Results tagged ‘ Mick Kelleher ’
9/14/09 Yankees vs. Angels
It’s been about two weeks since the game happened, so I am sorry for the delay. A lot of stuff has been making me busy, so I’ll try to get the next game I went to (9/25) up soon also.
This was one day where I knew that I may not be getting a baseball. But I wasn’t worried. I was excited for this day. Because I would be going on the field for Yankees BP.
It’s a long story, but I’ll shorten it. Since I know some people in the Yankees organization we were able to participate in a “feedback” session where ticket holders would go to give feedback on the New Yankee Stadium. Then for giving feedback, you’d get a prize. The prizes were like: $200 gift card to team store, $200 gift card to Hard Rock Café, watch Batting Practice from the field, and etc. Of course we choose watching BP from the field, and this was date.
But I was going to try for a baseball, and autographs. I had to go to a place at 4:30 to be allowed on the field, so I had 30 minutes to snag. I thought that I wouldn’t get anything, but I was excited and a bit annoyed when I saw the Yankees only stretching at the foul line.
Why, of all days, did they have to stretch when the gates opened? Couldn’t one or two people be hitting? Couldn’t one person be throwing? So anyway right at the time they started throwing I had to report to the entrance. They gave me a field pass, and then they led me down an elevator to underneath the stadium. The only other times I was down hear was when I was in the Legends and on the field for the clinic, but I only saw a fraction of it. So now I saw a bunch more things while we were led to the field. This is a blurry photo of the concourse:
A sign to help out the visiting team:
A sign to help the umpires, photographers, and us:
We walked down the hall which had the umpires room, took a right, and then a left, and I could see light. Pretty soon I saw light, dirt, grass, and baseballs, I was on the field.
I took a look to my left:
Then to my right:
And then walked over to the designated standing area.
I was amazed to be standing on the field, incredibly happy. I was there mainly to get autographs and to finally stand on the field when BP was going on, and not get in trouble (when I was younger I fell on the field at Wrigley, they just made me get back into the seats). But I was nervous about asking players for autographs. They told us that we couldn’t call out to players, but then, how would they know that we were there for autographs? So after calling out quietly for a couple players I finally got Eric Hinske’s attention. He came over to sign for me, because nobody else really knew he was signing (my 1st autograph).
By then it was about the 2nd round of batting practice, so Derek, Johnny, Brett, Melky, etc. were gone. But A-Rod, Mark T, and Matsui were out now. But I saw Jose Molina was done with batting, so I called out to him as he was heading back to the dugout. He came over to the area, stopped, and signed my 2nd autograph.
Remember how I said that A-Rod was out batting? I have had (heard also) of bad experiences with Alex, but this time he went right over to a person on my left and started signing.
So when I saw that it was A-Rod I went over there and tried to get him. It may look like in the photo above that the crowd was intense to get him, but it wasn’t. So I was able to get Alex Rodriguez to sign my 3rd autograph, right under the commemorative logo.
After getting A-Rod, I moved back over to the right edge of the area and waited for other people. But I guess I should’ve stayed over there because Jerry Hairston Jr. started signing. But again, it was easy to go over there and get him for my 4th autograph, and then my brother and I got a photo with him:
I saw a player in the Yankees dugout, Number 47. I looked at a list of numbers of the players that I don’t know. There was no 47.
“It’s Freddie Guzman.” My brother said. Apparently he was just called up, and nobody knew him, so when he heard somebody calling his name, he was more than glad to sign my 5th autograph.
In the photo below you can see two people standing near the designated area, the far one is Francisco Cervelli, and the closer one is Mick Kelleher. I went over to Francisco first and got him to sign my 6th autograph.
Then I went over to Mick. Not wanting to get shut out I was going to ask him for a baseball when batting practice was winding down. He was talking to people, and when I asked him he said:
“I’ll see what I can do.”
