At Long Last

In 2000, I secured a quirky Sports Illustrated for Kids gig: report on which parts of the ballpark are best to get your hands on a Major League baseball. Last week, that counsel paid off for me.

One of the joys of attending a Major League Baseball game is the prospect of getting a baseball. It’s a child-like feeling, filled with adventure and wonder, that never goes away — not over the course of nine innings, not over many decades of taking in ballgames.

It’s such a Holy Grail, in fact, that in Spring 2000 I pitched Sports Illustrated for Kids on the idea of tracking where every baseball wound up in the stands. Once I charted that information, I explained to my editor, we could create a graphic that offers specific guidance for youngsters about where to get seats.

That’s what led to my sitting alongside other journalists on the evening of April 24, 2000 in the Comiskey Field press box. In contrast to their much more holistic assignments, my task was single-minded and laser-focused: keep my eye on the ball after it left the field of play.¹

By the end of the Chicago White Sox victory over the Baltimore Orioles², I concluded that fans close to the dugouts are among those with the best shot at snagging a ball. This was hardly a shocker, but I had data to back it up.

The July 2000 SI for Kids, which included other data points I dug up, such as the colleges that produced the most active professional athletes.

It's one thing to know where to sit, of course. But, especially in light of the much steeper price of those tickets, it’s quite another to be able to sit there. Since my first MLB game at Fenway Park in 1976,³ for every closer-to-the-action seat I have secured, there have been at least 20 games in “the cheap seats” -- the bleachers or other far-flung sections. As a result, I had never caught a ball in all my years of going to games, mostly those hosted by the two Chicago baseball teams.

This past Friday evening, however, I had one of those enviable seats. And it was in the same ballpark, now named Guaranteed Rate Field, where I had conducted my research 23 years ago.

Invited by my friend Mike to join him in the 21^st row, we were situated straight back from Chicago’s on-deck circle along the third base side to see the White Sox against the Boston Red Sox, my original hometown team. That’s where I was, on the aisle and adorned in my “bisoxual” garb of White Sox jersey and Red Sox cap, when the ball came sailing my way in the middle of the eighth inning.

I stood up after a throng of fans had already risen, so I didn’t see who threw the ball. Frankly, I didn’t even realize it was a ball; in my mind it was a T-shirt, a Pavlovian response to mid-inning promotional T-shirt tosses that had been occurring throughout the night. The closer it got, the clearer it seemed to be coming right at me. As I stretched my arms up and out as if in worship, I continued to labor under that T-shirt misimpression.

Imagine my surprise, then, when it was a smaller, but much harder, spherical object that smacked sharply into my hands. It took a few moments to comprehend why my left hand stung. Trotting off the field after the White Sox got the third out, veteran shortstop Elvis Andrus had heaved the ball some 100 feet over the protective netting that is now a standard feature of every MLB park.

Shortly after the catch, I enjoy the moment with Mike.

I basked in congratulatory remarks and chuckled at good-natured jabs at my mixed-message wardrobe supporting both teams. Over the ensuing minutes, as the game wrapped up, three men asked to hold it — two middle-aged and one a college student.

With each request, I gladly obliged. Their shared enthusiasm for the moment made it all the more special.

I could try to wax philosophical about all this, but really, my biggest take-away is that it’s just so cool to finally have gotten my hands on a Major League baseball. Eventually, I might use it to play catch or even to hit flyballs to my son or a friend.

For now, the ball rests on a bookshelf, like the central character of a tale that’s been over 47 years in the making.⁴

1. As opposed to my one-game sample, Gary Scott and Cliff Frohlich reported on extensive research from 76 games at seven ballparks. Their findings, “Where Spectators Sit to Catch Baseballs,” was published in the 1981 Baseball Research Journal.

An excerpt:

“Although there is an enormous body of statistical information available concerning major league baseball games, players, and stadia, we are unaware of any quantitative research concerning what happens to baseballs that go into the grandstands in the normal course of play. As baseball fans, the present authors have often wondered where to sit in a baseball stadium to maximize the likelihood of obtaining a baseball. Clearly, in America, this is a question of basic importance. If you doubt this, attend a major league baseball game with a child between the ages of six and 12, and he or she will set your doubts to rest.”

2. After the game, in the Orioles locker room, I congratulated future Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. on getting his 3,000^th career hit a little over a week earlier. I then explained my assignment and asked if he’d share a comment to go along with my feature. Earlier in his career, Ripken had shattered Lou Gehrig’s MLB record for consecutive games played. On this evening, however, the 39-year-old had not played. To my question, he offered only a patronizing smile and this: “I think I’m going to take the whole night off.”

3. Incidentally, the closest I ever game to catching a ball at a big-league game was that first day at Fenway, when my dad took me and my two brothers to a doubleheader between the Red Sox and Texas Rangers. I was a 7-year-old ready for action (baseball glove on), and ducked as a screaming line drive off the bat of Doug Griffin came close to me about 10 rows behind the first-base dugout.

I’d like to think I stuck my glove up in the faint hope that the ball might find it – and maybe I did. What I know for certain is that, my head turned away from the field, I saw a middle-aged man in the row behind us fumbling it on his chest and hauling it in. Indeed, that moment (and my disappointment, I suppose) is seared in my memory.

4. In the spirit of full disclosure, several years ago I got a ball at a White Sox game. It was the ninth inning, a blowout loss for Chicago, and my son and I had worked our way gradually to the front row with other street urchins who had crept in from the cheap seats. The batter fouled the ball to the screen behind home plate and the on-deck player picked it up, walked over to me and flipped it to me from a few feet away. I appreciated it, but that’s a rather cheap “hand-off,” worthy only of a long-winded footnote.

And, yes, I realize that even my tale here from last Friday evening might not “count” in some folks’ eyes. It wasn’t a batted ball from the field of play, but a dead ball between innings. But I’ll take it. And I’m keeping it.