Results tagged ‘ Moat ’
8/18/09 White Sox vs. Royals
There were no Easter Eggs or glove trick baseballs at “The Cell”. That meant that I’d have to ask the player shagging in left Field for the balls that rolled to the wall. That player would be the so-far-nice Josh Anderson. I asked him for the first ball that rolled to the Left Field wall when I was there, and he tossed me the ball, my 1st ball.
The first group was predominantly lefties, so I moved over to Right Field. They were hitting some bombs, maybe twenty rows back into the furthest section. I have no clue who the hitters were, but they sure were good.
One bomb was about 12 rows over my head and 15 feet to my right (I was standing in row 6 on the aisle) when the seats were still fairly empty. As soon as the ball was hit I knew that it was a bomb, so I ran up the steps and saw the ball land in an empty row. It stayed put and didn’t trickle down any rows, so I ran into the row that it landed in and grabbed my 2nd ball.
Then the same batter blasted another ball in a different round of swings. This time the ball landed in the section closest to the batters’ eye, a section 8 seats wide and one section to my right. I saw the ball land, so I ran to that row and saw the ball trickle down a row, and then another, and then another, and then another, where it stopped because it hit a seat’s support beam and it laid dead in the tow. I ran over and grabbed my 3rd ball, which wouldn’t have been mine had it rolled one row further.
And then the photo below shows where the ball landed (red arrow) and where I picked it up (yellow arrow):
Joakim Soria, one of the last players on the Royals that I hadn’t gotten went over to the foul line to pick up some balls, and then he started signing.
So I got my ball and had him sign my 1st autograph, put the ball back, and then immediately ran back into fair territory.
My 3rd Ball would be my last ball in Right Field. I was over in Right Field when I saw a ball gets tossed to the first row, but it was knocked into the moat. When I saw that I immediately sprinted over to Left Field. When I got there I knew I needed to work fast because the only usher with an issue with using the glove trick patrols the moat and Left Field Bullpen. So I looked into the moat, but I saw nothing.
I asked the people around me and they pointed to a spot where they thought the ball had gone. It turns out it went underneath the overhang, so I wasn’t sure where it was or how far back it was. But eventually, after looking for a bit I saw it. It was about 1 foot underneath the overhang; you could only see it if you were directly on top of it. So I let out some string, swung the glove underneath the overhang and knocked the ball closer on the first try. I reeled up my glove, put the rubber band around the tip and the sharpie in the middle, and I reeled up my 4th ball with ease.
Then about 3 little kids without gloves came running up to me asking for the ball. I politely said no because I:
A) Don’t give balls away to people who ask
B) Don’t feel I is right to give one ball to one kid in front of other kids of the same age.
But little did I know that these little kids would help me get a couple of baseballs.
I stayed over in Left Field for the rest of BP.
Joakim Soria fielded a ball in front of those little kids, and then another ball in the same spot.
He wanted to give them baseballs, but since they were about 3 or so and there were no adults in the front row I told Joakim that I would get a baseball and give it to a random kid there. He tossed me the baseball, which I then gave to an aforementioned random kid there. Since it wasn’t intended for anyone and I had the right to decide who to give it to I count it as my 5th ball. Then he took the other baseball and tossed it to me, and this time he told me to give it to a specific kid. I pointed to the kid and said: “Him?” just to be safe, and when he nodded I gave it to that kid. That ball I didn’t count because I had to give it to that kid, it was intended for a specific person, and I caught it for them because they couldn’t. So then Joakim asked Bruce Chen, also in Left Field, for a baseball that he just retrieved. This time Joakim pointed to me and mouthed:
“You keep it.” So it was unlike a similar accident yesterday where I was standing on a chair, Joakim tossed me a ball, I caught it and then I fell backwards. This time I was standing on a chair in the second row and Joakim tossed me a ball, but I caught it without injury this time for my 6th ball of the day, and last one for batting practice.
I tried to make it to the dugouts in time for the end of BP, but I was unsuccessful and got no balls there and like last time I got one autograph, Roman Colon (my 2nd autograph).
I didn’t get anything at pre-game throwing because of the incredible competition.
A little Royals fan. Can’t compete with that.
Skip ahead to the game and in the Top of the 1st inning Mike Jacobs flew out to Gordon Beckham who ran back to grab it, and then Gordon tossed the ball into the seats along the foul line. I was over 100 feet away from where he tossed it, but I still got a ball tossed to me by someone coming off the field.