But before I could see what he was going to do, Rob Thompson started signing right where Francisco Cervelli was, so I went over there. He was talking to some people (people who seemed to know each and every Yankee) so I had to wait until he was finished. And then when he was I got Rob to sign my 7th autograph.
Then Mick Kelleher showed me what he could do. He came back over to my with a glove full of baseballs. He only handed me one (my 1st baseball) and started walking away, but then he turned back and gave me two more, my 2nd and 3rd baseballs.
“Give some to your friends.”
I was shocked I noticed that they were all Yankee Commemoratives, but I didn’t care. I gave one of them (ball no. 2) to a little kid who was also on the field, and my dad captured me giving it to him.
He kept throwing the ball away, on the ground, so it got dirty, but it was his ball. At one point his dad told me to give him another baseball and watch what he would, so I did. Apparently he didn’t do what his dad thought he was going to do because he kept both ball and refused to give them up. So his dad handed him a camera case and the kid dropped both balls. I gave the second baseball to his dad to hold onto.
I had three baseballs, so at least I knew that my streak of 3 baseballs a game would live to see game 45, so I felt the pressure was off.
The next autograph I got was John Flahrety, who was just wandering around the area behind home plate. I called him over, got his autograph for my 8th autograph, and got an out of focus photo with him.
Oh, I forgot to mention, Batting Practice was close to wrapping up. Some of the batters were coming in, like Ramiro Pena. I got him for my 9th autograph.
By the time I got Ramiro Pena’s autograph, we had been on the field for around 50 minutes, so there’d only be about another 10 minutes left before we had to go. Most of the good batters had done, a lot of the good pitchers were still in the outfield. So I waited for them. One of them was Jon Albaladejo. He came into the dugout and started heading for the clubhouse. I called his name and he looked up. I tossed him the baseballs and he signed them right there in the dugout, my 10th autograph.
And that was my last autograph before BP wrapped up. They let us stand on the field for a couple of minutes of Angels BP, so I had a bit extra time. I noticed that about 4 Yankees were looking at a life-size photo of some sort down at the other side of the dugout. They were looking at it for a couple minutes. “They” were Alfredo Aceves, David Robertson, Phil Coke, and CC Sabathia. We had to start leaving, but I lingered while everyone else left before me. And it paid off. Right before I HAD to leave the pitchers started coming in, one at a time. The first one was Alfredo Aceves. When he got close enough I called out and he motioned for me to toss him the baseball. I tossed it to him and he signed my 11th autograph. After that we had to go, so we left.
It was an once-in-a-lifetime experience, so I was incredibly happy afterwards. I didn’t care that I got shutout for Angels BP or for the rest of the game. I was satisfied with the 3 balls, 11 autographs, and with standing on the field a few feet from some of the best players in the game.
Stats:
- 3 MLB Balls Today
- 11 MLB Autographs Today
- 200 MLB Autographs in this Season
- 239 Total Autographs in this Season
- 288 MLB Balls in this Season
- 309 Total Balls in this Season
- 3 Hand-To-Hand
- 3 BP
- Attendance: 44,701 People
- Competition Factor: 134,103
- 6.4 Balls / 1 Game
- 45 Consecutive Games with at least 3 MLB Baseballs
- 35 Consecutive Games with at least 1 MLB Autograph
7/23/09 Yankees vs. Athletics
Is it good when you come to a make-up game because it won’t be crowded, but then it starts raining?
There was more of a crowd than I expected during the game, but at the beginning, these were the 100 or so people waiting to get in at the Great Hall:
It was raining as soon as I got there. I ran up the steps hoping for there to be BP, but I didn’t get disappointed. I looked all across the field until I got to the left field bullpen, where there were a couple players. The players/coaches were Gio Gonzalez, (Brandon Buckley?), Curt Young, and Ron Romanick. You can guess what each guy was doing.
Gio made an errant pitch and it settled on a nearby tarp (the ball’s location is where the black circle is currently in the photo above). I asked Curt for the ball, but he did the universal “wait” sign (holding up one finger). So I waited until after when Curt went to get the ball.
