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Valuable balls (to me, that is)



  First ball at Yankee Stadium

Roberto Kelly threw the ball over Jesse Barfield's head in a long-toss session. I reached over the wall and caught it. Barfield didn't have another ball, so he asked me if he could use it until they were done and promised to return it. I tossed it back to him, and he kept his word.
     
  Cal Ripken Jr. BP ball

Ripken remains my favorite player of all time. I was never able to catch a game ball off his bat, so this is the next best thing: a foul grounder he hit during batting practice in the Bronx.
     
  1,000th ball

Braves pitcher Pedro Borbon Jr. threw it to me on June 11, 1996 at Shea Stadium. It helped that I was wearing a Braves cap and asked him in Spanish.
     
  50th game ball

Foul ball, caught on a fly behind the plate at Pro Player Stadium. Wish I remembered who hit it.
     
  First game homer caught on a fly

From Ted Lilly's hand to Mike Bordick's bat to my glove. Every fan in Yankee Stadium was chanting, "Throw it baaack!!!" and when I refused, they started chanting something else.
     
  Four studs

Sometimes I prefer to get balls thrown to me because of the personal touch. These four (clockwise from the top left) were thrown by Tom Glavine, Trevor Hoffman, Albert Pujols, and Ichiro Suzuki.
     
  2,000th ball

Phillies pitcher Joe Roa tossed it to me on May 24, 2003 at Olympic Stadium. It helped that I was wearing a Phillies cap and asked him in English.
     
  Mariano Rivera

Yankee Stadium. July 8, 2004. Top of the 9th. Two outs. Mariano Rivera induced Rey Sanchez to ground out to 2nd baseman Miguel Cairo for his 30th save of the season and 313th of his career. Cairo threw the ball to 1st baseman Tony Clark. Clark handed it to Rivera. Rivera returned to the dugout and tossed it to me.
     
  2,500th ball
Roy Oswalt pitched it. Marlon Anderson fouled it. I caught it.
     
  40 stadiums

My first ball at Minute Made Park made it 40 major league stadiums with at least one snag.
     
  500th on the road

Citizens Bank Park was the site of my 500th non-NYC ball.
     
  Heath Bell = my hero

Bell might've been a Quadruple-A reliever for the Mets, but he really was my hero. This is the ball with which we played catch in 2005.
     
  3-2-1 contact

My record for most balls in a season is 321. It happened in 2005, and this was the last one.
     
  Bucky Dent

I got to know Bucky in the early 90s when I attended his baseball school in Florida. It was a thrill to get this ball from him at Shea more than a decade later.
     
  Pedro Martinez

Pedro had seen me on TV early in 2006, so he knew about my collection and recognized me at Shea. When he fielded this ball during BP, he clumsily danced around right field (to make fun of me) and shouted, "Ohhh!!! I got a ball from Pedro Martinez!!!" Then he looked my way and threw it to me.
     
  Barry Bonds

Wow! It's a ball that people other than me actually care about! I caught Barry Bonds' 724th career home run on 8/16/06 at PETCO Park.

Click here to watch the footage (.AVI = 9.8MB) and give it a minute to load.
     
  100th game ball

Camden Yards. April 23, 2007. Top of the 7th inning. Runner on 1st. No outs. 1-1 pitch from Brian Burres to Nick Swisher. High foul pop-up behind the plate.
     
  3,000th ball

On May 7, 2007, I used my glove trick to pluck this ball off the warning track during batting practice at Yankee Stadium.