy visit from these two gentlemen:

They both write for Cut 4, a feature on MLB.com. The guy on the right is named Matt Latimer. He covers Yankee Stadium and did a feature on me last season. The guy on the left is named Andrew Harts, and he covers Citi Field. They’re both really cool guys with equally cool jobs.

As for the game itself, the Diamondbacks scored twice in the 1st inning off CC Sabathia and tacked on an insurance run in the 5th. It wasn’t enough. The Yankees tied the game with three runs in the 7th. Then they took a 4-3 lead in the 8th, and Mariano Rivera came in to pitch the 9th. Just before the final out, I took this photo of Heath Bell (and J.J. Putz) in the bullpen, watching the action:

Mariano closed it out for his 612th career save. He’s pretty good.

BALLHAWKING STATS:

• 10 balls at this game (six pictured above because I gave four away)

• 52 balls in 7 games this season = 7.43 balls per game.

• 879 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 404 consecutive games with at least two balls

• 212 lifetime games with ten or more balls

• 2 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field and Fenway Park.

• 6,511 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.)

• 23 donors for my fundraiser

• $1.26 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $12.60 raised at this game

• $65.52 raised this season through my fundraiser

• $1,000 from BIGS Sunflower Seeds for my game-used baseballs

• $22,471.52 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

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

In case you’re not aware, this is highly unusual. It means that the ball failed its first inspection at the Rawlings baseball factory, got sent back to the employee who’d stitched it, got fixed, got sent back to the inspection room, failed the inspection again, got fixed again by the same employee, and finally passed. Oof.

My goal for the day was simple: I wanted to talk to Heath Bell. I hadn’t seen him since last season, and as you might already know, he and I are pals. But before the Diamondbacks took the field for BP, there were Yankee baseballs to snag — or rather baseBALL, singular. Here’s the only ball I caught during the 25 minutes that the home team was hitting:

It was a home run. I don’t know who hit it. All I can tell you is that I ran the full length of that empty row and caught it on the fly near the side-fence of the bullpen.

Then I headed into foul territory . . .

. . . and had to compete with my friend Greg Barasch for toss-ups for the next few minutes. (In the photo above, he’s the taller of the two fans standing on the right in red D’backs gear.) I ended up getting two baseballs in that area — one from Cliff Pennington and another from pitching coach Charles Nagy.

I headed back to my regular spot in straight-away left field, and when I saw Heath jogging toward the bullpen, I shouted his name REALLY loud. I had to because he was about 150 feet away. Thankfully, he heard me and looked over in my direction, and when I waved my cap, he came over to say hey:

He started by asking me how my off-season was, and the conversation took off from there. I told him that I’d emailed and texted him over the winter about writing a book with him, but never heard back. He told me that his email address had changed, and he started giving me the new one, but it was kind of long and complicated, and he didn’t want any of the fans standing near me to overhear him, so we started talking about his phone number. I grabbed my iPhone and pulled up his contact info and read him the last four digits.

“Gimme your phone,” he said, so I reached down and handed it to him. That’s when the nearest security guard walked down the steps and told me not to “hang over the wall.” (Yankee Stadium is SO MUCH FUN!!!) Whatever. I was just glad that Heath had my phone, and I took the following photo as he typed in his new contact info:

After he returned my phone, he told me that he had actually been thinking of calling me about doing a book together.

“You’re the only person I know who writes books,” he said.

“That’s surprising,” I replied, “because you must know a lot of people, but anyway, here’s the important question that we should be asking ourselves: Do you think I could pitch better than you could write?”

He thought for a moment and said, “Yeah, probably.”

“I *was* once clocked throwing 79 miles per hour,” I told him.

“Then definitely,” he said.

“But I’ve probably lost 10 to 15 ticks on the gun since then,” I confessed.

Then I asked him how his wife and kids are doing — they’re still living in California, he said — and how his off-season was. The main thing he talked about was the difference between the Marlins and Diamondbacks and how his mechanics got all screwed up last season and how the Marlins tried to fix him their way (which didn’t work) and how the D’backs have taken a much better approach and helped him HIS way.

“I’m back on track,” he said. “I figured it out.”

We talked about his mechanics for a bit. You know how he has that little jump-step where he sort of goes up high and then comes back down before pitching the ball? Well, that’s the main thing that he’s been working on. He said his velocity is fine and WAS fine last season, so he really couldn’t understand what was wrong. It was great to talk about all this stuff with him.

Then I showed him my new glove. Here he is wearing/inspecting it:

“I should get you a glove,” he said — so then we talked about gloves for a while.

Then I told him that I’m being sponsored this season by BIGS Sunflower Seeds. I mentioned that they’re gonna be sending me to all 30 major league stadiums and challenging me to snag a game-used ball at each venue, and that for each place where I succeed, they’re going to donate $500 to Pitch In For Baseball. (Heath knows about that charity because he made a sizable donation to it through my fundraiser in 2009. By the way, did you know that Pitch In For Baseball was recently featured on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams? Click here to watch the segment.) I told Heath that I’ll see him in San Francisco next week. (BIGS Sunflower Seeds is sending me to Angel Stadium on April 21st, PETCO Park on April 22nd, AT&T Park on April 23rd and 24th (when the D’backs will be there), and Safeco Field on April 25th and 26th. If you’re going to be at any of these games, find me. There might be some free seeds in it for you.) Heath asked when I’m planning to be at Chase Field. I said I’d let him know, and that was pretty much the end of it.

As I was walking back up the steps, I heard him shout my name. I turned around and saw him back in the outfield.

“Text me!” he yelled, and I gave him a thumbs-up.

I don’t know how many home run balls I missed during the 10 or 15 minutes that we were chatting, but it was worth it. I seriously love that man.

Halfway through the Diamondbacks’ portion of BP, I headed to right field and had to compete with my friend Ben Weil. In the following photo, he’s wearing the Randy Johnson jersey.

He snagged a *lot* of baseballs out there, but I got a few as well. I’m not sure who was hitting — probably Eric Hinske and Eric Chavez — but anyway, my 4th ball of the day was a homer that sailed directly over his head and into my glove. My 5th and 6th balls were home runs that landed in the seats, and I do mean *in* the seats. (I gave one of those away.) My 7th ball was a long home run that landed in the mostly-empty bleachers behind me. There was one kid up there, probably about 10 years old, who would’ve easily snagged it, but unfortunately for him, the ball took a horrendously unlucky ricochet and bounced completely out of the bleachers as he chased it down the steps. I made a lunging bare-handed grab (facing away from the field) as it dropped down into my section, and without hesitating, I tossed the ball up to him. He was thrilled, and everyone thanked me, and THAT’S when it occurred to me that that was my 6,500th ball. DAMN!!! I thought about it for a minute and came up with a solution that would make everyone happy: I walked back over to where the kid was standing (he was about 20 feet away) and said, “Hey, I’ll trade you a brand-new ball for the one I just gave you.”

“Really?!” he shouted.

