Before the game started, I got autographs from Adam Rosales and Steve Pearce...



...and then got Luis Rivas to toss me a ball--my seventh of the day--after he finished playing catch along the right field foul line. When I caught that ball, the entire front row was packed with kids, but none of them had gloves. They were ALL there for autographs, so no one protested when I reached out and made the easy catch.

Six of the seven balls I'd snagged at that point were either marked (with a "C" by Cincinnati) or stamped (with "practice") on the sweet spot. As for the small four-digit numbers that appear on the balls, I wrote them as I snagged each one. They indicate how many balls I have. The ball in the middle of the lower row, for example, was the 3,588th ball of my collection, and if you're wondering why some of the numbers are upside-down...it's not my fault. It's the Reds' and Pirates' fault. I mark every ball in the same spot: to the left of the main portion of the stamp, all the way over near the sweet spot. The Reds and Pirates were obviously not concerned with making each mark or stamp face the same way. As far as I'm concerned, THEY marked and stamped some of the balls upside-down; I merely turned them all so they'd face the same way in this photograph.

Jona and I wandered throughout the game after getting kicked out of a great foul ball spot in the third inning. (Good job, Pirates management. Not only have you assembled an unwatchable team, but you have more empty seats than fans, and you're instructing your ushers to act like bullies. Bravo. Enjoy another 15 years in the cellar. And while we're at it, your dollar hot dogs sucked.) We checked out the view from deep left-center field and poked our heads inside the restaurant:



We wandered back toward the field and got a good look at the open space behind the bleachers where I'd caught a BP homer the day before (I highly recommend this spot whenever a power-hitting righty comes up):



I was filmed juggling three balls late in the game (sorry for the poor quality but this is a screen shot from a low-quality video)...

...and shown on the Jumbotron for at least 20 seconds:



As you can see in the photo above, the Pirates had a 4-1 lead after six innings. Each team added a run after that...and that was it. There were four home runs hit in the game, and I didn't come close to any of them. Paul Maholm worked eight solid innings to earn the win. The game lasted just two hours and 14 minutes. The attendance was a minuscule 15,787. After the final out, I got a ball tossed to me by home plate umpire Kevin Causey as he walked off the field (on the outfield end of the third base dugout) and then got another ball from an unidentifiable Pirate one minute later at the dugout. (It had to be a pitcher because he walked across the field from the bullpen. He was tall and had a beard, and I think he was right-handed. Any ideas who it might've been?) I gave this ball to a girl on my right, collected a few extra ticket stubs, and went out to dinner with Jona.

Goodbye, PNC Park.



STATS:

• 9 balls at this game

• 317 balls in 44 games this season = 7.2 balls per game.

• 540 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 131 consecutive games outside of New York with at least one ball

• 3,594 total balls

Several other things...

1) I'm five balls away from breaking my single-season record.

2) I've decided to go for 400 balls this season, and since I have about 20 more games planned, I should be able to do it.

3) It looks like I'm going to be in Philadelphia with Clif (aka "goislanders4") on Tuesday.

4) I haven't had ANY time lately to answer emails or comments (I've barely had time to blog and eat and sleep), but I'm hoping to catch up at some point this weekend...

Due to a combination of stupidity, bad luck, and quirky architectural design, I still only had those two baseballs when the rest of the stadium opened at 5:30pm. (An example of the bad luck: I was scooting through the second row, about to make an easy basket catch on a line drive home run, when a man in the front row who had lost the ball in the sun darted to the side in a last-second attempt to duck out of the way, but he ended up ducking right into it and getting in my way as the ball slammed off his shoulder and plopped back onto the field.) I ran out to the right field seats, thinking it might be better there...but no, it was a total waste of time. The wall was too high. It would've been tough to use the glove trick, only because the ushers and security guards would've had a chance to stop me. The section was too steep. There were too many tunnels and railings. There was no room to run. And it started getting crowded.

I went back to left field, changed into my Reds shirt and Reds cap, and snagged three more balls during the remaining half of BP (all of which were marked with a "C" on the sweet spot). The first was tossed by a player that I couldn't identify, the second was a deep home run that I caught on a fly in that open area behind the benches, and the third came via the glove trick near the foul pole. Not bad, not great. It could've been worse, but I also could've hit double digits by this point if I'd REALLY been on my game.

