It's almost the new year, and baseball (even the World Series) is long gone. Even though this year was tough to let go, I was let down pretty easy. After my final game, I was still catching up on games in July. When the Series was ending, I was stuck in August. I worked for a few more months, and now finally, with 2014 right around the corner, I can put this past season to rest.
I was really hoping I'd be able to watch most of the playoffs amid all my schoolwork. I always hope for odd match-ups, so a World Series with the Rays and Braves would have been really entertaining on my end. I was personally pulling for the Pirates, and I don't think I was alone. How does someone root against a team like that? The atmosphere for the games in Pittsburgh was insane. I was able to follow everything thanks to a few Ballhawks who were attending the games. The Bucs definitely gave the Cardinals a fight, but they came up just a little short in Game 5.Speaking of the Cardinals - the fact they made it in for the third straight year made me want to chop my own ears off. The amount of chatter and yapping I heard in Normal drove me insane. I wouldn't have known what to do with myself if they actually won again. However, thanks to their continued success all the way until the last game of the year, I was almost able to squeeze one more game in during the NLCS. Ballhawk Shawn and I were on close watch for StubHub deals during weekend games. I was all for it, because the ride from Normal is only about two hours. He would swing by to pick me up, making the journey down there extremely easy. Thanks to ticket prices and the weather, it never happened. Because of the Red Sox, tickets for the Series rarely dropped below $250.
Funny story, though - I bet some of you heard about the guy that got his ticket to Game 1 in Boston for $6. All he had to pay were the fees from StubHub. Because of someone's screw up, he saved about $894 compared to what other tickets in his section were going for. As it turns out, I actually sort of know the guy. His name is Erik, and he's one of those Ballhawks from Pittsburgh. I found him on Twitter before the season started, and met up with him in Detroit completely on accident. His season was a non-stop whirlwind. Not only with watching the Pirates all summer, but also because of his Ballhawking success. When everything was over, he beat out Zack Hample by 14 balls. He also edged out Hample by a single point in the MyGameBalls 'Ballhawk of the Year' voting. Just looking from the outside in, I was amazed at the insane season he had.
Anyway, thank you, Red Sox, for keeping my sanity and taking care of the Cardinals. Not just because it gave me some peace and quiet at ISU, but also for giving us a good story line. It was much more entertaining to read about you winning at home rather than coverage about yet ANOTHER St.Louis championship.
The very next morning after the Sox won, I was invited to do my first ever radio interview. One of my old high school classmates co-hosts a show called 'The Great Debate' while he goes to school at the Illinois Center for Broadcasting. If you haven't gotten around to listening to it yet, here it is:
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Moving on now, lets revisit the goals I made back in March. (If you want to read the goals entry to see my reasoning behind each goal, go here). The ones remaining in bold are ones I judged to be accomplished.
From strictly a numbers standpoint, here's what I accomplished this season:
FINAL 2013 STATS
- 32 balls total this season
- 2.0 Balls Per Game Average when Ballhawking
- 21 consecutive games with a ball (dating back to July 17th, 2012)
- 64 lifetime balls
- Total time spent at games: 108 hours, 5 minutes
- 5 parks visited (Including two for the first time)
- 24 BaseBlog entries
Just like I said in my recap entry from last year, if you had showed me all this in February, I would have been more than happy. I once again doubled the total I went into the season with, going from 32 to 64. The doubling sounds impressive, but 64 balls in three seasons kind of diminishes that feat. I wish I could have done more in 2012 and a little more in 2013 to have that number be higher, but it is what it is. I am not a professional Ballhawk who can go to 60 games a summer. I make the best of the hand I'm dealt, and I feel like I've been able to make the most of it. Remember, this all came from a kid who decided to bring his glove to the park one day not too long ago.
2013 BALLHAWK GOALS - End of Season Review
I'm basically forced to call this one a success, because I never came home empty handed. I got a ball in all 16 Ballhawk games, and my current 21 game streak dates well back into 2012.
- "You're only a fool if you come back empty handed"
Some of the things I originally labeled as "foolish" were not that ridiculous by the end of the year. There are just certain things one needs to do in order to give themselves the best chance at catching a ball. I run through concourses, get denied when I ask players for a toss up, talk to myself, trip over my own feet, and occasionally run into other fans on accident, just to name a few. What's odd is that I don't care about those things very much anymore. I've started accepting them a part of the job I enjoy doing so much. I'm happy to see I've naturally justified these actions and realized the reward of a ball greatly exceeds any sort of screw up or embarrassment I go through in the process.
Dammit. One short. But hey, isn't that the perfect example of goal setting?
- Have 65 balls by the end of the season
When thinking about this one in particular, I remember April 12th, May 22nd, June 11th and June 25th. Those are the days I didn't see a single second of batting practice. That's close to SEVEN HOURS of BP that were taken from me. If everything went perfectly and I had all that time back, I could very well be at 75 or more. Not to mention all the individual close calls that could have left me with that one extra ball.
Dammit again. One short...again. I technically should have had this on May 14th, but this was the scene (captured by Dave) that kept me from getting to this plateau.
- Get 5 balls in one game
I'll admit, this was out of range for most of the season, before and after May 14th.That game showed me any day could be my day. I always wanted to keep this goal in the back of my mind to motivate me and try to make every day "that day". It hasn't come yet, but I'll continue to be positive. One of these games, everything will go in my favor for a few minutes, and it'll happen.
I only hit five this year, and was perfect in all of them. This doesn't seem all that difficult in retrospect, but my plans changed a lot from when I first wrote this. I thought I would make it to Target Field, another new park, and also go back to St.Louis, which I still considered foreign land.
- Get a ball at every stadium I visit (and I do mean EVERY one)
I never made it to a minor league game. I realized summer isn't as long as it seemed when I was 10. On top of that, it gets much shorter when you already plan out 12 to 15 games on your schedule before Spring Break. If I wanted to go to a baseball game, I'd head to one of the three MLB stadiums I could get to and back in the same day. I'm not going to waste an entire weekend driving four hours to Des Moines to see the I-Cubs. And showing up more than 15 minutes before the start of a Boomer's game is just...embarrassing.
YES! It should have come long, long before the end of July, but at least it happened. I still don't feel like I've learned to track balls all that well. That's something that needs to improve immediately, and is still on the list for next year.
- Catch a homer on the fly
Huh. I remember exactly how I felt when I thought this one up. I was completely opposed to it, and just put it in here to show I wasn't completely heartless. I only did it three times (twice in Cincinnati and at my very last game), but it already feels like old news. Doing it the first time really changed my outlook. My collection is not complete; there were missing numbers for balls I actually caught before any were given to kids. This isn't to say I'm going to hand them out left and right, but I won't indefinitely hoard every single one if a certain situation calls for some generosity.
- Give a ball away
Yet another failed one. Compared to other seasons, there were not quite as many games in 2013 where getting a commemorative was possible. Most of my underachievement was just bad luck. Nothing can combat that. Although, it was possible to skip a day of class when the Nationals came to Wrigley in August to have a day like THIS:
- Get a commemorative ball
(All three photos courtesy of Ballhawk Shawn)
Nope. Not even close. Target Field is good for this, and I never made it there. I was also holding onto a tiny sliver of hope to grab one on Waveland, but those are few and far between. This one was kind of dumb, and was just here to say "I told you so" if it somehow happened.
- Get a ball before the stadium gates open
Add one more to incomplete list. This wasn't really fair, seeing as how Zack surpasses my skills and abilities ten-fold. He only spent one day here on his BIGS tour, and caught nine balls. In my five games at home, I came up with nine total. After that wash, he stands at 47, with me still 17 below him at 30.
- Pass Zack Hample [in balls caught at Wrigley Field]
Five times...that's it? I was definitely around the park much more than that, but skipped going in early too many times. I want to avoid that as much as I can next season.
This goal still stands. Zack won't be back for (I'm guessing) at least three or four seasons, so I have plenty of time to get those 18 balls to pass him. It doesn't really matter what category I beat him in, but I want to be number one in SOMETHING, especially with him right behind me in second. This is just the easiest one.
Ha! I completely forgot about this one! This story actually won me a shirt from BIGS; the one Zack wore all season. Thanks Kyuji!
- Play catch with a Major Leaguer
(If you're oblivious to this story, it happened before my second game in Cincinnati. I give a very detailed description of what went down).
Safe to say I knocked this one out of the park. (HA!)
- Meet another notable Ballhawk or baseball blogger
(Plus Al, but I couldn't find a picture).
This was another one that was kind of silly. I never cared about it a whole ton. I rarely paid attention to who my balls were coming from, and looking back, it didn't make a difference. I did a quick double check, and it never happened. I do follow Kim DeJesus, if that means anything.
- Get a ball from a player I follow on Twitter
This was a standard I intended to use in order to keep my mind focused on grabbing as many balls as possible without thinking of consequences or becoming timid. I guess the best way to explain how I feel about this goal after all 20 games is that I just didn't turn out to be this kind of guy. Yes, I still love the Glove Trick and think it's great how I can grab these balls that are seemingly out of reach, but stealing and being sneaky just wasn't how this season played out. At some point, I wanted to focus on honesty and catch balls without any sort of "help". I wanted to catch BP homers on the fly; the most important and most sought after.
- Use the Glove Trick at every park besides Wrigley
All in all, I'd call it unsuccessful. Cincinnati worked well, but I never pulled it out in Milwaukee. By no fault of my own, I was denied in Detroit when the gate usher tried to make me throw my string away.
This is a great concept, but people are catching on. I see more and more retrieval devices every time I go to the Cell. In order to have a good shot at one in the gap, it would need to be moderately close to me, otherwise someone else will be there to snatch it up. On the opposing side, ushers are becoming more wise to it everywhere I go. I feel like the secret has gotten out, and the creativeness of the Trick as a whole is decreasing as time goes on.
****
I can't say much more about this year other than it simply blew me away. I had a plan as far as trips, games, and Ballhawk strategy, but actually experiencing these things in the moment was so much better than I expected. I've described every one of those moments somewhere within these entries over the past ten months, and if you're a continued reader, you know how much each one meant to me.
I won't lie, what I've done fails in comparison to other Ballhawks (balls wise) and other baseball fans (stadium wise). However, keep in mind that just a few years ago, I was only a kid reading a book. I started from nothing. It truly amazes me how far I've personally come with numbers, my viewpoint of the game, and the connections I've made with the people I've met.
The single greatest part about doing what I do every summer is knowing that people like me are few and far between. I know I'm one of only a handful of my kind in the stadium. I thrive on the "me against the world" mindset I create for myself.
Baseball is by far the top priority in my mind. I think about Ballhawking and blogging more than anything else. Unfortunately, I need to be rational and realize that other things require more attention in the real world. I feel like 20 games was a hell of an effort to make baseball as big a part of my life as possible in my situation though. I still want it to be an even bigger part of my life, but other things are getting in the way.
I could not be happier (less for a few small details) about what I've been able to accomplish with what I've been given. Each change or circumstance in my life has allowed me to see and experience the next big thing in my adventure. This will continue to be the story next season too. My situation is going to change drastically, but I'll be able to experience yet another part of the Ballhawk lifestyle.
Even with the certainty about some things, my plans will continue to be altered by things I don't know about yet. I'll continue to roll with the punches, and, especially in 2014, take notice and appreciate every second I have at a ballpark. As I post this today, a new year begins for me, almost literally with January just a few days away. I'm not sure how things will fall into place or what exactly is going to happen, but I have confidence that 2014 will be better than any other season before it.
****
I could not be happier (less for a few small details) about what I've been able to accomplish with what I've been given. Each change or circumstance in my life has allowed me to see and experience the next big thing in my adventure. This will continue to be the story next season too. My situation is going to change drastically, but I'll be able to experience yet another part of the Ballhawk lifestyle.
Even with the certainty about some things, my plans will continue to be altered by things I don't know about yet. I'll continue to roll with the punches, and, especially in 2014, take notice and appreciate every second I have at a ballpark. As I post this today, a new year begins for me, almost literally with January just a few days away. I'm not sure how things will fall into place or what exactly is going to happen, but I have confidence that 2014 will be better than any other season before it.
****
"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone."
- A. Bartlett Giamatti, MLB Commissioner, 1989
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