You may have thought that my last entry would be the one to finish out the year. To be honest, at the time, I did too. I was very focused on making at least one trip home in September, and failed to realize that I wouldn't have any major commitments at ISU during this last weekend of the month. As as luck would have it, this was also the final weekend of the regular season, and the Sox were closing at home.
I'm always up for squeezing in some more Ballhawking, but I wasn't sure I wanted to devote so much of my time at home. Because of my indecisiveness, I was torn on buying tickets or not. Rain is never out of the question, and it wouldn't surprise me if the Sox or Royals passed on hitting since they both had been eliminated from the playoffs for weeks and only had two games left.
On a semi-unrelated note, I found a new website I can get tickets from. It's called ScoreBig, and works much differently than any other ticket site. Basically, you pick a seating area or price level (ex: 500 level outfield). Then, you enter how much you are willing to pay for a seat in that area, and submit your offer. If the site has tickets at that price, they're instantly yours, right there and then. If your offer was too low, you're locked out of that price level for that event for 24 hours before you can bid again. That doesn't mean the entire event; you would just have to pick a different seating area on their map. You're never able to think about which section or row you like, because they never tell you exactly what they have available and what your seats are until after you bought them. The randomness factor is the reason they can slash prices on a lot of their inventory.
Anyway, I wanted to try it out. Since I was worried about accidentally buying tickets to an event I had no intention of going to, I've never went through the bidding process. My indifference for this game was the perfect opportunity to try it out. I first wanted to get the rejection notice to see what it was like, then put something more reasonable and what I was truly willing to pay. I put in a dollar for each ticket the first time....and my bid was accepted. Yes, A SINGLE FREAKING DOLLAR per seat. I was shocked. I got two tickets essentially for free. Long story short, I felt no pressure to show up. If Kyra and I made other plans, I'd just skip it. But as you can see, I made the right choice.
I've never made my way to the Cell all the way from Kyra's apartment by Loyola. I estimated the ride on the Red Line to take an hour. Nobody wants to sit on there for that long, so we took a bus to get downtown and cut the train distance in half. This was a terrible idea that I did not time well at all. I was going to cut it VERY close.
As I was power walking along the first base side of the stadium and heading to the right field, I heard the announcement from the PA system, and people started going inside. I have never ever been this late before, and started running as fast as I could to find this waiting for me at Gate 3:
It was going to be rough to come up with a ball. This was a Saturday night game with fireworks, something I've never dealt with. Contrary to how I've felt in the past, I was up for the challenge. I'm not as terrified of my consecutive games streak ending as much as I used to be. Twenty games in a row with a ball is enough to prove myself. If I didn't come away with one, I was sure it would be due to the situation instead of something I did incorrectly.
I was glad to see it wasn't as crazy inside as it looked to be from standing outside the gates.
I was a complete mess. Since I had no time to get ready outside, I had to do it all while keeping an eye on the field. There were a few valuable minutes, and I couldn't afford to miss anything. In addition to pulling up lineups and finding my glove trick stuff, I had to work with the giant hole that got ripped in my crappy drawstring bag. I was standing out here with crap falling out all over for 10 minutes before I stuffed everything in my pockets.
I remember a few close calls on some scrambles about 15 rows up in various places in right center. I missed all of them. I wasn't necessarily angry or frustrated, but the adrenaline and anxiety I had made me much more on edge. I made more comments to myself than usual, and was moving all over the place.
Ball number one on the day was was pretty cool. Who cares how I got to this aisle or who hit it. I don't remember any of that. All I know is I was in the right place at the right time.
When it was in the air, I was standing a few seats over in the section to my left. I noticed pretty quickly it had a chance to be a ground rule double, so I tried to get in line with it. There was no way I was going to make it to the front row in time, so a high bounce was my only hope. I just stood behind other guys who were already down there.
When it fell to the warning track, it popped right up and cleared the wall. It rocketed past the first wave of fans, with the ball being less than a foot from their outstretched hands. It was coming in fast right towards me when the second guy (the one right in front of me) reached up, only to have it fly between his hands. I kept my eye on it the whole way, and stopped it with my glove right in front of my face. I was lined up perfectly. This one felt good given how I felt about the current circumstances.
