The Indians stopped by for a 3 game set before the Twins go on an extended road trip.  They will play only 6 more games all month in the Dome.

I didn’t have high hopes for the week since I was only going to two games and one of those would be a day game after a night game with no BP.  My outlook turned out to be justified.

For the first game, I camped out along the left field line with my big glove.  It usually isn’t too bad of an area since you can get into the first row and the competition is not nearly as stiff.  The pitcher who was originally shagging there paid no attention to me when I asked for a ball.  He acted as if he didn’t hear me at all.

He was joined by a much friendlier pitcher after a few minutes and when a ball rolled to the wall I leaned over with the big glove like I was going for the ball.  He jogged over and I asked him for the ball.  He tossed it to me for ball #1 on the night.  He got a kick out of the big glove and asked me where I got it.

I moved over to the right field side and started working on the Indians pitchers over there.  I did my best, but they didn’t feel like rewarding the bald guy with a pelota.  As I was standing there a fly ball came in.  It is an area that balls rarely reach on the fly in BP due to it being well in foul territory.  A guy has to hit a long slicer for it to reach these seats.  The ball went right to a guy and his girlfriend.  The guy tried to bare hand it and failed miserably.  The ball rolled down a few rows and I went and got it.  I then handed the ball to his girlfriend who was over the moon with excitement.  That was ball #2 on the night and the last ball I would get.

On the Thursday day game I was treated to a heck of a ball game by the Twins but the ballhawking sucked.  I asked for a ball from a Japanese pitcher in his native tounge, he looked at me and then told me the coach sitting right there said no.  Oh well.

I wasn’t able to get into position for an ump ball but I was able to get a bat boy toss up for my only ball of the game.

I am not great with computers.  I don’t own a digital camera.  I bought my dad one awhile back and I occasionally take that to games.  I am going to try to add some pictures here to liven things up a tad. 

This is the view from my season ticket seat.  Right above where the players congregate to go on deck.

Above you can see Joe Nelson after he borrowed my glove.

Above is me holding Joe Nelson’s mitt.

That is my aquarium, how did this picture get into my ballhawking pictures?  I have no idea.

Above is a typical ballhawking crowd in the left field seats.

Justin Morneau taking a cut.  This is the view from my seat.  I am spoiled.

Above you can see why the Dome is such a snagging nightmare.  There are no lower level right field seats.  This forces everyone into the left field.

Joe Nelson posing with my big glove.

Me posing with Nelson’s glove.

I was at the Dome today for a noon tilt with the Red Sox.  Since it was a day game after a night game there was no bp.  Even though, I got there shortly after the gates opened.

A few Twins pitchers were warming up but none was really in the mood to toss balls up to the faithful.  I moved over and camped out were a Japanese Red Sox pitcher was warming up.  When he finished I asked him in Japanese for the ball.  The black guy he was throwing to asked him what I was saying and he told him that I wanted the ball.  The Japanese guy then threw me a strike for ball #1 on the day.  Two balls in this series by using Japanese.

I moved over to my seat and settled in to watch a pretty boring game.  Both managers and catchers did get tossed out of the game in the 7th inning which was something to see.

During the game, Twin Brian Buscher was sitting beneath my seat from time to time.  I saw that he grabbed a ball to fiddle around with.  After the inning he got up and starting walking back into the tunnel.  I asked him for the ball and he asked me for a quarter!  I was wearing cargo shorts so if I had a quarter on me it would take awhile to find.  The lady Red Sox fan next to me offered me a quarter but I told her I thought that he was joking.

I got a dollar out of my wallet and offered it to Mr. Buscher.  He told me that he only takes quarters and walked away!

I rooted through my pockets and found a nice Texas state quarter and set it aside in case he came back.  A couple of innings later, he came back.  I told him that I had his quarter.  He put his hand out and I flipped it to him.  He then tossed me a baseball.  This is an interesting one.  Did I just snag a baseball or buy one??  Do I count this in my stats or not?  I am going to have to defer to the ballhawking elders on this one.

After the game, I waited around patiently and got a bat boy toss up.  That made 3 balls on the day.  A pretty good outing for a game with no bp

May 26th at the Dome.  The Red Sox were in town along with their obnoxious fans.  I guess they weren’t too bad, there were just a lot of them.

Before I go any further I want to address a pet peeve of mine.  That is people that come to the ballgame dressed in jerseys and/or hats of team’s that are not playing.  There was an idiot at the game tonight with a Tigers jersey and cap on.  Of course you had the people in the Yankee garb.  I once saw an Asian guy in an Orioles jacket and Yankees cap at at Twins/Mariners contest.  WTF? 