As for that open area behind the bleachers...here I am standing there:



It was a great spot except for one thing: it was well over 400 feet from home plate so there weren't too many guys who could reach me.

One problem with the bleachers at PNC is that the wall measures 383 feet from home plate in straight-away left field. That's kinda far. Another problem stems from the fact that fans in any stadium always cram into the first few rows; the bleachers here only HAVE a few rows--a mere half-dozen in one spot--so despite the low attendance at this game, that whole section still got uncomfortably crowded toward the end of BP:



Batting practice ended at 6pm--about 20 minutes earlier than usual--so I lost a few more snagging opportunities. It just wasn't a good day, and I was kicking myself for not going to see the Mets in D.C. instead.

Just before the game started, I snuck down to the Reds' dugout (which is on the first base side at PNC) and got my sixth ball of the day tossed by some guy I'd never heard of. Adam Rosales? I hadn't even noticed his name when I printed the team's roster the night before. Seriously, who is he? Who were half the players in the game? I thought I was watching minor league baseball.

I moved to the seats behind the third base dugout and ran down to the front row when Javier Valentin lined out to end the top of the first inning. Doug Mientkiewicz caught the ball and flipped it to me on his way in. Check out the bat imprint on it:



Can you tell what it says? There's a faint reverse imprint (as if you're looking at it in a mirror) of the first six letters in the word "Cincinnati." See it?

I moved back to the first base side and tried going for third-out balls behind the Reds' dugout, but I didn't get anything. I kept getting kicked out (and eventually threatened) by an old crabby usher, which was especially frustrating because the Reds must've tossed 20 balls to the people in the front row throughout the game. No joke. Not only did every third-out ball get tossed into the crowd, but 1st base coach Billy Hatcher gave away the infield warm-up ball every inning as well. And there were other balls that got tossed up...foul balls from the ball boy, random balls from the players and coaches. It was crazy. And yeah...I had to stay 10 to 15 rows back and watch helplessly as all of this was taking place.

As for the game itself...whatever. I mean, it WAS Major League Baseball (at least that's what I was told), but there really wasn't much to get excited about. Two lousy teams. No superstars. Unenthusiastic fans. Terrible cheese steak (with no cheese). What is there to say? I actually missed Shea and Yankee Stadium. (Did I really just say that?) Edinson Volquez pitched well and earned his 14th win. Mike Lincoln also pitched well and earned his ninth hold. Valentin and Brandon Phillips hit home runs. Rosales and Chris Dickerson picked up their first major league hits. Corey Patterson went 2-for-4 to raise his batting average to .194. Home plate umpire Jerry Meals called a great game.

???

I'm at a loss.

STATS:

• 7 balls at this game

• 308 balls in 43 games this season = 7.2 balls per game.

• 539 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 130 consecutive games outside of New York with at least one ball

• 3,585 total balls

Greg turned up soon after.

During the first hour that Shea was open, I noticed that there was one usher in the bleachers collecting all the home run balls. I hadn't seen her toss any of them back onto the field, so when I was finally out there and noticed a couple baseball-sized bulges in her pockets, I innocently asked, "What happened to all those balls you were collecting before the bleachers opened?"

"I still got 'em," she said without much emotion, leaving me to wonder if she was being testy or just feeling ho-hum about the whole thing.

"Any chance you might be able to spare one of them? Please?"

She reached into her pocket and pulled one out and handed it to me--just like that--and I later gave it to a little kid.

Did I count this ball in my collection? Abso-snagging-lutely. Ball No. 3,574. As I've mentioned before, stadium security has gone out of its way so many times to prevent me from getting balls that on these rare occasions when they actually show me some love, I gladly accept it.

Meanwhile, the bleachers were getting uncomfortably crowded:



In the photo above, do you see the guy wearing a black shirt, white shorts and white shoes? Well, he was a jerk. At one point, when a home run ball was heading our way and I got a head start to the spot where it was going to land, he stuck out his arms and elbowed me in the chest to prevent me from getting past, and wouldn't you know it...when he turned around I noticed that the front of his shirt had a Yankees logo.

"What the HELL are you doing?!" I shouted at him. "This isn't Yankee Stadium! We don't DO that here!"

"Whaddaya talkin' about?!" he snapped. "You tried t'cut me off!"

"No I didn't," I said, "and you know damn well what I'm talking about. Keep your elbows at your side, and we'll both be fine."

Ten minutes later, with BP still in full swing, a beer had replaced his glove. Shocker. (Neither of us got that ball, by the way, but he did see me snag a few more.

My fifth ball of the day (pictured on the left) was a home run that landed in the bleachers--you can see where it hit the metal ridges on the benches--and it took some skill to snag it because it skipped up off a wall and was about to plunk down in the aisle as I was racing another fan for it. Basically, I had to catch it on an in-between hop after guessing how high it was going to bounce off the unfamiliar metal flooring. My sixth ball (pictured on the right) was tossed by Marlins bullpen coordinator Pierre Arsenault. I have no idea how this strange marking got on it, but I once snagged another ball like it. Could it have been pounded into a net? The L-screen, perhaps? Or the batting cage itself? Don't those nets have wider holes?

Five minutes before BP ended, Greg took off and headed back into the main part of the stadium, and two minutes later, another ball landed in the left-center field gap. I reeled it in. It was muddy. (Eww; there's something extra dirty about Shea Stadium dirt.) It was my 300th ball of the season:



I had a great seat for the game. Not only was I in the front row behind that nice wide aisle, but there weren't any other fans with gloves, and the two biggest/meanest-looking guys in the section were glued to their cell phones:



Were they texting each other? (GUY ONE: omg these fones r gr8 lets go mets!!! GUY TWO: u got dat rite boieeee lol.) I just don't get it.

There were five home runs hit during the game, and I nearly snagged the best one: Daniel Murphy's first as a big leaguer. If you haven't heard of this guy, now's the time to get his name into your head. I think he's gonna be around for quite some time. He's 23 years old, bats left-handed, has a great eye, excellent pitch recognition, a patient approach, and a gorgeous swing. He pinch hit for Scott Schoeneweis (boo!) in the sixth inning and went oppo off Renyel Pinto, a southpaw with nasty stuff. The ball, which was hit pretty much right in my direction, barely cleared the outfield wall but fell short of the bleachers and bounced back onto the field. If it had been hit 10 feet further, I would've been all over it.

The two Carloses--Delgado and Beltran--also went deep for the Mets while Jorge Cantu and Mike Jacobs went yard for Florida.

The Mets ended up winning, 8-6. Schoeneweis "earned" the win after working one-third of an inning in relief of Brian Stokes. Aaron Heilman (boo!) got the save. Beltran and David Wright (yay!) each had three hits. It was a fun night, made even funner when I got a brand new commemorative ball from Ramon Castro at the Mets' dugout after the final out.

STATS:

• 8 balls at this game

• 301 balls in 42 games this season = 7.2 balls per game.

• 538 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 328 consecutive games at Shea Stadium with at least one ball

• 3,578 total balls

• 1 day until I'll be at PNC Park. I'm planning to wake up tomorrow in the 6am hour (ouch) and hit the road soon after. It's a six-and-a-half-hour drive according to MapQuest. Thank God for iPods and girlfriends. Jona will be with me, as will my entire doo-wop collection (much to her dismay). (What? You don't like doo-wop? Download "Canadian Sunset" by the Impacts and tell me that's not an awesome song. Go on. I dare you. Anyway, my doo-wop collection only accounts for about one-sixth of one percent of all my music, so whatever.) I'll be attending two games (August 12-13), but she'll probably only join me on the second day. I'll be taking my laptop, but I have no idea if I'll have the time/energy to blog while I'm there. I don't know. I might be able to crank out an entry before I head back to the ballpark on Wednesday afternoon...

Just before the Mets finished throwing, I moved to the seats behind first base and stayed about 15 rows back. I held up my big glove and didn't say a word, and within 30 seconds I got another (standard) ball thrown to me. It might've come from Robinson Cancel. I'm not sure. It was thrown from at least 150 feet away, and it went right through one of the big holes in the webbing of the glove. Luckily, there were no other fans within 20 feet of me, so I was able to scurry down a couple steps and grab it.

That's when my girlfriend Jona showed up and started taking a ton of photos.

Sammy had a chance to use his glove trick for a commemorative ball sitting on the sloped grassy area near the DreamSeats...



