Around The Card Room, Take 2

I have caught a few baseballs at games. 

I don't go out of my way to catch them, they have to come to me.  

On July 15, 2005, my parents are out of the country and they left me a bunch of their baseball tickets for the week. They sat in right field at the old Busch Stadium. In this picture, their seats would have been above the white sign next to the Cardinals bullpen, under the overhang. 

I went to this game with one of my neighbors who worked as a chef in the city. We met up at the ballpark and were watching the end of the Houston Astros batting practice. Those seats were prime territory for ballhawks pregame. Frequently, there would be people who stood in the aisle of the section or in the walkway in front of the seats trying to catch BP homers or get players to throw balls into the stands. This game was no different. 

Although, the Astros did not have many lefties, so the batting practice crowd was light in right-field.  In fact, Baseball Reference lists no starting left-handed batters on the 2005 Astros, which is shown with an asterisk.  

They did have Lance Berkman though, who was a switch-hitter. 

So, batting practice is happening and there was a hard-line drive hit by an Astros player. Watching the ball, it was going to be below my seats and to my left towards the aisle of the section. The ball ends up hitting off a high school aged kid, who was hanging out in the aisle, and bounces back about 20 feet. The baseball lands in seat in front of us and is stuck in between seat bottom and seat back. 

I looked at it. My neighbor looked at. The kid in the aisle was down and out on the step. My neighbor pointed out that he did not pay for his ticket, so he insisted that I take the ball. I reached out and grabbed the ball. I watched batting practice for the next several minutes to determine the left-handed batter while also watching the high school kid try to garner some level of sympathy from an usher who had yelled at him several minutes before for standing in the aisle.  

The answer was Lance Berkman.  

This is the ball.  

The ball is marked with an H.

The Cardinals ended up winning the game on an Albert Pujols walk-off home run.  

This ended up being the last game I attended in Busch Stadium II, because I moved a few weeks later and Busch Stadium II was torn down at the end of the season for the current version.   

I display this baseball next to one of my Albert Pujols bobbleheads. Although, it is not an a shelf like the bobble I showed in my previous post, rather this is on top of a bookcase. This is my oldest child's favorite part of the baseball card room, because he loves reading the baseball books. Albert has a little ding on his jawline from being knocked over. 

Add in the fact that Berkman would go on to play a short time for the Cardinals on the 2011 World Series team, and this is easily one of my favorite items in my baseball card room.