9/29/05 at Shea Stadium

What a day...

It rained all morning and continued into the early afternoon. Then the sun came out at 3pm, so my friend Sean and I decided to go. (He's the guy from 9/6/05 at Camden Yards and 9/22/05 at Shea Stadium.) We got to Shea and saw from the subway platform that the field was set up for BP. We bought our tickets, waited in line outside Gate C, and ran inside when the stadium opened at 4:40pm.

No BP. Just the Japanese media.

Half an hour later, I saw a Mets player walk out of the bullpen and start playing catch with someone in the right field corner. I ran out there.

It was Heath Bell. He waved to me. I waved back. It was nice to be recognized, but I usually don't get balls from guys who know me. Therefore, my first thought was something along the lines of: "Dammit, why couldn't it have been ANYONE else?"

Sean gave me my space and went to left field. (What a nice friend.) I waited a minute and then yelled, "Heath!! You and I should be throwing instead!!"

"You don't have a glove!!" he called back.

I unzipped my backpack and pulled out my glove and shouted "Ohhhhhh!!" as if to say, "You feel busted."

"Tuck in your shirt!!" he snapped.

Okay. That's fine. He wanted me to look like a ballplayer, so I scrambled to tuck in my big, floppy, long-sleeved, light grey tee-shirt. I put my glove back on and he threw the next one right to me. I wasn't expecting it. Not that quickly anyway. He was about 75 feet away, and I threw it back. Perfect throw. Not much velocity though. My arm wasn't warmed up. I just wanted to make sure I didn't bounce it or launch it over his head. He threw the next one back to his partner on the field. The other guy wasn't a player or even a trainer. I think it was the team's Japanese translator.

Heath moved back...back...back...until he was long-tossing. Then, after a few minutes, he began moving closer in to finish with a few short throws. Finally, he tossed me the ball again. I threw it back. He threw it back. I threw it back. And so on. I was trying to show off my knuckleball, but he put me to shame with his. He threw one that danced so much that I dropped it, causing him to fling up his arms in disgust because the ball had fallen onto that hard-to-reach sloped grassy area between the seats and the field.

"Don't worry," I said when he walked over. "I can get it. You've seen the trick with my glove, right?"

He shook his head.

"Oh man," I said, pulling out my rubber band and Sharpie, "check it out." I stretched the band over the glove and propped it open with the marker and stopped to give an explanation.

"I can see what you're doing," he said.

"All right all right, here goes..."

I lowered the glove over the ball and jiggled it around for a few seconds. The grass was thick, and I wanted to make sure that the band had stretched all the way over the ball. I raised the glove slowly for dramatic effect...and the ball was stuck inside. Heath loved it. He turned to the few other fans who'd made their way out to the right field corner and said, "This guy is a professional."

I thought he was going to let me keep the ball at that point, but instead he backed up onto the outfield grass and held up his glove--so I threw it back.

It was tough to play catch from the seats. Not only was I eight feet above the field and throwing downward on an awkward angle, but there were steps and railings--and seats--all around me.

I moved a few sections over where the wall wasn't as high, and we kept playing catch. One of Heath's throws was too low and clipped the back of a seat. The ball ricocheted far to my left, and I had to climb over several railings to get there. Heath waited patiently.

"Give me your camera," said a voice.

It was Sean! He'd seen me playing catch from the other side of the stadium and ran over (I love having athletic friends) to take pictures. I pointed at my backpack, which was sitting on an orange seat 30 feet away. He went over and found the camera and came back.

"Get behind me!" I said. "Then you get me with Heath in the background!"

Sean rolled his eyes. He already had it all figured out--and he went to work.

The set...

The windup...

The pitch!

Heath was calling balls and strikes from his crouch. I ran the count to 3-2 (on some questionable calls) and ended up bouncing a curveball. But that's fine. There was an open base.

The fans were asking me how I got to play catch with him. A pack of security guards marched out of the bullpen to see what was going on--and realized there wasn't anything they could say, so they left. It was great. Heath and I must've played catch for 10 minutes, and at the end of it, he let me keep the ball.

He came over to sign autographs. I asked him if he'd seen the bathtub pic. He shook his head, so I pulled out my wallet (where I keep a copy) and handed it over.

"That's less than one-third of my collection," I told him.

He had lots of questions.
"What do you with them?"
"Where do you keep them?"
"Do you live with your parents?"
"Do you work?"

He must not have believed me because he started looking at my credit cards and counting my money.

"Take whatever you need," I said, but he left it all there and handed it back. And that was it. I shook his hand and thanked him, and he headed off to the bullpen.

I was so happy that I didn't even care what happened for the rest of the day...but of course I still headed out to left field when the Rockies started BP at 5:25pm.

Sean was out there. He'd already gotten a ball.

Before long, I got one from a Rockies pitcher who was hiding his jersey with his warmup jacket. I'm pretty sure it was Scott Dohmann, but it was hard to tell. With the exception of a handful of guys, the Rockies are seriously a bunch of no-names. Anyway, the ball had some writing on the sweet spot, and I still have no idea what it means. (I wrote the "2730" on it because it's the 2,730th ball of my collection.)

My next goal was to get ONE more ball to keep my streak alive; I'd been to 50 consecutive games in which I'd snagged at least three.

Number 23 was playing catch in left field. I pulled out my roster and did a quick search. It was Ryan Speier. I wasn't sure if I'd even heard of Ryan Speier, but he didn't have to know that. I waited until he finished throwing and then yelled his name. He turned around, spotted my Rockies cap, and flung his GLOVE to me from 40 feet away. I literally could not believe my eyes. The whole situation unfolded in slow-motion. I'd seen him take the glove off...and swing his right arm back...and under-hand this bundle of leather toward me in a high arc...over several fans and half a dozen rows of seats. Was this a joke?! Was he going to walk over and tell me to give it back? Was I awake? I'd been to over 600 major league games and never gotten a glove. I'd never even considered that there was a possibility of getting one.

A minute later, I was still in shock.

The other fans were pretty stunned, too, and several of them came over to have a look. It was gorgeous. Rawlings. Gold Glove Series. Black leather with red labels and a red Speier stitched onto the outside of the thumb.

Then I realized why he'd given it away. A few of the leather laces had torn, leaving a large hole in the pocket.

"You could get it restrung!" someone shouted.

Restrung?! Why would I want to do that? I want to leave it exactly as I got it. It's perfect.

By this point, I REALLY didn't care what happened for the rest of the day.

Sean decided (and I agreed) that it was stupid for us to be competing with each other in the same section, so he went up to the Loge.

He ended up getting two more balls up there. One was thrown by Todd Greene. The other was a homer that rattled around in the semi-empty seats. Luckily, my day wasn't done. It would've been embarrassing to bring a friend to the game and then get outsnagged by him.

I got my third ball from Garrett Atkins. He was taking fungos at shortstop. I was 10 rows back along the 3rd base line. He probably threw it from 120 feet away. It was my record-tying 300th ball of the season--and it kept my streak alive.

Two minutes after returning to the left field corner, I spotted a ball sitting on the infield dirt between 3rd and short. I knew that someone would eventually walk over and pick it up and toss it into the crowd, so I ran over, hoping it would happen sooner than later. It did. Clint Barmes approached the ball and gave me a sidearm flip as soon as I shouted his name. There it was. Ball #301 of the season. A new record. (It's an ugly ball, all scuffed and beat up and discolored. I love it.)

I went back to the left field corner and got another ball--my fifth of the day--from...someone. I think it was an outfielder, and I think it was Brad Hawpe, but there was no way to tell. And I'll never know. That's a shame, but at least it wasn't the record-breaker. Whenever I catch an important ball, I try to make sure that I know the source.

Todd Helton was walking from left field to the dugout. I really wanted a ball from him, so I kept pace with him by climbing over railings and running through the aisle. There were two balls sitting near the protective screen behind 3rd base, so I cut down the stairs to get there before he did. As he approached, I called out and asked him as politely as I've ever asked for a ball. He paused just long enough to say, "It's not free ball day," and then kept walking. Nice.

