Results tagged ‘ mlballhawk.com ’
Rays vs. Angels – May 12th, 2010 – 5 Balls & a few autographs
Today was a 4:05 afternoon game with the Rays at Angels Stadium. I am beginning to like these games because batting practice is relatively empty. Now if we could only get a team in that hits a ton of balls into the seats then it would be perfect. Oh yeah we also need the Angels to open the gates 2 hours before these games instead of just an hour and a half before.
Anyway, before the gates opened I was out by the Angels parking lot trying to get my Torii Hunter home run from 4/28 signed. While I was waiting I decided that I would start a team ball so as other guys came in and stopped I got them to sign the ball. Jason Bulger, Brian Stokes and a couple of other guys stopped and signed. Right around 1pm Torii Hunter pulled up and stopped to sign. I had Torii first sign the home run ball and then I asked him if I could sneak one more in and I got him to sign my 5000th ball caught at professional baseball games and he did.
Shortly after Hunter drove in Bobby Abreu came by and stopped to sign and I had him sign a copy of my book. I also asked about his brothers, Dennis and Nelson whom I had in my clubhouse when I worked for the Rockford Cubbies in 1997. He told me that Nelson was in the Domican and that Dennis was going to be playing for the Tijuana team in the Golden Baseball League. That will be pretty cool if the Tijuana team actually gets off the ground and plays a game.
That was all the excitement before the gates opened and once the gates opened I ran to my favorite spot and low and behold NO ONE WAS IN IT!! WoooHooo! I finally get to play My spot! Unfortuantely it wasn’t 2 good because early on there were two “WALL HUGGERS” that rolled around my glove as they went by and I did not get them. Hideki Matsui was in the last group of the Angels and he hit one that was headed right at 2 Rays pitchers stretching. As the ball got to them one pitcher moved his leg about 2 inches and it went right between his legs and rooled right to me for my first ball of the day. Shortly after that Lance Cormier was warming up with another pitcher and when they finished throwing I asked Lance nicely if I could get that ball and he tossed it to me.
Just after getting my 2nd ball of the day a cute little girl name Brianna that had climbed up beside me and her mom was there with her. There was a ball sitting near the warning track and George Hendrick was walking towards it. I yelled out to George and asked if we could get a ball for Brianna. George walked over and picked up the ball and headed towards us. He asked Brianna what her name was and then asked’ “I just have one question for ya, are you rooting for my team??” Brianna answered the question with the right answer which was “Yes”. George handed her the ball and she had a huge smile on her face.
Shortly after that Carlos Pena launched a fly ball right down the line near the foul pole. I was originally going to SNAP it because there was no one around me but at the last second a guy ran up beside me and I had to outreach him for the ball which was my 3rd of the day. He then says, “Man give me that ball for my nephew, he’s 7 and you’re like 40!” Ok, this is where I get a little irritated by idiots like that! First of all if you are going to ask me or even a player for a baseball you do not start the conversation with GIVE ME! There was no way in hell that I was going to give him anything after that, in fact I just ignored him. Second, if you want to get a ball for your nephew then bring him to the game. I can’t tell you how many times people try to get balls for kids that don’t really exist. If you want a ball for you admit it, be honest and try to get one on your own. If it doesn’t work out then NICELY ask me at the end of batting practice. Then I may or may not give you a ball if I have one!
Shortly after this John Jaso hit a “Wall hugger” that I finally made the right play on and scooped it up. That was my 4th and final ball of batting practice and so I said goodbye to my new friends from Ventura and headed up to meet up with the other ballhawks for our post BP meeting….. lol …. ok it is just where we share how many balls we got!
Now it was game time, for the first 5 innings I sat in the right field corner and there was nothing exciting going on. Ben Zobrist doubled into the corner and if he would have gotten the ball in the air it would have been right at me. In the 6th inning I was going to go over to left field but my friend and fellow ballhawk Rob sent me a text so I went and sat down by him for the rest of the game in the LF pavilion.
In to top of the 7th inning Torii Hunter threw the warm up ball about 2 sections to our right so I told Rob that in the top of the 8th I would get Abreu to throw me that innings warm up ball. The top of the eighth comes and as Bobby comes out I yelled at him and held up my glove. Bobby smiled and after about every other throw looked at me again. I am pretty sure he remembered me from our conversation about his brothers earlier. Anyway, as soon as they were done playing catch he tossed it right to me for my 5th ball of the day.
As the top of the 9th came around I headed to the Rays dugout to see if I could get the final out game ball or anything else. As the players were congratulating each other after the rays 4-3 win I watched for the player that had the game ball. Well since the catch was made against the left field wall I guess the player tossed it to a fan there because no one had a ball coming off the field. So there would be no more baseballs on this day!
I did however get something unexpected at the end of the day ….. A BEE STING!!!
Just as I was about to leave the dugout I felt something on my neck, it was a bug so I grabbed it and looked and saw it was a bee. OUCH! I could feel the stinger in my neck and like and idiot I picked at it. Thankfully somehow I got it out but my neck swelled up a little bit!
Anyway, overall and in spite of the bee sting I did have a good day today and so far this week I have grabbed 11 balls in 3 games! Not sure if I will get to anymore games this weekend however because tickets are full price 
Don’t forget if you are local to Anaheim and have extra tickets you want to donate to BASEBALLS 4 MADD just send me an email at jwitt@mlballhawk.com If you donate tickets for Angels or Dodger games you can get a receipt for the face value of the tickets to claim as a charitable contribution!!
NOTE: Hopefully soon I will again be able to take a camera to more games to take pictures 
Rays vs. Angels – May 11th, 2010 – 3 Balls
Tonight was a game that I did not plan on attending. Early in the morning I received an email from my contact over at MADD and she said that she had a couple of tickets for the game. I had already made plans for the evening but after talking to my “date” she said that it would be just fine if I went to the park for batting practice and then she picked me up a little after 7 nearby.
The gates opened at 5:05 and off I was to my spot in the right field corner. The young Ballhawk that usually heisted my spot was off to left field and when I got to my spot a relatively new Ballhawk was in my spot instead. Oh well, I hung around my spot and thankfully there were only a couple of balls close. In fact BP pretty much sucked until the later groups of the Rays and I headed up to the right field pavilion for the last 2 groups.
Reid Brignac was in the cage and hit a ball right at me and I made the catch just behind a guy sticking his barehand up for my 1st ball of the day. Shortly after that John Jaso was patroling the outfield shagging balls and picked one up by the wall and I yelled down to him, “Hey John, how about one for the big kids!” He turned around and tossed me my 2nd ball of the day. Right after BP ended I went around to the left field seats and just as I got there one of the ushers tossed me my third ball of the day!
That was it so I will make this a very short entry! As on Monday I was without a baseball until the last 15 minutes of BP and then ended up with 3 balls! Overall it was a decent day!
TWINS??? How bout QUINTS???
Tonight was my first trip to the ballpark of 2010. I got to the ballpark early to try to get some autographs and that was pretty much a wast of time. There were only about 3 Angels players that signed and it was the same 3 guys that have signed almost everyday over the past 3 years!
Finally around 5pm the gates opened and I headed in to the corner. Just as I got down to the corner one of the Angels pitchers had a ball and looked right at me. I held up my glove and he said “hang on a second”. Um ….. Ok …. I will be here for a while anyway I thought to myself. So a couple of minutes passed and Hideki Matsui hit a ball into right field, this unknown pitcher picked it up and tossed it to me for my 1st regular season ball of the year.
Just after I was thrown ball #1 Matsui stepped back in and hit a shot into the corner. I moved to get into position for the bounce and just as I looked to see where the ball was it bounced in front of me, I stuck up my glove and in it went. Ball #2
Ball #3 of the day was the typical slow roller around the wall that rolled right to me. It was an easy snag and oddly the one security guard that I hate was right there and didn’t say anything. Hmmmm …. maybe he’s becoming nicer??? NAH!!
So in the first 20 minutes of BP I had 3 balls. The next 10 minutes was uneventful but then I got ball #4 again on a richochet around the wall on the field and about 1 minute later another ball took the same path and I made the snag for ball #5.
WOW! It was going to be a great BP, 5 balls and the Twins were just getting into the cage. Then I woke up!! There were only 2 balls hit close and I only had a slim chance to get one of them. The bad thing was the fact that the one ball I had a slim chance to get was a BRAND NEW TWINS commemorative ball.
Oh well ….. I will definitely not complain about 5 balls! I am not sure when I will get to another game, probably not for a while so this was definintely fun!
I am now just 8 balls away from 5,000 total baseballs caught at professional baseball games over the past 34 seasons!! I am also just 75 balls away from 3,000 regular season MLB balls and 151 away from 4,000 total MLB balls including spring training!
2010 Regular Season MLB Totals
- Games Attended = 1
- Hit Balls caught = 4
- Thrown Balls caught = 1
- TOTAL BALLS CAUGHT 5
- BPG ave. = 5.0
This Baseball Fan Has A Plan – OC Register
This article will run in “print” tomorrow (Sunday 8/9) in the Orange County Register!!
Wednesday morning as you all know by now I went over to Cal State Fullerton to have the Orange County Register take some photos of me for a story about Baseballs 4 MADD.
By 4:30 in the afternoon the story was online at OCRegister.com. You can get to the story by clicking here. It will be interesting to see how many pledges this helps us out with. As it says my ultimate goal was $10,000 and I hope that we can put a dent in that number with the pledges that this story can help us bring in!
I am hoping that the article will also appear in print at some point this week. The reported said more than likely it would show up in the paper by the end of the week ……. we’ll see!
I also came across an article that was on the USA Today’s website about the Ballhawk League and Erik Jabs. It had comments from Zack and even named me too!!!!
Click on the photo below to get to that article
Keep watching as I intend on updating my MLBlog http://ballhawk.mlblogs.com and my website http://ballhawk.mlblogs.com ………….. hopefully pledges come in and we can crack the $1000 mark by the end of next week!
Fellow MLBlogger Zack Hample on the Tonight Show and even I made it on TV
On Wednesday I went to the Tonight show to see fellow Ballhawk and MLBloggers Zack Hample. I have talked to Zack via email and MLBlogs for 5 or 6 years now. We talked on the phone earlier this week and finally we were both going to be in the same place at the same time to meet.
We got there in plenty of time to use the tickets I had got off of TVTIX.com . Zack was going to try to put us on the studio list however they had told him only two guests and we felt that we would get in with our tickets anyway which we did. Here is a picture of the line to get into the Tonight show to see Zack Hample. They all were there for Zack weren’t they? Sorry about the quality of these 2 photos as they were taken with my cell phone.
Once we in the studio we had to turn off all of our phones, cameras etc. John Melendez (Stuttering John from the Howard Stern Show) came out and warmed up the audience by giving away some stuff and Jay Leno came out and told us to make sure we laughed during the monologue.
In the second segment of the show after the monologue John Melendez came out to host “What the Audience Wants To Know”. All of the questions obviously were set ups for jokes but it was pretty funny. All of the people they had asking the questions were right in front of me which gave me the opportunity to get on TV. I figured that some people might notice if me if I was holding a baseball. As you can see in this photo there I am behind Melendez holding a baseball on my lap. I couldn’t make it to obvious by holding it up or I might have gotten in trouble with the production crew. So I just held it on my leg where you could easily see it.
No I really am not bald although in this picture it might look that way. After this segment Dana Carvey came out. He was on for the next two segments and most likely ran a little long causing the shortening of Zacks segment. Dana Carvey was hilarious doing impressions of everything going on in politics right now and he even chimed in during Zacks segment making fun of the people at Shea that had evidently thrown Zack out a few times over the years.
Finally it was Zack’s turn and I think Zack did a pretty good job. After the show he told me that he was not nervous at all. He said that even Dana Carvey said something to him about him not being nervous. I told Zack that he is a seasoned pro and it just comes natural to a Ballhawk.
It was definitely cool seeing a fellow Ballhawk get his 15 minutes of fame on the BIG STAGE!
After the show we met up with Zack across the street at of all places a Shell station. We talked, shared stories and took a few photos as well. I even haded Zack a small stack of Tonight Show tickets which he didn’t even know were available. I then had him sign a few of them and he OK’ed putting one or two on Ebay. So stay tuned for that …….. most likely it will be a Major League Baseball along with a Tonight Show Ticket signed by the WORLDS GREATEST BASEBALL FAN ZACK HAMPLE! I guess I should have worn a hat and tucked my shirt in! This picture was taken by Zack’s girlfriend Jona. They could have photoshoped it!
There were some funny moments with the audience gasping at the number of baseballs that he has caught. I did hear a few people laugh and say what a dork etc. but all of us that chase baseballs know that there has to be some DORK in us to continue Ballhawking!
The funniest thing was the fact that Jay said he holds the WORLD RECORD for catching baseballs. When Zack came out after the show he just laughed and told me that even he told them that wasn’t really true but they said that they were just going with it. Who really cares anyway, those of us that are “Ballhawks” are just glad to see our hobby getting recognized!
Great Job Zack and as you said we definitely need to do something together whether it is a documentry , book or even a reality show!
Game 1 – ALDS – Red Sox vs. Angels @ Angel Stadium with “Ballhawking 101″ client David Y.
On the Monday before the start of the ALDS I received an email from a baseball fan from Northern California. David contacted me because he wanted to go to the 2 ALDS games in Anaheim since he was going to be attending a conference down here.
We met up on Tuesday night to discuss the details of the week and to also head over to the Red Sox team hotel for a shot at getting autographs. While David had been to several Giants games he really had not chased autographs or baseballs. From what he told me his son had acquired a few autographs and baseballs but he was looking for a few more tips.
We spent about an hour and a half at the hotel and mall and we saw a handful of players however only a couple signed and they only signed one or two autographs. David did learn a few things that you should not do such as yelling foul and abusive names at a player just because he doesn’t sign and running after players like a crazed maniac. This is what a few of the autograph seekers did and it only hurts the chances of getting autographs.
Wednesday morning about 8:15 I arrived at the ballpark to get us tickets. I expected to be far back in the ticket line however when I got to the ticket line there was only 1 person ahead of me! WHAT??? The ALDS against Boston and only 1 person in line for Day of Game tickets? That is CRAZY!! Oh well it worked out very good because we ended up with SUITE tickets. YES A SUITE!! It seems the Angels sales staff had not sold 2 Party Suites so they decided to make one avaialbe to individual ticket buyers.
On Wednesday night David had to be at the conference until 6pm. I was on my own for batting practice and and it was pretty bad. The Angels who usually hit a few balls down the right field line in the last 2 groups hit only 2 and they were not anywhere near me. The Red Sox came up and I was lucky enough to make a play on a slow roller hit down the line by J.D. Drew.
As BP ended David called and said that he was outside the main gate. I walked over there and we met up and headed up to the Suite. Once we got to the Suite we were suprised to see food inside. I was told that there would only be food at an extra charge if we wanted it. Obviously before we started to eat anything we double checked to make sure it was complimentary and it was! HOW COOL!
We had Pizza, Hot Dogs, Popcorn, Cracker Jacks, peanuts and other cool things however there were no drinks
The game was a pitchers duel until Jason Bay broke it open with a Home Run. After that is was just boring simply because the Angels could not do anything to get anymore runs across the plate.
In the 8th inning we headed down to the Field level to get behind the Sox dugout to try to get a ball after the game. Here are a few pics from the inning and a half we waited down there:
If you look at the enlarged image of this photo the ball is just under the Umpire’s feet. It is hard to tell but I can assure you that is where it is!
This is a picture of Paplebon coming in to Save the game for the Red Sox. At the end of the game he walked in with the final out ball in his glove and tossed it to the guy right next to me!
UGH!! I hate when that happens! Oh well tomorrow is another day!
On the way out we saw former Angels and Yankee pitcher Jim Abbott. Abbott signed some autographs, posed for a few pictures and then took off. Shortly after that we did the same!
On Thursday I spend a few hours at the stadium trying to get some more autographs for David and was lucky enough to get a few. Mark Kotsay, Justin Masterson, Gil Valasquz and one other autograph.
I will be posting my entry for Game 2 of the ALDS shortly! Keep watching!
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN TAKING PART IN MY “BALLHAWKING 101″ day at the Ballpark which INCLUDES TICKETS to an NLCS GAME check out the post below or go to http://mlballhawk.com and check out the link for “LET’S GO TO A NLCS GAME!”
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