...and I'd just like to point out that even though he struggled with it for at least 10 minutes, I generously stood back and let him get it:

After Sammy reeled in the ball, I ran up to the Loge level and had my own chance to use the glove trick. Jona stayed on the Field level and documented the action. Starting on the upper left and going clockwise in the four-part pic down below, I'm 1) setting up the trick, 2) leaning under a railing (under the foul pole which was in my way) and starting to lower my glove, 3) getting the glove to drop gently over the ball, and 4) holding up the ball for the camera.



In all four pics, the fan wearing the blue shirt and black cap is a guy named Adam who's been reading this blog for a while and leaving comments as "cubsbaseball." This was the first time we'd met, and when Jona came upstairs we got a pic together:



By the way, the ball I fished out of the gap behind the right field wall was commemorative, but the logo was very worn. Check it out:



I got two more (standard) balls before the Padres started taking BP. The first was thrown to me in the Loge by Sanchez, and the second was tossed by hitting coach Howard Johnson at the first base dugout as the Mets left the field. This ball was even more worn than the one I got with the glove trick:



Jona followed me around for the rest of batting practice and kept taking pics, but there really wasn't anything worth photographing. Why? Because the Padres were THE stingiest team I have ever seen. I was wearing a Padres cap and a Padres shirt, and I was wearing the big glove, and I *still* couldn't get anyone to toss me a ball. It was terrible. At one point, I was standing along the left field foul line and shouting (politely) at bullpen coach Darrel Akerfelds for a ball.

"They'll hit you one!" he yelled.

"No they won't!" I yelled back, "not in foul territory!"

I was right.

Twenty minutes later, when I was up in the left field Loge, I managed to get Trevor Hoffman to look up and smile, and that was it for BP. Did I mention it was terrible? I'd put the Hample Jinx on the entire Padres organization, but based on the standings, I obviously don't need to.

Finally, at the very end of BP, I worked my way down to the Padres' dugout and got my sixth ball of the day from some coach with "RAY 80" on the back of his uniform. My friend Leigh from San Diego (aka "padreleigh" if you read the comments) has since told me that that guy is a batting practice pitcher.

Jona and I switched hats (and possession of the big glove) for a photo after BP...



...and less than 10 minutes later, I used the glove to get Kevin Kouzmanoff to toss me his pre-game warm-up ball from shallow left field. (Fine, so the Padres weren't ALL bad.) Unfortunately, the ball popped out of the glove and rolled underneath a seat on the other side of a railing, and it took an all-out scramble on my part to get it.

Jona and I spent the game in the Loge where I ran around for foul balls behind home plate. She ran with me at first, but since she was feeling a bit under the weather, she ended up grabbing a seat near the tunnel where I was positioning myself for left-handed batters. This was her view of me late in the game:






For the first eight innings, the only action was when I got recognized by several fans. At one point, a father and son from Detroit asked me if I was the guy from YouTube, and when I said yes, the kid asked me to sign his ticket stub. A couple innings later, a guy around my age asked if I was the baseball collector.

"That's me," I said and he replied with something along the lines of: "Oh my God! Me and my friend have been arguing for like half an hour about whether or not you were the guy. This is crazy...umm, I hope this isn't awkward or anything, but would it be okay if I take your picture?"

"That's not awkward at all," I said. "Go for it."

Finally, in the top of the ninth, I found myself standing in the tunnel on the first base side of the plate with Scott Schoeneweis (boo!!!) on the mound and Tadahito Iguchi at the dish. Somehow, Iguchi swung late on one of the ensuing cream-puff fastballs and looped a nice little foul pop-up in my direction. I judged it perfectly, drifted to the front of the tunnel, moved down one step into the seats in front of the aisle, and reached up above several other gloveless hands for the easy catch. Boom. Easy. Done. Half the section cheered and gave me high-fives. The other half booed and started yelling at me to "give it to the kid." There was exactly ONE kid in the entire section who not only was using both hands to eat ice cream out of a miniature helmet, but didn't even have a glove or make any attempt to move toward the spot where the ball was clearly going to land. I'm sorry, but kids like that don't deserve baseballs. They're not bad human beings. They just don't deserve balls. Not in my opinion. And I'd never give away a game ball anyway, especially not a game ball with a commemorative logo, so I stuck it in my pocket. Then I thanked the people who were congratulating me, and I explained myself to those who were still (because of their own pathetic insecurities) heckling me.

