Tagged: Nationals Park

August 17, 2013

8/7/13 Braves at Nationals: Nationals Park

With how my schedule was looking for the rest of the year, this was almost definitely looking like it would be my last game at Nationals Park in 2013. And so I was glad to start my day by catching a Nationals BP homer on the fly that also turned out to be a 2010 World Series commemorative baseball:

I don’t know who hit it, but I ran through the middle row of the Red Seat and leaned over seats to catch the ball. It was a fun experience. I then soon after headed over to right field, where I got yet another 2010 World Series commemorative. This one was tossed to me by some Nationals trainer who has been with the team for several years and has tossed me a couple baseballs, but I still don’t know exactly what he does. It seems like the Nationals have a couple guys like that where you don’t know exactly what they do. Anyway, he tossed me another golden ball, so I like him:

I don’t have pictures of my next two baseballs because they were both in the middle of a stretch of action in the Red Seats, and I’m a forgetful idiot who apparently can’t take pictures when things calm down, but here’s how I got both of them:

The first ball was a Dan Uggla home run that he tomahawked (See what I did there?) into the Red Seats. The route to the ball from where I was was clogged up with people, so the best I could do was get behind where the ball was going to land. It then evaded a bunch of gloves, hit off a seat, and bounced up into the air, where I snatched it up. I gave this away to a kid at the front of the section. The second ball came when I went to the corner spot in the Red Seats closest to center field. When Jose Costanza went into center field to field a ball that had gone there, I called out to him by name, and he then turned to me and threw the ball that he had just gotten. It was headed right for me, but the guy standing next to me, who had seen me get a few baseballs reached in front of me and caught the baseball. But you know what? I’m not even mad–nor was I in the moment–because I just moved away from this guy on the next ball Costanza fielded and got him to toss me that one. I then made a point of giving that ball away to the kid who was standing right next to the guy who had reached in front of me.

And then after that, I got a bonus, because Rick Gold came into the section. I asked him if he had snagged any of the Target Field commemorative baseballs, because I desperately wanted to trade someone one of my extra World Series 2010 balls for an extra Target Field ball. But somehow, I didn’t even end up giving him anything, and instead, he gave me this for nothing:

Well not really nothing, but really a commemorative to be named later. So if I ever get two or more of a commemorative Rick doesn’t have, I will give him that because he gave me this one. That was very nice of him, and it made me very happy. It almost even made up for the fact that I hadn’t gotten a Target Field ball. (And just to clear things up, I *much* prefer to snag baseballs on my own, but I’m also not above trading commemoratives, because I also don’t go after commemoratives with the vigor that most ballhawks do. I do very much like to get them, but I’ve never asked a player to specifically toss me a commemorative baseball and have never planned a trip because of a commemorative ball. Basically, if a team in a game that I’m going to has a commemorative ball–or several in the case of the Nationals–it’s a bonus to whatever I snag that day.)

The Costanza toss-up would be my last baseball of BP. So afterwards, I went to the Braves bullpen, since there were still a couple baseballs:

And no surprise, the Nationals groundskeepers cleared out the baseballs when they entered the bullpen. Actually, knowing the Nationals groundskeepers (who are some of, if not THE, worst groundskeeper in terms of tossing up baseballs and leaving them on the field for players to toss them up), it was a bigger surprise that they only collected two of the three baseballs and left the ball I’ve labeled “2” for the Braves relievers.

The first person who made his way to the bullpen was Brian McCann. I thought I had a pretty good chance of getting him to toss me a ball, but my only worry was someone was going to beat me to it, because McCann would be pretty easy to recognize and ask by name. I didn’t have to worry about it, though, because he stopped short of the bullpen to do his stretches in the outfield. Then came Eddie Perez. I was particularly worried about him, because I had noticed his two daughters had been sitting on top of the Braves bullpen, so I figured the ball would go to them if he picked it up. Thankfully, he stopped to talk with McCann for ages. Then came Alan Butts. He was perfect because even though I wasn’t trying to get a ball from him then, I was the only one who recognized him the previous day and said hi to him. So when he walked past me to get into the bullpen, I asked him if he could toss me that ball. To that he responded, “In a second.” So after getting a variety of his “bullpen catcher” things ready, he went over and tossed me the ball:

As for the game, I had thought of sitting by the dugout for the longest time, but then I realized that despite Nationals Park being the stadium I’ve spent the most games at, I still don’t have a game home run there, so I sat in left field:

No home runs came out there, but at the end of the game, I made my way to the far end of the Braves bullpen and got Eddie Perez to toss me a ball (since he had been talking to McCann and hadn’t seen me get the ball from Butts):

I then headed over to say goodbye to an usher I’ve talked to throughout this year, and as my parting gift, I gave him the ball I had just gotten from Perez:

His name is Jan Pastor, and he’s a really nice usher who works the aisle right next to the MASN booth in the center field plaza. I believe it is section 102-103, but I may be wrong. Anyway, if you’re ever at Nationals Park when I’m not there, say hi to him for me.

I then headed off to take the train, where I had an experience on the Metro that I’ve never had post-Nationals game. It’s usually as packed as it can be with all of the people leaving the Nationals game, but somehow for a full stop after we left Navy Yard-Ballpark, the stop nearest Nationals Park, I was the only one in my subway car:

I mean I’ve been on a ton of empty subway cars before, but they’ve all been at the ends of lines when there aren’t really many people at the stop, and this was at a major stop during one of its more congested hours. Anyway; weird.

STATS:

6 balls at this game (4 pictured because I gave 3 away, but then added the one Rick gave me to the picture)

Numbers 622-627 for my “lifetime”:

181 Balls in 43 Games= 4.21 Balls Per Game
6 Balls x 29,114 Fans=174,684 Competition Factor
105 straight Games with at least 1 Ball
10 straight Games with 2 Balls
7 straight Games with 3 Balls
6 straight Games with 4 Balls
4 straight Games with 5 Balls
2 straight Games with 6 Balls
192 Balls in 42 Games at Nationals Park= 4.57 Balls Per Game
34 straight Games with at least 1 Ball at Nationals Park
5 straight Games with at least 2 Balls at Nationals Park
2 straight Games with at least 3-6 Balls at Nationals Park
Time Spent On Game 3:27-11:28= 8 Hours 1 Minute

August 16, 2013

8/6/13 Braves at Nationals: Nationals Park

So back from Philadelphia and the madness of BallhawkFest, I took a couple days to rest and write. But after that, it was time to go to the second game of the Braves-Nationals series. First, there was a chance of rain, so I went atop the Nationals parking garage to check if the cages were up:

