4/8/12 Twins at Orioles: Camden Yards

April 9, 2012

Guess how I spent Easter. I had my bonnet:

I had my peeps:

and of course spent it at my cathedral:

Now I was only here for my one, maybe two balls from the pitchers warming up since there would be no bp, but wait what’s this?:

Apparently, as explained to me by Matt Hersl, early in the season, teams actually do hit a day game after a night game, or the Orioles anyway.

My first ball came when a ball hit down in the row where there is a gap in the railing:

Avi Miller could have raced me for the ball, but as he said, he’s not up for knocking each other down. Another ball landed there a little while after and I “passed on” Avi’s act of kindness and let another fan get the ball even though it had bounced closer to me after hitting the seats.

My second ball, I believe, came from me running down the row that disappears into the upper-right corner of this next picture:

I caught the ball, but I stumbled, because I chipped a cup holder and would have fallen on my face had I not grabbed a handrail on my way down.

My third ball, I believe (I know I caught my 2nd and 3rd balls this way, but I don’t know in which order) came from me running across and catching a ball right in front of Matt Hersl. I was right about where Matt is in this picture when I caught the ball:

(Matt is the one in the gray shirt while Avi is the one in orange)

I then moved over to the flag court for Joe Mauer’s hitting group and sadly the only thing of note that happened was a vendor on Eutaw Street got nailed by a Joe Mauer HR. I don’t want to share the pictures of him, but here they are cleaning his blood off the ground:

I then went into the CF seats where I got my 4th ball off a ground-rule double that rattled in the seats a bit in the rightmost section.

Then came an interesting scenario in that a person was trying to glove trick a ball, who was not a Ballhawk I recognized, and had no idea what he was doing. Can you identify why?:

That’s right. He was doing the glove trick without a pen and was wondering why it wasn’t working. So I gave him my pen and as a result he handed me the ball. I then looked around for a person to give the ball to. After about five minutes, I found this little girl (she’s partially hidden by her mother):

Normally, I can’t stand people who wear a team’s gear that isn’t playing in the game, because it’s a big “FU” to the teams playing, but an exception was clearly in order for this fan decked out in pink Nationals gear.

That was it for bp. Once again I was out in the flag court and thought the baseball gods had set me up with the perfect scenario to catch my first game HR with 12 of the 18 hitters hitting from the Left side of the plate, but sadly they were only baiting me and got me, hook, line, and sinker. You see there was a pretty good wind blowing in from RF, so even if a player managed to get the angle of his hit high enough, which is the challenge with getting a RF HR, it would be knocked down by the wind. There were two balls that looked good directly off the bat, but absolutely died, one of which still managed to get Justin Morneau a hit.

To top it off, the Twins nearly escaped a no-hitter with the previously mentioned Morneau hit being the first hit, but still lost the game, completing a less-than-desired start to the season for my Twins. I went to the umpire tunnel to try and get a ball from Bill Welke (I think his name is “Bill”, but a voice in my head is telling me Tim (I only memorize umpire’s last names). Avi told me he only gave away one ball, so I guess I’m not as embittered, not that I was before. This is, of course, if he only had one ball to give away, but I think he did, because I called him out by last name and was wearing this hat:

After the game, I had two hours before my bus was scheduled to leave so I wandered all the places I had been with my dad on our trip to Camden Yards in 2008. So like the Harbor Area, our hotel, and things like that. I am now writing this from said bus and extremely regretful of that wandering since everything is tired. Throughout the whole day I was lugging around this backpack:

As you can infer from its size, it is doubling as my suitcase back to New York.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get some sleep as I have to get up at 3:30 AM tomorrow to go to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina…right after I post the stats.

STATS:
• 4 Balls at this game (3 pictured, because I gave one that I counted away)

Numbers 228-231 for my career:

• 9 Balls this season in 2 games= 4.5 Balls Per Game
• 11 straight games with at least 1 ball
• 2 straight games with at least 4 balls
• 4 balls*14,738 fans= 58,952 competition factor
• Time at Game 10:58- 4:07= 5 hours 11 minutes

Written by Mateo Fischer Posted in Ballhawking, Camden Yards Tagged with Baltimore Orioles, Camden Yards, Easter, Minnesota Twins, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Orioles, twins