“Yeah,” I said and held up the replacement ball. He then tossed down my precious milestone ball, and I tossed him the pearl. That was a huge relief for me, and he was even more excited than before.

Back in left field, I caught one final BP homer on the fly. Once again, I have no idea who hit it. It was a righty, and I made a nice play on it, but only because I misjudged the ball in the first place and had to recover. Basically, when it was hit, I moved down a row, but then as the ball was approaching, I realized that it was going to sail a bit over my head, so I climbed back over a row of seats (which, evidently, is now a felony at Yankee Stadium) and then jumped as high as I could and caught it back-handed and then pretty much fell over in a belly-flop position onto the empty row of seats behind me. My right knee is now bruised as a result, but it was totally worth it. Thankfully, the security supervisor (who had told me two days earlier not to climb over the seats) didn’t see any of that.

Ben had snagged nine balls at that point. Here’s how he labels/differentiates them:

In case you can’t tell, that’s his 9th ball of the day wrapped in a napkin, on which he has messily written:

“9 – Caught
leaping over
rail in 103″

That would be section 103 in right field. Ben doesn’t like to mark the balls themselves, so he writes notes that he keeps with them, and when he gets home, he puts each ball in a Ziploc bag and labels it neater. (By the way, did you notice his Sesame Street hat in the photo above? He’s quite a character.)

Ben had never reached double digits at the new Yankee Stadium, and because he was nice enough to give me an extra ticket in left field, I let him go for the pre-game t0ss-up from the bullpen. Later in the game, he got another ball and ended the day with 11. We try to stay out of each other’s way and not rob each other. Sometimes we can’t help it, though, and then we just end up trash-talking and laughing like hell.

Twenty minutes before the game, I sent the following text to Heath: “Hey, it’s Zack. Great catching up with you today. I’ll let you know when I’m gonna be at Chase Field. See you tomorrow.”

(Around that time, I received the following email from someone I don’t know: “Hi Zack, are you interested in selling all of your baseballs?” I had a good laugh, showed Ben, and eventually wrote back and said, “Nope, but thanks for asking.”)

Ben and I sat together during the game. This was our view:

Heath Bell wasn’t kidding when he declared that he’s “back on track.” Here’s a photo of him warming up in the bullpen . . .

. . . before entering the game in the bottom of the 8th inning and striking out the side. Now, I know what you might be thinking: how can someone with an ERA of 9.00 claim to have it all figured out? Well, okay, fine, that *was* his ERA at the start of the night. He had allowed four earned runs in four innings (three of which came in his very first outing in which he worked just one-third of an inning). Now his ERA is down to 7.20, and if he pitches another scoreless inning or two, he’ll be back in the land of respectability. Meanwhile, in five total innings of work this season, he has walked one batter and struck out ten. That’s pretty damn impressive, so let’s just see how it goes.

In the photo above, did you notice the “4″ on his back? The Yankees were celebrating Jackie Robinson Day. Normally it takes place on April 15th, but because these two teams didn’t play that day, all the players were wearing No. 42 at this game instead.

The Yankees ended up winning, 4-2. Robinson Cano (who was named after Jackie Robinson) hit a three-run homer, and Mariano Rivera notched his 611th career save.

Eleven minutes after the game ended, Heath texted and said, “Great seeing u too.”

I responded with, “Awesome 8th inning tonight. That was really fun to see,” and then he sent me back a smily face. BFFs forever!! <3

Ben was kind enough to drive me home, and when I got there, these two boxes were waiting for me:

SCORE!!!

It was my long-awaited shipment of BIGS Sunflower Seeds. (The ball in the photo is there to show you the size; that’s my 6,500th ball, by the way.)

I opened one of the boxes:

It was a bucket of seeds. Here’s a peek inside . . .

. . . and here are all the packs of seeds spread out:

As you can see, there were 16 packs and four different flavors — Sizzlin’ Bacon, Dill Pickle, Buffalo Wing, and Original. Here’s a closer look:

I do like seeds, but I gotta say that I’ve always been an “original” kinda guy. I never really got into flavored seeds, but I’m willing to give all this stuff a shot. And for the record, the folks at BIGS didn’t ask me to photograph the seeds and blog about it. They said I could do whatever I wanted with them, but I *did* want to blog about it. I’m excited. Free seeds! What’s not to like? You know how much I blog about my food in general — ballpark concessions, unusual meals when I’m traveling, my plate at most Thanksgivings, and so on.

Anyway, here’s a closeup of my 6,500th ball . . .

. . . and here are the six that I kept:

I was surprised to discover that all six baseballs have invisible ink stamps, some more noticeable than others. Check it out. Here’s a side-by-side comparison in regular light versus black light:

That’s it for now. I have a zillion things to do, and I’m heading back to Yankee Stadium in a few hours.

BALLHAWKING STATS:

• 8 balls at this game (six pictured above because I gave two away)

• 42 balls in 6 games this season = 7 balls per game.

• 878 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 403 consecutive games with at least two balls

• 2 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field and Fenway Park.

• 6,501 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.)

• 23 donors for my fundraiser

• $1.26 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $10.08 raised at this game

• $52.92 raised this season through my fundraiser

• $1,000 from BIGS Sunflower Seeds for my game-used baseballs

• $22,458.92 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

Batting practice got off to a great start. Within the first minute that I was inside the stadium, Phil Hughes threw me a ball in right-center field, and then a security guard tossed a home run ball down to me from the empty bleachers. Here’s a photo that shows the layout (with Hughes standing in deep center):

Two minutes later, I happened to notice this:

I don’t know how I missed it on my way in, but whatever. I now had three baseballs and was already feeling like I had a good shot at reaching double digits.

That’s when everything fell apart — at least temporarily. Ichiro Suzuki and Travis Hafner were in the next group of hitters, so I headed up to the second deck:

Not only did they fail to reach the second deck, but Ichiro hit two home runs within a few feet of where I’d been standing down below. It was painful. And to make matters worse, the Yankees jogged off the field 20 minutes before the Orioles were due to start hitting. This was the result:

I stood around and watched the Orioles standing around. How exciting.

Once things picked back up, Orioles bullpen catcher Rudy Arias tossed me my 4th ball of the day in left field. Then I drifted to my left and climbed down over a row of empty seats to catch a home run; it was hit by a tall, right-handed white guy, so I assumed it was Nolan Reimold.

My 6th ball was thrown by Jake Arrieta in left-center, and my 7th came from Pedro Strop after I shouted his name and added the words “por favor.”

That’s when several things happened. First, two members of the media (pictured below) got a lesson from a colleague on how to operate the parabolic microphone:

Then, less than a minute later, a Yankee fan overheard me asking for another ball and called me a d-bag. (This fan is pictured above, undeservedly wearing Derek Jeter’s No. 2 on his back.)

“What’re you gonna do with TWO?!” he demanded, and when I offered a sensible explanation, he  shouted, “Shove it up yer ass!!”

