Snagging a baseball during your ballpark visit is one of the best ways to enhance the experience. Whether you’re lucky to get a game ball, position yourself in the right place during batting practice or stumble across a ball when you first enter the seating bowl, you’ll have a cool souvenir to keep.
When I first started taking baseball road trips in 2010, I was pretty keen on snagging as many baseballs as I could. That interest has waned a little in recent seasons, but I still love to get a ball when I can. Over the years, I’ve amassed a decent-sized collection of baseballs from the majors, several levels of the minors and independent leagues. Since I’m a list-making kind of guy, I thought it’d be fun to share the favorites from my collection with you.
For this list, I’m going to omit the various home runs, foul balls and autographed balls that I’ve acquired. I’ve been fortunate to add a lot of those balls to my collection, and they’d easily make up a top-10 list on their own. (Maybe I’ll put together that list someday.) Instead, I want to look at 10 baseballs that I collected in a unique way or that have sentimental value to me.
Here’s a look at my 10 favorite baseballs. It’s too difficult to rank them in order of their importance to me, so I’m listing them in chronological order.
August 9, 2010: Eastwood Field
During my second road trip of 2010, I visited Eastwood Field in Niles, Ohio, which was then home to the Mahoning Valley Scrappers of the New York-Penn League. On my first trip a month earlier, I’d learned about looking for baseballs behind the outfield fences of small ballparks, and I wasn’t disappointed during this quest at Eastwood Field. While I didn’t find anything in the parking lot behind the fence, I walked much farther away and found a BP baseball sitting in the grass. I snapped a photo where the ball sat, and loved the photo so much that I had it printed and framed afterward. A decade later, the photo still hangs on my wall as a happy memory of that first summer of baseball travel.
May 21, 2012: FirstEnergy Stadium
A day that involved a nine-hour drive and a rained-out game might be fairly forgettable, right? Well, I have happy memories of a rainy evening in Lakewood, New Jersey — in part because of the baseball I found. When I got to the ballpark and realized there’d be no game to watch, I took a self-guided tour around the concourse and enjoyed the sights. On the way out of the park, I found an NCAA baseball sitting in the wet grass. Puzzled, I did some quick research and learned that FirstEnergy Park had hosted the NCAA’s Mid-Atlantic Regional tournament earlier that week. To this point, this is the only NCAA baseball in my collection. You can see how wet the ball is in this photo, but I was able to successfully dry it off.
April 17, 2013: Rogers Centre
I love when a plan works out, and that’s the sentiment that I have when I think of this next baseball. I’ve snagged several BP balls in the 100 Level at Rogers Centre over the years, but during an early season visit in 2013, I decided to leave my usual spot in the 100 Level and run up to the 200 Level in hopes of getting a home run even farther from home plate. When I got to the 200s, I was the only fan around — which meant that as soon as someone muscled a ball up into this level, I’d be able to track it down. That happened just a few minutes after I arrived, as White Sox catcher Tyler Flowers lifted this ball into my section for an easy snag.
June 10, 2013: Bowling Green Ballpark
There’s something really rewarding about snagging a baseball outside of a ballpark. This is something that I was able to experience during a visit to Bowling Green Ballpark in June of 2013. After parking my car in a small lot behind the outfield fence, I headed toward the sidewalk and noticed this BP ball sitting in front of me. A quick inspection of the area revealed that it had almost certainly rolled through an open gate in the outfield fence and made its way across the parking lot. I estimated that I was standing at least 500 feet from home plate, so finding a ball in this spot was a big surprise.
July 6, 2013: Falcon Park
Auburn’s Falcon Park is a special place for me. Not only did I visit it during my first road trip in 2010, but I’ve always had a wonderful time at this intimate venue. One great memory occurred in 2013, when I threw out a ceremonial first pitch for the first time. This was a bucket list item for me, and the Doubledays did a lot to make it really memorable. The ball is just a well-used NYPL baseball, but it holds a lot of sentimental value.
September 1, 2015: Russell Diethrick Park
It’s always sad when a baseball team folds, but it’s nice to have a souvenir if you’re able to attend the team’s last game. That was the case for me in 2015, when I made plans to be in Jamestown, New York to catch the final two games for the Jamestown Jammers. I have many fond memories of a long day at the ballpark, including tracking down this baseball that one Jammers player threw from behind the first base line over the left field fence between games of the doubleheader. I took off and ran around the park’s perimeter, expecting the ball to be gone by the time I got there. I was overjoyed when I quickly found it sitting in the grass.
May 16, 2016: El Paso Chihuahuas
While watching the visiting (and now-defunct) New Orleans Zephyrs take BP at El Paso’s beautiful Southwest University Park, a hitter launched the ball to the center field berm where I was standing. I quickly retrieved it, took this photo and then threw it to the nearest New Orleans player. Throwing a baseball to a player is always cool, but I also got the opportunity to talk with him for several minutes and even exchanged Twitter messages afterward. The player? Nick Wittgren, who was then in the Marlins system but is now a member of the Cleveland Indians and has put together some solid seasons for the club. (This is the lone baseball in this list that isn’t still in my collection, as Wittgren threw it back toward the infield for future BP use. It belongs on this list because of its cool story.)
September 21, 2016: Coors Field
I have many great memories of three games at the outstanding Coors Field in the fall of 2017, including this baseball that a Rockies player threw me. I was standing in the right field corner as a pair of Rockies played catch. One of them overthrew the ball and it landed a few seats away from me, so I picked it up. I figured the players would have another ball to play with, but they didn’t — that much was clear when the player closest to me gestured with his glove as though he wanted the ball back. I chucked it to him, but before anything else happened, his teammate produced a ball from his pocket to play with. The player with the ball that I’d thrown responded by turning and tossing it back to me. I later learned that the player was Matt Carasiti, who only pitched in 19 games with the Rockies. His lack of big league success isn’t a concern for me. I love this baseball because of the circumstances of how I got it.
July 25, 2017: Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton Park
My favorite memory of a visit to Ottawa in 2017 for the all-star game between the independent Can-Am League and American Association is watching the game with my brother and nephew, but I can’t overlook a cool baseball that I managed to add to my collection. I’d been chatting with a member of the Champions grounds crew before the game, and he offered to take me up onto the stadium roof in the game’s later innings. That was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up, and being able to survey the field from this unique vantage point was an experience I won’t soon forget. Of course, finding a baseball on the roof — technically, he found it while I was snapping photos and gave it to me before we descended — only added to this adventure.
September 15, 2017: Target Field
I spent several minutes watching the visiting Blue Jays playing catch before the gates opened at Target Field in 2017, and if that wasn’t exciting enough, the manner in which I snagged this next baseball certainly was. As the players made their way toward the dugout, one reliever turned and fired a baseball into the upper deck high above left field. I was standing close to the third base dugout, and immediately took off in a quest to the find the ball. I had to quickly make my way to the 100 Level concourse, run to the corner and then race up multiple flights of stairs to the upper deck. I searched extensively for the baseball before eventually giving up and returning to the main concourse. A moment later, I decided to try again, so I once again ran upstairs and, this time, tracked it down.