When I got home, I learned from Leigh that the foul ball aftermath was captured on the Padres' broadcast. Here's what he said:

"When Tad Iguchi fouled the ball back in the 9th, you could hear a little applause. Our color guy, Mark Grant, said something about the ball coming back towards them. The camera cut to the two guys in the booth. They were both leaning over looking down. Grant said something like, 'Looks like the fan that caught that foul brought his glove to the yard tonight.' Then, the camera panned down and had a GREAT SHOT of you standing in the tunnel holding the ball in your right hand. You put the ball into your right pocket. They showed you listening to what a few fans were saying to you, then you smiled. The camera then panned down to your shirt that said, 'Baseball is life.' Play by play guy Steve Quis said something about your shirt and that was it. Oh yeah, when you put the ball in your pocket Grant said something like, 'He better hide that ball or he'll get rolled on the 7 train.' Ha ha. Anyway, nice job getting on Channel 4 San Diego. If MLB.com has our feed for the game archive, then you can see all the above."

Cool, huh?

As for the game itself, both starters--Pedro Martinez and Cha Seung Baek--allowed two earned runs in 6 1/3 innings, but one got the win and the other took the loss. Pedro surrendered two home runs in the first inning but settled down after that, giving up just two more hits the rest of the way. Unfortunately for him, he was relieved with one out and a runner on third. Feliciano then recorded a strikeout and a walk and induced what should've been an inning-ending ground out. But no. David Wright misplayed it, and the decisive unearned run scored and was charged to Pedro. The Padres tacked on an insurance run in the top of the eighth, and that was it. Final score: Stingy Team 4, Big Glove Appreciators 2.

On my way out of Shea with Jona, I gave a ball to a kid WHO HAD A GLOVE and took a pic of the Iguchi foul ball:



STATS:

• 8 balls at this game

• 293 balls in 41 games this season = 7.1 balls per game.

• 537 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 327 consecutive games at Shea Stadium with at least one ball

• 120 lifetime game balls (not counting game-used balls that get tossed into the crowd)

• 3,570 total balls

Does anyone reading this have season ticket connections in Pittsburgh? I'm planning to go to two games at PNC Park on August 12-13, and I hear that the stadium opens half an hour earlier for fans who not only have season tickets (as part of a 20-game, 40-game, or full-season plan) but who also have a season ticket holder ID to go with it. How the hell am I supposed to get around THAT?

The Phillies hadn't yet started hitting when I ran inside the stadium at 4:35pm, but that didn't matter because there was already a ball sitting halfway out on the warning track in left-center field. Just as I was starting to set up my glove trick, I heard another "Are you Zack Hample?" This time it was a guy named Jeff who's been reading this blog but hasn't yet commented (for some crazy reason). I said a quick hello, then flung my glove out and knocked the ball closer on the first try. Ethan grabbed his camera started taking pics. That's when Phillies outfielder So Taguchi walked over. I asked him for the ball in Japanese, but I figured I was screwed. None of the Phillies seemed to like my glove trick and some (like Shane Victorino) had previously attempted to sabotage it.

By the time Taguchi walked over and picked up the ball, I had lifted my glove out of the way. He looked up and (in perfect English) asked me to lower it...so I did...and he stuck the ball inside. Cool.

The Phillies started hitting less than a minute later, and another ball ended up rolling to the same spot. By this point Taguchi wasn't anywhere in sight. There weren't any players nearby, for that matter, so once again I began the process of flinging my glove out and knocking the ball closer. Jeff also had a glove trick and asked if he could try to get the ball even though I had already started making my attempt.

"Sure," I said, "we'll just have a good ol' fashioned battle for it."

From the time that I knocked the ball closer to the time that I raised my glove back up to set up the rubber band and magic marker, Jeff had several opportunities to lower his glove right over the ball and snag it. But for whatever reason his trick failed. His rubber band was probably too tight or too loose, so I ended up getting the ball to stick inside my glove. As I was raising it back up for the final time, another ball flew out of nowhere and slammed the padded wall below. I looked up. Shane Victorino. Who else? Thankfully his aim was off, and he was still too far away to run over and grab my glove, so I was able to lift it the rest of the way and pull out my second ball of the day. (I'm not mad at Victorino. I think he was just being playful. Of course if he'd actually prevented me from getting that ball, I would've unleashed the Hample Jinx on his Hawaiian you-know-what.)

A little while later, I botched my chance at snagging ball No. 3, although it was a difficult chance that surely would NOT have been scored an error if there were an official scorer for snagging. Here's what happened. Pat Burrell launched a home run over my head. The ball landed in an empty row, ricocheted back toward my row, clipped the back of a seat, popped up in the air but flew away from me on an angle as I was just arriving. In the split-second that the ball was in the air right in front of me, I took a swipe at it with my bare hand, but unfortunately the ball hit the tip of my fingers and deflected over the seats below and started trickling down the steps. I was trapped in the middle of the row, and I knew I was done. VERY frustrating.

To make matters worse, the left field seats were as crowded as I'd ever seen them. (You can see my mom in the photo on the right. She's wearing sunglasses and looking at me.) Granted, it wasn't nearly as packed as the short porch gets at Yankee Stadium, but by this ballpark's standards, it was highly unpleasant. Finally, toward the end of the Phillies' portion of BP, a right-handed batter (no idea who) hit a home run in my direction. I was standing on a crowded staircase. I judged the ball perfectly. I shuffled down a couple steps as the ball began its descent, and at the last second I reached up and made the catch above half a dozen other hands. My mom was sitting a few feet away and had a great view. That felt good.

I took her out to right-center field when the rest of the stadium opened at 5:35pm, and as soon as we got there, I saw a ball roll to the wall in left-center so I raced back. I snagged that one with the glove trick, then got Kevin Gregg to toss me another in straight-away left field, then got Arthur Rhodes to toss me my sixth ball of the day in left-center. I was wearing
an aqua-colored Marlins T-shirt to go with my aqua-colored Marlins cap, and it was definitely paying off.

Back in right-center field, I crossed paths with Jeff (here we are in the pic on the left) and caught another home run in front of my mom. (Might've been hit by Mike Jacobs. Might've been Jeremy Hermida. Whatever.) Then I got Alfredo Amezaga to throw me a ball by asking in Spanish, and when Renyel Pinto ended up with a ball in his glove several minutes later, I shouted, "Para mi madre!" which means "for my mother" and got him to toss that one as well. I made sure to be the one to make the catch--I couldn't have counted it in my collection if my mom had caught it--and then made a big production of handing the ball to her because I could see both Pinto and Amezaga staring at me.

Toward the end of BP, I tried to use my glove trick for a ball that was several feet out from the wall in the bullpen, but before I had chance to reel it in, a security guard marched down the steps and made me stop. I told him I was trying to get it for a little kid (which was true), and he still wouldn't let me get it. Not only that...he cut the string off my glove and then marched back up the steps as if he was proud of himself for accomplishing something. Normally I keep extra string with me, but I didn't have any this time. I just forgot it. No big deal. Batting practice ended several minutes later, and before I left the seats, I reached into my backpack and pulled out a ball for the kid. He had a glove. He'd been trying unsuccessfully for the previous 45 minutes to get a ball. I thought he deserved one. It's as simple as that.

Right before the game, I snuck down to the Marlins' dugout and got my 10th ball of the day tossed by Hanley Ramirez. Sweet!! I'd been hoping to get to add him to my list for years.

My mom and I grabbed a couple empty seats on the third base side. Nice view. (The stairs were on my left.) And as you can see in the photo below, the Phillies "fans" were really into the game:



When the Marlins took a 4-0 lead in the 7th inning, lots of "fans" left the stadium and my mom and I moved two sections to the right. This was the view:



When Rhodes fanned pinch hitter Greg Dobbs to end the 8th inning, catcher John Baker forgot how many outs there were and jumped up in preparation to throw the ball around the horn. Rhodes got his attention, but Baker still appeared confused, so Rhodes got the ball from him, and since I was already in the front row at this point, I got him to toss it to me on his way in. It was the second ball of the day that he'd given to me.

"Did anybody get that one?" asked my mom when I returned to our seats.

I opened my glove and showed her the ball, and she couldn't believe it. (Believe it, lady!)

We both had a great time at the game. Obviously it was nice to spend 12 hours together (including our time in the car), but it was more than that. She got to see me in action and get a real glimpse into my world. I got to teach her a few things about baseball and share my passion. The weather was perfect. We ate hot dogs and peanuts while secretly rooting against the Phillies, who ended up losing, 8-2. It was just perfect.

After the game, I bolted back down to the dugout and got a ball from Marlins 1st base/infield coach Andy Fox. I think it was the infield warm-up ball. How else could it have gotten so beat up. Check it out. Is this NOT a thing of beauty?



STATS:

• 12 balls at this game

• 285 balls in 40 games this season = 7.1 balls per game.

• 140 balls in 14 lifetime games at Citizen Bank Park = 10 balls per game.

• 85 lifetime games with 10 or more balls

• 30 lifetime games outside NYC with 10 or more balls

• 536 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 129 consecutive games outside of New York with at least one ball

• 3,562 total balls

There were a few more snagging opportunities that we passed up...like, for example...when the A's were playing catch before the game along the left field foul line, the four of us were eating pizza in the fourth row on the opposite side of the stadium. That's where our seats were. Check out the view:

This game was Jason Bay's first as a member of the Red Sox--or the "Bayston Red Sox" as one fan's T-shirt read--and the ovation he received during his first at-bat gave me goose bumps and almost made my eyes a little misty. It was THAT thunderous and heart-warming. I didn't get the sense that anyone at Fenway missed Manny. He's behaved so poorly that even I (a longtime Manny supporter with a personal connection to him) have a tough time rooting for him now. On the other hand, Jason Bay is one of those quiet/professional types who consistently puts up solid numbers but gets no respect because he plays in Pittsburgh. I felt so happy for him. After five years of rotting in baseball hell, he was rescued and thrust into a pennant race in front of 37,832 fans who were truly thrilled to have him. With all due respect to the four million-plus fans who've been filling up Yankee Stadium each of the past few years, I have to say that the people in New England are without a doubt more passionate about their team than ANY fan base I've EVER encountered. There's no comparison. It's not even close.

Bay ended up drawing a five-pitch walk in the bottom of the second (you've never heard such loud cheers for a walk), moving to third on a J.D. Drew double, and scoring the game's first run on a sacrifice fly by Jed Lowrie. Tim Wakefield and Justin Duchscherer matched zeros after that, and it looked like the Sox were going to hang on for 1-0 win until Jack Cust (who's on pace to strike out 205 times this season) hit an opposite field bomb off Hideki Okajima to tie the game at 1-1 in the eighth.

Jean knew a lot about baseball, and in fact, so did Lars and Cody because they'd read my book. I don't know if they tried to memorize it or what, but I was blown away with the amount of facts and details they remembered. We all wore our gloves, but since there wasn't much action in the foul ball department, we focused on watching the game. They asked dozens of questions and I explained everything...from the stats on the scoreboard to the Pesky Pole (which was less than 20 feet to our right) to double-play depth...and on and on and on. I had lots of fun, and I'm pretty sure they did as well.

As the game headed into the 10th inning, I was surprised when hardly any fans left the stadium. Six outs later, however, a few seats opened up so I led Jean and Cody and Lars toward home plate...and this is where we settled down:




With two outs in the bottom of the 11th, I took Lars and Cody to the third base dugout and explained exactly how to get a third-out ball. We were all set to charge toward the front row and yell at whichever A's player ended up with the ball...when Kevin Youkilis took a called third strike and the catcher rolled it back to the mound.

Five outs later we were back in position, but we didn't get another shot. Bay hit a towering fly ball high off the Monster for a triple, Drew drew an intentional walk, and Lowrie punched a weak grounder past the left side of the mound that allowed Bay to score the winning run. Final score: Zack 3, Red Sox 2, Athletics 1.

Lars and Cody and I still went down to the dugout (even though I knew the A's would be in a foul mood), and it paid off...sort of. We got some gum and seeds from one of the bat boys. He was carrying a few boxes of it, and after I called out and asked him if we could have some, he walked over and held it out and let us grab whatever we wanted. The photo on the right shows what I took. Cody and Lars each got their own stash.

We all lingered inside the stadium as long as possible, then headed outside and I told them where they might be able to get a few more autographs. I didn't stick around for that, however, and they understood why. It was already well past 11pm, I'd been up since 8:45am, and I had a 211-mile drive ahead of me. Before we parted ways, Jean told me she might send me to a game at Citi Field next season with her son who was born on the day that the Mets won their first World Series...

STATS:

• 3 balls at this game

• 273 balls in 39 games this season = 7 balls per game.

• 535 consecutive games with at least one ball

• 128 consecutive games outside of New York with at least one ball

• 9 consecutive Watch With Zack games with at least two balls

• 3,550 total balls