I didn't get anything at the Rockies' dugout after BP, but that was okay because another good thing happened there instead. I ran into a woman named Diane Firstman, who not only is a friend of mine from the Scrabble world, but she's the one who'd recently mentioned me in her "Diamonds are for Humor" MLBlog. She was there with her friend Kevin McCarthy, the guy she'd written about whose company has season tickets in the front row. They invited me to sit with them during the game. I said I was there with a friend. They told me to get him, and they lent me their ticket stubs so I could sneak him back into the Field Level. (Once BP ends, security obnoxiously starts checking tickets; poor Sean had gotten stuck in the Loge when BP abruptly ended five minutes early.)

I got him back in, and we headed down to the dugout. We ended up sitting there all night, but before the game started, I ran out to the left field foul line and got my sixth ball of the day from Rockies second baseman Luis Gonzalez (not to be confused with the Arizona Diamondbacks left fielder with the same name). I also got three autographs on my ticket stub.

From left to right: Clint Barmes (who oughta be ashamed of himself for writing like that), Ryan Shealy (who's enormous), and Ryan Speier (my new favorite player of all time). I got to talk to Speier for a full minute, during which I thanked him for the glove and asked why HE didn't restring it.

"I have like three others," he said.

I got my picture taken with him (which came out horribly) and ended the conversation with my second major league handshake of the day. I think THAT might be a new record for me as well.

The game started, and I was in the perfect spot to get a ball tossed to me by the Rockies as they came off the field. (The view wasn't bad either.)

Sure enough, after Cliff Floyd grounded out to Gonzalez to end the bottom of the 1st, Shealy (playing 1st base) tossed me the ball on his way in. That was #7 on the day.

Several innings later, Diane got a ball from Barmes. Little kids were getting balls left and right. It was amazing how many balls were being tossed into the crowd. I rarely sit behind the dugout and always forget that there's constant action there. Still, I didn't think I'd get anything else for the rest of the night because the munchkins had taken over.

I was wrong.

Before the bottom of the 8th, 1st base coach Dave Collins (who stole 395 bases during his major league career) tossed me the infield warmup ball. Then, when the Rockies came off the field three outs later, Shealy tossed me another...Tom Glavine had chopped it off the plate to my favorite player.

Unlike the nonsense I had to endure three days earlier in Philadelphia, no one at Shea got mad at me for getting three balls during the game...except Kevin...although I think he was joking. What did Sean think? Nothing. He had to leave early and missed out.

Two other fans got into a heated debate over a ball. Two fathers. Father #1 (who had front row seats) had gotten two balls. Father #2 (who was sitting six rows back and kept running up) had barely missed out on the second. Father #2 was yelling and cursing until father #1 handed him one of the balls. Father #2 then apologized for all the mean things he'd said and marched off triumphantly to present the ball (which he didn't deserve) to his young son. I told father #1 he should've kept them both. He shrugged. We agreed that father #2 was an idiot who should've just gone to the souvenir stand instead.

Meanwhile, a lucky fan in the Mezzanine (third deck) caught TWO foul balls during the game and everyone cheered their heads off. Is one ball enough? Is two balls too many? What about nine? Everyone's got an opinion, and that's fine. I just don't like it when that opinion is forced upon me.

Glavine ended up winning his 275th career game with a brilliant two-hit, 11-strikeout performance. Mike Piazza blasted his 397th career homer. David Wright went deep twice and picked up his 100th RBI of the season. Jose Reyes set a Mets record for most at-bats in a season. He's now up to 684.

Final score: Mets 11, Rockies 0.

STATS:

• 306 balls in 41 games this season = 7.5 balls per game

• 425 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 51 consecutive games with at least three balls

• 2,737 total balls...moves me into 49th place on the all-time hits list ahead of Tony Perez (2,732) and Goose Goslin (2,735). Next up is Barry Bonds (2,742).