I got in and searched for Easter Eggs.  I found nothing.  I went down to the wall and eye spied a Metrodome commemorative that had the logo facing up and it was SPARKLING!  The Red Sox players came out to shag BP and I saw #16 walking towards the ball.  I discreetly looked at my cheat sheet and saw that the player was backup catcher George Kottaras.  I said “George, that commemorative there is absoulutely sparkling, mind tossing it up?”  He said “sparkling huh?”  and tossed it to me for me first ball on the day.  YIPPEE!

I then moved my act around to where some Japanese guy was warming up.  I asked him for the ball in Japanese and he looked at my Irish *** like I was some weirdo.  After he finished throwing he looked back and I asked again, in perfect japanese I might add, for the ball.  He supplied my second ball of the game. I was please at that the point since two balls with the Red Sox in town isn’t bad at the Dome.

I did get to partake in a between inning contest in which I was to try to throw a ball into an inflatable pool from the second deck to win free ice cream for a year.  My throw came up just short.  I don’t need the ice cream anyway.  I got a nice Twins logo baseball out of it though.  The ball won’t count in my collection, but it is nice.

After the Twins finished beating the Sox 5-2, I went down to the dugout and got my boy Adam to hook me up with my 3rd ball of the game.

I had an exciting night at the dome.  Not from a ballhawking perspective, but from a pure baseball perspective.

I arrived 20 minutes before the gates opened and to my surprise the lines were stretched out to the street and around towards the Twins plaza!  I hadn’t looked before I went but the Twins were giving away baseball bats to the first 5,000 kids under 14.  Any hopes I had of getting into the stadium within the first 5 minutes vanished.

When I finally got into the stadium I saw hundreds of youngsters scurrying around like rats.  They were everywhere.  Ballhawking was going to be a nightmare with our border rival Brewers in town.

I didn’t even bother trying in left field for a ball since that would be like going for a needle in a haystack.  I went around to the right field side and Jose Mirares tried to hook me up but his throw came up short.  This was in contrast to his toss last night that flew over my head.

When the Brewers came out I knew things were dead.  I swear they must get fined $500 if they throw a ball into the stands.  The stands were filled with little kids with gloves and Brewers gear asking nicely for balls and the players paid no attention at all to them.

I went around to my seat above the Twins tunnel and proceeded to watch a nice pitcher’s duel.  It was good baseball and it was on the big stage of a ESPN national game.  Joe Mauer, who is simply amazing lately hit a deep shot to put the Twins on the board.

In the 7th inning, a struggling Carlos Gomez beat out an infield hit with a headfirst slide that got the crowd pumped because the hometown hero was coming up to bat.  Then a Brewers fan ran on to the field.  The Twins security guys, mostly off duty prison guards, tackled the idiot before he got 10 feet and hustled him off the field.  At times I didn’t know if I was at the dome or Miller Park.  Out of the 40,000 people there, about half seemed to be rooting for the Brewers.

Then Mauer got hit by a pitch. The ump called it a foul tip though and Ron Gardenhire rushed out and gave him an Earl Weaver worthy tounge lashing.  The ump reversed his call and awarded Mauer the base to load em up.  This brought out the Brewers manager who gave the ump quite the earful.

The almost capacity crowd was electric at this point.  I don’t get real excited real often and I was on edge.  During the dual rhubarbs with the two managers, the P.A. system BLARED Justin Morneau’s theme song “TNT” through the speakers.  I yelled to the guy next to me that if Morneau hit a grand slam the place would come apart at the seams.

Morneau absolutely CRUSHED the first pitch into the upper deck for a grand slam and the place went bonkers.  I was screaming and jumping up and down with the furor of a 17 year old kid high on ecstasy at a underground rave party.  I was literally beside myself with excitement.  When I stopped yelling and jumping around like a fool, my voice was hoarse and I was slightly light headed.  THAT is what baseball is all about!  Whew!

I did get one ball tossed up to me by hitting coach Joe Vavra so I didn’t get shut out from a ballhawking perspective.  But, tonight the ballhawking had to take a backseat to some good old fashioned baseball playing from the boys of summer.

I arrived for the opening of the gates for tonight’s tilt about 15 minutes early.  It was slated to be a well attended game with our border “rivals” the Brew Crew in town.  I ended up paying a little more to park than normal because of the greedy lot owners capitalizing on the big crowd.

