Spring Training 2016: Game 2 – Marlins vs. Twins – 3/11/16

I arrived at the ballpark at 10:30 this morning, leaving me with only 30 minutes to spare before the gates opened. I hung by the gates so that I could be first in line again. At 11:00 am, I sprinted over to the berm, hoping to find another Easter egg. Unfortunately, a stadium employee had just finished picking up all of the balls in the berm when I arrived there. The first ball that I got was in a scramble. The second ball that I got was one that I played off of the back wall but rebounded back onto the field and was tossed up to me. Both balls were commemorative, bringing my commemorative total to 11. That was it for Twins BP. I already had reached my goal of 15 balls for the spring and I still had all of Marlins BP to go. With the help of strong, right handed power hitters and a strong wind blowing out, there was plenty of action for the next 45 minutes. There was also more competition than the day before:

Using similar techniques from my previous game (Spring Training 2016: Game 1 – Twins vs. Phillies), I was able to beat out most of the other ballhawks for each ball. The next three balls came fairly routine: balls hit near me that I caught on the fly. I was now up to five on the day, and had already caught the same number on the fly as I had the game before. My next ball was pretty special. I was positioned in the center field corner of the berm, (see picture above), and the ball was hit to straightaway left field. I sprinted over to where I knew the ball was going to land and made a lunging catch, reaching in front of the awaiting gloves. This was my 6th of the day (4th on the fly), tying the number that I had gotten at the previous game. However, this put me at 19 for the spring and I really wanted to come away with an even 20. Luckily for me, near the very end of BP, a ball was hit right to the corner of the berm, near the fence. Most of the other kids along the fence were distracted with getting a tossup from a ball that had just rolled over to the wall. I was the only person aware that another ball had been hit right to them. I drifted over about five steps and made the easy catch. That ball marked my 20th ball of the spring and my eighth caught on the fly out of 13 that I had gotten over the last two games. Wouldn’t it be amazing to get over 60% of all your baseballs on the fly during the regular season?

Once again, I sought shade during the game down the left field line:

(The berm wasn’t always that empty). With a man on and trailing 6-5 in the bottom of the ninth, I wandered back over to the nearly empty berm, hoping to catch a possible walk-off home run. No such luck. This was my view as the final out was made, sealing a 6-5 loss for the Twins:

As I walked out of the stadium for the final time, I took this picture:

Here are the 11 commemoratives that I got this spring:

And here is all 20 (since I gave one away, I replaced it with another ball for the sake of having a 5×4 picture. The “fake” one is the upper right):

I did feel a bit bad about not giving more away. But every serious ballhawk got at least one ball and practically every other kid standing up against the fence got a tossup (there were a LOT of tossups), so just about everyone came away with a ball, some more than others…

I had accomplished my goal of 15 baseballs and had a great time watching baseball again. It was a very successful few days for me and it left me with 91 career baseballs, just nine shy of 100. I hope to reach that milestone early in the season.

That concludes my Spring Training recap. My next entry should be right after the Home Opener. I am a 20 game season ticket holder again this year, so I have the great benefit of getting in two hours early for each game. I plan on recapping ever game I go to, but most likely not too in depth.

Thank you for reading! If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please leave a comment below. Please follow or subscribe so you can be notified whenever I post. Thanks again and Go Twins!