Moments later, the head security supervisor in left field — a new guy who’s clearly trying to assert his dominance — approached me and asked to see my ticket. I asked if there was a problem, and basically, yeah, there is: he said he’s seen me running around for balls, and he told me not to climb over the seats. Why? Because he doesn’t want me to hurt myself or anyone else. Sounds reasonable, right? Well, it’s not. I’ve been to more than 1,000 games in 50 major league stadiums, and this was the first time I’d ever heard that. (Keep in mind: this is the same supervisor whose guard wouldn’t let me move back ten rows the other night to avoid the rain — an hour before game time when the section was empty.) I’ll admit that I’ve often been told not to run through the aisles at various ballparks, and that a certain grumpy usher down the right field foul line at Shea Stadium used to nag me about climbing over those annoying orange railings, but never had I been told not to climb over seats. I don’t even step on the seats; I carefully step/hop completely over. No harm done. People do it all the time when they’re going in and out of their seats. You know what I mean? If someone is sitting in the middle of a packed row, and he needs to get up and the row behind him is empty, what does he do? He climbs back over it to avoid hassling everyone next to him. Anyway, I told the guard, “No problem,” and we shook hands, and that seemed to be the end of it, but I’m telling you now: it’s a huge problem, and things are gonna get ugly.

A few minutes after that, I saw a pair of little kids with gloves enter the next section — there hadn’t been any kids prior to that — so I walked over and handed them each a ball.

Evidently, while I was gone, a home run had landed near the spot where I’d been standing because the rude fan (the guy wearing the Jeter jersey) looked at me and shouted, “Where were you on THAT one?!”

“I was over there,” I said, “giving away a couple baseballs to those kids. Where were YOU?!”

That seemed to set him off because he started cursing at me and threatening me all over again and calling me greedy and selfish and blah blah, so what did I do? I pulled another ball out of my bag and walked over to him and held it out and said, “Here’s a ball for you too.” The look on his face was priceless; he was so stunned by my unexpected kindness that he got even more pissed off.

“I was just kidding!” he shouted, acting all tough and nonchalant. “I don’t want it.”

“Okay,” I shrugged, and when I started walking off, he shouted, “NOW SHOVE IT UP YER ASS!!!”

The look on his face was even more priceless (if that’s even possible) when he saw me get another ball moments later from Orioles coach Bill Castro.

Toward the end of BP, I ran the full length of the section (to my left toward the bullpen) and caught a home run on the fly — my 9th ball of the day – without climbing over any precious seats. I don’t know who hit it, but I can tell you that it made a terrific THWACK as it hit the pocket of my new glove.

Fast-forward half an hour. Orioles starter Wei-Yin Chen was warming up in left field, but rather than photographing him, I took this shot of the stands behind me:

In the photo above, do you see the little girl in the pink hat? I gave her a ball. See the Yankee fan in the white jersey over the State Farm ad? He was shouting all kinds of garbage at Chen, the worst of which was, “Where are my egg rolls?!?!”

Welcome to Yankee Stadium, where you can curse and threaten people and shout racist slurs, but if you want to move back to avoid the rain or climb over a row of seats, security will be all over you.

Shortly before game time, I got Mike Harkey to toss me ball No. 10 from the right field bullpen. I’ve gotten one from him at each of the three Yankee games I’ve attended this season.

During the game, I sat in right field and had the misfortune of overhearing several despicable hecklers. At one point, I actually wrote down the second-worst thing they said because I wanted to remember it and share it here later. (The worst thing they said is too awful to repeat here.) I want everyone to recognize the culture of hatred and loathsomeness that exists at Yankee Stadium — a culture which is able to exist because the police officers and security guards do nothing to stop it. Here’s what one of the hecklers shouted (for the whole section to hear, including a smattering of women and children): “Hey, Markakis!! My mother stands like that!! You look like a lady out there!! Make me a sandwich while you’re standing like that!!”

Seriously, wow.

There was a middle-aged Scottish couple sitting directly behind me, so I turned to them and said, “Please don’t judge this entire country based on how these idiots are behaving.” They smiled and assured me they wouldn’t.

Given the fact that I was rooting extra-hard for the Orioles (because of all the crap I had endured here over the past few days), the game itself was miserable. Hiroki Kuroda pitched a shutout, and the Yankees won, 3-0.

Look who I ran into after the game:

In the photo above, that’s Avi Miller (a Camden Yards regular) on the left and the Cook family (prolific bloggers from Pennsylvania) on the right — Todd and his two boys, Tim (age 7) and Kellan (age 2). Avi and the Cooks had been at Fenway Park earlier in the day for the one o’clock game against the Rays, and despite the fact that they didn’t experience any batting practice, the Cooks managed to snag baseballs at both venues — a feat that has come to be known as Youngblooding.

We all headed out together, and look what Avi had:

As I mentioned in a recent entry, I’m being sponsored this season by BIGS Sunflower Seeds. The folks at BIGS are going to be sending me a whole bunch of seeds any day, but this was actually the first time that I’d seen any, so I really *was* excited.

Kellen, unfortunately, wasn’t nearly as excited about giving me a fist-bump for the camera. Remember when I met Todd and Tim for the first time on 6/3/09 at Nationals Park and got a fist-bump from Tim? No? Well, even though this wasn’t the first time I’d met Kellen, I was hoping to recreate that moment with a double fist-bump. Tim was willing to participate, but I needed him to face the camera:

Then he gave me a brief fist-bump, but he had too much energy to hold still, and Kellen just wasn’t feeling it:

As you can see, I was saddened by the whole experience . . .

. . . but I vow to get a double fist-bump photo with these boys before long — maybe next year? Next season, Kellen will be the same age (3) that Tim was when I met him and got the fist-bump in D.C. It’s gonna happen. I can feel it.

Todd was kind enough to give me a ride back to Manhattan, but it wasn’t particularly comfortable. Check out this photo of his boys from a recent road trip — not a whole lot of space between those two car seats, huh? Yeah, well, I managed to partially cram my big butt in there, and it was brutal:

My head was hitting the ceiling, Kellen’s seat was digging into a kidney, and within five minutes, both of my feet were numb and tingling. It was worth it, though. It had been a while since I’d seen these guys, so I didn’t mind being in pain in exchange for getting to hang out for an extra half-hour.

By the way, Avi is working on a massive ticket stub wallpapering project and needs help. He needs as many stubs as possible and is hoping that people from all over will send some to him. If you gather up enough for him, he’ll send you a self-addressed stamped envelope, and he’s also willing to “make a qualifying donation to Pitch In For Baseball” to thank me for sending people his way. He’s thinking one penny for each regular stub and two pennies for fancier season ticket stubs. That might not sound like a lot, but it’ll really add up if a bunch of people get involved. He also wants pocket schedules too, and he’s planning to give away some pretty cool baseball prizes to the top few contributors. Give him a shout on Twitter (@AviMillerBSR) to find out more.

BALLHAWKING STATS:

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

• 34 balls in 5 games this season = 6.8 balls per game.

• 877 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 601 consecutive games in New York with at least one ball

• 211 lifetime games with ten or more balls

• 2 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field and Fenway Park.

• 6,493 total balls

CHARITY STATS:

(For every stadium this season at which I snag a gamer, 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.)

• 23 donors for my fundraiser

• $1.26 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $12.60 raised at this game

• $42.84 raised this season through my fundraiser

• $1,000 from BIGS Sunflower Seeds for my game-used baseballs

• $22,448.84 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

Finally, four of the seven balls that I kept have invisible ink stamps, but rather than posting a side-by-side comparison like I normally do, I’m going to show you separately so that you can do your own little comparison. Grab this photo (of the balls in regular light) . . .

. . . and now grab this one (of the balls in black light):

Did you do it? Did you download them or drag them onto your desktop? Good. Highlight them both and double-click and flip back and forth. They should be right on top of each other so that the balls are in the exact same place, and only the light is changing.

That’s it for now. I’ll be back at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday, unfortunately.

The weather was awful. It rained all afternoon, and it was cold — VERY COLD, like, see-your-breath-and-can’t-feel-your-toes kinda cold. I knew there wasn’t going to be batting practice, but for some twisted reason, I couldn’t convince myself to stay away.

Here’s what I saw when I ran into Yankee Stadium at 5pm . . .

. . . and that’s *all* I saw for the first half-hour. The Yankees were nowhere in sight — probably playing cards and eating a gourmet pre-game meal in the clubhouse — and there was no action on the Orioles’ side either.

Finally, at around 5:35pm, there was a sign of life:

I headed down to the front row, and after a few minutes, I got this:

In the photo above, do you see the player crouching to the right of the ball? That’s Pedro Strop. He had tossed it to me because it had been thrown wildly and gotten wet. It might not look like much, but it was extra special to me; this was my 600th consecutive game in New York at which I’d snagged at least one ball — a streak that goes way back to Shea and the old Yankee Stadium.

Then something unpleasant happened. For starters, there were only a few dozen fans in the entire stadium, and I was kicked out of the section by a security guard. Why? Because at Yankee Stadium, the guards sweep through the seats 45 minutes after the gates open and check tickets. But wait. It gets worse. At 6pm, I went to my assigned section and asked the guard if I could sit in the last row for a few minutes. I figured I didn’t need to ask. Really, I was just being polite. I mean, it was more than an hour before game time, and the entire section was empty. My seat was halfway down, exposed to the steady mist that was falling, but the last row was covered by the overhang of the second deck. Quite simply, I wanted to sit down and rest (I’d bruised my right ankle two days earlier at Fenway) and stay dry — but the guard wouldn’t let me. In a robotic, I-have-no-shred-of-humanity tone, she said, “You have to sit in the seat that you paid for.” I thought she was kidding at first, and when it became clear that she wasn’t, I tried to reason with her, and when that didn’t work, I found a nearby Fan Assistance office and filed a complaint. I even filled out a card to make it official:

In the photo above, the guy standing on the left is the person that I talked to. In a similarly robotic manner, he told me that the guard was “just doing her job” and that “it is our policy to have guests sit in their assigned seats.” He explained that the purpose of the policy is to “prevent that awkward situation when a family arrives and an unruly fan refuses to move.” (Families should know better than to visit Yankee Stadium.) I tried to reason with him, just to see if he’d be real with me — to see if he’d show some decency and say something like, “Between you and me, it’s a silly rule, but it is what it is.” But of course that didn’t happen. Instead, he told me that if I was concerned about staying dry, I could “visit the Yankees Museum or go to the Hard Rock Cafe, where there is a variety of food options.” ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?! I went to complain about the most asinine rule I’ve ever encountered in any stadium that I’ve ever visited in my entire life, and this absolute bozo of an employee tried to sell me something.

Anyway . . .

When Orioles starter Miguel Gonzalez began warming up in left field, I headed into the bleachers . . .

. . . and eventually got pitching coach Rick Adair to toss me my second ball of the day:

Five minutes later, I got Mike Harkey to throw me a ball on the terrace overlooking the Yankees’ bullpen, and five minutes after that, I got a ball from Manny Machado on the 3rd base side.

This was my view during the game:

In the previous photo, do you see the little kid on the staircase in the red cap? Every inning, he went down to the front row to try to get a warm-up ball from Ichiro Suzuki (who seems to have gotten less friendly since becoming a Yankee), and late in the game, he wandered over to the bullpen several times. He was trying hard, but wasn’t having any luck, so I hooked him up. “You look like you could use a baseball,” I said as I handed one to him, and yes, he was very excited.

In the top of the 8th inning, something VERY special happened — something that I’d never seen before . . . I don’t think. I’m talking about a triple play! I remember being at a game in Philly several years ago when there was a triple play, but I totally missed it because I was in the concourse. I was really upset about that, but I don’t have to feel that way any longer. Here at Yankee Stadium, the Orioles had runners on 1st and 2nd when Manny Machado smashed a one-hopper to 2nd baseman Robinson Cano, who flipped the ball to 2nd base for the first out. Jayson Nix, the Yankees’ shortstop, caught that throw, but instead of firing the ball to 1st base for an easy double play (which everyone in the stadium assumed he’d do, and which would’ve made sense, given the fact that the Yankees’ were winning, 5-2, and didn’t need to worry about the lead runner), he threw it to 3rd baseman Kevin Youkilis. Alexi Casilla, the runner who had started out on 2nd base, reversed direction and got caught in a rundown. Youkilis threw the ball back to Nix, who then threw it back to Youkilis, who then tagged Casilla for the 2nd out, and then . . . wouldn’t you know it? Machado was caught in between 1st and 2nd base, so Youkilis threw the ball across the diamond to 1st baseman Lyle Overbay. This prompted Machado to dash toward 2nd base, so Overbay threw the ball there. Cano caught it and barely applied the tag in time, and there you have it — the first 4-6-5-6-5-3-4 triple play in major league history. Truly amazing. Even though the play helped the Yankees, I was SO glad to have seen it. I’m also glad that I realized what was happening even before it happened; as soon as Youkilis recorded the second out and threw the ball to Overbay, I was like, “OMG, this could be a triple play!” And then it happened. Everyone was high-fiving in the stands. I’ll never forget it.

One inning later, Mariano Rivera finished warming up . . .

. . . and entered the game:

Everyone loves him, and I do mean EVERYone. Even *I* love him, and I don’t exactly love the team he plays for. He’s a living legend. It’s a real event whenever he pitches. On this particular night, he surrendered a hit, but worked a scoreless inning for his 610th career save.

