I like to commemorate events with baseball. I was graduating the day after, so what better way to spend the night before than to go to a baseball game, right? Look who I ran into at the gate:

That would be fellow ballhawk, Greg Barasch, on the left and myself on the right. I was pretty surprised he showed up since I offered him an extra ticket I had to the game the night prior and he denied it. Apparently, what had happened was he needed two tickets; one for himself and one for his dad. Oh and the picture was taken by a kid from Canada I met at the gate, who I explained to why Yankee Stadium is about the worst place in baseball to get autographs.

The sky didn’t look “that” bad, as you can see in this next picture:

That said, when I got out of my underground subway station, (which can be seen below and slightly to the right of McDonald’s) I could feel the softest touch of rain ever. It lead me to this train of thought: “I know this won’t be enough to cancel bp, but it is really cloudy, so this might just be the beginning of the rain before it starts pouring, or the grounds crew might have the same thought as me and tarp the field prematurely even though there is no serious rain yet. Whatever it is, can you help me out, rain gods, and take the day off?”

When I ran in through the gates, look who I got my picture taken with:

That would be the Yankees’ amazing set-up man, David Robertson. He was right inside Gate 6 for fans to take pictures with him. Obviously I wasn’t going to pass up the possibilty of taking a picture with him. Now I can say I’ve taken a picture with a former Yankee closer. How many people can say that? If you’re wondering about the weird look I have in the picture, it was because I was looking at the screen on my iPhone to make sure we were both in the frame, and I usually don’t take pictures of myself with my iPhone so it didn’t even occur to me that I had to look at the lens before taking the picture. Oh well, it’s still pretty cool.

Once I got in and settled myself in right field, it wasn’t very long before I got my first ball. Clay Rapada went over closer to center field to retrieve a ball, so I ran up to the first row and asked him for the ball. He then tossed it right to me and I headed back to my usual spot where I took this picture with Rapada on the right side of my glove:

Something would happen to me on the way back to that spot, though, that would come to define my day.

I was still in the first row and had the Rapada ball in my glove. Suddenly, I saw a ball coming towards me. The ball bounced off the top of the wall, and although it was going pretty fast it wouldn’t have been a difficult catch for me. The only problem was, I already had a baseball in my glove, so I tried to drop that ball and catch the new one all in one motion, but the ball bounced off my glove and past me, where Greg picked it up. If you’re wondering what the theme of my day was, it was missing hit balls because I was trying to get balls thrown to me.

My next ball was similar to the last one in that it bounced off the top of the wall. If you are having a hard time visualizing this, here is the wall:

As you can kind of see, it is made of some hard rock, so balls skip pretty quickly off of it. My second ball was hit at a high enough arc that it bounced off the wall and into the bleachers right above the “L”s in “Modell’s” sign:

Right before this ball was hit, a person came up to me and said he read this blog. Right now I want to apologize to this person for never catching his name when he said that, so: if you’re reading this, sorry I never caught your name. I thought I’d run into you later on, but it never happened, so don’t hesitate to re-introduce yourself next time.

Anyway, everyone else besides me and this person gave up on the ball. He bolted out of the section, presumably to try to get it by going up to the bleachers. I, meanwhile, jumped up to see if I could locate the ball and try to pull it close enough to the fencing on the side with my glove trick to where I could reach through it and pull the ball through the gap between the metal. While I was jumping to see if this was possible, a security guard at the top of the section must have seen me, so she came down the steps. As she came down, I asked her, “could you possibly toss me that ball please?” She responded, “Yeah that’s what I’m looking for.” She located the ball and the tossed it to me. An interesting factor in this was that I still had the Rapada ball in my glove, so I had to transfer that discreetly enough to my right (non-gloved) hand as to a) be able to catch the ball she was going to toss me with my glove and b) not let her see I already had a ball.

I then moved over to left field where this was my view:

I was there for pretty much one reason. The ball boy magnified in this next picture goes to my high school (or I guess I should say “went” since we have now both formally graduated since this game):

As you can see, he was in the outfield shagging baseballs like the players. However, although I did not formally ask him for a baseball, I picked up though his interaction with other fans that he couldn’t throw balls into the stands.

Although the reason I came to left field didn’t come to fruition (get a ball from the ballboy who went to my school), I did get my third and final ball of the day when a Royals righty hit a ball to my right. The ball rattled around in the seats and I grabbed it before two other fans who were trying to could. Here’s the ball with the person who hit it waaaay in the background:

After that came a slew of missed opportunities on my part. I’m not going to complain, I’m just listing them for everyone to see. The numeration starts at “2″, though, because I missed the ball that bounced off the wall earlier, remember?

2. A Royals player went over to retrieve a ball in LCF and was walking back when he spotted a kid. I could tell from how he changed the direction he was walking in that he was going to toss the ball to the kid, pictured here:

so I lined up right behind the kid in case the Royals player over-threw him, but I didn’t have my glove up because I thought that would make the player more careful to not over-throw the kid. What d’ya know, the player over-threw the kid. The ball deflected off the kids glove and was headed straight at me. It changed direction ever so slightly that it bounced off my glove and back towards the kid, so had I *not* been right behind him I could have easily picked up the ball and handed it to him, but I was just “heads-up” enough to line up with the kid but then botch the ball that came right at me.

3-7. Remember when I mentioned the theme of this game was missing hit balls because I was trying to get balls thrown to me? Well for the better portion of batting practice, I was in right field because Greg was in left field and I didn’t want us to get in each other’s way. Over there, I went down the steps numerous times to ask a Royals player for a ball. Five of those times, a ball sailed over my head to a spot where I almost definitely would have caught it had I been in my regular spot at that time.

8. Again I was down the steps calling out to a Royals player (none of which actually threw me anything). This time a player hit a ball close to where I was, but because I didn’t have sunglasses (because I thought it was going to be a cloudy day since there was a forecasted 60% chance of rain) I lost the ball in the sun and had to hope I could pick it up in the seat but someone else beat me to it.

9. A ball was hit to my right but I picked a row that wasn’t empty and I couldn’t run all the way to the spot where the ball landed without running into anyone- which isn’t an option for me.

I don’t usually write all the missed opportunities for me in a game, and I’m sure I left out at least one, but it was just that this game was SO frustrating because I may have been able to get into double digits had I capitalized on these missed opportunities.

Speaking of double digits, did anyone read my tweet after the game? Well, if I haven’t mentioned, Greg is that neighbor alluded to in the tweet. Yes, there are two ballhawks on the same floor of an apartment building in Manhattan. Serendipitous, isn’t it. If you want to egg us next Halloween, our address is 478 Broadway New York, NY 10013. I’m apartment 5A and he’s 5F. Anyway, since I snagged 3 balls, you can tell from the tweet that he managed to snag 10 balls at this game.

During the game, I went up and sat with a bunch of family and friend who were (most of them anyway) in town for my graduation the next day. I won’t go through the process of naming them, but here they are:

I was actually the second person who had taken (after various attempts) a picture of the group, so if some of them looked less than enthused, that’s why.

Being that it was a special occasion, I gave up my usual seat in the bleachers for this view:

Tragic, isn’t it? Instead of being 500 feet from the plate on the second level, I had to sit on the second level in foul territory. Oh poor me. The only downside was nothing came within 20 feet of me, but I knew that coming in and was willing to give up my chances of catching something for being with my family for a night.

As for the game itself, the Royals won 3-2.

STATS:

• 3 Balls at this game

numbers 356-358 for my lifetime:

• 36 Balls in 8 Games this year= 4.5 Balls Per Game
• 17 straight Games with at least 1 Ball
• 8 straight Games with at least 2 Balls
• 8 straight Games with at least 3 Balls
• 3 Balls x 37,674 Fans= 113,022 Competition Factor
• 46 Balls in 13 Games at the New Yankee Stadium= 3.54 Balls Per Game
• 13 straight Games at the New Yankee Stadium with at least 1 Ball
• 5 straight Games at the New Yankee Stadium with at least 2 Balls
• 5 straight Games at the New Yankee Stadium with at least 3 Balls
• Time at Game 4:27- 10:21= 5 Hours 56 Minutes