4/12/13 Mets at Twins: Target Field

April 17, 2013

After the Twins decided to take a week-long break from the winter-like conditions of Minnesota. And look who was at the gates when I got there:

With his St. Cloud State hockey jersey for a day of mourning since the Huskies had lost in the Frozen Four the previous day.

There was also something else going on at Gate 34 when I got there:

That would be the 96.3 K-Twin Booth with the Rider, Lindsay & Coomer airing when I got there. Then, while in a conversation involving Robin Ventura, A-Rod, and Lou Gherig, something awesome happened. I saw one of the hosts wave at me. Ron Coomer had left at that point, but you see, the “Lindsay” part of the show would be Lindsay Guentzel, who if you recall, I met the night I snagged my one–and to this point only–home run ball, when she gave me her baseball card. Well, she had spotted me from the booth; presumably when Tony yelled out something that I have forgotten and Lindsay acknowledged him on-air.

Anyway, the “other” host who was in the booth, Mark Rider, signaled for me to enter the booth from the door on the other side, and, long story short: I got a min-interview with them on K-Twin in the six minutes before the gates opened. I know I sounded like a complete idiot for parts of it, because I was in-part still in shock from the spontaneity  of it all, but I managed to get enough interesting stuff out for maybe someone to relate to what are some of the things that I like about ballhawking. And at the end of the interview, I thanked the two hosts for what was an amazing experience and got a picture with Mark Rider, courtesy of Lindsay:

I then got in pretty quickly after that despite mine being the only gate that the operators of happened to forget how to open. Another interesting aspect of this game that will make it stand out in my mind for a very long time is that it had been snowing the two days prior and it was supposed to snow during batting practice and the game itself. As a result, I got treated to a show one usually doesn’t see at the gates:

Yep. That would be a worker on a ladder clearing the snow from atop the awning above the turnstiles.

Once I got in, I hesitated a little in the right-center field section of seating before going out to the left field bleachers. There I managed to quickly catch a ball on the fly of an unidentified Twins player:

I misjudged it at first, though. I ran to get in line with the ball, but it wasn’t until the ball was almost on me that I realized it wasn’t going to carry to me due to the sub-40 degree temperature of the game. So I leaned over a row of bleachers and caught the ball.
Oh, and just in case you look at the field and don’t believe that it had been snowing the previous two days, that’s because the field is heated and workers cleared the stands of snow. Here, for example, is the batter’s eye:

That’s what the entire field would look like if it weren’t heated.

In left field, I had run into a fellow ballhawk who also happens to attend the University of Minnesota, Brandon Nedoma, who I had met in the final series of the 2012 season, so I decided it would be better for both of us if I headed to right field to try to get a ball. I did:

It came in the form of a toss-up from Ryan Pressly, which, fun fact, was the first ball recorded from him ever on mygameballs.com. That’s cool.

I then headed over to foul territory in case any Twins righty pulled a grounder down the line:

But the Twins ended their hitting soon after I got there. With my now two baseballs for the day, I headed over further into foul ground where the Mets were stretching:

It is at this point that I would like you to save your spot in the entry and go back up to examine the title. You see how it begins 4/12/13, right? That means this game was played on the twelfth day of April. Now look at some of the darker-colored spots in that last picture. Those white spots aren’t my phone’s camera acting up; they are snow flakes. It was actually snowing even though we were almost half-way through April! Since it was one of my goals to see a batting practice/game in the snow while I was here at Minnesota, I loved it, but that doesn’t spot me from realizing how ridiculous that actually is.

The result of me going over there was I got Daniel Murphy to toss me my third ball of the game:

I actually didn’t even recognize him at the time. I was hoping the ball would end up with his throwing partner, Ruben Tejada, but he ended up with the ball, so I in my Mets ski hat flashed my glove and he threw me the ball from about 80 feet out.

I then headed over to the pitchers warming up further down the line. Now I didn’t get anything, so normally I wouldn’t talk about it, but I had to give you some context for the following picture:

Ho-ly snow. It may not look like much, but keep in min that the shutter speeds on iPhones are very fast to avoid blurring. Let give you an idea of how hard the snow was falling. I couldn’t identify the ball while it was in the air a couple times when it traveled between Brandon Lyon and LaTroy Hawkins. Yeah. It was that bad.

I then headed over to right field and got my fourth ball of the day from Tom Goodwin:

Giving a new definition to the term “snowball”. But that’s not all, take a look at the view from the standing room:

“Cray” is but one of many adjectives that could be used to describe the weather at the moment.

I then moved over to the seats in right-center field. It should be noted that although I’m in these seats a bunch, they are worst of the three outfield sections; it’s just that the other two are usually far more crowded and/or I’m trying to get a ball specifically from the person in right-center field. While I was there, I asked Marlon Byrd for a ball. He then tossed it against the wall below me twice (jokingly) before tossing the ball up to me:

And that was it for batting practice. It was incredibly frustrating but not at the same time. How you ask? It was frustrating because I know that I probably could have set my Target Field record for balls in a game had it not been for the cold, because NOTHING was flying out into the stands. The cold air was knocking everything down before it got there. I mean a better hitting team could have hit a few out, but there wasn’t really anyone hitting baseballs into the stands besides David Wright. Ike Davis was hitting the out, but they were mostly landing in the batter’s eye section.

As soon as batting practice was done, I made a beeline for one of the Twins’ best promotions to date. You see, because of the snow, the Twins tried to salvage as many of the paid attendance as possible by providing free coffee and hot chocolate throughout the game. (Sorry for the blurry picture. My fingers were at this point already half-way frozen, so holding the phone steady was tough):

Talk about heaven on earth. By the end of the night, I would have drunk close to, if not over ten cups of hot chocolate. Here is the picture of my first with the diamond in the background:

I would stand in the standing room most of the game in the slight chance that someone launched a ball out there despite the cold (they didn’t) with occasional trips around the concourse of the stadium to keep somewhat warm. And I wasn’t the only one who thought low-30s was cold for a baseball game. Here is a view of the seats in the ninth inning:

To be fair to the fans, though, this wasn’t a game to stick around for. A bunch more people gave it a try to begin the game but either got cold or discouraged when the Twins were losing 10-2 by the second inning. I don’t blame them. But I also thank them for leaving, because it made me getting this ball from home plate umpire, Mike Everitt that much easier since I was the only one by the tunnel when he left the field:

It was right after this that I saw Tony appear in the Champions Club side of the dugout. (He had been there the whole game, but this was the first time I had seen him since I came down to the dugout. And again, sorry for the blurriness, but my hand was shaking and my fingers frozen in a curled position, so I wasn’t in ideal shape to take a picture.):

Besides it being nice to see him again, he gets the assist on my next baseball because just as I was set to leave, I asked Tony if there was anyone still in the dugout, and he told me that the dugout attendant, or whatever his official title is, was still in there. Moments later, the attendant, whose name I believe is Mario, emerged with about five baseballs. The first of which went to Tony. The next one Mario threw tome to give to the kid next to me. Cheap I know, but since I had the ball first before giving it away, it was my seventh ball of the day. Mario almost threw me the last ball he had, but there was a little girl who had still not gotten one, so he apologized to me before tossing it to her. Disappointing that I couldn’t tie my Target Field record, but I can’t argue with that logic.

After that, I said goodbye to Tony and a friend with whom I have several classes with and had met me at the dugout, and then I left. But on my way out, I made sure to take a picture of the microphone that had broadcast me all over Twins Territory just a few long hours earlier. (Normally they would have been short hours, but the cold took its toll.):

Good times. And even better:

<blockquote data-conversation=”none” data-cards=”hidden”>

@observebaseball come up with more stories and we will have you on again! It was awesome! twitpic.com/cj4vy7

— Lindsay Guentzel (@LindsayGuentzel) April 13, 2013
// <![CDATA[
async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″>
// ]]>

STATS:

• 7 Balls at this game (5 pictured because I gave 2 away)

Numbers 452-458 for my life:

• 12 Baseballs in 3 Games= 4.00 Balls Per Game
• 7 Balls x 23,735 Fans= 166,145 Competition Factor
• 65 straight Games with at least 1 Ball
• 15 straight Games with at least 2 Balls
• 2 straight Games with at least 3 Balls
• 67 Balls in 17 Games at Target Field= 3.94 Balls Per Game
• 16 straight Games with at least 1-2 Balls at Target Field
• 2 straight Games with at least 3 Balls at Target Field
• Time Spent On Game 3:00-11:36= 8 Hours 36 Minutes

Written by Mateo Fischer Posted in Ballhawking, Target Field Tagged with 96.3 K-Twin, baseball, baseball card, baseball in the snow, batting practice, Daniel Murphy, frozen four, gates, hockey jersey, hosts, huskies, interesting stuff, Lindsay & Coomer, Lindsay Guentzel, long break, lou gherig, Mark Rider, Marlon Byrd, Mets, Mike Everitt, Minnesota Twins, New York Mets, outdoors, Rider, robin ventura, ron coomer, Ryan Pressly, six minutes, snow, spontaneity, sports, st cloud state, st cloud state hockey, Tom Goodwin, Tony Voda, twins