Thankfully the crowd was partying on the Twins plaza and not lining up to enter the stadium.  I was able to get to start my own line and was first in.  Being first in was of no use today since there no Easter eggs to be found anywhere.

From the start the left field was getting uncomfortably crowded for BP.  The Twins weren’t doing much in the way of jacking them out and the toss ups were few and far between.  I went around to the entire other side of the “park” where my spanish speaking compadres hang out shagging.  Even though I am a big, pale, white Irishman, those Mexicans and Dominicans always seem to hook me.

I got Jose Mirares’ attention and told him to air one out.  He kept motioning for me to go back-back-back.  He then aired it out and tossed it 10 feet over my head and it bounced an entire section away from me.  Thankfully, nobody went for the ball in the 30 seconds it took me to get over there and claim it.  It was a commemorative.

I got zero love from the Brewers during BP.  The left field stands were insanely crowded.  The Brewers weren’t tossing much up at all either.

I went over to my seat and settled in.  The bat boy on the visiting side will throw balls up into the stands during the game while the home side bat boy steadfastly refuses to toss ANYTHING up during the game.  He will however hook me up after the game from time to time.  Well, since I was sitting near the visiting side in a good row, I thought maybe I would get a bat boy toss up.  He did toss a few up, but he is really cautious about throwing them more than one row back.

In the top of the 9th, I moved down right next to the umpire exit.  It was just a couple of rows up from where I had been.  The bat boy got a ball and I was right there, front and center, with my obnoxiously big glove.  He underhanded the ball to ME.  But, with the arch he put on the ball, it turned into a jump ball and a guy behind me came over the top of me and robbed me.  All is fair in love and ballhawking I guess.

After the game ended, I got ready to yell for an ump ball. This would be the first time I ever tried for one.  I yelled the umps name several times and he finally reached in his pouch and threw it up carelessly.  The big mitt is not very agile people.  It bounced off the side of the mitt and into the row behind me.  Thankfully the booze soaked vulture that robbed me of a ball just a few minutes prior was already headed over to Hubert’s Bar for some post game libations.  I had ball #2 on the day.

I went over to the Twins dugout to try to get a bat boy toss up from my boy Adam.  While waiting for Adam to return to the ball bucket, I spotted the Happy Youngster camped out in the VIP seats with the same idea as me.  Considering that Happy was wearing a fake mustache and a bad mullet wig, I was pleased at myself for picking him out of the crowd. I joined the Youngster for some ballhawk chatter while we waited for Adam.

Adam came back out and let me know that he had seen that ball that I had blown the chance at earlier.  I pointed out my boy, the Happy Youngster all the way from Wisconsin.  Adam hooked him up with a game used orb.

I got the chance to chat a little more with the Youngster and then made my way out into the night.  My Twins were once again victorious!

I had a day game today and since the boys played a 13 inning game last night that ended at about midnight I knew that not only would there not be BP, but they boys might arrive a little later.  As such I wasn’t expecting much, if anything, from a ballhawking perspective.

I got into the Dome and saw a couple of players tossing.  Nothing exciting.  Once they were done the ball got tossed to a kid.  There were a TON of kids at today’s game although most were in the cheap upper deck seats and out of my way.

I saw Bobby Seay throwing with an unindentitified Tiger in right field.  They were the only Tigers throwing.  I camped out in the raised seating next to right field and Bobby hooked me up after they were throwing for ball #1.

I moved over to my seat and didn’t really do any ballhawking in earnest for the rest of pre-game. 

During the game I saw batting coach Joe Vavra with a ball in his hand just basically playing around with it.  I asked him if I could have it when he was done.  He immediately leaned back in his chair and fired it backwards.  It missed me and everyone else by a mile.  It went back into the tunnel and never even reached the stands.  The bat boy grabbed it and, not knowing that it was meant for me, tossed it a section over to some girl.

After the inning, Joe reached into the ball bucket and made up for his error for ball #2 on the day.

The boys won a thrilling game on the field and swept the Tigers!  After the game I waited around for the bat boy.  The bat boy is an inconsistent source of balls for me.  However, there were ZERO kids that had waited around the 10 minutes after the game that it takes him to get around to bringing in the discarded game used ball bucket. 

The bat boy rewarded my patience with ball #3 on the day!  Not a bad outing for me that brought my year’s total to 31 balls.

I went to the 5-12 tilt against the Tigers at the Dome with my older brother.  We go to about 12 games a year together.  He is not a ballhawk, but he does bring a glove, look for some Easter eggs, and then just generally stays to himself in the left field home run porch.

We were among the first two in the gate and we went down the stairs in search of Easter eggs.  He found one right away, I found nothing.  He had reached his goal of 3 balls this season.

I started working on Edwin Robinson in left field to no avail.  Balls were being thrown into the stands periodically, but not to me.  Balls were being hit into the stands as well, just not to me.  I decided to head to a more desolate spot to ballhawk.

The thing that sucks about weekday games at the dome is that you miss all of the home team’s warm ups and BP and you also miss the visiting team’s warm up throwing session which are all great ball snagging chances.  All you are left with is about 40 minutes or so of opposing team BP.  Considering I am a grown man decked out in Twins gear, things can get tough.  Enough excuses for now.

When I got over to the raised area that sits along the right field corner, the players would periodically toss a ball to a kid.  More often than not their balls would fall short and land in this crowed abyss of hoses and ground crew equipment behind the wall.  This was the first time I really wished I had a glove trick.  It was about a 40 foot drop, so I don’t even know if a trick would work from up that high.

There was an old coot on field usher that thought he was doing the Tigers a favor by going and picking up balls that had been squibbed foul and throwing them back out to the bucket boy.  The old piece of trash was really killing my chances of getting a mercy throw up.

There was one ball left about 20 feet from the wall just past first base.  I went down there and started camping on it.  However, this kid around 13 or so was also camped on it.  I asked Twins TV slug Ron Coomer to toss it to me and he told me it wasn’t his to toss.  True enough I guess.  I then went and tried my luck in the raised seating area again with no luck.

When BP was a minute or two from being over, I went back down and started camping out by that ball by the wall again.  As the players ran in, the kid who was also camped out ran over to be above the Tigers dugout.  That left just me camped out by the ball.  I asked a Tigers player for it and he kinda ignored me.  It looked like he was going to just jog right by it.  I asked again and he picked it up.  He stopped and looked all around for someone to throw it to.  I was the last guy he wanted to give that ball to for some reason.  Thankfully there were no other options and he flipped it to me.  Even though I was only 20 feet at most away he still came up short!  Luckily the dirt colored turf along the wall has some bounce and I grabbed the ball on the hop.  That was it for the night.  One lousy ball.

Now on to a post script.  I work with a couple of guys that are aware of my ballhawking.  I asked them before opening day how many balls they thought I would get this year.  One said 27 and the other said 39.  Well, it is just May 13th and I just got ball #28 on the year.  I will be bringing that ball into work with salt, pepper, relish, and other assorted condiments and offer it up to the guy that guessed 27 to eat along with his crow.

Some of the Twins seem like jerks, Luis Ayala isn’t one of them.  Luis, like Carlos Gomez seem to love the big glove.  Luis has borrowed the glove twice and has been good with rewarding me with balls. 

At Sunday’s day game, Luis was chilling out below my seat so I said “hi”.  He thanked me for letting him use the glove and said he wanted one to call his very own.  I then proceeded to make Luis what I am kind of thinking is a bad deal.

I told Luis I would get him a big glove for one of his jerseys. He said sure thing.  Now, Luis is a nice guy, but while Mauer jersey’s go for $3,000 up here and Morneau and Nathan jerseys go for $2,000 and $1,000 respectively, a Luis Ayala jersey is the kind of jersey that ends up on the bargain rack at Twinsfest going for $50 bucks or so.

To add insult to injury, Luis amended the deal a bit by saying that due to something or another, it would have to be a BP jersey.  Now, I am thinking that I am going to have to come out of my pocket with over $100 for a big glove in exchange for a struggling reliever’s BP jersey?  Not the best deal of my life.

I also kind of screw myself a bit in that with Luis having a big glove, the Twins will not need to borrow mine and I may lose out on some balls that way.  But, a deal is a deal, so I ordered up a big glove for Luis last night.  Luis did hook me up with a MLB Mother’s Day pink necklace so that was nice.

Luis’s glove should arrive in a few days and I will probably give it to him during the Milwaukee series over Memorial Day weekend.

Trust me, as someone who used to frequent casinos in my younger days, I have blown $100 countless times in a matter of 15-20 minutes playing blackjack.  All I left with then is smokey smelling clothes and a long drive home.  I also spend about $1,000 or so a month eating all my meals out.  So, blowing money foolishly is not new to me.  And I never leave with a major league ballplayer’s jersey.

So, I am prepared to honor the deal without too may qualms.  I may make an off handed comment about the glove being over $100 so if he could raid Mauer or Morneau’s lockers it would be much appreciated.  Maybe that might plant a seed where I get a really nice hook up.  Who knows?