9-6-09 PNC Park
Question:
What's worse than attending a Sunday afternoon game?
Answer:
Attending a Sunday afternoon game with the Cardinals taking batting practice.
When I got to PNC Park, I stood outside for awhile and looked in. There were no cages set up, and the garage doors to where the screens and cage were kept, were closed.
After talking to fellow ballhawk Nick Pelescak before the gates opened, I decided to not enter the park, and just go home. I didn't feel like running all over the place to try and get a ball. I would basically have to beg players to throw me a warm up ball, which is something I'm not fond of doing.
On my way walking back to my car, I got a call from Nick. The groundscrew had just rolled out all of the screens. I stopped in my tracks and turned around to head back towards PNC Park.
Unfortunately, the team taking batting practice on this Sunday was the St Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals are notorious for their line drive, opposite field approach, making home runs rare.
Luckily, when they began hitting, one Cardinals batter hit a ball to the left center field wall. I threw my glove out on the field twice to roll the ball to the base of the wall, and used the glove trick to reel up ball #1.
You can probably see my glove trail in the dirt above.
I tried to get a few players attention to get a ball tossed up, but not even future hall of famer John Smoltz was paying any attention to the fans.
The first Cardinals group hit exactly zero home runs. Fantastic.
I moved over to the right field wall for the next group, which included several lefties. There were a few home runs hit at me. One ball was a line drive that I reached over the right field wall for, but ended up being about a foot too low for me to catch. It hit off of the wall. I heard Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright say, "Oh!" Making me feel like I should've reached over the wall more, but I didn't want to fall 21 feet to my death.
Another home run was hit directly at me, but a guy in the front row ( I was in the second ) reached in front of my glove and made the catch. Robbery.
I tried asking Wainwright and Carpenter to toss balls up, but was ignored. The Cardinals also ignored two young courteous Cards fans.
I knew if those kids couldn't get a ball tossed to them, that there was absolutely no chance of me getting one.
I went back to left field for the final Cardinals group. There, a large crowd severely limited my range.
It didn't matter though, because the last group didn't hit any homers either.
Good thing I used the glove trick early to get on the board, because I got shut out the rest of batting practice.
Again, I left before the game started.
On the walk back to my car, I stopped in West Park at Gus and Yia Yia's to get an old fashioned ice ball.
Good stuff.
Today's lone baseball:
And the sweet spot:
STATISTICS:
Game: 1 ball (1 device)
Season: 344 balls (181 hit, 101 thrown, 62 device)
Games: 71 games (7 of which didn't have BP)
Average: 4.85 balls per game
Career: 510 balls
Streak: 86 consecutive games attended with at least 1 ball snagged.
Attendance: 19,274
What's worse than attending a Sunday afternoon game?
Answer:
Attending a Sunday afternoon game with the Cardinals taking batting practice.
When I got to PNC Park, I stood outside for awhile and looked in. There were no cages set up, and the garage doors to where the screens and cage were kept, were closed.
After talking to fellow ballhawk Nick Pelescak before the gates opened, I decided to not enter the park, and just go home. I didn't feel like running all over the place to try and get a ball. I would basically have to beg players to throw me a warm up ball, which is something I'm not fond of doing.
On my way walking back to my car, I got a call from Nick. The groundscrew had just rolled out all of the screens. I stopped in my tracks and turned around to head back towards PNC Park.
Unfortunately, the team taking batting practice on this Sunday was the St Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals are notorious for their line drive, opposite field approach, making home runs rare.
Luckily, when they began hitting, one Cardinals batter hit a ball to the left center field wall. I threw my glove out on the field twice to roll the ball to the base of the wall, and used the glove trick to reel up ball #1.
You can probably see my glove trail in the dirt above.
I tried to get a few players attention to get a ball tossed up, but not even future hall of famer John Smoltz was paying any attention to the fans.
The first Cardinals group hit exactly zero home runs. Fantastic.
I moved over to the right field wall for the next group, which included several lefties. There were a few home runs hit at me. One ball was a line drive that I reached over the right field wall for, but ended up being about a foot too low for me to catch. It hit off of the wall. I heard Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright say, "Oh!" Making me feel like I should've reached over the wall more, but I didn't want to fall 21 feet to my death.
Another home run was hit directly at me, but a guy in the front row ( I was in the second ) reached in front of my glove and made the catch. Robbery.
I tried asking Wainwright and Carpenter to toss balls up, but was ignored. The Cardinals also ignored two young courteous Cards fans.
I knew if those kids couldn't get a ball tossed to them, that there was absolutely no chance of me getting one.
I went back to left field for the final Cardinals group. There, a large crowd severely limited my range.
It didn't matter though, because the last group didn't hit any homers either.
Good thing I used the glove trick early to get on the board, because I got shut out the rest of batting practice.
Again, I left before the game started.
On the walk back to my car, I stopped in West Park at Gus and Yia Yia's to get an old fashioned ice ball.
Good stuff.
Today's lone baseball:
And the sweet spot:
STATISTICS:
Game: 1 ball (1 device)
Season: 344 balls (181 hit, 101 thrown, 62 device)
Games: 71 games (7 of which didn't have BP)
Average: 4.85 balls per game
Career: 510 balls
Streak: 86 consecutive games attended with at least 1 ball snagged.
Attendance: 19,274
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