After having a burst of rain that cut short batting practice and caused the game to be delayed by a half-hour the night before, it was nice to arrive outside Gate H with the sun overhead and a beautiful forecast in front of me.
Also in front of me:
It was “Cruuuuuz” t-shirt giveaway day, which meant that I got a cool new shirt, but also that there would be a solid group of people arriving early for the game.
When the gates opened, I was slow getting to left field, meaning I did not find any leftover baseballs. I held down my spot in the aisle between 84 and 82 and waited for Manny Machado, J.J. Hardy and Jonathan Schoop to provide me with some action.
And with batting practice still in its early stages, I had a good amount of room to navigate on both sides of me:
Fairly early on, I was able to unceremoniously grab a Machado shot that landed in the seats, my first ball of the day.
After the Machado group finished, Delmon Young and others took their cuts. Late in the round, Young gave me some action up here:
Young hit one that landed in the stairwell to my left (to the right in the picture) and bounced into the section underneath the “Sheraton” sign. A few people — me included — gave chase. Usually when a ball lands in those sections, it rolls down to the bottom almost instantly. However, as I stood there waiting for the ball, I saw it slowly rolling around in the third row. It was quite clear that the ball was going to come to a stop there. By the time I decided to run up the steps for it, someone else had made the same decision. Since I was second in line going up the steps, I had to goes as slowly as the person was in front of me. That was a big problem since the person in front of me had no idea where the ball was and was taking it slow in order to spot it. Thinking quickly, I went full-monkey. I climbed up and over the railing, jumped into the section, and picked the ball up right before the lady in black pictured above could grab it.
I inspected my second ball of the day, made sure it was not either completely clean or a commemorative and gave it to her.
For the rest of Orioles’ batting practice, I did not add to my total. And for the first group of Tigers hitters, I also stayed at two.
When the second group of Tigers came up to hit, left field was once again crowded so I made my way over here:
Unlike the day before, I decided to play closer to center field in order to have a better shot at catching some of Miguel Cabrera’s oppo-bombs. But, that did not work out, either.
I was not only stuck on two balls for the day when that group of Tigers finished hitting, but I was still on two when batting practice as a whole was over.
For the game, I started off sitting here, my usual spot in left field:
During pre-game stretching, I saw this happening in center field:
It’s Adam Jones being buddy-buddy with Torii Hunter, the guy who caused the benches to clear the night before and told Bud Norris he was going to “whoop [his] ass.” I would just prefer to see my All-Star centerfielder and presumed team leader stand up for one of his pitchers. No, I don’t want him to start throwing uppercuts at Hunter, but maybe not give him hugs and chat it up with him the very next night. I guess that’s just baseball, though.
Even though it was a Tuesday night game, the left field seats quickly became crowded. In order to give myself the most room, I moved to right field to join Alex Kopp and Grant Edrington. Check out what left field had become:
For right-handed batters, I had this view:
And for lefties:
During a break in the action, I stopped and had a conversation with a friendly usher named Walt, one of the guys who holds the “how may I help you?” sign. He quickly told me about this:
Apparently, during early batting practice that day before the gates opened, Nick Markakis sent a scorching liner onto Eutaw Street that rocketed off the ground and into the window of Dempsey’s restaurant, causing the glass to have a pretty large spiderweb crack. Yikes. Maybe Dempsey’s should let us stand out there at 4 o’clock again so that we can catch the balls before they crack their windows. Just a thought.
As for the game, with two outs in the ninth inning, it looked like I would once again be leaving without an opportunity to grab a home run. As we always do when facing the last out, Alex and I grabbed our bags and walked towards the flag court. We like to get out of the stadium as soon as we can after the last out to beat the foot traffic.
“It’s a jinx to grab your bag with two outs,” I said to Alex, half-joking.
He laughed.
With the right-handed Torii Hunter up, we watched the game on the televisions through the glass at Dempsey’s. When the umpire hit Hunter with strike two, I took a big leap towards the exit, thinking it was strike three and the game was over. Boy was I wrong.
Of course, we know what happened that night.
But, here is what you probably do not know:
With Victor Martinez at the plate following the crushing blow by Miguel Cabrera, Alex and I walked onto the flag court, bags still on our backs, waiting for a home run like we do with every left-handed hitter. Within a pitch or two, Martinez sent a blast that I knew immediately was going onto Eutaw Street. I turned and ran towards the gate, bumping into a group of twenty-somethings that had no idea what was going on. At this point, I was not looking up at the ball: I knew I had no shot to catch it on the fly. I was just running towards the Warehouse, knowing the ball would soon land and bounce up against it, most likely on the awning where I would them wait for it to roll back down.
The ball did indeed land on Eutaw Street — deep on Eutaw Street — near the entrance to Dempsey’s. But, since the ball was hit so deep, the trajectory did not allow it to bounce onto the awning. Instead, the ball hit over top the doorway to Dempsey’s. I was by far the closest fan where the ball had knocked off of, and I was preparing to grab the rebound.
But someone was in my way: a manager of Dempsey’s. He grabbed the ball as it fell towards him. I bumped into his back and grabbed his arm (in an attempt to grab the ball) as soon as he caught it.
I stood there for a second, assuming that since he was an employee — and thus not allowed to keep baseballs or even make an attempt to catch a baseball — that he would quickly give it to me. That didn’t happen:
He kept it.
Alex, who was chasing the ball from a different angle, saw it all play out. He says that if the Dempsey’s manager was not there that I would easily have grabbed the ball.
What a shame.
Wednesday, May 14th
The following day was one of those funky, 12:35 Wednesday day games. Grant had convinced me to get on the light rail at about 9:45 in the morning to get to the stadium before gates opened. We knew there wouldn’t be batting practice, but we also knew we had nothing better to do.
So after my 8 a.m. exam at Towson University, I met Grant at the lightrail and we had a miserable morning ride.
We got off the light rail and saw this:
School buses as far as the eye could see. And this is when I remembered that it was “Field Trip Day,” an annual event held by the Orioles and WJZ that brings thousands of school-aged children on a field trip to Camden Yards where WJZ meteorologists teach them about weather. Wonderful.
Speaking of weather:
It was gray and gross, but thankfully not raining. Well, at least I wouldn’t have called it rain. There was just a constant mist in the air. It wasn’t falling like rain would, but instead just hovering, dancing around in the air much like snow. Either way: gray and gross.
On Field Trip Days in the past, all non-field-trip fans were forced to hang out in the center field/Eutaw Street area, meaning season ticket holders can not go into left field over down the baselines. Fully expecting this, I was surprised when they let us walk into the left field seats.
“I’m surprised, usually on this day you guys don’t let us through here,” I said to the extremely nice supervisor, and all around good guy, who had let us through.
He laughed and didn’t say anything for moment.
“You know what, you’re right. Come back. I don’t think we open this gate until 11.”
Damn.
With that, I hung out above the Tigers’ bullpen where Robbie Ray was getting some side work in:
No baseballs were tossed-up.
Then I watched Chris Tillman warm up from the center field bleachers:
Once again, no baseballs.
But check out how many screaming children there were:
I then went down the first base line where some Orioles’ pitchers had come out to throw:
Nothing came from that, either.
Before the game, I hung out near the handicapped seats at the top of the section behind the Orioles dugout, once again targeting Adam Jones and his pre-game warm-up ball:
(That is Hardy, Machado and Schoop throwing there).
Jones eventually appeared with Markakis and began throwing. When they finished, I waved my arms over my head to get Jones’ attention. It worked, and he launched the baseball towards me. Uncharacteristically, the ball was pretty under-thrown. Luckily, I was able to reach-out about two rows in front of me and make the catch. I held my glove up to Adam, signaling to him that I had made the grab and also thanking him, and he gave me a fist pump back.
Here’s what the beauty looked like:
As for the game, I spent my time in right field: on the flag court for lefties and at the top of section 98 to watch the right-handers. At one point, with a bunch of right-handed batters due up, I hung out here, hoping for a foul ball:
But nothing came close.
In the top of the ninth, I went in between sections 88 and 90 and waited for Jones to toss-up his warm-up ball like he does every ninth inning. When he finished throwing and turned to look for a target, I waved my arms, turned my hat around, and pretended to be a catcher, giving him a big target. He saw me, shook his head no, and threw it to Grant at the top of the section.
I am starting to think Adam recognizes Grant, Alex and I and tries to help us out with baseballs whenever he can. I mean, he has targeted each one of us multiple times both behind the dugout before the game and in the bleachers in the ninth inning. And his head shake to me made me think that he knew he gave me the one before the game. Maybe I am completely wrong and he has no idea who we are, but I don’t think so.
So thanks, Adam Jones, for recognizing us and hooking us up. Very cool of you.
Season Stats:
19 games
53 baseballs
– 31 hit
– 9 ball retrieved
– 8 thrown
– 6 found