Paul Konerko is one of the only First Basemen that I have seen toss the pre-inning warm-up ball into the crowd after each time that the inning ends. He catches it from the dugout, looks into the crowd and tosses it to someone. Well in the first inning he looked into the crowd and tossed it to me for my 7th ball so far.
Since I had gotten a ball at the White Sox dugout so early I figured that I would sit at the Royals dugout as close as I could.
Well I noticed that in the Royals dugout that not only Bob McClure had a ball in his hands, but there was a ball sitting on the fence in front of Miguel Olivo who was a few feet to Bob’s left.
I think it was the Top of the 2nd when I got there, but at the end of the 2nd I asked Miguel Olivo for the baseball, and pointed to it. He looked in front of himself, saw the baseball, grabbed it, turned back toward me and tossed me my 8th ball.
I made my goal for the night to be double digits after I got that ball. So I headed over to the bullpen to try for a ball. I saw that Roman Colon had a ball in his pocket, so I asked for it, but he lied and said he didn’t. And then not one Royal gave out a ball from the bullpen the entire night. In the Top of the 8th when I saw that Roman had a ball I asked him again for it.
He gave it half his might and it fell short, and then even though it was his fault he kicked the ball into the bullpen and didn’t give me another try.
So no baseballs came my way during the game. At the end of the game I ran down to the dugout and got a spot in the corner and saw that Rusty Kuntz had a baseball that he was putting in his pocket and I asked him for it. He saw my Royals hat, walked closer and flipped me an extremely beaten up baseball for my 9th ball of the night.
I put it away quickly so I could focus again on the dugout. I thought that that would be the last ball that I got. All the players had left an only a few remained, and they were being interviewed. I hoped that I a ballboy would find a baseball among the benches and give it to me, but that didn’t happen. I saw that Josh Anderson had a baseball, and I asked him for it, but then he started looking in the crowd for someone. He stood for a minute or two, looking, but he didn’t find the person, so he tossed it to the crowd to my left, but they bobbled it. So then he took the ball again and flipped it again into the crowd, and this time I caught it, but a kid next to me took it out of my glove, stood there for a moment and then walked off. I didn’t know what happened. He seemed extremely desperate to get a ball. But now I wasn’t sure whether to count it or not. I had it in my glove, and then he took it out of it. So did it count or not? I was flip-flopping on the decision when I remembered of an encounter that Ballhawk League Creator Erik Jabs had where a fan ripped a ball out of his glove and then tossed it back to him. He decided to count it, so I figured why shouldn’t I? So then I counted it, my 10th ball of the night. Double Digits…
Stats:
- 10 MLB Balls Today
- 2 MLB Autographs Today
- 154 MLB Autographs in this Season
- 193 Total Autographs in this Season
- 231 MLB Balls in this Season
- 252 Total Balls in this Season
- 7 Thrown, 2 Hit, 1 Glove-Trick
- 6 BP, 2 During, 2 After
- Attendance: 28,812 People
- Competition Factor: 288,120
- 37 Consecutive Games with at least 3 MLB Baseballs
- 27 Consecutive Games with at least 1 MLB Autograph
- 22 Consecutive Games with at least 4 MLB Baseballs
8/17/09 White Sox vs. Royals
My fourth Royals game this vacation, this time at US Cellular Field.
I arrived to the game 20 minutes before the gates opened. I went to the gate closest to right field and saw “The Happy Youngster” Nick Yohanek at that gate.
I stopped to talk with him and he let me go in with him. My goal for the day was 10. We decided that we should try for 20+ combined. But that didn’t happen.
After running up the ramps and showing my ticket to the guard in the 100 level, I ran into the seats. I saw Bob McClure in the bullpen with a non-rubbed up baseball, so I assumed he picked it off the ground. I asked him for it and he tossed me my 1st ball.
After not finding any Easter Eggs in right field, I went to left field and checked the moat.
There were two balls there. Nick went for one and I went for the other. The ball was a bit under the overhang, so I had to knock it out from underneath. When I finally knocked it out from underneath, I lowered my glove over it and reeled up my 2nd ball.