Oh, I should mention that the Yankees took the lead late in the game when Adam Jones dropped a deep but very catchable fly ball for a two-out, three-run error. The entire bleacher section responded by chanting, “YOU F*CKED UP!!! YOU F*CKED UP!!!” (Just another night in the Bronx.) This is the same bleacher section that was referring to Youkilis as “Useless” when he committed the horrible crime of misplaying a ground ball in the 7th inning. The fact that he helped turn a triple play and went 3-for-3 to raise his batting average to .424 . . . eh, whatever, the guy’s a bum!

BALLHAWKING STATS:

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

• 24 balls in 4 games this season = 6 balls per game.

• 876 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 600 consecutive games in New York with at least one ball

• 2 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field and Fenway Park.

• 6,483 total balls

CHARITY STATS:

(For every stadium this season at which I snag a gamer, 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.)

• 23 donors for my fundraiser

• $1.26 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $5.04 raised at this game

• $30.24 raised this season through my fundraiser

• $1,000 from BIGS Sunflower Seeds for my game-used baseballs

• $22,436.24 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

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

The last few years have been a struggle for me at Fenway Park. In 2011 I attended two games there on crutches, and last season, when I hired a videographer to get footage of my 6,000th ball, batting practice was wiped out by rain.

Things went much better this time around. Here I am outside the stadium:

The previous photo was taken by my friend Ben Weil. He and I drove up for the day from New York, courtesy of BIGS Sunflower Seeds — my official sponsor for the 2013 baseball season. Ben had to pay for his own ticket and food, but everything else was covered. All I had to do was try like hell to snag a game-used ball, and if I succeeded, it would mean an extra $500 for Pitch In For Baseball.

Speaking of food, here’s a double-photo of me and Ben having lunch:

We were at the Bleacher Bar – a great place to go if you want a sneak peek at the field. (I had a grilled chicken sandwich and an order of cheese fries with bacon and sour cream.) Check out the view to my left:

The forecast was iffy, so it was nice to see that the batting cage was set up. When we finished eating, the Red Sox were taking early BP, so we headed here:

That’s the view from the open-air parking garage behind the Green Monster. Ben and I were hoping for a few longballs to find us, but there wasn’t any action.

At around 3:45pm, we headed over to Gate C and met up with a couple of friends and Fenway regulars. Do you recognize them?

In the photo above, the 6-foot-5 guy on the left is named Mike. He works for the FAA and helped me last summer with the helicopter stunt . . . remember? Ben is on the right (molesting the lamppost), and the guy between us is named Jere (pronounced “Jerry”). It’s kind of hard to tell, but Mike is holding a pair of DVDs, which contain bonus video footage from the helicopter stunt. (I know there hasn’t been *any* footage posted yet, and believe me, I’m not too happy about it. Someday, I promise you’ll see how it all went down. I might post some of the bonus footage myself if I can figure out how to convert/edit it.)

When the stadium opened at 4:40pm, Mike and Jere and I headed to the center field seats:

Several minutes later, I snagged this:

It was a ground-rule double hit by Mike Napoli. (Even though the center field wall is 17 feet high, balls do sometimes bounce over it — or at least high enough up it than you can lean over and grab them.)

Halfway through the Red Sox’s portion of BP, I headed to right field. This was the view . . .

. . . and this was right below me in the bullpen:

I snagged it with my glove trick, marking the 400th consecutive game at which I’ve gotten at least two baseballs — a streak that dates back to the 2007 All-Star Game.

In the following photo, do you see the two baseballs in the bullpen?

Well, I used my glove trick to snag the closer of the two and handed it to the little kid pictured below in the Pedroia jersey:

Then I headed back to center field, and just as the Sox were wrapping up BP, I got David Ross to throw me my 4th ball of the day.

Soon after the Orioles came out, Chris Tillman recognized me and struck up a conversation. (We got to know each other a little bit at Camden Yards over the past few seasons.) In the following photo, there are two players standing next to each other near the warning track. Tillman is on the right . . .

. . . and if you’re interested in hearing what we talked about, check out Jere’s blog. He got some of it on video. Basically, Tillman wanted to know about the three foul balls I caught on 5/12/11 at Camden Yards, and I told him I’d mail him a copy of my latest book, The Baseball. (I also told him about my sponsorship with BIGS. One of his teammates then pulled out a packet of seeds. I asked if it was David’s — that’s the brand I’ve seen most often at major league games — but they told me it was Frito Lay. [This portion of the conversation was not captured on video.] Never in my life did I ever expect to be so interested in sunflower seeds.)

When the rest of the stadium opened at 5:40pm, I headed here:

I wasn’t thrilled about those protective screens blocking my view, but I knew that balls would still be able to hook around them. The only problem was that it never happened. Nothing was hit to me. Nothing was thrown to me. During the Orioles’ portion of BP, I snagged a grand total of zero baseballs. Thankfully I managed to get Ronnie Deck, the team’s bullpen catcher, to toss me a ball at the dugout right after BP, but still. Bleh. This was my reaction:

Several things happened in the following half-hour:

1) I tweeted a photo of myself with four baseballs.
2) Jere’s finger was bleeding from a scrape he suffered while scrambling for a ball.
3) Mike and Ben schmoozed it up:

Then it started raining, and I headed to the Orioles’ dugout to try to get a warm-up ball. In the following photo, do you see the player standing near home plate?

That’s Manny Machado, and when he finished playing catch with J.J. Hardy, he tossed me the ball — my 6th of the day. Ben was mildly annoyed at that point because he had chosen to go to the other end of the dugout, figuring that Hardy (the veteran) would end up with the ball. Two minutes later, two more Orioles came out to throw. I asked Ben which side of the dugout he wanted, and he picked the home-plate end. I don’t even remember which two guys were throwing. All I can tell you is that Ryan Flaherty was closer my end of the dugout — the outfield end — and when the warm-up session ended, guess who got the ball? Yep. Flaherty flipped it up, and Ben was ready to strangle me. (Don’t feel too bad for him. He ended the day with four baseballs of his own.)

When the game began, my goal was simple: hang out near the Orioles’ dugout and try to snag a 3rd-out ball. I didn’t get one after the 1st inning, but when Stephen Drew ended the 2nd with a routine fly ball to left fielder Nate McLouth, things went exactly as planned. Here’s a screen shot that shows the ball (circled in red) sailing toward me:

Here’s another screen shot that shows me reaching out for the snag:

The video itself (filmed by Ben) isn’t worth sharing. I never intended to post it. I just wanted to be able to grab a few screen shots.

Here I am with the ball, excited to have raised more money for charity:

After that, I spent the next few innings here:

Not only was the view good, but there was an empty cross-aisle right behind me:

I thought it’d be a great spot for a foul ball, but nothing came close.

In the 5th inning, it started raining pretty hard . . .

. . . so I headed for the concourse. Look how crowded it was:

I happened to run into Ben, who told me during the bottom of the 5th that he was going to try to get a 3rd-out ball. I held his backpack while he hurried toward the Orioles’ dugout. While he was gone, I got a vanilla ice cream cone with rainbow sprinkles, and when he returned (like, two minutes later), I took the following photo:

Impressive. Dustin Pedroia had struck out to end the inning, and Ben got Matt Wieters to toss him the ball. And then there was a rain delay:

Ben and I considered leaving — it was gonna be a long drive back to New York — but we ended up talking ourselves into staying. The way we saw it . . . if the delay didn’t last long, then there was no point in leaving, and if it DID last long, then everyone else would leave and we’d hate ourselves for not being there.

As it turned out, the delay only lasted 43 minutes. I tried to get a warm-up ball from J.J. Hardy before play resumed, but instead, all I got was a photo of coach Wayne Kirby goofing around near the dugout:

Late in the game, the Red Sox announced that their record-setting sellout streak had officially ended at 794 games (plus 26 post-season contests for a total of 820) — the longest streak in the history of “major professional sports.” This was the message on the jumbotron:

In the last 24 hours, some media outlets have posted positive stories about the streak, while others have bashed its fraudulence. Either way you look at it, it’s still pretty cool that the Sox were THAT popular for THAT long, and I was glad to be there for the historic end. It was certainly easier to move around and find empty seats.

With the Sox holding a 5-3 lead in the top of the 9th inning, Ben and I wandered back toward the dugout. Joel Hanrahan was on the mound:

We hoped to snag a post-game ball from the umpire or from anyone, really. (By the way, can you spot Ben in the previous photo? It’s not hard.)

Hanrahan completely melted down — and it wasn’t my finest inning either. Chris Davis greeted him with a leadoff homer to center field, which I would’ve caught had I been camped out there in the cross-aisle, which is where I’d talked about sitting earlier in the evening. Then, after two quick outs, Hanrahan surrendered a single and two walks and uncorked a 55-footer to tie the game. On the very next pitch, Manny Machado blasted a three-run homer over the Green Monster to put the Orioles on top, 8-5. That ball was thrown back onto the field, retrieved by 2nd base umpire Jim Wolf, tossed to Orioles 3rd base coach Bobby Dickerson, and then tossed to me in the front row behind the dugout. Sounds good, right? Well, I didn’t catch the ball. You know how an outfielder will sometimes dive headfirst for a sinking liner, and the ball will land a few inches short of his glove? Well, that’s sort of what happened to me. Dickerson’s throw was clearly going to fall short, but because there were huge/aggressive guys on either side of me (whom Ben had warned me about), I was forced to lunge forward and dive/flop for the ball atop the dugout roof. Unfortunately, the ball short-hopped my glove and hit the very tip of it and bounced back into the dugout. It was then tossed back up toward me, but fell so short that it didn’t even reach the roof. It was then tossed to a completely different section 20 feet away. At first I was bummed more than words can describe, but then it occurred to me: Would that ball have even counted?! One of the biggest rules in ballhawking, at least for me, is that I have to be the first fan to attain possession of the ball. (This rule is even listed here on the BIGS Baseball Adventure website.) That home run ball WAS acquired by another fan when it first landed in the Monster seats, so if I’d caught it when the Orioles’ coach tossed it in my direction . . . then what? Should the rule be modified so that home run balls that get thrown back onto the field can be “re-snagged” when they re-enter the stands? If so, what would happen if a fan were to throw back a home run ball from deep in the bleachers, only to have the ball fall short and never make it *out* of the stands? Would that count for the person who re-snags it? This is murky, so in a weird way, I’m glad that I didn’t snag the ball. Everyone would’ve been divided. If I counted it, people would be calling me a fraud, and if I didn’t count it, that would’ve felt weird because it *was* the actual home run ball. Oy vey. I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts on this.

Anyway, the Orioles held on for an 8-5 win, and after the final out, I got my 9th and final ball from home plate umpire Cory Blaser. On my way out of the stadium, I gave away a ball to a young, exuberant fan named Kyle.

Ben drove us back to New York. I was home by 3:15am and in bed at around 4:45am. Oof. Next time I go to Boston, I need to spend a solid week at Fenway rather than doing this back-and-forth-in-a-day nonsense.

BALLHAWKING STATS:

• 9 balls at this game (seven pictured here because I gave two away)

• 20 balls in 3 games this season = 6.7 balls per game.

• 875 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 400 consecutive games with at least two balls

• 316 consecutive games outside of New York with at least one ball

• 2 stadiums this season with a game-used ball: Citi Field and Fenway Park.

• 6,479 total balls

CHARITY STATS:

(In addition to the money that BIGS Sunflower Seeds will be donating, I’m doing my own fundraiser again this season for Pitch In For Baseball, a non-profit charity that provides baseball equipment to underprivileged kids all over the world. Click here to learn more.)

• 23 donors

• $1.26 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $11.34 raised at this game

• $25.20 raised this season (plus $1,000 from BIGS)

• $22,431.20 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

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

I arrived so early that there weren’t many people around . . .

. . . but by the time the gates opened at 5pm, there was a quite a crowd. Here I am just before heading inside:

I was looking forward to racing out to the empty right field seats and scouring the ground for baseballs, but when I made it there, this was the scene:

That guard was new and told me he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with the balls. Last year, those balls would’ve been given to the first three fans to get there, but this year, they just disappeared.

I was in a good spot and had lots of room to run . . .

. . . but there wasn’t much to run for. Last year, Curtis Granderson, Eric Chavez, Alex Rodriguez, and Raul Ibanez would’ve hit a dozen balls into the seats, but now I was stuck with Brett Gardner, Kevin Youkilis, Vernon Wells, and Lyle Overbay.

Worthless.

Finally, toward the end of the Yankees’ portion of BP, I caught a home run on the fly — the first with my new glove. Here I am with it:

I’m pretty sure that Travis Hafner hit it. Overbay had taken his cuts in the previous group, but could it have been Brennan Boesch? I’ll learn these guys’ stances/swings before long. As for the catch itself, I made it harder than it needed to be. I backed up a row and *then* cut to my right, but because it was cold, the ball didn’t carry, so I ended up having to climb back down over a row at the last second before back-handing it. Duh.

The previous photo was taken by a guy named Andrew, who reads this blog and is getting into ballhawking. (He and I first met on 6/16/12 at Citi Field). When the Red Sox started hitting, he followed me to left field. Here he is giving a thumbs-up:

This was my view just before I snagged my second ball of the day:

In the photo above, do you see the chain at the bottom of the stairs . . . on the right? It’s blocking the space between the railing and the outfield wall. Are you with me? Well, a right-handed batter hit a deep fly ball that had a chance of bouncing into the seats, so I hurried down the steps, and just before it landed, I climbed over the chain into the empty camera well. The ball bounced off the warning track, but it wasn’t going to clear the wall, so I lunged over the edge and swatted down at it with my glove and trapped it against the padding. (I hope this makes sense.) Andrew Bailey was standing 10 feet away from me at the time, and when he looked up, I said, “Pretty slick, huh?!” He gave me a friendly nod.

At 5:45pm, with roughly 35 minutes remaining in BP, the security guards started checking tickets and kicking everyone out who didn’t belong. That included me, which sucked at the time, but turned out to be a good thing; my actual seat was in right field, so I headed over there and ended up catching three more home runs on the fly. (I don’t know who hit any of them. Mike Carp? Daniel Nava? No clue.) Do you see the little kid in the green jacket in the following photo?

I ended up giving the ball to him because I ran right past him to catch it, and for record, no, I didn’t shove him or reach in front of him. I had bolted through the row behind him, and at the last second, I reached into his row to make the one-handed, thigh-high catch. If I hadn’t been there, and if the ball hadn’t ricocheted to any of the other fans who were closing in on it, then the kid might’ve snagged it on his own, but as things stood, I was happy to have caught it, and he was glad when I handed it to him. His mom came over later and thanked me.

The next home run required me to run left to nearly the exact same spot, but this time I reached all the way up — any higher and I would’ve had to jump.

Several minutes later, I snagged my final homer after drifting 10 feet to the right and reaching across my body for a back-handed catch. There were several grown men (none with gloves) directly behind me, so I gave the ball to the nearest one.

That’s when I posted this tweet, but as it turned out, my day of ballhawking wasn’t done. Just before the game, I got Yankees coach Mike Harkey to throw me a ball — my sixth of the day — from the right field bullpen, and then I got a photo of him chucking more balls into the bleachers:

Given the facts that (a) the Yankees won and (b) I didn’t catch any more balls, I’d have to say that my personal highlight during the first eight innings was this mullet sighting:

This creamsicle-flavored lollipop was pretty great too:

The lowlight was having to listen to these guys all night:

They were seated/standing/screaming directly behind me in the bleachers, and I truly can’t comprehend how or why they weren’t ejected. They were hollering nearly every curse imaginable, including threats at Red Sox right fielder Shane Victorino. They were shouting homophobic slurs and cursing/insulting women seated near me in the 100 Level. What the hell is the matter with the Yankees? They have 8 million security guards patrolling the seats and checking tickets at 5:45pm, but NO guards during the game to deal with people like this?

With the Yankees leading, 4-1, Mariano Rivera entered the game in the top of the 9th. Here’s what it looked like from my section:

This was his first appearance since injuring his knee last season, and it was GREAT to see him. (Even though I don’t care for the Yankees, I *love* Mariano.) I decided to play close attention to the radar gun readings, and when his first pitch clocked in at 88 miles per hour, I thought, “Ohhh, boy, this is going to be a rough season for him.” But that turned out to be the slowest of his 20 pitches. The rest of them were thrown between 89 and 91 miles per hour — not bad for a 43-year-old.

Mariano was not his usual unhittable self. He allowed two guys to reach base and surrendered a run, but escaped the jam and recorded his 609th career save.

As soon as the final out was recorded, I bolted for the subway and took the following photo before boarding the No. 4 train:

Now, in case you’re wondering about the whole sponsorship thing and my apparent “failure” to snag a game-used ball at Yankee Stadium . . . relax. I live in New York and plan to attend lots of Yankee games. If September rolls around and I still haven’t caught a game home run, then I’ll work my way closer to the dugouts and go for a 3rd-out ball, okay? The season is young.

BALLHAWKING STATS:

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

• 11 balls in 2 games this season = 5.5 balls per game.

• 874 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 599 consecutive games in New York with at least one ball

• 399 consecutive games with at least two balls

• 189 consecutive Yankee home games with at least one ball

• 60 consecutive games at the new Yankee Stadium with at least two balls

• 6,470 total balls

CHARITY STATS:

(I’m raising money again this season for Pitch In For Baseball, a non-profit charity that provides baseball equipment to underprivileged kids all over the world. Click here to learn more.)

• 19 donors

• $1.13 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $6.78 raised at this game

• $12.43 raised this season

• $21,418.43 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

Finally, three of the four balls that I kept have invisible ink stamps, and the other one seems to have invisible ink all over it. (That’s the one that Mike Harkey gave me.) Here’s a side-by-side comparison of them in regular light versus black light:

If I had to summarize my first game of the 2013 season in one word, it would be: “COLD!!” And if I had to summarize how I felt all day with one photograph, it would be this:

I was wearing long underwear, two shirts, a hoodie, and my heaviest winter jacket, yet certain parts of my body were frozen. Meanwhile, my friend Ben Weil was bundled up with more cheerful clothing:

No, that’s not a Dwight Gooden jersey in the photo above. It’s a Paul LoDuca jersey — and of course you noticed the Cookie Monster hat, right?

Ben had brought a (cheap) baseball so we could play catch and break in our new gloves. (You might remember my glove from this entry I posted in December.) After a few minutes, our friend Greg Barasch showed up and joined us. Here’s a photo of Greg that shows the area where we were throwing:

Before the gates opened, I saw a few more familiar faces and rounded everyone up for a group photo. Take a look and then I’ll identify everyone:

1) Chris Hernandez
2) Vin Delia
3) Ben Cole
4) Eli
5) Ben Weil
6) Greg Barasch
7) me

When the gates finally opened at 5:10pm, I bolted toward the left field seats, and when I got there, I snagged two baseballs within ten seconds. One of the Mets players — I assumed it was a pitcher, but wasn’t sure who — retrieved a ball near the warning track and threw it to me. I hadn’t even asked for it. He just kinda looked up at me since I was the only person there, and when I flapped my glove, he chucked it in my direction. Almost immediately after that, an employee down below on the Party Deck (who recognized me from last season) flipped up a home run ball that had landed there. Not a bad way to start the season.

Not surprisingly (because it was the Mets and because it was freezing and because the wind was blowing in hard from left field), there wasn’t much action after that, so I quickly took a few photos. Here’s one that shows my new glove with the first (official MLB) ball I caught with it:

This was my view from left field:

In the photo above, do you see the two players standing next to each other? Well, the guy who’d thrown me the ball was on the right. I *really* wanted to figure out who it was, so when he turned around for a moment to look at the jumbotron, I got a shot of his face:

Later that night, I tweeted the photo and asked for help and got a bunch of responses from people who confidently declared it was Jeremy Hefner. So there.

Now, as I mentioned in my last entry, I’m being sponsored this season and sent to all 30 major league stadiums by BIGS Sunflower Seeds. My main contact there is a guy named Neal, who plans to hit up a bunch of games with me and document the action, but since he couldn’t be here at Citi Field, I did some extra documenting for him. Greg was hanging out nearby, so I handed him my iPhone and got him to take a photo of me with my first two baseballs. Then I emailed it to Neal (who’s based in Colorado), and within a matter of minutes, he had posted it and written a short blog entry about me at BIGSBaseballAdventure.com. Here’s the direct link to that entry. Pretty cool stuff.

Left field was dead, so I headed over to right-center:

Don’t be fooled by the sunlight in the previous photo. Have you seen the movie “The Day After Tomorrow“? That’s how cold it felt.

Citi Field looked the same as last year . . .

. . . which is to say awful. Seriously, though, I’d been wondering if there’d been any changes to the bullpens or outfield walls, so that’s part of the reason why I’d gone to right field. While I was there, I noticed an unreachable ball in a gutter . . .

. . . as well as an Opening Day commemorative ball directly below me:

In case you’re confused by the previous photo . . . I was looking down over the side railing at a walkway next to the outer edge of the bullpen. That ball was sitting on a thigh-high ledge outside one of the windows of a small, enclosed area where the pitchers and coaches sometimes hang out. In the photo above, you can’t see the Opening Day logo, but that’s because the ball had been moved. I don’t know how it got there, but I did see several employees pick it up and inspect it and put it back down. At one point, the logo was facing up, and AARRGHH!!! I wanted to jump down there and snatch it. There was no chance for me to use my glove trick because (a) I haven’t even set it up yet on my new glove and (b) there was security all over the place. I got scolded for merely leaning over the railing and asking for the ball, so can you imagine what would’ve happened if I’d dangled my glove down there? Eventually, an EMS worker took the ball, and when I asked him for it, he claimed he was going to put inside the enclosed area. Yeah right.

Ten minutes after the Padres starting hitting, I got my third ball of the day, and it was a total fluke. One of the pitchers (not sure who, but it was probably Eric Stults or Joe Thatcher) threw a ball to an adult fan, who was standing 20 feet to my left in the front row. The ball sailed about five feet over his head and landed in the empty third row. This other fan must’ve gotten temporarily blinded by the sun because he didn’t even react. He didn’t reach for the ball or attempt to scamper after it — nothing. It was bizarre. He was so close to it when it landed that *I* didn’t bother running after it. All he had to do was climb back over two rows and pick it up, but he just kinda shrugged and started wandering off, so I hurried over and grabbed it.

Moments later, an oddly-dressed man showed up and stood right in front of me:

To call him “annoying” would be an insult to annoying people. This dude was perhaps THE most annoying fan I’ve ever encountered, and that’s saying something. In the thickest New York accent you can possibly imagine, he immediately starting yelling the following at the Padres: “HEY!! YO!! BALL-BALL-BALL-BALL-BALL-BALL-BALL!!!!!!!”

“Yeah, that’s not gonna work,” I said, but the guy either didn’t hear me or didn’t care — and he kept shouting it over and over and over. And over. And over.

After a while, whenever a player fielded a ball within 100 feet of us, he started shouting, “RIGHT HEEE-YUH!!! YA GOTTA SPREAD ‘EM AROUND!!!!!!!”

It was like a sick joke, and if I hadn’t been concerned about this guy ruining *my* chances to get another ball, I might’ve actually been amused.

“Yeah,” I said, “that’s not gonna work either.”

Five minutes later, when I was seriously about to lose my mind, a left-handed batter was hitting ball after ball to left field.

“WHY UH ALL DEEZ GUYS HITTIN’ BAWLZ T’DA OPPISSIT FIELD?!?!” said the guy to no one in particular.

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I walked down to the front row and asked, “Is that a serious question?”

“YEAH, ITSA NOYING. DEY GOTTA HIT SUM HOME RUNZ OUT HEEE-YUH!!!”

I responded by giving him a semi-lenghty explanation about how baseball (and life) works, at which point he kinda grunted and then headed up the steps. (Seriously, WTF?) A few minutes later, I got Padres bullpen catcher Justin Hatcher to throw me my fourth ball of the day, which you can see here:

I was behind the dugout when the Padres finished hitting . . .

. . . but didn’t get anything there. I did, however, run into a guy that I’ve gotten to know a little bit over the years. His name is Adam, and he’s standing on the right in the following photo. His father, Alan, is on he left:

I stayed behind the 3rd-base dugout for most of the game — for the following reasons:

1) It’s MUCH colder in left field because of wind currents and poor stadium design.
2) Ben was sitting near the dugout, and I felt like hanging with him.
3) I wanted to have a good view of the game.
4) I wanted to snag a game-used ball; for every stadium this season at which I get one, BIGS Sunflower Seeds will donate $500 to Pitch In For Baseball, a non-profit charity that provides baseball and softball equipment to underprivileged kids all over the world.

It didn’t take long. Collin Cowgill led off the bottom of the 1st with a grounder to first baseman Yonder Alonso. Clayton Richard, the Padres’ starter, covered first base on the play, and after the out was recorded, the ball was tossed out of play. I was only half-paying attention at that point and barely noticed it rolling toward the dugout, so I jumped up and hurried down the steps. Padres first base coach Dave Roberts retrieved it, and since I was the only person asking for it (and wearing Heath Bell’s old cap), he flipped it to me. SUCCESS!! Here I am with the ball:

Every time Jedd Gyorko came to bat, I headed to this general vicinity:

Why? Because he’s a rookie, and he’s right-handed, and he has a grand total of ZERO major league home runs. I stayed out there for a few other righties (Carlos Quentin, Collin Cowgill, and David Wright), but nothing came close; Mets starter Matt Harvey was dominant, and although the Mets somehow managed to hit three home runs, they all went to right field.

At one point, I hung out in the 2nd row behind the Padres’ dugout. This was my view:

For whatever reason, there weren’t as many security guards as there normally are, and everything seemed more laid-back. I have to say that it was quite nice.

Ben’s girlfriend Jen showed up halfway through the game. (She’s awesome.) Here she is holding a 3rd-out ball that SHE snagged (after Ben missed it):

Ben felt like an idiot, but hey, an inning or two later, I did too after moving a bit too slowly and reaching a bit too hesitantly for a foul ball that had ricocheted toward me from the back of the section. We all do dumb stuff when chasing baseballs. It’s inevitable.

Late in the game, I gave one of my baseballs to a kid who’d been trying all night to get one. Eventually he *did* get one on his own and offered to return the ball that I’d given him. I told him he could keep it and take it out to the park and play with it or whatever. I suggested that some day he give a baseball to a kid at a game. He seemed to like that idea.

After the final out of the Mets’ 8-4 victory, I gave another ball to a different kid, whose family/friends were very appreciative. We all ended up chatting for a bit and walking outside together, and eventually I took a photo of them:

The kid’s name is Jaden. I suspect he’ll be hanging onto that ball for a while.

BALLHAWKING STATS:

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

• 5 balls in 1 game this season = 5 balls per game.

• 873 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 598 consecutive games in New York with at least one ball

• 398 consecutive games with at least two balls

• 6,464 total balls

CHARITY STATS:

(In addition to the money that BIGS Sunflower Seeds will be donating to Pitch In For Baseball, I’m doing my own fundraiser again this season. Click here to learn more.)

• 16 donors

• $0.92 pledged per ball (if you add up all the pledges)

• $4.60 raised at this game

• $4.60 raised this season

• $21,410.60 raised since I started my fundraiser in 2009

Finally, two of the three baseballs that I kept have invisible ink stamps. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the first one in regular light versus black light . . .

. . . and here’s the other: