When I woke up for this game, I knew that all of my nightmares had been true. See most people have a nightmare about oversleeping an exam or job interview. Well I have nightmares of oversleeping a baseball game. It wasn’t exactly that bad, but I woke up late enough where I knew that I had time only to get my bag ready, get out the door, and sprint to the nearest major city bus stop, which was almost a mile away. I then realized realized mid-trip that I had taken the wrong bus, and that this one wouldn’t take me to Target Field. I had to get off this bus to run to the light rail, which then somehow got me to the game less than half-an-hour after the gates opened. And when I got in, I was greeted with a most welcome surprise:

Maybe you can’t tell, but there was batting practice going on. Unlike some teams, the Twins–as I have learned from the ushers–never take batting practice on Sundays, so the visiting team usually follows suit and forgoes it as well. However, the Indians had a possibility of a Wild Card game the next day, they had to stay sharp and take batting practice.

Upon entering the stadium, it took me less than five minutes to get a baseball. I have no clue who the who tossed it to me was since he was a coach-type person who isn’t on the roster, but it was good for my first ball of the day:

My next ball came when the Indians pitchers were throwing down the left field line. Again, I don’t know the name of the man who threw me the ball, but I can say that he was an Indians relief pitcher:

After that, I headed back up to the flag court. There I quickly got and gave away a Jason Kubel homer. And that was it for me for batting practice. After which, I headed to the bullpen. There Scott Diamond was just getting to the bullpen. I also met a ballhawk whose nickname is “Panda.” We had met several times at the dugout after games as we were both going for an umpire ball, where he actually instructed me to call him Panda. Anyway, he has always been nice, so we struck up a conversation there. During this I got both Scott Diamond and Rick Anderson to wave at me, so I figured that I had the ball in the bag if either of them ended up with the ball. Surely enough, Rick Anderson ended up with the ball, so I called out when he was high-fiving the other pitchers; and with an assist from Jared Burton, I got the ball:

And then it was time for the game itself. Like the previous game, (click the “previous entry” button at the bottom of this entry if you’re on the page for this entry only, or click on the title of this entry and then do that if you want to read that entry) the Twins were again doing the “autographed baseball every inning” thing, so I did that every at the bottom of every inning and positioned myself at the Twins dugout at the top of every inning to try to get a third-out ball. At the top of the first inning, the Twins sent this tweet out:

I had been at the team store by Gate 29 at that time, so I sprinted to the flag pole. I got there only about ten seconds after the tweet had been sent out, but there was already a sea of people with phones. (Well like five, but it might as well have been given how quickly I got there.) All of them were looking up and down at the flag pole area and then their phones in confusion. I didn’t see anyone with a ball fleeing the scene, so I assumed that the prize had not been given out yet. Using my previous experience with the contest, I figured the representative hadn’t yet arrived with the ball. So I looked around for a person with credentials hanging from his/her neck. And then I saw a woman that matched this description perfectly walking from my right. Before anyone could even realize what I was doing, I had claimed the ball. I know that there were definitely people who hadn’t seen me get the ball at all because two asked me after the fact if the ball had already been claimed by someone.

My next ball came at the Twins dugout. After several innings of trying, I finally got a Twin to toss me a third-out ball. Clete Thomas, who was the left fielder, made a catch for the third out. When he jogged back to the dugout, I thought there was no chance that I’d get the ball, since I was behind a crowd of five kids, so I backed up a little and took advantage of the fact that I was the only one actually with Twins gear on. Not expecting him to actually toss me the ball, I waved my arms. And he lobbed the ball perfectly enough that it just barely cleared the kids’ gloves and landed in my glove for the basket catch. But I then pulled out a ball from my backpack and gave it to one of the kids.

Then when I finally stopped going after the autographed baseballs, I went to the Indians dugout and got Yan Gomes to toss me a third-out strike out ball. It was the first time I’ve ever been able to adjust to the strike out ball. Usually I’m committed hard to the third-out ball on the outfield end of the dugout, so I miss the strike out third-out ball. This time, though, I was able to identify the fact that it was a strike out, go to the back of the section, and run down the proper staircase in time for Gomes to see my Indians attire:

Suffice to say I was proud of myself. However, I wasn’t able to get any of the other players from the two teams to toss me a third-out ball, so my next baseball wouldn’t come until the game had ended.

Unfortunately, the Twins were unable to win and force the first ever-three way Wild Card situation, so the Indians were on the field celebrating after the game:

The good thing about this, though, was that after C.C.Lee tossed me a ball at the dugout, Vinnie Pestano–who was walking right behind Lee and of course saw me get the first ball–tossed me a second ball without me even asking:

Little did I know at the time, but the first of these was my 200th ball ever at Target Field. This made it the first stadium I’ve snagged 200 balls at, and it put me at nine for the day. Had I been able to get to the outfield end of the dugout in time, I might have ended the day with 14 baseballs by how many the two bullpen catcher were throwing into the stands. But because of the amount of people who stayed because of the celebration, the area was packed and couldn’t get to that side in time. Instead I decided to try to get on the Twins side in case they were to throw up any miscellaneous items they no longer needed for the offseason. I didn’t make it in time for that, but I did get Panda to take my picture with the remaining six baseballs:

Now you may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned giving away three baseballs in the entry thus far. That’s because I don’t remember which baseballs I gave away before this point. This is because after this point I resolved to give away baseballs who had been nice to me all year. But before that, I made sure to run into Tony Voda for one last time. I don’t think I mentioned him before this point in the entry, but he was indeed there, and had an amazing game in his own regard. (To find out how, click his name, which will take you to his entry for this game.)

Now you may notice (1. That Tony is dressed up like Waldo. I’d like to explain it, but I think it’s best if you just imagine why he did it. I mean, it is pretty self-explanatory. But also…) that I have something made out to myself. Tony had been in the behind-home-plate club earlier in the game. So when I passed by on the Twins dugout side to talk to him, he handed that to me. You see, he did something in April of this year that was pretty awesome. He asked his readers (which I include myself in) if they wanted a hand-written copy of the entry he was going to write, and this (these words are a link to the contents of the envelope you see in the last picture) was the result. After that, I went to the ushers in that I most liked and gave away all but two of my baseballs. The two I kept were the one signed by Bert Blyleven and my 756 career baseball, because I thought it’d be fun to keep the ball that tied me with Barry Bonds if each of my baseballs were a major league home run. After which, I went on my way, but not before I took a final picture at Gate 34 with the Bert Blyleven ball:

And then got on the bus where I read the Events Operations Guide that one of the ushers gave me as a parting gift:

And with that I rode off into the sunset (literally) back to my apartment.

STATS:

• 9 Balls at this Game (2 pictured because I gave 7 away)

Numbers 755-763:

• 317 Balls in 64 Games= 4.95 Balls Per Game
• 9 Balls x 30,935 Fans= 278,415 Competition Factor
• 126 straight Games with at least 1 Ball
• 31 straight Games with at least 2 Balls
• 5 straight Games with at least 3-5 Balls
• 3 straight Games with at least 6 Balls
• 201 Balls in 38 Games at Target Field= 5.29 Balls Per Game
• 36 straight Games with at least 1 Ball at Target Field
• 16 straight Games with at least 2 Balls at Target Field
• 5 straight Games with at least 3-5 Balls at Target Field
• 3 straight Games with at least 6 Balls at Target Field
• Time Spent On Game 11:15-5:30= 6 Hours 15 Minutes

And to wrap up this entry, which was for my last game of the season, I would like to write to end with this preliminary forecast of what is to come. Obviously I can’t tell the future, and I do love ballhawking. However, this shall be my last season of full-time ballhawking for the foreseeable future. I have been trying to do it as long as I can, but with this being my sophomore year of college, I think it’s time for me to start doing something work-related during my summers instead of spending it going to baseball games and then writing about them. Not to say there’s anything wrong with it; Go ahead and do that for as long as you can. But with the “work” world readily approaching, it seems like I need to get an internship or something related. This coming Tuesday I have a face-to-face interview at Target Field regarding a Baseball Operations position. I feel as though I am a really good candidate for the position, but there are also–I’m sure–many other VERY qualified candidates. So if I get this internship, I will be working that the whole summer and will then almost definitely not going to any Twins games as a ballhawk, but I may be able to attend  other teams’ home games. If I don’t get that internship, my next option would be to try to get an internship  with the St. Paul Saints, but I’ve heard those are very time-demanding, so I don’t know which games I could even try to make.

As for the offseason, I plan to make it pretty much the same as last year. So I will post my review of my season ballhawking next, and then I’ll make a video of the entry ideas I have for the winter and you’ll vote throughout the offseason as to which entries you want to read. (I’ll explain the details more clearly in the video.) I’ll probably be blogging 1-2 times per week until I run out of offseason to do so. Past that I have no clue what I’ll be writing about, but rest assured that I will be writing about something. So until then, thank you for reading this season, and we’ll see where this blog is when the 2014 season rolls around: