Ahhh, the months had finally passed, a “Ballhawk fest” had been organized by Alan Schuster, founder of mygameballs.com, as a gathering of ballhawks from near and far. The weekly reminders to my dad had also passed:

“Hey dad, we’re still free July 23rd right?”

“Why?”

“Orioles game? Sound familiar? Ballhawk fest? No?”

“Oh yeah, not sure if we can swing that, but we’ll see”

 and now it was the test to see if my persistance had payed off.

The plan was almost blown up by the timing of getting my sister back to her job as a camp counselor but I was able to be dropped of at the park a at about 5:10, took me till about 5:20 to actually get to the park and get in from where I got dropped. Unfortunately I didn’t have a season ticket that could get me to left field so I stuck to center field for 10 minutes, in that time only 1 ball even reached the seats and there were only probably 3 toss ups to little kids in the front rows.

I was constantly checking my phone for the time and I got to the left field seats right when 5:30 came around. I was too focused on trying to get my first ever batting practice ball (all my balls have been infield warmup/3rd out balls) to introduce myself to the rest of the group, and I figured they were focused enough to not want to be disturbed anyway. I only had only 2 shots at batted balls the whole time, one I over judged by one row and a guy sneaked in a row in front of me and grabbed it cuz he had a better angle, another i under judged and it landed 4 rows behind me despite my best leaping attempt.

So as batting practice wrapped up I had nothing to show for it =/ dissapointing. I then introduced myself to Alan and got my event shirt. He then took me to meet Zack Hample, whom I had never met but have read his blog for two years or so and who had influenced me to take a try at ballhawking. We talked a bit at the seats next to the Orioles Bullpen where there had been 8 or so BP balls scattered, an attendent then came by and gathered them in a pile on the bullpen bench. The starting pitcher and catcher then came out to warm up and with them came the Pitching and Bullpen coach. The bullpen coach took a seat on the bullpen bench and Zack tried to get his attention, he tried telling him about the balls being put on the bench and that they were from BP but you could tell the coach couldn’t hear him very well and wasn’t processing the request. A few minutes later the coach finally looked to his right, and spotted the balls on the bench, it then clicked in his mind what Zack had been trying to convey to him and he then proceeded to toss all of the balls over the screen to all of us standing on the other side. I was able to grab one of those and it ended up being my only ball of the day =/. Imagine that, all game waiting for a third out ball, as an Adam Jones HR landed literally in my assigned seat (http://baltimore.orioles.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=17200171&topic_id=8879002&c_id=bal, our seats were section 78, row 4 seats 3-4 A.k.a the ball was picked up probably at seat 4) fml, and Derek Lee tossed ball after ball to the side of the dugout rather then over the top. I guess I dont know Lee’s tendencies as well as I know Ryan Howard’s.

Despite only snagging one ball I had a great time meeting all the guys, learning the ballpark, and getting Zack to sign my copy of his book. I’ll be making trips to the Phillies Games on Thursday and Friday, and hopefully others. Let me know if you’re going to any Phillies games, I’ll try to keep this updated. I am still looking forward to the day that I get to a ballpark before the gates have oppened and I get to be there for the entirety of BP.

Thanks for reading,

Jeremy (aka PhillyOs)