A hunt for Home Run Derby ball turns up different sort of prize

It was a warm evening, especially if you made the questionable decision to wear thick cotton slacks to the game.

I ventured into the left-field stands during batting practice.

A couple rows behind me, a young fan snagged a home run ball off the bat of the Athletics’ Brent Rooker. David Perkins of Roswell, at the game with his father, Matthew, had little trouble making the catch. An outfielder for the Centennial High baseball team, he’s more adept at tracking fly balls than most.

“It had a lot of backspin,” he reported. “(The ball’s trajectory) was true.”

Credit: Ken Sugiura

Credit: Ken Sugiura

I retreated to the concourse beyond the left-field seats. With fans making their way to their seats, going to concession stands or staking a spot for the Derby, the corridor was packed like a Tokyo subway car — except warmer, with more baseball gloves and significantly less Japanese.

After the traffic had cleared, there were actually fewer people than I expected. Fans stood perhaps four or five deep beyond the last row of seats, enough space to actually feel a breeze. I was joined by a lot of jersey-wearing bros in their 20s and 30s. Catching a home run would not be easy, a sentiment shared by at least one other attendee.

“I wish I was taller,” said a young man in a red polo shirt.

When the Washington Nationals’ James Wood and then Rooker led off the first round, anticipation was high. But Rooker’s turn made something clear.

The Athletics designated hitter crushed a ball toward us that was measured at 471 feet, just 24 feet shy of the longest home run ever hit in a game in Truist’s history. But it appeared to land about halfway deep into the left-field stands, maybe 75 feet from where we were.

For a ball to reach the bros and me, it was going to take a titanic blast, a big bounce, hurricane-grade winds or possibly a combination of the three.

Credit: Jason Getz/AJC

Credit: Jason Getz/AJC

With the potential for a souvenir all but removed (for the record, I planned to give my ball to a young fan if I had caught one), all there was left to do was enjoy the night. And if you were a baseball fan and not a columnist fishing for a story, that was quite sufficient.

After Rooker, Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero set the crowd abuzz by riddling the left-field stands with bombs at rapid-fire pace. After Caminero, Pittsburgh’s Oneil Cruz smashed a baseball that appeared to literally leave the stadium in right-center field — at 513 feet, the longest-traveling blast of the night.

“Oh, my God,” my red-shirted neighbor exclaimed. “What the hell.”

‘Out of this world’

As the night extended, interest waned. It was not the most enthusiastic audience and the Home Run Derby is a long event with a lot of breaks and not much tension. The crowd in the concourse thinned out. But one of the great things about going to a baseball game materialized.

I struck up a conversation with a neighbor, Zach Nickerson. From Acworth, he was there with his younger brother Cade and their friend Zeke Strout (the height-challenged young man in the red polo). The three were fraternity brothers at Georgia Tech (Cade is still in school) and are all diehard baseball fans.

Credit: Ken Sugiura

Credit: Ken Sugiura

Their parents would have been proud of their comportment. When a dad left our pack to go to a concession stand, they kept an eye on his son and got a little worried when the dad took a while to come back. Strout offered the boy his spot to get a clearer look at home plate.

Zach is a nut for the game, the Braves in particular.

“They could be 0-for-162 and I’ll watch every game,” he said.

His family went to every MLB stadium for a game before he reached college. He loves tracking prospects and young players. He went to the All-Star Futures Game on Saturday with his girlfriend and was familiar with all of the prospects in the game, including one player that he knew growing up in Cobb County — Harry Ford, a rising star in the Mariners system from North Cobb High. He said he had 12 of Caminero’s cards.

Zach gave a glowing recommendation of the Pen, a specialty seating section above the Braves’ bullpen in right center. Among the perks is all-you-can-eat food until the end of the fifth inning. His strategy for afternoon games is to get lunch before the game and then return for an early dinner later on. It’s also apparently a good place to get on the stadium video board. He suggested looking for tickets on resale websites, where prices are often cheaper than face value.

“It’s the best decision I’ve ever made,” he said.

Among other things, we talked about his time at Tech, my job, his job, his close friendship with his brother, how he randomly became a Seattle Seahawks fan, how his father once managed to take batting practice at Wrigley Field and how his mother and her sister, both Florida grads, are rabid Gators fans.

“They met (Tim Tebow) and it was like their life accomplishment,” he said.

On it went as the derby continued. Interest picked back up in the final round, won by Seattle slugger Cal Raleigh.

No home runs ever reached us. No one seemed to mind, not least an enthusiastic young man with more Caminero cards than anyone could ever need. The experience of being at the Home Run Derby, Zach said, was “out of this world.”

It was not difficult to believe him.