I thought he was going to chuck it over the net so I stepped back about 10 feet, but he instead tossed it in front of the net. When I realized what was happening, I did what I would consider a great play by running up to the net at the last second and sticking my hand under it in the hope that it would land in my hand because I just stuck it through the gap randomly. Less than a second after my hand went underneath it, my 1st ball smacked my hand. Curt watched the thing unfold and gave me a thumbs up.
The Yankees did something which I thought was incredibly neat. Most fans weren’t there to watch Gio in the bullpen, so the Yankees showed the last half-inning of Mark Buehrle’s perfect game on the JumboTron.
But Gio Gonzalez wasn’t the last to throw. Justin Duchscherer came to throw.
He threw for a while and when he finished, he looked towards me and wound up for a long throw, and sure enough he threw it about 1 section long.
It took a couple bounces but since nobody else ran for it, it settled on the ground and I grabbed my 2nd ball, and thanks to the many bounces and wetness it got this weird mark:
With incredible luck, Brian Bruney started throwing as Duchscherer finished so after he finished I ran over to the Yankees dugout where I saw Andrew from last time. Since I had two, I let him (successfully) get that ball AND Joba Chamberlain and Dave Eiland started throwing. Andrew and I ran over there and got there in time. Joba finished throwing and pointed to Andrew. He threw the ball and put a lot of heat on it. I wasn’t sure whether that ball would hurt Andrew or not, but I still reached out and grabbed my 3rd baseball, and then immediately gave it to Andrew. But he was nice enough to let me keep it. All of that happened in less than 1 hour.
There was nothing going on the time so I paid a visited to the Upper Deck, and with it’s open air concourse had a bunch of rain:
And a lot of empty seats:
And provided a view of more empty seats:
Then an a while later after I visited the Upper Deck an A came out in the pouring rain and started signing.
I don’t know why the player would do that (Brad Ziegler), but it was my 1st autograph.
I did get to ask him some questions.
“You going to try to play the game today?” I said.
“Hope so,” he said. “I don’t want a double header!”
“Are you guys gonna throw?”
“We were supposed to 30 minutes ago.”
Not a good sign, but about ½ hour later, 4 A’s came out to throw.
Santiago Casilla threw with Andrew Bailey and Craig Breslow threw with Brad Ziegler.
Since it was wet out, Brad had an errant throw. The ball went off the tarp and settled on the ground. Craig Breslow walked over after he finished, retrieved it, and threw it my way. I timed it and caught my 4th ball on a back-handed catch.
Edgar Gonzalez was just standing there and later started throwing and when he finished, he went over to sign. I rushed over there and was able to get him on two for my 2nd autograph (on bottom).
So this 2 hour and 40 minute rain delay did nothing to get rid of fans. Andrew and I went into the Mohegan Sun Sports Bar and waited 1 hour to get a chicken fingers, hot dog, water, and coke. Way to go Yankees, people love to wait 1 hour for food during rain delays.
But the good was that at 9pm they announced that the game would be played at 9:40! Pretty soon after that, some players came out. They came to stretch and even 4 players threw. Matt Holiday was with Orlando Cabrera and Bobby Crosby was with Mark Ellis.
So then when Orlando finished, I stood on a little piece of concrete on top of Legends. It worked because he spotted me and threw my 5th ball over the Legends and everyone in it.
So Andrew and I worked over to behind the dugout and partition where we were last time. We stayed there for a good 5 innings. I got nothing, but Andrew got a ball tossed to him by Todd Steverson.
Why did we stop then? Well, we got in the Legends by LEGAL means (to anyone who knows, please don’t say or tell). So since we had attracted a lot of attention over by the A’s dugout, we stayed by the Yankees dugout. I only got one ball, my 6th ball, because a specific little boy by the dugout got two straight balls in the last two innings. My ball was the ninth inning Yankees warm-up ball, courtesy of Mick Kelleher.