I tried the front row for a little while....
Then switched over to the foul line in case I needed to dart over to the dugout.
Eventually, I realized I was missing way too much in the outfield, even if leaving this spot meant missing the Royals jog in. I went back out behind the bullpen.
See those two players on the left? The one in the sweatshirt was trying to get a ball to that guy and his two boys (one of them is being blocked by Dad.) On numerous occasions, the Royal turned around and attempted to get their attention, but they were never looking at the right time. I held up my glove just to see if he was willing to give it to someone else, but he was pretty set on his choice. He would point to them every time someone else asked for the ball.
The next time he turned around, I pointed to them, gave the player a thumbs up, and did a hands-off sort of motion, as if to say "I won't be a jerk and grab it from them if they miss it - I see what you want". After one more try, I saw him move his head to look directly at me. He pointed at me, and I put my glove up to let him know I was ready. He hit me with perfect accuracy from all the way out there. Without even looking at it, I took it out of my glove and underhanded it to Dad, which netted me a thank you.
I don't think anyone could argue that this ball shouldn't count. As a ball snagger, I was the link that made the connection possible. I used my experiences and my attentiveness to the situation in order to make it happen. If I wasn't present, they may still have ended up with it, but the fact remains I still helped both parties. Number 64 is upheld.
That's all that happened in BP. I stayed on the Royals side for warm up balls:
And got nothing. And yes, those guys are actually Royals fans. There were actually quite a few around all parts of the stadium. I couldn't figure out if they just traveled well on weekends, or they bought these tickets in some hope of seeing their team clinch a playoff spot.
James Shields was signing autographs closer to the dugout:
I really wish I had an actual ticket instead of a piece of paper. He's the first guy I've ever wanted an autograph from while Ballhawking. He's not great, but I knew who he was. That's saying something too, because I've gotten really bad and knowing anything about the game besides how to catch a ball over the last few years.
Luckily, the KC starter was a little slow getting warmed up, and I was able to make it out to the bullpen before he even got in there.
I found out a week later that this guy throws some serious gas. I had no idea who he was then, and since he or Salvador Perez didn't throw me their ball, I could still care less.
One again, there were huge patches of empty seats everywhere, especially behind the visiting dugout.
This is actually the farthest I've ever been away from the field since I started to sit here. I'm looking forward to taking advantage of it again plenty of times next year.
Nothing came my way during the game. After BP was over, I really didn't care what happened. My most important job was done, and now I was just waiting for nine innings to pass while maybe grabbing one more ball in the process.
I got a lot of pictures of Eric Hosmer:
And also Paul Konerko. There was a lot of talk about this being his last series ever with the White Sox. There was a chance he would retire, and always the possibility he could be signed for a few more years as a DH for some other AL team. I made sure to watch him closer than usual, because it was almost assuredly the last time I'd see him. (Update - Definitely wrong. He just got two more years just last week. For the type of player he is, he has to call it quits when he gets to 39, I feel).
Sometime around the second or third inning, people came for the seats we were occupying. I wanted to stay on an aisle, and quickly looked down to lower rows, only to see no place with two open seats. We went up a couple rows and got rejected a few times before finally finding some place we didn't get immediately kicked out of. We ended up somewhere between rows 17 and 20. I barley had to think about it before I realized this wasn't going to work.
So, we left. It wasn't even the fourth inning yet. I didn't feel the least bit wasteful, because two baseballs was absolutely worth $2 and the time I took to get down here. Kyra and I made our plans for the night on the El ride back, which only took about forty minutes.
Well....that's it. I don't have any great way to end this, especially because it was a last minute idea. Such an unimportant game can't have a spectacular ending, so I'm not going to try to make something out of nothing. I'll have lots of comments for the "Season in Review" entry, which won't take long considering I don't have to worry about ANYTHING for the next month.
STATS
- 2 balls at this game
- 32 balls total this season
- 21 consecutive games with a ball
- 64 lifetime balls
- Time Spent at Game: 2 hours, 20 minutes
- Total time spent at games: 108 hours, 5 minutes (Just over 4 and a half complete days)
- 2 ball X 22,235 fans = 44,470 Competition Factor
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