Batted balls were flying all around as I rolled up my string. I saw Nick catch some on the fly, and then one was coming right to me. I moved maybe 2 steps or so to make sure that the ball wouldn’t hit me because it was coming exactly to me, and the ball clanged off a metal bench above me. I didn’t have my glove on, so I waited for the ball to take a lucky bounce. It didn’t bounce, it rolled. It rolled down the steps to me. To prevent it from rolling past me, I stuck my foot out. My foot stopped the ball in its tracks and then I reached down and picked up my 3rd ball. As you can see from the photo below it got scuffed up from smacking the ground:
I tried moving around in the outfield to catch fly balls, but it was crowded. Not New Yankee Stadium crowded, just enough to block off a lot of rows. I was going to look at the bullpen for balls, but before that I asked Luke Hochevar for a ball in the left-center corner while standing on a seat. He saw my Royals gear and threw me my 4th ball.
I got a ball like that later, but more painful, but before that I went to the bullpen to see if any balls were to be glove-tricked.
There were a couple balls, but just as I got there, Rusty Kuntz came into pick up balls that were there.
There was one ball that could be mine in a couple seconds, so I told Rusty:
“Leave it there. I can get it.”
So he stood there and watched, kicked it closer when it needed to be, and laughed as I reeled up my 5th ball.
Now here’s a story. Since the front row had become crowded, I stood on a seat in the second row and waved my arms and John Bale tossed me a ball, but a kid in front of me deflected it into the moat.
No problem, right?
Wrong.
Just as I lowered my glove down to get it, another kid with a glove trick came over and lowered his glove. I asked him if I could try to get it and he raised his trick up, but when I raised mine up to loosen the band a bit he lowered his.
I told him I wasn’t done, but he wouldn’t listen. I tried knocking the ball away from him, but our strings got tangled.
So I raised the glove to try and untangle it. The kid was calling his brother over to get the ball with his device. Not so fast. I gave Nick permission to get it, so he did, and then graciously helped untangle the string for a couple minutes. It probably cost me and Nick a ball or two, and we weren’t too happy. Because of that incident, left field became dead. But there was some action at the dugout. Mitch Maier came in and started signing, and since I was focused on ballhawking at that moment and it was too far away (it would take my minutes to get there and get his autograph) my brother took the baseball and got Mitch Maier to sign it for me, my 1st autograph. Remember, an autograph is not the same as a baseball and has different rules. But now let’s get back to the Ballhawking.
So Nick and I moved to right field. Remember about that painful ball that I mentioned earlier? I was standing on a seat (again) and calling to Joakim (Waa-keem) Soria for a ball that rolled to the center field wall. He saw my Royals shirt and threw me the ball. But it was high. I wanted that ball.
So I jumped off the seat.
I reached up high.
I grabbed the ball out of the air, but then I fell back.
I was heading for the seat, then Nick, who was behind me, slowed me down, and I barely hit the seats. I wasn’t sure if I still had the baseball because my glove felt right, so I opened it up and saw that the ball was tucked in the very tip of the glove, not going anywhere. So there it was, I had my 6th baseball. I stood up and showed Joakim that I had the ball, and he gave me a thumbs up.
That was my last ball of BP. I made it late to the dugout. So I got no balls and only Alex Gordon’s autograph (my 2nd autograph.).
There’s another story from the game.
In the first inning, a Royal hit a home run into the White Sox bullpen. As soon as it landed, I was off. I got there and the ball was in the front of the bullpen.
Two people that I recognized were already there though, Todd and his son Tim. They write a blog with the URL http://cookandsonbats.mlblogs.com and they were standing in the concourse when they saw the home run land, so they ran down to look at it. A little bit later, Nick came also and we grabbed two seats on the aisle about 8 rows back. Since the seats were wet, I was wiping them down when another home run was hit. Nick and I ran down, but the home run landed in the bullpen, a couple feet from Nick’s glove. Guess what happened? Juan Nieves, the bullpen coach, grabbed the White Sox home run and threw it into the crowd. Guess where it landed? IN the seat I was in before I ran down to the bullpen. And then a security guard grabbed the other home run and gave it to a kid who didn’t know what was happening and wasn’t even asking for it.
First Braun’s homer, then this. And the competition was intense at the dugouts. I only got one more ball, my 7th ball. It was from an unknown Royals pitcher after the game, it was also my last ball of the day.
