8/16/13 Rockies at Orioles: Camden Yards

Apparently two weeks was long enough a hiatus from Oriole Park at Camden Yards, because two weeks to the day, I was back there:

The four front people would be:

1. Oliver Francies- A semi-regular who I met because he goes to UND, which is a rival in various sports to UMN.

2. Sir Grant Edrington III- Who I introduced various times when I wrote about the last homestand I was here for. (So, here, here, here, and here)

3. Garrett Meyer- A Kansas City ballhawk, who I hadn’t seen since a game that I didn’t even enter the gates for in June of last year.

4. Avi Miller- With whom I was staying for this Rockies series, and general encyclopedia of all things Orioles.

Going in, I knew I was going to have some competition, but I also wanted to take advantage of the lack of usual competition. Alex Kopp was off on a vacation in Miami, and Tim Anderson wasn’t getting to the game until about 5:30. So when I got in, I first didn’t find any easter eggs, but secondly had the following arrangement of ballhawks surrounding me. Grant was to my left:

Avi was in front of me:

And Garrett was to my right:

To begin BP, JJ Hardy hit two home runs over my head. Both of which I should have caught on the fly, and both of which I misjudged. Thankfully I go the second one, but right after I took this picture:

I turned to Avi and said, “This could be a looong day for me.” It was shortly after that Hardy hit another home run near me. It was headed to my left and to Avi’s row. So when he went into that row, I went in the row below him and jumped up for the catch right in front of his glove:

Avi then headed out shortly after that and spent the rest of BP drinking his sorrows away for free. (I’m half-joking about that. I’ll leave it to your imagination what half I’m talking about.) I then snagged two baseballs which I apparently forgot to take pictures of.(I came to the realization of this just seconds before I typed those last two sentences.) The first was an Alexi Casilla home run that I ran a section to my right to catch. I also caught this one right in front of a teenager and got grief from a middle aged season ticket holder for doing so even though I had already gotten a ball. (I just ignored him, because I knew the kid was a regular who had no problem getting baseballs on his own. For the record, he would go on to get two baseballs before I got a single other baseball.) My second ball came when I headed down the line for the Rockies warming up. I yelled Charlie when the throwing group of Charlie Blackmon and Culberson were done throwing. Culberson ended up with the ball, so I waved to him. And I don’t know who the ball was intended for, because while I had waved right before he tossed the ball, his throw was tailing towards Garrett for what seemed to be an easy catch. I really don’t know what happened next to him, but Garrett had the ball tip off his glove, and so since it bounced to me, I picked the ball up. Weird. And also, I had no clue at the time, I had no clue that this was my 200th ball of the season. Something I had only done once before.

My next ball came out in the center field section of seating. When a number 35 came to the wall to retrieve a ball, I quickly checked my roster and got Chad Bettis to toss me a ball. I then gave the ball to a kid I had slipped past to get into the first row:

That was my fifth baseball of the day. My sixth was by far my favorite of the game…and with no game balls this year, I’d say it ranks pretty high up my favorite snags of this year. (Which is kinda sad now that I think of it.) For whatever reason, I was the only ballhawk on the flag court when Todd Helton launched a ball to the extreme right of the flag court. In fact, it was even off of the flag court. Because as I ran after the ball, I had to reach over the railing that divides the flag court from section 98 at OPACY. So had I not caught the ball, it would have landed in the seats:

This would be my sixth and final ball of BP. After BP, I went to the Orioles bullpen.

Now usually Rick Adair is the one who comes to the Orioles bullpen and tosses all of the baseballs in there to the crowd, but this game it was someone different. As he watched whoever the starting pitcher was warming up outside the bullpen, Grant and I figured out that Rick Adair had taken a leave of absence, and this other coach was Scott McGregor. While neither Grant nor I  got a ball tossed to us, McGregor tossed a ball to a kid to my right. Unfortunately, two grown ups stood up, and after go the ball took two convenient bounces to me, I picked it up and gave it to a kid to my left who actually had a glove on:

That would be my seventh and final ball of the day. For the game I hung out with Tim, Avi, and Grant out in the flag court. I would have a picture, but Avi blocked Tim out of the picture on the first take and then disappeared from frame on the second picture. And while we had a couple close calls, none of us got a home run out there during the game.

STATS:

• 7 Balls at this Game (5 pictured because I gave 2 away)

Numbers 643-649 for my “lifetime”:

• 203 Balls in 47 Games= 4.26 Balls Per Game
• 7 Balls x 31,438 Fans=220,066 Competition Factor
• 109 straight Games with at least 1 Ball
• 14 straight Games with 2 Balls
• 11 straight Games with 3 Balls
• 3 straight Games with 4-5 Balls
• 2 straight Games with 6-7 Balls
• 74 Balls in 18 Games at OPACY= 4.11 Balls Per Game
• 18 straight Games with at least 1 Ball at OPACY
• 8 straight Games with at least 2 Balls at OPACY
• 6 straight Games with at least 3 Balls at OPACY
• 4 straight Games with at least 4 Balls at OPACY
• 2 straight Games with at least 5 Balls at OPACY
• Time Spent On Game 1:28-11:17= 9 Hours 49 Minutes