We rushed over the A’s dugout at the end of the game to try and get something. I got nothing, but Andrew got a ball from the ballboy.
Stats:
- 6 MLB Balls Today
- 2 MLB Autographs Today
- 100 MLB Autographs in this Season
- 139 Total Autographs in this Season
- 161 MLB Balls in this Season
- 182 Total Balls in this Season
- 4 BP, 1 Pre-Game, 1 During
- 6 Thrown
- Attendance: 44,206 People
- Competition Factor: 265,236
- 5.75 Balls / 1 Game
- 28 Consecutive Games with at least 3 MLB Baseballs
- 18 Consecutive Games with at least 1 MLB Autograph
- 13 Consecutive Games with at least 4 MLB Baseballs
6/27/09 Mets vs. Yankees
Subway Series, Part 3. Part 1 ended with 5 Baseballs, one of which was My 100th MLB Baseball of the Season. Part 2 ended with another 5 Baseballs, 3 Special Citi Field Baseballs and a bruise on my knee. How would Part 3 end?
Apparently the Jackie Robinson Rotunda isn’t the first gate to open. The Left Field gate opens at the same time. I learned that when I approached Left Field. But First I entered through the JRR, and ran towards left field. I snuck a peek at the field and saw B.P. was on (FINALLY!) But I also saw a baseball lying inches from the wall.
First when I arrived in Left I scanned for Easter Eggs (none), and then I went to work. I lowered my glove, but the way I bundled up my string made the glove not work so well. I lowered it right to the bottom and tried picking it up. But it was too tight. Then Fernando Nieve made an appearance. He took the ball and placed it where my hand goes. Odd, but I’ll take the help. I rose up my 1st ball (And just to tell you, it’s a device ball because he didn’t toss it up to me, he put it in a place that I could only get with a device,) and stuck it in my pocket to wait for some action.
But I would have to wait a bit. A ball rolled right near the wall. I took out the string and was about to lower it, but Mike Pelfrey went to pick it up. It’s quite a drop so I couldn’t lower it before he got there.
15 feet in fact.
“Leave it there! I can get it!”
“What?” He asked a bit confused a tossed me the ball, but it was short and fell back down. Being it was his fault he gave me another throw, and I caught it, my 2nd ball. Oh, it was a Shea Commemorative baseball also.
Even though the Yankees haven’t started to hit yet, the crowd arrived early, and they concentrated into Left Field. Yay! So what I did was I ran to Center Field.
There were only about 15 people there, and this would explain why: It was 415ft from Home Plate.
Yeah, not many balls were going to be hit out here, but I saw that Right Field was also not that crowded, so I went over there. But nothing happened over there, while I saw a couple balls near the wall in Center, so I trudged back over there. But then I saw some balls in the black in center closer to left field, so I went over there, but as soon as I arrived a guard came to pick them up. So I moved back to Center again as a pit stop to re-fuel. Then I ran back over to Right. And all that movement took about 15 minutes.
All of the outfield is bad for snagging. Left Field gets too crowded. Center Field is 415ft from home plate. And Right Field is 18 feet from the ground and blocked by the second deck. I had to wait until Dave Racaniello made an appearance until I got my next ball.
While in Right I made a request to Dave: “Could I have the next ball you get?” He just shrugged his shoulders, but when a ball smacked off the wall in front of me and landed 5 feet in front of me, 20 or so feet down, I called out his name, and he took the ball and tossed me my 3rd ball.
It was far up.
And here are two things to note that happened in Right:
1) I asked Nieve for a ball, but he shook his head after remembering me from left
2) I saw a guard pocketing a ball that landed in the bullpen. I told the guard above in the seats and he just laughed.
So sensing that Right was dead I move back to Center. But needing a batter to hit a ball about 420ft to reach me, no home runs were hit. But there was one batter who was blasting balls towards Center, but just not IN Center. One was hit close enough to the wall that the player who was shagging balls, Bobby Parnell, couldn’t ignore the people asking him, including me. Well he turned around and threw me my 4th ball of the day.
Bobby Parnell is the player just to the right of the top of my glove.
I moved back over to Left Field because I saw two glove trickable (yes, trickable) balls in the black. I didn’t get those, but I did notice that the Mets jogged off the field before the Yankees were even throwing.
Odd… So I had nothing to do with the dugouts being blocked off. I just waited for the Yankees to start hitting. When they did, I had to wait a bit for some action. A BUNCH of balls were hit to the wall, and only Dave Eiland was picking them up, slowly, one by one. But I waited for the pitchers to start, but as they came to the foul line, the fans did also. But that made Left Field a bit less crowded (they moved over to the foul line, as you can see here).
So I ran out to Left Field again.
Nothing came my way for a bit. There were some balls that were hit to the wall towards my Left and Brett Gardner went to retrieve them, so I ran over there to ask him. But when I was close enough to ask him I noticed a guy taking his hat off and jostling for position. So I looked up and what did I see? A ball about .75 seconds away from landing. So when it landed it happened to land right in my row, so all I did was I turned and bare-handed my 5th ball. It was a New Yankee Stadium Commemorative ball with an odd, but cool black mark.
Pretty soon a ball landed inches from the wall by the foul pole. I moved over there and asked the people huddled above it:
“Could I try to get that ball?”
After about 30 seconds my glove was trying to knock the ball closer. I moved it about 2 feet closer; I rose my glove back up, placed a sharpie in it, and lowered my glove again. But when I placed my glove on top of the ball, something happened: the rubber band wouldn’t stretch around the ball. It was too tight, so I was forced to raise it back up and loosen it a bit I was getting nervous and my knees were quaking, literally. The previous attempt had taken around 4 minutes or so. There was a guard nearby, who could clearly see it. I lowered my glove once again after loosening it, after landing on the ball and telling that it was trapped in my glove, I raised my glove up, but now the band was too loose. I was really worried now. I raised my glove back up.
“Don’t give up now kid!” Some guy yelled.
A person behind me asked if he could try to get it if I couldn’t.
“One more try.”
I tightened the band maybe about 1 cm and lowered my glove again. This whole attempt had taken about 10 minutes or so already. I was worried. I remembered reading on Donnie’s blog that security at Citi Field was getting stricter on ball-retrieving devices. My glove was a ball-retrieving device. They took away two other people’s device already prior to this day. Would they confiscate just my string? Or would they be jerks and confiscate my glove? Would they rip up my ticket and saw that was a warning? Or would they eject me? Ok, that last one was too extreme, but this was definitely my last chance, whether I would like it or not. So I lowered it over the ball. The glove touched the ground. The rubber band stretched around the ball. Now would it hold? I raised my glove up and I felt the pleasure of my glove being heavier than normal. So slowly I raised it up, slowly, slowly, slowly, and then pretty soon, my 6th ball was in my hand. People cheered and clapped.
But I risked the trick once more by trying it on a ball (the red circle) that was a few feet out from the wall.
The labels will come in handy, just read on. I arrived over there and asked if I could get it. A kid (the orange circle on the wall) next to me said things repeatedly to me. It annoyed me so much. I took out my string.
“That’s my cousin’s ball; it was tossed to him twice.”
“You’re not gonna get that!”
My string was tangled so I raised it back up and released the tangles so it could go to the bottom. It successfully made it to the bottom, but my sharpie fell out.
“Oh, he’s gonna get it!”
“No wait, it’s too far out.”
“Only a cup trick works.”
I started swinging in a circular motion to knock it closer.
“It’s still too far out.”
I knocked it closer.
“No wait he’s gonna get it! He is!”
SHUT UP!
But before I could pick the ball up, Alfredo Aceves (the orange circle on the field) walked over. He looked at my contraption. He took the sharpie that had fallen to the ground. He took the ball that I was trying to get. So what he did next I didn’t ask for. He signed the ball. I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t want THAT ball signed, but he did it. What was I supposed to say? “DON’T SIGN IT; JUST GIVE ME THE BALL AND SHARPIE???” So he signed it and did what Fernando Nieve did. I raised my glove up and looked at the signed ball. It was my 1st autograph then my 7th ball.
He signed it before I had it, so yeah. But anyway security finally cracked down on me.
An usher told me to come over there after I raised my glove up.
“I’m sorry, but you’re gonna have to stop doing that.”
“Oh O.K. Sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Yeah people high up, they saw you, and they were talking to me on the walkie-talkie.”
“Oh, it’s just that at other parks they allowed it, like at Shea.”
“Yeah there was this one guy who came here a lot. Kamble?”
“Zack Hample?”
“Yeah him, he has like 3,000 baseballs.”
“Actually 4,100 baseballs.”
So that was it. Nothing taken away. Nothing to make me worried. It’s just that I won’t be using the trick at Left Field anymore there. So the glove trick is officially banned in both New York Stadiums. That was the last stuff to happen to me during B.P.
But after B.P. I was talking to a couple when they said the “Knicks Italian Basketball player is here. He’s wearing a red hat.”
See him?
They told me where the player, Danilo Gallinari, was, and I went over there. I approached him, got a photo with him, and got him to sign two tickets stubs for my 2nd autograph so far.
I stayed over near the dugout in hopes of a third out ball, but on the inner corner because a strikeout pitcher was pitching (A.J. Burnett).
In the First: Strikeout, but Jorge rolls the ball back to the mound.
In the Second: Groundout, Tex takes the ball to the other end of the dugout.
Before the Third: I get the infield’s warm-up ball for my 8th ball of the day, courtesy of Mike Kelleher.
A very beaten up New Yankee Stadium Commemorative baseball posed on the ’4′ in the ’42′ dedicated to Jackie Robinson.
At the 7th I moved over to the Mets dugout. I wanted a game used, rubbed up, Citi Field Commemorative ball. So when Sheffield got the inning ending ball, I ran to the First Row. When he came in, he flipped the crowd a ball, which I got, my 9th ball. The type of ball that I wanted.
Stats:
- 9 MLB Balls Today
- 1 MLB Autograph Today
- 1 Basketball Autograph Today
- 2 Total Autographs Today
- 124 MLB Balls in this Season
- 140 Total Balls in this Season
- 83 MLB Autographs in this Season
- 88 Total Autographs in this Season
- 7 BP, 2 During
- 5 Thrown, 3 Glove Trick, 1 Hit
- Attendance: 41,302 People
- Competition Factor: 371,718
- 11 Consecutive Games with at least 1 MLB Autograph
- 21 Consecutive Games with at least 3 MLB Baseballs
- 6 Consecutive Games with at least 4 MLB Baseballs
- 5.9 Balls / 1 Game
Subway Series Part 3: 9 Baseballs and some odd stories to tell…
4/9/09 Orioles vs. Yankees
We arrive at the hotel early because yesterday, an autograph collector told me that the bus would leave at around 9, and since it’s a day game, most of the players would take the bus. We arrived at about 8:15, so we sit against a building. After a while Mick Kelleher and Kevin Long come out in suits and Mick says: “Good Morning”. That’s pretty much the only action for a while. At about 8:55 the bus arrives.
We walk over and get a spot against the ropes and wait for the players. It takes a while, seems like 30 minutes, for one player to come out. It’s Nick Swisher and he comes over and signs my ball first for my 1st autograph of the day. Originally he says “only one,” but I say that it is for my brother and he signs the other one.