Stats:
- 7 MLB Balls Today
- 2 MLB Autographs Today
- 152 MLB Autographs in this Season
- 191 Total Autographs in this Season
- 221 MLB Balls in this Season
- 242 Total Balls in this Season
- 4 Thrown, 2 Glove Trick, 1 Hit
- 6 BP, 1 After
- Attendance: 36,703 People
- Competition Factor: 256,921
- 6.14 Balls / 1 Game
- 36 Consecutive Games with at least 3 MLB Baseballs
- 26 Consecutive Games with at least 1 MLB Autograph
- 21 Consecutive Games with at least 4 MLB Baseballs
Oh, and two more cool photos:
8/14/09 Brewers vs. Astros
Next Destination: Miller Park. The gates would be opening at 5:30, but I got into the stadium at 4:15. How?
There’s a Friday’s restaurant in Miller Park. You enter by the Friday’s sign on the third base side, have your ticket scanned on game days and take a table.
There are two patios with a view of the field that you can snag baseballs from: the inner patio and the bullpen patio (outer). I choose the latter and looked for balls in the bullpen to get via glove trick.
There was one ball in the bullpen.
There’s a net extending 3 feet out of so to prevent stuff from falling from the tables into the bullpen. I made it a bit difficult to reel in balls, but I was able to knock it closer a bit.
After about 10 minutes and 3 dropped sharpies I had my 1st ball reeled up.
Since there were no balls left in the bullpen I went to check the moat in front of the inner patio. There was also one ball in the moat.
I asked someone if I could try to get it and they moved a bit. I lowered my glove, dropped it over the ball, and had the balls easily, but as I was reeling it up the ball dropped!
I lowered it over the ball again, but now it was too loose. So after reeling my glove up, tightening the band just a bit, and lowering it again I went back to work. I lowered my glove over the ball, jiggled it to make sure it was in, and reeled up my 2nd ball.
Another ball landed in the bullpen and I threw my glove out to knock it closer,
But Brewers’ Bullpen Catcher Marcus Hanel told me to stop. I read off an encounter Ballhawk League Founder Erik Jabs had with Marcus that Marcus considered the glove trick stealing. So I rolled up my string and waited for a home run.
Mike Cameron yanked a big one out to the furthest table to center in Friday’s. The guy situated at that table caught it on the fly with his bare hands.
Then a swing or two later he launched one to the same spot. The guy didn’t try to catch it this time and he let it bounce out of Friday’s. It clanged off a stand or something and went high in the ait. I hopped over an annoying railing and grabbed my 3rd ball as it came back down to earth.
That was my last ballat Friday’s When all the gates opened I bolted inside to where the Astros were throwing. I got nothing quickly, but then I saw that the person throwing with Darin Erstad (the player I now believe is Michael Bourn) threw a ball that tipped off Darin’s glove and rolled to the wall. He had another one, so he didn’t walk over to get it, so I moved over to where I though it was.
Nobody noticed the ball or picked it up, so I leaned over the wall, knocked it closer with my glove and grabbed my 4th ball of the day and No. 200 Lifetime. Not exactly the way I’d like to snag #200, but a ball is a ball.
After I got that ball I got no other ones from the Astros when they were throwing. I went back to Friday’s to see if I could get any balls in the moat. There was one ball there that I was trying to knock closer. It was able 1 foot out from the back wall, but there was also a metal beam that jutted out about 8 inches. I had to keep tossing my glove out, trying to land it on the ball, and then immediately pull back, but it wasn’t working. At one point two groundscrew members came in and I asked them for the ball, but they just ignored me and kept walking into the bullpen, and when they came out of the bullpen I asked again, but they ignored me again! Finally a police officer came in to the moat and I asked him for the ball. He picked it up and tossed it to me, but it was too far out and it fell back in the moat. I said that he could just put it in the glove, so he did, very firmly, and while doing so he knocked the sharpie out of the glove. He took up the sharpie and started scribbling on the ball.
“No! Don’t do that!” I yelled and he stopped. I reeled up my 5th ball and he went over and pocketed another ball that landed there for himself.
I made my way up to the LF Bleachers above Friday’s expecting to get a ball or two, but no. The Astros weren’t hitting them to me, and the players down below weren’t being too generous, so I got nothing up there and I left to go to the Astros Dugout for the end of BP. It ended up being a terrible decision. The Astros kept pelting the seats with homers that I was just in and I didn’t get any balls at the Astros dugout because I couldn’t identify any of them, even with my picture roster. Doug Brocali *did* sign my 1st autograph, but that was it!
