Last weekend, I took my third baseball road trip of the summer. You can read about my first one (to Rochester, Auburn and Syracuse) HERE and my second one (Buffalo, Cleveland, Mahoning Valley and Toronto) HERE and HERE.

This trip, I watched Toronto’s AA affiliate the New Hampshire Fisher Cats in Eastern League semifinal action against Trenton, and then watched the Tri-City ValleyCats in game one of the New York-Penn League championship against Brooklyn.

I’m by no means Zack Hample, but I love to get baseballs at games I attend and try to get at least one at every stadium. Minor League Baseball games are tough because batting practice isn’t open to fans, and the ushers remove all the balls hit into the stands prior to the gates being open. I patiently sat through the Fisher Cats game without getting a ball, but once the game was over, I headed to the dugouts in the hopes of hitting gold. The Trenton dugout was empty, but I noticed a ball at the bottom of the elevator lift adjacent to the dugout. There was no way I could reach it, so I had to hop over the rail, into the elevator and come up with the ball. It was cobweb central but I grabbed it and climbed back out with an official Eastern League ball! This is the first Eastern League ball in my collection, and it’s a beauty:

The next day, I lined up early at Tri-City’s Joseph L. Bruno Stadium in the hopes of heading beyond the outfield fence and getting a BP home run ball. Unfortunately, two fans who’d apparently snuck in early were grabbing all the balls, but I was determined not to be shut out. Fans aren’t allowed behind the fence (except if they’re in the corners) but I quickly spotted a ball in left/centre field, and raced over to grab it. I was pumped to see it was an Official MLB ball and was in pretty good shape. Its sweet spot had PRACTICE stamped on it, and I was glad to come away with it.

Here’s one side:

And the other:

All in all, a pretty exciting trip! Check out my next post to see pictures of the autographs I obtained.

Those games will likely be my last baseball games of 2010, unfortunately. I attended a total of 11 games from short-season A ball all the way to the big leagues. I ended up with 23 total balls this summer. (I gave two away to other fans and my wife also caught two, which I’m not counting in my total.)