Welcome to the 16 members who have signed up for the first annual Ballhawk Competition.  Since the season will officially begin tomorrow, I would like to get everyone on the same page as to how to report their statistics to me.

Each Sunday, I will send a reminder email to all participants, requesting your statistics for the week.  I will then take the numbers that you’ve sent me and plug them into a master spreadsheet. 

So, what information will I need?  Each week, you will have to send me your weekly totals in:
1)  Balls caught – Total number of balls caught for the week.

2)  Hit (Batted Balls) – These include home runs, ground rule doubles, foul balls.  Also, any balls that you find in the stands when entering a stadium (Easter Eggs) will be considered a batted ball and fall into the Hit category.

3)  Thrown – Any ball that you snag that has been thrown or handed to you by a player, coach, or stadium employee.  Balls snagged by friends and handed over to you DO NOT COUNT.

4)  Device – Any ball that you snag that you would not have been able to get without some kind of device or contraption.  (Cup tricks, Glove tricks, Poles, Butterfly Nets, etc)

5)  Attendance – In order to calculate your average competition factor I will need to know how many games you attended during the week, and what the attendance was at each one.  You can send me the weekly totals (example: 3 games, 112,232) or you can send me game by game totals and I’ll add it up.  (example:  4/7 32,232, 4/9 40,000, 4/11 40,000)

6)  Game Balls/Home Runs?  If you snag a home run ball, ground rule double or foul ball during an actual game, it will count as a game ball.  These balls will be included in your hit category.  For example, if a ballhawk snags 4 balls in a week, 2 homers in batting practice, 1 thrown ball, and 1 home run ball during a game, they should report 3 hit balls, and 1 thrown ball.  Game balls will count as ONE ball in your weekly totals.  If you catch a home run ball, send me the mlb.com video link, and I’ll post a link in the Weekly update for everyone to watch.

So, using my final week of the season, I would email the following information:
********************************************************************************************
Total Balls:  12 balls
Hit: 10 balls
Thrown:  2 balls
Device: 0 balls
Total Attendance: 107,857
Games: 5
Game Balls: 0

You can also break it down for me like so if you like:
9/21/08  1 ball (0 hit, 1 thrown, 0 device)  20,311 attendance
9/20/08  6 balls(6 hit, 0 thrown, 0 device) 36,621 attendance
9/19/08  2 balls(2 hit, 0 thrown, 0 device) 26,301 attendance
9/17/08  2 balls(2 hit, 0 thrown, 0 device) 11,883 attendance
9/16/08  1 ball (0 hit, 1 thrown, 0 device) 12,741 attendance
*******************************************************************************************

On Sunday Night, I’ll put it all in a spreadsheet and it will look something like this:

The ERR is a formula error that will be corrected once everyone attends a game.  I have formulas entered that will come up as ERR if asked to divide by 0.

If you’d like a different display name, such as your last name or a nickname, just let me know.

Any questions about anything, just post a comment!