So I headed back to Friday’s to see if I could get anything. There was nothing in the moat, but there were three balls in the bullpen. One was too far out, the other two balls I could’ve gotten. I tried knocking them closer, but some bullpen workers appeared before I could get them close enough.
I asked them for one of the balls, but he ignored me and started setting up the bullpen for the players. Luckily when he was done he took one of the balls, one that I had wanted because of a marking on the sweetspot, and tossed me my 6th ball.
I moved over to where the Astros would be stretching in hopes of getting something. Kazuo Matsui and his trainer started throwing on the foul line and I asked the trainer for the ball in Japanese, but he didn’t give it to me. I did learn how to ask for the ball in a proper Japanese accent from a Japanese cameraman. My favorite Astro Hunter Pence started walking in so I called out “Hunter! Hunter!” in hopes that he would come over to sign. I wouldn’t be telling you this had I not gotten it, so yes I got Hunter Pence to sign my 2nd autograph.
Here are the only two autographs from the game:
I barely missed out on Michael Bourn’s signing. I was the next person for him to sign for before he left.
All the players went in, so I went into a great foul ball in Miller Park, the cross-aisle right in front of the press box. But since I didn’t have a ticket there, I got kicked out of that. I then moved to a foul ball spot along the right field line, but I kicked out in about 10 seconds. And then I came close to Ryan Braun’s 1st Inning Home Run even though I was about 400 feet away from where it landed. It landed in a closed off box next to the Center Field Ivy. 
Another kid and I waited out there and someone retrieved it, but he gave it to the other kid. I was so P-O’d from everything that happened in the first inning that I just wanted to sit in one place and watch the game. Even though I was incredibly p*ssed I still ran down to the first row when Jason Bourgeois (pronounced Boo-jwaa) grounded to Geoff Blum who threw the ball to Lance Berkman to make the third out. I ran down to the front row and realized that I was at the wrong end of the dugout. So I cut though the first row to some empty seats there and got Lance Berkman to toss me my 7th ball.
I made my mission to get 10 balls on the night so I kept switching dugouts. At one point I asked First Base Coach for the Brewers for the next inning warm-up ball. When that time came he disappeared into the dugout with the ball, but I stayed there just in case he came out randomly. He didn’t come out randomly, but he did flip the ball over the dugout about 10 feet to my left. The people in those seats didn’t see the ball pop out of the dugout, so I was overjoyed when the body rolled off the dugout, bounced off one of them and plopped down on the ground where I picked up my 8th baseball of the night, and hit my lip.
That was my last ball during the game. At the end of the game I tried to get an ump ball, but about 5 littler kids rushed the area and got balls. I tried to get a ball from the pitchers walking in from the bullpen, but to no avail. So how did I get my final baseball of the night? I peeked into the dugout to see if by any chance that there was a baseball was lying around. I stuck my camera out a bit to take a photo of the parts of the dugout I couldn’t see. I didn’t see any baseball, but I stuck down there for a bit longer. There was a guy in the dugout cleaning things up when all of a sudden I saw him get on his knees and look underneath the bench. He reached down, underneath the bench and pulled out a baseball. I asked him for the baseball and as he approached me he flipped me my 9th baseball and my final one of the night, but I did get Geoff Blum and Jason Michaels’ autographs for my 3rd and 4th autographs respectively. The End.
The Practice Balls:
The “H” and “—-” Balls:
And The One Normal Game Rubbed Ball:
Next Game: Wrigley.
Stats:
- 9 MLB Balls Today
- 4 MLB Autographs Today
- 130 MLB Autographs in this Season
- 169 Total Autographs in this Season
- 205 MLB Balls in this Season
- 226 Total balls in this Season
- 5 BP, 1 Pre-Game, 2 During, 1 After
- 3 Glove Trick, 1 Hit, 5 Thrown
- Attendance: 37,715
- Competition Factor: 339,435
- 6.03 Balls / 1 Game
- 34 Consecutive Games with at least 3 MLB Baseballs
- 24 Consecutive Games with at least 1 MLB Autograph
- 19 Consecutive Games with at least 4 MLB Baseballs
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