Then a bit later Brett Gardner comes out and signs two for my 2nd autograph of the day, and he signs for everyone else. There are no more pictures from the hotel because my camera battery dies, but we have another at the hotel. Melky and Edwar then come out. I have Edwar already, so I want Melky. I thought that ‘Mr. Big Shot’ wouldn’t sign for the fans, but he does. And he signs for me (only 1) which is my 3rd autograph today. Other people come out, like Tex, Nady, Matsui, and Pettitte, but none of them sign. They all just walk past. I head back to the hotel because the bus left, but from my window I can see the bus pulled up again. Oh well, I’ll just wait until the stadium.
We arrive to the stadium later than I wanted, and there is already two huge lines that turn around and form squares. Since we are stuck in center, and Adam Eaton is throwing, I wait until he is done, but he goes into the bullpen. My mom then tells me that we can go into around the stadium, so I rush over to where Eaton is throwing in the bullpen. The Yankees are almost out stretching, so I have to decide between Yankees or Eaton. I will be the only one looking for Eaton’s ball. Then I see Rick Kravitz has a ball, so I ask him when Eaton is almost over, but no ball. I ask him a bit later, but Adam Eaton throws me the ball, but misses. It’s ok because it falls in this area beneath me (see the ball?).
So, I get my 1st ball with my glove trick. Then it goes dead, no other balls for the rest of BP.
I go over to Boog to get his autograph because I promised myself I would, so I get Boog for my 1st autograph today and 1926th MLB autograph of all time.
The Yankees come out to stretch, so I go over there and guess who comes over to sign? Johnny Damon, so I get him, my 2nd autograph, on both balls. It was then I learned that Nick Adenhart died. I am shocked. I expected him to be a good pitcher, and I remember seeing him in the Futures Game in 2006. It’s amazing how quickly they go.
I was really surprised at it, shocked even, but they had to get on with the game. So after the moment of silence for Nick, I ask Rob Thompson for the next infield warm-up ball. He says he’ll ask Mick because it’s his job. But when the time comes, Mick gives me no ball. I want more than one ball. I am worried because last time I tried for a ball during the game, I got nothing and the crowd was smaller that day. But good luck in the bottom of the 4th, Mark Teixiera tosses me the 3rd out ball, my 2nd ball, after pointing me out in the people at the dugout for the 3rd out ball, cool.
It has an interesting mark whipping some print off. I try for the infield warm up ball again at the inner corner of the Yankees dugout, but some woman in the front says you already have a ball, let someone else get it. How did she know that I already have a ball (but not two)?
I head to the bullpen because I see a Yankee warming up and some seats near the bullpen empty. When I get there, I see the bullpen catcher tossing a ball to some other fans. So he is giving today, eh? Jose Veras is warming up with him, so when they are finished, I ask the catcher for a ball, and he hooks me up with my 3rd ball today.
I am less anxious now with 3 balls, but I want a 4 ball average for this trip.
Nothing else really happens for the rest of the game, memorabilia wise, but I do see a lot of foul balls hit to spots near the press box. I should take note of that for the Tampa game…
Well, at the end of the game, I see Mick Kelleher, trying to see if he’ll keep his promise. I ask him for a ball, and he nods. He points at me and tosses me my 4th ball above the crowd at the dugout after the game, and it was a crowd.
After everyone goes into the clubhouse, the usher kicks everyone out. I make my way merrily along to Eutaw Street, while collecting 3 or 4 ticket stubs that I find lying on the ground in many different places. So I make my average so far for this trip 4 balls a game, I hope I can get more than that with the hopefully 5,000 person crowd for the rain soaked Tampa game.
- 5 MLB Autographs Today
- 4 MLB Balls Today
- 12 MLB Balls in This Season
- 32 MLB Autographs in This Season
- 35 Total Autographs in This Season
- 28 Total Balls in This Season
- 1,927 MLB for All-Time
- 2,335 Total Autographs for All-Time
- Attendence: 28,534 people.
- Competition Factor: 114,136
- 4 balls/1 game (for 3 games this season)
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