6/3/11 Braves at Mets: Citi Field
Ah summer. Having finished my last exam the day before, (barely) I was ready to get my summer started and go to some baseball. Again I needed a respite from the matters at hand. Pardon the long time to get it up I didn’t write it the day after and mis-uploaded the pictures, went on the road and never wrote the entry.
Here goes. I entered the stadium and all the hawks were in attendance:
| zackhample | 7 |
| piazza | 4 |
| gbarasch | 3 |
| fischerm | 3 |
| howie | 2 |
| rossfink | 1 |
| garyk | 1 |
| jona | 0 |
| Box Score | |
That’s right. A total of eight mygameballs.com members. Seeing this at the gate, I went towards the right field line because I figured it wasn’t worth it to race them to left. I stopped in foul territory and started searching for Easter eggs. As I was doing this, a ball rolled to around where I was (pardon also the pictures in vivid color I did have a cracked screen and couldn’t tell the pictures were shaded blue) :
Jason Isringhausen picked the ball up and after my request threw it to me. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even know he was on the Mets. Until he turned around (so I saw the name on his back) I thought it was Lucas Duda. Either way he threw me a ball and I went over to left field promptly afterwards.
It was a slow bp considering I was sharing the left field seats with maybe a hundred people, half a dozen being very skilled. My only ball in left field was a ball that took this path:
Yes a random Met hit a ball into the second deck. I knew that it would be tough to get another ball in left field with all the competition. So I started running as soon as I judged it was going to go into the second deck because I knew it was early enough in batting practice that nobody would probably be up there. I was right. It took me about five minutes to find the ball once up there but it was worth the very long journey (because of the steep incline of the second deck, you have to climb up about fifty feet to get thirty feet over your friends in the first deck). My mistake was in running back up quickly just as I got down to the field level, because I thought another ball had gone up there. In all reality, the ball had gone up there but had I waited two seconds longer I would have seen that the ball ricocheted back onto the field. That cost me serious time.
To escape the crowd and make up for lost time, I moved over to center field in hopes of a ball getting drilled, rolling to the wall, and the player tossing it to me. How do you think it went?:
That player from which the arrow is pointing from is Bobby Parnell. When the ball rolled to the wall he jogged over and picked it up (solid line). I then called for it and he tossed it to me (dotted line).
That was it for the bp. Nothing from the Braves. Had I written this the day after I could have gone into more detail of how but I write this a month after the fact. So…
I sat in left field for the game:
Why? I thought there were two lefties on the mound. Want to see the line-ups:
That’s right, I did confuse Derek Lowe for a lefty. I was just thinking about how the ball moves out of the pitchers hands. Since Lowe is a sinker baller, and his ball moves away from lefties I thought that he himself was a lefty. I mean I knew that he was a righty but when glancing at the probable pitchers I thought he was a lefty. This was a big mistake since the line-ups (righty vs lefty) of the two New York teams (Yankees and Mets) are so predicated on the opposing pitchers, due to all the switch hitters in their line-ups, any Home Run i would catch would most likely be a Braves Home Run. More specifically: Chipper Jones or Dan Uggla.
Nothing came even close to me. The game itself was interesting as The Mets were up 3-1 until the eighth inning. Upon which they went onto surrender 5 runs in the next two innings and lose 6-3. I had been talking to a family the whole game and since the son had a glove, I saw if he had gotten a ball already and when he said he had not I gave him one of mine Keep in mind that I did have a cracked screen so I couldn’t see how badly this picture turned out:
Oh, and for those thinking that I could even have the slightest idea of how my pictures turned out, this is how cracked the screen is:
That is with the power on.
Update: I actually stumbled upon in my notes that I gave away the Parnell ball right after I caught it while I gave the ball away from the upper deck to the kid I mentioned before.
STATS:
- 3 balls at this game (one pictured because I gave two away)
- 25 balls in 11 games= 2.27 balls per game
- 36 games straight with at least 1 ball
- 22 straight at Citi Field
- 3 balls*28,301 fans= 84,903 competition factor
- Time at game (I don’t really remember but let’s estimate it) 4:40- 10:10= 5 hours 30 minutes
Observing Baseball 