ON BASEBALL

Graphics to accompany My Life As A Ball Hawk, Parts I & II

X-axis = year

Y-axis = baseballs per year (BPY)

 - All baseballs retrieved from minor league games, major league spring training games, and major league regular season and post season games

 - Adam's life as a ball hawk began when he started to attend regular season baseball games in 1987

 - Joanna's life as a ball hawk began when she started to attend Spring Training in 2004

Below you will find an assortment of photos of our baseballs organized by year. The labeling convention has evolved over the years but has stayed relatively consistent since 2002.  It always contains date, teams, and is written to the right of the label on the ball. 

Here is a key:

__________

Month - Date - Year

Away team acronym - runs scored 

vs. 

Home team acronym - runs scored

Code for how ball was obtained

Notes

__________

Key to codes for how ball was obtained and weighting based on difficulty:  

COF (3) - Catch On Fly - a ball that was hit by a player then caught before touching the ground

COB (2) - Catch On Bounce, a ball that was hit by a player and touches a person or thing previous to acquisition

S (2) - Splash Hit - a ball that was hit in to a body of water (only possible in a few MLB parks, i.e. Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Kansas City)

G (1) - Gimme - a ball that was given to a fan by a player or grounds person

EE (1) - Easter Egg, a ball that was simply picked up off of the ground or found in or around a ball park.  The best way to get an Easter Egg is to arrive at the park before the gates open, be one of the first to get in the gate, and look for balls that have been hit in to the stands

BOF (-1) - Bounce Off Face - a rare and undesirable method for obtaining a ball

Live game caught balls are assigned a higher weighting but are not yet frequent enough (twice) to warrant explanation.

The only way to determine if a ball was caught by Joanna or Adam is to look at the handwriting, or date stamp, Joanna hyphenates the date, Adam circles the day of the month.