It was a Sunday game, which was a day game following a night game, thereby decreasing the chances of batting practice.

I got to the stadium around 11AM, and saw no trace of the batting cage or screens.  So, I hung out on the bridge for twenty minutes, where I could see directly into the park.  I then left, resigned to the fact that there would be no batting practice.  Coupled with 35,000 people at the game, it just wasn’t worth running around all game for a ball or two.

I started walking back to the car when I got a text from my fiancee Amy, who was working the game.  She told me that they were wheeling out the screens and that batting practice would be on.

I jogged back to the park and made it into the left field bleachers by 11:35, 35 minutes after the gates had opened.

Only the Phillies would be hitting today.

And, it was packed.

I glove tricked ball #1 and ball #2 towards the left field foul pole:

The stadium was absolutely packed.  Check out the bleachers:

My view straight ahead:

I decided to move towards the foul pole where I would have slightly more room to move.

The move paid off, as I caught a Ben Francisco home run ball on the fly here for ball #3:

I didn’t snag anything else until the 5th inning.  A large group of people left the front row in center field, so I went down for a minute to give myself a chance at an Andrew McCutchen warm up ball.  He fired a perfect strike to me, while I was on the phone with Amy, who I was meeting up with for some food on her break.

That would be my fourth and final ball of the day.

Today’s baseballs:

Sweet spots:

STATISTICS:
Game:  4 balls (1 hit, 1 thrown, 2 device)
Season:  177 balls (67 hit, 40 thrown, 47 device, 23 found)
Games: 29 games
Average:  6.10 balls per game
Career:  1,299 balls
Attendance: 35,505