Yay, batting practice! I then headed back down to the center field where I met up with two ballhawks I regret not writing more about the past two seasons:

That would be Dave Butler and Art (whose last name I don’t know). They are probably the two most “regular” ballhawks at Nationals. Dave pretty much exclusively goes after hit baseballs while Art almost exclusively goes after Nationals toss-ups. They are both very friendly guys, and if you ever see them at Nationals Park, tell them Mateo says hello. Dave can be pretty easily identified by the fact that he always has his Giants hat on, and Art can 95% of the time be found with his sunglasses, Bluetooth, and blue Nationals hat on in the corner spot by the visitor’s bullpen right as the gates open.
Once we got in, I headed for straight-away left, since both Dave and Rick Gold were battling it out in the Red Seats for pitchers BP.
Ironically, my first ball of the day came in the Red Seats when the two of them left for the Nationals’ second group of hitters. Ross Ohlendorf fielded a ball at the wall, and looked up to toss the ball to someone. And when I raised my glove, he flipped me the ball:

And then literally *right* after that, I saw a person coming down the grass hill in center field to clear out all of the baseballs that were sitting there. It was so soon after the first ball that I actually had it in my non-glove hand and had to hide it behind my back to get the man to toss me the ball that was on the hill. and I guess I’m more deceptive than I thought, because:

Do you kind of see the logo of the ball? It was a World Series 2010 commemorative ball. I had heard the Nationals were using this and several other types of commemoratives, but this was the first time I had seen any of them in 2013. So since I had snagged two baseballs within a span of ten seconds, I gave the non-commemorative Ohlendorf ball to a kid at the corner of the section.

After that, a Nationals righty smashed a ball that bounced up to the top of the restaurant, where an employee picked the ball up. At that point everyone else pursuing the ball gave up and went back to the bottom of the section. I didn’t understand, though, since it was employee that supposedly had to give the ball away. So I stuck around, stuck up my glove, and got this:

And you see right; that is a Fenway Park 100th year commemorative baseball. It was amazing, but this would sadly be my last commemorative ball of the day.

I then headed over to right field for the third group of Nationals hitters. There I got Taylor Jordan to toss me a ball by being the only one to call him by name:

I then got my fifth ball of the day when the Braves started hitting. I got Craig Kimbrel to toss me a baseball over the Braves bullpen:

And then it was time to have a cup trick party. Now you’re not exactly supposed to, but you can sometimes get away with using a ball retriever in the gap right below the Red Seats. So this being my first time with a reliable retriever in Nationals Park with me having Tim Anderson‘s cup trick in my bag of tricks, I took advantage of it.

I first saw one ball go into the gap on a hit ball, so I got the cup trick out and pulled the ball out from here in the gap:

I then gave it away to a kid whose glove the ball had bounced off of. I then got a second ball from the gap soon after that and gave it to a person right next to me on top of where I snagged the ball in the gap. And then I asked him if he could hold the ball out for a picture:

And by then, people realized what I had, and when a ball landed in the gap, people called me over to retrieve the ball for them. I walked over, but as I did, Justin Upton launched a ball right into the row I was walking in, so I ran through the row and caught the ball through several glove screens:

That was my eighth ball. And then when I retrieved the ball and gave it away to the family who dropped the ball, I had my ninth ball of the day:

If you can see the bars below the ball in the picture, the ball was trapped under one of those, so I had to knock it sideways out from under there to retrieve the ball. At this point I was getting nervous because I had now gotten 3 balls via cup trick. So when a guy told me there was another ball in the gap, I just wanted to get my cup trick out quickly, get the ball, and not get seen. But as soon as I pulled the cup trick out of the gap, I sensed someone behind me. It was a security guard who told me he needed me to give him the trick. It was obviously not mine, so I asked if he had a string-cutting device. And when he said no, I tried untying the string, he eventually just gave up and told me that I’m there often enough that I should just not do it again. That was my tenth ball of the day, by the way.

My record for baseballs in a game was 11, so with 10 and there still being about 15 minutes left in batting practice, I thought I had a pretty good opportunity to break it. And this got even better when I picked up a ball that Luis Avilan had overthrown to a kid. I then gave the ball to the kid:

I then had a very good chance to break my record, but Avilan’s inaccuracy came back to bite me, and he overthrew me, so this ball would be my last of the day. No, the only thing I would snag from this point on was a piece of gum thrown to me by David Carpenter after I stayed by the bullpen to watch Julio Teheran ( whose name is properly pronounced “Teh-heh-rahn”) warm up:

I then sat in left field, because I thought it would be great if my record-breaking 12th ball would have come on a home run:

It didn’t.

STATS:

11 Balls at this Game (5 pictured because I gave 6 away)

Numbers 611-621 for my lifetime:

175 Balls in 42 Games= 4.17 Balls Per Game
11 Balls x 30,875 Fans=339,625 Competition Factor
104 straight Games with at least 1 Ball
9 straight Games with 2 Balls
6 straight Games with 3 Balls
5 straight Games with 4 Balls
3 straight Games with 5 balls
186 Balls in 41 Games at Nationals Park= 4.54 Balls Per Game
33 straight Games with at least 1 Ball at Nationals Park
4 straight Games with at least 2 Balls at Nationals Park
Time Spent On Game 3:21-11:03= 7 Hours 42 Minutes

August 7, 2013

7/27/13 Mets at Nationals: Nationals Park

I have been to as many Mets at Nationals games as probably 95% of the baseball-watching population. I have little to no doubt in my mind that it is the match-up I have seen more games than any other in baseball. That said, in terms of excitement, this was in at least the lower 50th percentile. That started with what was happening when I got to the gates:

I was utterly confused, because I had gotten there 3 hours early. So naturally I tried to scan my ticket and get in, but that’s when I learned that this was a season ticket holder event, and as a result of this, 1. There would be no batting practice, and 2. The gates were only opening 1.5 hours early for the game.

Instead of getting in line and waiting in the sun for 90 minutes, I sat down in the shade and charged my iPhone (because I’m starting to suspect that they are even equipped with a battery). In this time, I saw the line grow massive outside of the center field gate:

Now normally I would have freaked out and jumped in line after five people got int it. But instead, I got up from sitting five minutes before the gates were supposed to open and relied on human stupidity to get me to near the front of the line. And I was right!

When the stadium opens 2.5 hours early, the only gate that’s open is the center field gate, but then all gates open 1.5 hours before the game starts. While pretty much no one else bothered to check, I figured since all of the stadium staff was already in the stadium for the season ticket holder event and the gates were opening 1.5 hours early, this would be the case. As a result of me being one of the first in closer to home plate, I was the first person to get to the Nationals pitchers warming up down the right field line:

And because of this, I got a toss-up from a face I hadn’t seen in a while: Ryan Mattheus. It was nice to see him back from his rehab stint, because if I’m not mistaken, he has tossed me more baseballs than any other person ever. (Actually I now checked, and he is the leader.) Here he added onto his lead by tossing me my seventh baseball ever:

That would be it for snagging until the game itself. I would actually go on to give this baseball away to an usher I know in left field, as I sat out there for the majority of the game. Although, I must clear up something from two sentences ago: I actually snagged my second and final baseball in *between* the game and not during the game itself. The two teams played eight innings, but there was then a rain delay in some part (or right after) of the eighth inning. So what I did since I was down by the dugout at this point in the game, is I got a baseball from home plate umpire Lance Barksdale as he cleared the field for the rain delay. There was then an hour-long rain delay, and then the two teams played the ninth inning. The delay was actually insult to injury, because this was a game that was cruising along until the seventh inning, where it then decided to start taking forever with a bunch of base runners and pitching changes.

But anyway, like I said, this wasn’t a very exciting game. That’s all I have for you. Be sure as always to read the stats. Goodbye.

STATS:

2 Baseballs at this game (1 pictured because I gave the other away)

Numbers 587 and 588:

142 Balls in 36 Games= 3.94 Balls Per Game
2 Balls x 37,464 Fans=74,928 Competition Factor
98 straight Games with at least 1 Ball
3 straight games with 2-3 Balls
175 Balls in 40 Games at Nationals Park= 4.38 Balls Per Game
32 straight Games with at least 1 Ball at Nationals Park
3 straight Games with at least 2-3 Balls at Nationals Park
Time Spent On Game 10:58-8:13= 9 Hours 15 Minutes

August 5, 2013

7/23/13 Pirates at Nationals: Nationals Park

While I accidentally missed out on the first game of the series, I got to the gates of Nationals Park for the second game of their series with the Pirates, and look who was at the gate awaiting me:

Left to right, that would be:

1. Myself.

2. Erik Jabs– The current mygameballs.com season leader with 446 baseballs this, who has also snagged 2,602 baseballs in his lifetime.

3. Rick Gold– A ballhawk/ employee of MLB.com who is slightly behind Erik in both baseball snagging categories I mentioned in his description.

Suffice to say, I was way out of my league, as is the case when most ballhawks are in the same ballpark as I am. For the first fifteen minutes, though, I was holding my own. Actually, I’m pretty sure I snagged three baseballs before either of them had snagged a single baseball.

Like I usually do for pitcher’s BP, I went to straight-away left:

Up to that point, the only pitcher Rick and I had never gotten a ball from that had been up in the majors for any considerable amount of time was Jordan Zimmerman. So when he was up, I relaxed a bit. Sure enough, though, he launched the furthest-hit ball I’ve seen him hit. Naturally, I was taken back by how far the ball was traveling, so I ran back up the steps. However, although the ball was hit hard and high by Zimmerman’s standards, by the time I had run into a row, I realized the ball was falling short, so I wasn’t able to catch the ball on the fly. Instead I watched it drop in front of me and picked it up for my first of the day:

I mean yeah I got the ball, but that misread had me feeling just absolutely awful about how the rest of the day was going to go. The next baseball, though, would have me feeling even worse. After the pitcher’s BP, all of us ballhawks did a musical chairs of sorts with the sections we were inhabiting. Said game of musical chairs ended with me in the Red Seats. There, I saw a ball get hit into the section of field between the Red Seats and right field seats. When I saw a Nationals player going to retrieve it, I ran over to the corner spot of the section. I reacted to him walking over so quickly, in fact, that I neglected to look at if there was anything in my way in the row of seating I was running through. Normally seats in stadiums flip up automatically when someone’s not sitting in them. One of the seats in this row, though, was the exception to that rule. Someone had sat in the seat earlier and it was left down. So as I ran through the row, I was taken out by said seat. The Nationals player was still walking, though; so I immediately got up from a fall that I would have otherwise taken my time in getting up from and asked this player if he could toss me the ball:

He wasn’t wearing his jersey at the time, but with the help of Erik Jabs, we figured out it was Ian Krol, since the only other lefty pitcher on the Nationals roster, I believe at the time, was Fernando Abad.

Us ballhawks then did our game of musical chairs once more, which had me in right field. There I got my third and final ball of the day when Gio Gonzalez overthrew these people and I picked it up to give it to them:

The other two ballhawks then went on to snag a combined 14 baseballs to my none. My only contribution to anyone’s stats from this point on revolved around this:

See, while I used to have a glove trick, it started becoming more trouble than it was worth, so I disassembled, and am thus currently without a retrieval device that is my own. So when I saw a ball go into the gap, I sent out this tweet warning the two other ballhawks:

And then this one when another baseball went into the gap:

Neither of them read it, but Erik was the first one to come over, so I pointed both out to him, and he reeled them in with his glove trick as I just stood off to his side and blocked the view of his string from the usher at the top of the section.

There was then another baseball that got dropped or hit in there, so while Erik was in the seats in straight-away left, I waved him over and he fished the ball out of the gap. And that was it. Erik and I went to the bullpen after BP, where he got a grounds crew guy to toss him a ball, and we watched Gerrit Cole warm up. But after that, he left to spend time with his family in Annapolis, and I watched the game in left field as I read this:

I still put my glove on for righties, but I was scheduled to take my driving test three days from this game, so I figured it would be a good time to actually start studying since I hadn’t at all previous to that point. And as bland as it can be for some people, Nationals Park is still a pretty great place to watch a baseball game:

Then again, I think I would talk differently sitting in the 400 level every game.

STATS:

3 baseballs at this game (2 pictured because I gave 1 away)

Numbers 579-581 for my career:

135 Balls in 34 Games= 3.97 Balls Per Game
3 Balls x 32,976 Fans=98,928 Competition Factor
96 straight Games with at least 1 Ball
168 Balls in 38 Games at Nationals Park= 4.42 Balls Per Game
30 straight Games with at least 1 Ball at Nationals Park
Time Spent On Game 2:58-11:00= 7 Hours 2 Minutes

August 2, 2013

7/20/13 Dodgers at Nationals: Nationals Park

I was supposed to actually go to the game before this, but I got there late enough that the game was no longer worth it to me, so I sold my ticket to a scalper and went home. That game was because of me setting up two bank accounts and the meeting to do so running incredibly late, but this one was good ol’ Washington DC Metro. I left my apartment at 3:16, which for a 4:30 gate opening time is more than enough time, since the commute itself only takes about half-an-hour. But once I took my 13 minute bus ride to the train station, I waited for over 15 minutes for the train, from where I had to take another train, which I waited for in two different metro stations for a total of about half-an-hour. At the end of all of it, I got to Nationals Park at about 5:10, and after running from the metro station to the stadium along with all of the stress of the whole situation, I was absolutely exhausted:

(I didn’t feel at all in the mood to do a second take, since being unintentionally (the intention being on my part; not of others) late to batting practice/ is one of the most sure-fire ways to get me mad.) As I entered the stadium, I made a straight shot for the right field seats just in time to see Todd Cook make a very impressive catch. Here he is right after it:

(If you don’t know Todd and his sons, Tim and Kellan, they’re the ones on the left-hand side of the frame.) I had actually been a section away from the ball when it was hit wondering where the Cooks were, since I knew they were at the game. Given the fact that I was late and still had no baseballs to that point, I ran after where the ball was headed in case of a deflection. Just then I saw a man come from the right field corner spot and reach behind two people to make a backhand catch. It took me a couple seconds, but I then realized it was Todd. I yelled to try to get his attention, but he was too far away, and my main focus at the time was to get on the board so I could relax. So I got Fernando Abad to toss me a ball from about 75 feet away from the wall, but the ball passed through the sun just before getting to me. Not having sunglasses on at the time, all I could do was put my glove up where I thought the ball was going to go and hope I could time the squeeze of my glove just right. I put my glove in the right place, because I felt the ball hit the palm of my hand, but I closed my glove a fraction of a second too late, because moments later I saw the ball rolling around on the ground and getting picked up by this guy:

With the crowd there for Davey Johnson bobblehead day, I sincerely thought I had just blown my best chance of avoiding a shutout. Anyway, it was right after that Todd Cook saw me and came to say hello:

I then spent the next few minutes talking to Tim while simultaneously keeping the corner of my eye on the field for flying baseballs. A couple minutes after that, it was almost time for the rest of the stadium to open. Todd and I had both seen a ball hit in foul territory, so here we are getting ready to rush for it:

It was just then that for whatever reason the sprinklers went off on the field at this time:

This worried me because I thought that might be a sign the Dodgers weren’t going to take BP. Turns out it didn’t matter because not only did Todd correctly guess where the ball was and beat me to it, but I didn’t get anything for the rest of BP. The Dodgers were a surprisingly-bad hitting team and their pitchers were being stingy.

After BP, the Cooks and I both went to the bullpen, where I got a picture of Tim with one of his BP balls:

But the Cooks soon left to go exploring/to their actual seats, so that left me watching Zack Grienke first mistakenly go to the center field side of the bullpen looking for an entrance, and then warm up by doing what we pitchers call “shadowing”:

Shadowing is when a pitcher mimics his pitching motion without actually releasing the ball to completely focus on just practicing and refining his mechanics. Grienke then played long-toss outside of the bullpen and eventually came back into the bullpen to warm up by actually throwing to a catcher:

When Grienke was done, and Rick Honeycutt was putting the extra baseball in the bullpen bag, I asked him if he could get a baseball that had gone in the flowers at the back of the bullpen for me. Either he didn’t hear what I had said or was just too lazy to get it, he got a ball out of the bag and tossed it to me:

Having avoided a shutout, I decided I was done ballhawing for the day, and texted Todd to see where he and the boys were. I figured that because I really enjoy spending time with the Cooks, and the fact that we don’t go to the same game that often meant my time would be much better served going around with them than trying to get an extra baseball to pad my stats.

So I met them at the picnic area above left field:

Little did I know it since I had never been there before sunset, but it has an amazing view of Washington. It also has an amazing view of the concourse behind the left field seats, which leads to the center field plaza:

Pretty neat, huh? The boys used this view to take pictures with their respective cameras:

The reason Tim has his own camera because he used to borrow his dad’s and break it. And Kellan has his own because while Todd didn’t let him use his after past experience with Tim, Kellan borrowed Tim’s camera and broke that. So Kellan’s is actually a vlog camera that can also take pictures, is waterproof, and most importantly, can be dropped from 7′ in the air and not be damaged at all.

We then went to their actual section behind home plate. Todd and I took advantage of the fact that we were in the last row of seats to be able to spit our sunflower seeds away without having to worry about hitting anyone with them….That is until we realized we were right above the upper-level concourse. Tim took advantage to get some shots of the pitcher and hitter from an interesting angle:

We then went all over the place during the game, but towards the end of it, we got a lady to take a picture of us. I asked her to take it landscape, but she insisted that Kellan’s head couldn’t fit in the frame:

(Hmm…I wonder why.) We then bent down, and did a second take:

(*sigh* Close enough.) At the end of the game, we headed down to the field-level concourse to try to get down for an umpire ball. When we got down there, a camera man asked Tim if he wanted to film a bit. So here is Tim filming stuff that the cameraman later told us was on the air in the Dodgers’ broadcast of the game:

That was awesome. And even more awesome was the fact that Tim got the save ball after Chris Withrow’s first career win. Well…sort of. Kenley Jansen initially did toss Tim the ball, but when he went into the dugout and got told what he had just done, he asked to swap baseballs with Tim for another and Tim gladly obliged. It would have been cool had Tim walked away with that small souvenir, but I am glad the Mr. Withrow got his baseball. I think it’s possible it meant a little something to him as well.

STATS:

1 Ball at this Game :-{

Number 578 for my lifetime:

132 Balls in 33 Games= 4.00 Balls Per Game
1 Balls x 41,816 Fans=41,816 Competition Factor
95 straight Games with at least 1 Ball
165 Balls in 37 Games at Nationals Park= 4.46 Balls Per Game
29 straight Games with at least 1 Ball at Nationals Park
Time Spent On Game 3:30-1:24= 9 Hours 54 Minutes

July 13, 2013

6/26/13 Diamondbacks at Nationals: Nationals Park

This was another very quick game for me insofar as probably the majority of this game that I documented was via vlog and not pictures:

But it was not for lack of excitement that I under-documented the occasion. I mean look who was here at this game:

So if you’re new here, that would be myself on the right, but the other people (right to left in terms of heads) would be:

1. Ben Weil– Ballhawk and friend from New York who was visiting for a game, and who I’ve gone to plenty of games with in the past.

2. Matt Winters- I don’t exactly know his story, but we’ve met several times at games through him being a ballhawk/friend of both Ben and Zack. I want to say I heard somewhere along the line that he’s from LA, but that would have been last year in New York, and I can barely remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, so I wouldn’t trust my memory on that.

3. Rick Gold– I think I introduced him in the last entry, but if you weren’t around for that, Rick has snagged nearly 2,000 baseballs as well as 46 game home run balls–15 of which came in one season. I think I’d be content with that total for my lifetime.

As we waited for the gates to open up, it appeared as though our toughest obstacle besides each other was going to maybe be the weather. The clouds looked very ominous, and so I actually had to check if the cages were set up for BP. While it did rain throughout BP, they thankfully never stopped hitting. That didn’t stop me from not getting one hit ball all day, though. And while we’re foreshadowing, let me spoil the surprise for you and say that I didn’t get a “legitimate” ball for the duration of Nationals BP. What I mean is that with me not getting a hit ball all day, the only “toss-up” I got during Nationals BP was a overthrow by Ross Ohlendorf where I had stood behind the girl he was throwing the ball to just in case that exact scenario happened. When I got the ball, I then gave it to the girl he had thrown it to. I don’t have a picture of the ball itself, but here’s a diagram of the scenario to help you to better visualize the scenario–where I also felt the need to point out where Ben is standing in the picture:

My second ball came when I got Willie Bloomquist to toss me a ball in the Red Seats:

The great thing about getting toss-ups from position players is they usually shag baseballs before they have to go into hit. So once they go to hit, you can get a ball in the exact same spot from whichever pitcher takes their spot in the outfield. And that’s exactly what happened to me. When Bloomquist went in to hit, I got a ball from Zeke Spruill in the same corner spot of the Red Seats:

A cool ting about this baseball is that when I logged it in mygameballs.com later that night, Spruill did not yet exist in the database. That means that I was the first one on the site to snag a baseball from him, which is always an awesome experience. I’d say I’ve “inaugurated” about five players on the site. And I wish I had more to write about from my time in BP, but that was the third and final ball I would snag during it.

Once the game rolled around I sat in left field and pretty much talked to Ben for the whole game. Well for the portion that he was there for, anyways. In about the third inning he left and said he was going to meet his friend who works for merchandise at Nationals Park, and then didn’t get back to his seat until the 8th inning. Pretty much right after that I headed to the Diamondbacks dugout and got the home plate umpire, Greg Gibson, to toss me a ball:

This was my fourth and final ball of the game. I then met up with Ben and Matt after the game and we headed out of the stadium before going our separate ways. I went on the subway back to my apartment and they went to Ben’s car to head to New York. Again, I wish I had more to write about, but not much more happened.

STATS:

4 Balls at this Game (3 pictured because I gave one away)

Numbers 574-577 for my “career”:

131 Balls in 32 Games= 4.09 Balls Per Game
4 Balls x 31,172 Fans=124,688 Competition Factor
94 straight Games with at least 1 Ball
164 Balls in 36 Games at Nationals Park= 4.56 Balls Per Game
28 straight Games with at least 1 Ball at Nationals Park
12 straight Games at Nationals Park with at least 2 Balls
Time Spent On Game 3:28-10:02= 6 Hours 34 Minutes

July 12, 2013

6/25/13 Diamondbacks at Nationals: Nationals Park

So this game was actually pretty simple, and I’m ashamed it took me so long to get this entry out, but the thought of writing was what kept me from even getting started on it. Anyway, here is the view of the field as I got it:

But before I get started on the snagging portion of the entry, let me tell you what lead up to this point. Because it was the last day that All-Star ballots were being accepted for prizes at Nationals Park (more on that later), I had to carry over 2,000 All-Star ballots with me to the ballpark that I had filled out the previous day:

As a result of that, I moved much more slowly than I normally do and missed a bus and two trains by less than ten seconds on my way to the ballpark. And as a result of that, I got to the gates less than five minutes before they opened. So instead of having a half-hour long conversation with Zack Hample, Rick Gold, and Zack’s mom–who I met at the gates–/take a picture with them to open up this entry with when I got to the gates, I pretty much had to get to the gates, get my ticket ready to be scanned, and enter. Now I thought I would have to carry my box of 1,500 All-Star ballots for the first hour of batting practice, but a regular of Nationals Park named Art was nice enough to let me leave them with him in the second row of the section closest to the visiting bullpen in left field and watch after them. So although I’m pretty sure you don’t read these, Art, thank you for allowing me to move freely about the ballpark.

Anyway, after getting shutout for the first two groups of Nationals hitters, my first baseball was really a cheapy. So there’s a Nationals usher in right field who is nice and lets me sit in right field even when I don’t have a ticket there. In return I give him baseballs whenever he asks for them to redistribute to kids during the games. Well when he saw me, he told me that he wanted me to catch a ball from Fernando Abad for him. See ushers aren’t technically allowed to get baseballs themselves, but he apparently knew Abad, so he called out to Abad and pointed to me as if to say, “Toss him the ball.” Abad obliged and even though I would give the ball away to this usher after batting practice ended, it was my first ball of the game:

After this group of hitters was done, about 80% of the players/coaches who had been shagging balls in the outfield jogged in, and so I would say there were only 4-5 people in the whole outfield. And because of this, Stephen Strasburg was left manning almost all of right field. I had never gotten him to even acknowledge me, much less toss me a baseball–Strasburg is one of those players who is quick to toss a baseball to a five-year-old–but pretty much doesn’t give you the time of day if your age has two digits–but I just kept asking him nicely for a ball every time he approached the wall. Finally on about the 20th time, he looked up and tossed me a ball. (Probably just to get me to shut up.):

And that would be my second and final ball of the day. I believe I missed a home run during Diamondbacks BP, but besides that they just weren’t hitting them wherever I was positioned, and the front row was packed with kids, so toss-ups were really tough to come by.

The most notable thing that happened between this snag and the end of Diamondbacks BP is that at least 1, if not 2 service men took a round of BP in the last group of Diamondbacks hitters:

As a son of a Vietnam Veteran (but a hater of war because of this fact), I appreciate the gesture by the Diamondbacks/Nationals, but I only wish they would have gotten better hitting servicemen to invite to take BP. These guys (or maybe guy. This took place weeks ago, so it’s not exactly fresh in my memory) I don’t think hit a ball into the outfield on the fly.

When batting practice ended, I headed back to the seats in left field to pick up my box of 1,500 ballots, took them to the table where they can be redeemed:

And from this got a Michael Morse bobblehead:

A Nationals Rally Towel:

And a Nationals Prize Pack:

The prize pack consists of a bobblehead (Ivan Rodriguez), a Nationals t-shirt, a Nationals hat, and a full program. (I feel the need to specify *full* program because the Nationals give away tiny gameday programs every day at the gates for free. I guess that would technically be a program and this things in the prize pack would be a Nationals magazine, but whatever.)

I then spent the first three innings filling out an additional 500 ballots (in addition to the 1,600 I had turned in for the prizes you saw above) and got an Adam Dunn. I should have taken a picture of it, but I didn’t. I guess it was a swing-and-a-miss on my part. *Bad pun that also makes fun of Adam Dunn completed*.

After that, I headed out to right field where this was my view:

And here is the reason I didn’t even have my glove on for most of the game:

If you’re new to this blog or for whatever reason do not know who the man in the A’s hat is, it is the Rick Gold I mentioned earlier in the entry. He has snagged nearly 2,000 baseballs in his life time along with nearly 50 game home run balls. So in addition to him being a much better ballhawk than I, the fact that he had already been in that section for 4 innings by the time I got there made me not want to compete with him directly and possibly cost both of us a ball. The way I was going to play it if a ball did indeed get hit to us is let him get his initial jump and then put my glove on just in case he read the ball incorrectly and I read it correctly. So he would have position, but I would (theoretically) be the mistake prevention back-up. Of course, as is the case when I’m there, nothing got hit within a section of us.

At the end of the game I headed to the dugout, but what came of that was no snagging but rather getting to talk to Zack and his mom (who was celebrating her birthday at the time)/watching Zack get a third-out ball tossed to him from 16 rows up and almost two sections to the right of Martin Prado, who tossed it to him. It was truly amazing how far Prado tossed it to him. I had gone down to the first row to try to get the ball from Prado, but when I couldn’t get his attention and saw his eyes lock on a target way behind me, I knew where the ball was headed. After that, the game ended, we said our goodbyes, and headed our separate ways.

STATS:

2 Balls at this game (1 pictured because I gave the other away)

Numbers 572-573 for my lifetime:

127 Balls in 31 Games= 4.10 Balls Per Game
2 Balls x 30,287 Fans=60,574 Competition Factor
93 straight Games with at least 1 Ball
160 Balls in 35 Games at Nationals Park= 4.57 Balls Per Game
27 straight Games with at least 1 Ball at Nationals Park
11 straight Games at Nationals Park with at least 2 Balls
Time Spent On Game 3:26-11:33= 8 Hours 7 Minutes

June 24, 2013

6/21/13 Rockies at Nationals: Nationals Park

A second day at Nationals Park, but this time with more batting practice:

Normally I go to straight-away left field for pitcher’s BP, (the first group of hitters) but my neighbor Greg Barasch was here for this game, so I gave him left field and I went to the Red Seats. I actually don’t think either of us got a ball during that first group, but I got one in the second group when a Nationals righty hit a ball to my right. A kid in front of me camped right under it, but the ball bounced off his glove, hit a seat, bounced up into the air, and I caught it:

It was almost the exact same as the second ball I had snagged the day before, but the only difference is the kid was prepared and the guy whose hands it bounced through through the day before didn’t have a glove.

My next ball came when I got Ian Krol to toss me a ball (By pretty much being the only one who knew his name):

And as quickly as Krol had tossed me the ball, I gave it away to a kid who had been next to the man in the white shirt, and had been trying to get Gio Gonzalez’s attention from 50 feet away to get him to toss a baseball. (It should be noted that while he did succeed in getting Gonzalez’s attention, he failed to get the ball since Gio was playing catch with a person who was along the right field foul line and we were in center field.)

My third ball of the day came when Craig Stammen fielded a ball near the wall. No one asked for it, but I was pointing at a kid to my right so Stammen could throw him the ball. There was a kid between us, though. I think Stammen thought I was pointing at the kid between us, but I knew he had already gotten a ball–he was actually holding it in his non-glove hand when Stammen released the ball. So when Stammen threw the ball about half-way between myself and this kid, I grabbed the ball:

I then gave the ball to the kid who I had actually been pointing to (in the orange). I really hope Stammen saw me give the ball away, because otherwise he might think I’m the biggest douchebag in history for pointing him towards a toss-up target only to reach in front of him to get the ball. After this, the most interesting thing I saw during Nationals BP was one woman’s cup trick:

Apparently, she had seen Rick Gold using his cup trick last year, and so she figured out a way to make one of her own using a tennis ball container and some sort of putty. And unlike most imitation retrieval devices I’ve seen made by non-ballhawks, it actually worked. She had already reeled in two baseballs by the time I noticed her with it.

When the Rockies started hitting, I once again headed into foul ground, and once again got shutout there. So I headed out to right field after that. There I managed to catch a Todd Helton home run on the fly right about here:

I then gave the ball away to a girl who had not yet gotten a ball. That marked the third straight ball I had snagged that I gave away. That made it 75% of my baseballs I had snagged this game that I gave away.

Carlos Gonzalez hit the next ball I snagged. I had just ran to my left in pursuit of another home run of his when he hit a ball back to my right. I ran at where I saw it landing, and when it finally did touch down, I scooped it while on the run for my fifth ball of the day. That was it for batting practice. I could have maybe had a couple other Rockies home runs, but bounces didn’t go my way and things of that nature, so my sixth and final ball came when I went to the Rockies bullpen in search of a Rockies commemorative baseball and I got Jerry Weinstein to toss me a baseball:

Actually, though, that’s not fair. This baseball took absolutely no skill on my part. I was actually avoiding asking Weinstein for a ball from distance because he had tossed me one the day prior, but he spotted me in my Rockies gear, waved to me, and tossed me the ball.

This was my view once again for the game:

My goal was to get a commemorative baseball from Bo McLaughlin at the bullpen after the game, but unfortunately he ignored me for the second straight day. And no one hit any home runs to left field, but trust me, I would have been ready had they done so:

Believe it or not, I actually had two gloves packed both Rockies games because I knew there were going to be people I knew at the gates, so I didn’t want to play catch with them left handed. It wasn’t until this game that I realized I could wear both gloves during the game. MANY people–upon hearing/realizing that I have both a right-handed and left-handed glove–have suggested to me that I just put a glove on both hands, but the problem with doing this during batting practice is I need a free hand for things such as labeling the baseballs I snag, taking pictures, and taking notes about the baseballs I snag. However, during the game I don’t have to do any of those things. So with the two gloves already in my backpack, I figured, “Why not?” and had them both ready. But for the record, it’s not something I plan to make a habit of.

But anyway, with me not snagging a Rockies commemorative ball, I’ll probably have two more opportunities to snag one when the Rockies visit the Orioles in August. I’m a little nervous, but who doesn’t like a little two-month-long cliffhanger? Oh yeah, everybody. But I guess I also I have no other option besides revisiting Citi Field when the Rockies visit it a few days before that.

STATS:

6 Baseballs at this Game (3 pictured because I gave the other half away)

Numbers 566-571:

125 Balls in 30 Games= 4.17 Balls Per Game
6 Balls x 34,917 Fans=209,502 Competition Factor
92 straight Games with at least 1 Ball
158 Balls in 34 Games at Nationals Park= 4.65 Balls Per Game
26 straight Games with at least 1 Ball at Nationals Park
10 straight Games at Nationals Park with at least 2 Balls
8 straight Games at Nationals Park with at least 3 Balls
6 straight Games at Nationals Park with at least 4 Balls
Time Spent On Game 2:58-11:47= 8 Hours 49 Minutes

June 22, 2013

6/20/13 Rockies at Nationals: Nationals Park

After over a week off from games and simply doing other cool stuff, it was back to Nationals Park where I met up with some familiar faces:

Those would be my friends–left to right–Zack Hample and Ben Weil. They drove in from New York pretty much to get a shot at the Rockies baseballs. Well at least Ben did. Zack was almost guaranteed to get a Rockies ball, but he also needed to knock out Nationals Park as he is going to all 30 stadiums as a part of some year-long craziness that BIGS Sunflower Seeds is putting him on.

When it came time for the gates to open, we all rushed inside just to be disappointed:

What I deduced was that the Nationals had an eleven-inning game in Philadelphia the night prior combined with a bus trip back, so they got back to Washington pretty late and Davey Johnson who is notorious for listening to what the players want to do decided not to take batting practice. So Ben and I just hung out in the left field seats. I don’t know what he was potentially waiting for in this next picture, but we sat down after that:

And then talked for 45 minutes or so while we sat and watched more nothingness:

The first action we saw was pretty much an hour after the gates opened when the Rockies simultaneously started hitting and warming up. I could have stayed in the outfield to try to snag a couple home run balls, but I headed here instead:

That’s because some players and coaches (Yorvit Torrealba being the only one in-frame for this picture) were tossing baseballs around at the dugout, but all of them tossed their baseballs into the infield when they were done with them. It was frustrating to me because I figured they would be done before the infielders and outfielders were done warming up in shallow left field, but they actually took longer. And I know this cost me a ball because when he and his throwing partner were done, Jordan Pacheco turned looking for a person to throw his warm-up ball to but then ran into the outfield when he didn’t see anyone. Had I been over there in Nationals gear I probably would have gotten the ball, much less being decked out in purple as I was.

I then headed further down the line where I got Jhoulys (that’s probably wrong) Chacin to toss me a ball. Unfortunately, Chacin tossed it over my head where the ball then deflected at a 90-degree angle. So while I was looking for the ball in the rows below where it had hit, an old man picked the ball up and offered it to me. I told him to keep it, but he insisted I take it. So while I didn’t count it, I walked over to the outfield and gave it to a kid with a glove on my way.

My first actual countable ball came when Nolan Arenado hit a ball to my right in the Red Seats. I ran over, initially thinking the ball was going into the left field bullpen, and caught the ball as a man in a blue shirt–who was tracking the ball the whole time and whose reflection you can kind of see in the next picture–ran into me:

It wasn’t with bad intentions that he ran into me, but to use a basketball analogy since this game was the same day as Game 7 of the NBA Finals, it was an “and-one” situation. He was actually also involved in my next snag. Carlos Gonzalez hit a ball opposite field in that same group, and while it isn’t my custom to reach in front of anyone if I’m not in a row in front of them, this same guy was camped under the ball with no glove, so I went right behind him in case he couldn’t handle the ball on the fly. Surprise alert: He couldn’t. The ball bounced through his hands, hit the seat in front of me, and flew up in the air, where I snatched it up. I then handed it to a kid to my left.

A couple minutes later though, something that has never happened to me ever happened. The kid came back to me and asked me to sign the ball for him:

It was cool and embarrassing at the same time because I have awful handwriting to begin with, so adding in the curvature of the ball made the signature all the more horrendous. Please don’t enlarge the image to see. (And of course now that I said it, about 50 of you are going to click on the picture and enlarge it.)

My next ball was tossed up to me by this guy:

I initially had no clue who he was, but upon retrospection, I’m pretty sure he is the Rockies strength and conditioning coordinator, Brian Jordan. Anyway, he tried to toss me a ball initially by hitting this advertisement thing:

and then having the ball roll down the hill in center field. It may sound ridiculous, but look how close he got:

He then just tossed the next ball he got up to me normally after saying, “I’ll get you a baseball; don’t worry.” So that was nice of him. I then focused my attention on getting a Rockies 20th year commemorative baseball, but it actually cost me a ball as I called out to Jim Wright–who was in the bullpen by one of said baseballs, so I gave up on that pretty quickly. (The way it cost me was I was over by the bullpen and a ball was hit right to where I had been standing beforehand.) But regardless, my next ball wouldn’t come until almost after batting practice was over. Right at the end of batting practice, the Rockies catching coach–a.k.a. the “we have a pretty good hitting catcher prospect but he can’t field at all, so we need a coach just for him” coach–Jerry Weinstein came into the bullpen, so I asked him if he could toss me one of the baseballs that was down there. By the time I had got to him he had already tossed the commemorative up, but he tossed me a regular ball up:

And that was it for the game. I headed to the dugout at the end of batting practice and met up with Zack and Ben there where we found out about a very special food offer at Nationals Park. I then headed out to left field with Ben while Zack went to the dugout for the game itself, where this picture pretty much sums up our first sour innings out in left field:

If it sounds like I’m being uncharacteristically vague, that’s because I am…purposefully. And that’s due to the fact that I included all of these details in my latest vlog, so check that out if you want to fill in the gaps. I actually didn’t include all three of us playing catch before the gates opened, which I should have, but this is something that is going to start happening here. If I cover stuff that happened during or surrounding any given game in the vlog, I won’t write about it here because that just seems redundant. I won’t announce when vlogs come out on here, but if you so desire, you can subscribe to my channel by clicking here or you can follow me on Twitter by clicking over in the sidebar over there —-> to get an update every time I upload a video. Here was the view for Ben and I for pretty much the whole nine innings of the game:

But anyway, both Ben and I tried to get a ball from the bullpen people after the game. He did; I didn’t. So he ended with 5 baseballs along with Zack, who had actually been trailing both of us as BP ended with 3 baseballs, but since he started the game out at the dugout, he snagged two third-out balls and lead both of us until Ben got the ball right at the end of the game.

And that was it. I chatted with Ben for a couple of minutes after the game, but then headed out with my step-dad, who had joined Ben and I in the bleachers at the seventh inning stretch. He had been in the stadium the whole game, but because I didn’t know where I would be sitting before I got to the game and both of our cellphones were getting horrible service, it wasn’t until then that we could know where the other was.

STATS:

4 Balls at this game (3 pictured because I gave the other away)

Numbers 562-565:

119 Balls in 29 Games= 4.10 Balls Per Game
4 Balls x 31,927 Fans=127,708 Competition Factor
91 straight Games with at least 1 Ball
152 Balls in 33 Games at Nationals Park= 4.61 Balls Per Game
25 straight Games with at least 1 Ball at Nationals Park
9 straight Games at Nationals Park with at least 2 Balls
7 straight Games at Nationals Park with at least 3 Balls
5 straight Games at Nationals Park with at least 4 Balls
Time Spent On Game 3:28-11:03= 7 Hours 31 Minutes

June 12, 2013

6/6/13 Mets at Nationals: Nationals Park

I didn’t know it by how it looked when I left to go to this game, but it would be defined by rain. There wouldn’t be any rain when I got there, but the Nationals still didn’t take any BP:

So I just sat around and talked to an usher I know in right field and a ballhawk out there until the Mets started hitting. Then David Wright hit a ball that bounced off the warning track. It then hit off a chair in the Red Seats–where I was standing when it came time for the Mets to hit, if you didn’t catch that–and bounced right to my glove. It was one of those times where really the ball caught me. Anyway, here’s my view of the field when the Mets started hitting:

The ball bounced pretty much between the two guys in red.

And then I got Collin McHugh to toss me a ball that I then immediately gave away to a kid to my left:

(Not the one who is in the last picture, but more on him later.) The next ball I got actually left me mad. I ran into a row as I tracked a Justin Turner home run and watched as the ball flew over my head. Thankfully there wasn’t anyone behind me and I could go and pick the ball up:

I then caught a Marlon Byrd home run on the fly, which I’m actually pretty proud of; not because I tracked the ball and made a leaping catch or anything like that, but because right as the ball was coming, a kid in the first row threw his glove in the air, which blocked my view of the ball, but I still got it:

And I then gave it to a kid to my left:

The arrow closest to the field is the kid I gave the ball away to and the second arrow is the kid who threw his glove in the air. And during that same hitting group, it started pouring. And with that, the Mets ran in and batting practice was over:

So in watching a grand total of two groups of BP–roughly an eighth of a total BP– I had snagged four baseballs, which is frustrating because I can only think of how good the numbers I could have put up could have been if I would have had a full BP.

I rushed to the Mets dugout when they first ended BP, but I was too late to get a ball from them. So as the game looked like it was going to be delayed, I walked up to talk to some ushers I knew from last season behind the Mets dugout. I was just planning on saying hi to them and moving on, but I ended up talking to them for a good hour until the game was officially called. Yep, that’s right. The game was postponed after what I would say was an hour+ rain delay. They probably would have called it sooner, but teams like to wait a while longer than they actually need in order for people to buy more things at the concession stands. But anyway, after watching the first few picks of the MLB draft on the big screen, this flashed up there:

And at that point I headed through the seats towards the outfield, where I planned to exit. I would have exited through the concourse, but it was a) Packed with people who had retreated up there to get away from the rain, and b) I wanted to see if anyone left their tickets in the stands, so I could possibly have an essentially free ticket to a future game. On my way out, though, I ran into an usher who knows me because he was the one who saw my ear bleeding in my first game back here this season, so talked with him for a couple minutes on what I believed to be was my way out of the stadium. In the time I was talking with him, though, I saw two Mets players coming out to throw just beyond the tarp, so when I was done talking with the usher, I headed back towards foul ground instead of taking off:

Okay, so the person throwing closest to me I could tell was Ricky Bones, but I couldn’t tell who the far thrower was, but I figured he was an actual player on the Mets, since two coaches probably wouldn’t come out to throw in the rain. The reason I was so far back is that I could tell the ushers at the top of the staircases were being instructed to keep all the fans at the top of the section. That meant that if I would have a very short window of opportunity at the bottom of the section before an usher would come down and tell me to leave. So as the far player started to inch in, and I could tell the catch session was coming to a close, I ran down to the bottom of the steps. Fifteen seconds into me being down there, the security guard on the field closest to the tarp in that last picture told me to go up. I asked him “I can’t even stay for a couple seconds to get this ball from them?” To which he responded, “No; you gotta go up.”

So I did technically obey his command, but as I sensed the players were done throwing, I first yelled out a request for the ball to Ricky Bones, but the two talked for a couple seconds. So I very slowly backed up the stairs; no doubt angering the security guard who had told me to go up. When the two Mets headed back towards the dugout, the other Mets–who I could now tell was Shawn Marcum–had the ball, so I waved my arms at him from now at least twenty rows deep into the section, and he launched me the ball for now my fifth on the day:

And while I was pretty excited about the ball myself when I got it, I heard a cheer erupt in what I thought was my head when I got the ball, but I turned around to see there was a full section of fans who had been watching the whole thing play out. It was the second loudest cheer I’ve ever gotten for a ball next to glove tricking a ball from the second deck of Miller Park. And with that, my day of ballhawking ended on five baseballs and I finally headed off home a little earlier than normal still.

STATS: