If the origins of “ballhawking” are murky and probably forever lost, there’s no question Zack Hample has given it refinement, clarity and perhaps even a rough-hewn elegance.
The art form, obsession, hobby, weirdness — Hample calls it all of these and more — confuses many. Judging from a sampling of Internet comments (“This guy’s a joke,” is a typical line), he has as many haters as admirers. Or as Hample says, “The Internet’s default mode is negativity.”
But make no mistake: Hample is the best ballhawk who’s ever lived. He is like Babe Ruth in the 1920s, out-homering all other teams combined. He’s like Bob Beamon jumping 29 feet 2 1/2 inches in 1968, when a fellow competitor said, “Compared to him, we are all as little tiny children.”
Many fans spend entire lifetimes going to ballgames and hardly ever smell a baseball. Hample, on the other hand, has caught, corralled and cajoled (mostly from players, coaches and umpires) 6,896 baseballs at major league parks over the last 23 years.
He has gotten at least one ball in 928 consecutive games. He has snagged at least one game-used ball (as opposed to a batting practice or between-innings warm-up ball) in all 25 stadiums he’s visited this year (he’s been to every MLB park, some numerous times). Each game-used ball, incidentally, gets a $500 donation from BIGS Sunflower Seeds (his sponsor this season) to a charity that provides baseball/softball equipment to communities in need.
His personal single-game record is 36 in Cincinnati’s Great American Ballpark on his 34th birthday (which is Sept. 14) in 2011.
Turner Field, which Hample visited last week, has been especially kind. He garnered a season’s-high 18 before and during Wednesday’s game against Colorado — he gave away six of those to children — and now has 217 balls in 16 lifetime games at Turner, for an average 13.56 balls per game, second only to his 13.74 balls per game at Nationals Park.
Hample first hit the mainstream media in 2008.
During the last week of old Yankee Stadium, he caught a home run hit by Jason Giambi one night, then a homer by Johnny Damon the next. After each catch Hample improvised a jaunty routine alternately known as the “Cabbage Patch” or the “Butter Churn.” Cameras beamed his image worldwide and eventually he landed on the Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno shows.
He caught Barry Bonds’ 724th home run and Mike Trout’s first. He caught the last home run in Shea Stadium hit by a Mets player (Carlos Beltran). He’s caught a total 24 home run balls, not counting six gophers that were tossed to him from the bullpen by obliging relief pitchers.
The obvious question for anyone who meets Hample is why all this ballhawking, whole summers-worth, year after year when, after all, he’s grown man.
“The only other thing I really wanted to be was a major league player,” he said, “and it’s a little late for that. The short answer is in two parts. One, if you’re going to try something, you might as well be the best. The second part, this is closest I can come to being on the field.
“I can’t really even fathom the word ‘career,’” he added. “I wouldn’t know how to apply for a job or even how to fill out a resume. I guess you might say I’m winging it and it seems to work.”
Detractors occasionally call him a dweeb. It’s true that he is a slight 5-11, has a shaved head, wear’s a two-day’s growth beard, including a barely traceable soul patch below his lower lip, which is about as fashionable as a Nehru jacket.
He also becomes singularly, almost unnaturally intense at the crack of a bat or the plop of a ball anywhere within the premises, saying that, “I’m not a casual person. That’s why I stay away from alcohol and drugs.”
But Hample was a lifelong baseball player through high school and even played his freshman year at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C. He’s also had a varied and intriguing life growing up in Manhattan, where today he lives on the Upper West Side a few blocks from Central Park.
His maternal grandfather founded the Argosy Book Store in 1925, which his family still runs on 59th Street and where Hample often works when he’s particularly hungry.
His father, Stu Hample, was a playwright, screenwriter, children’s books author (“Children’s Letters To God” currently has 1.2 million copies in print), newspaper strip illustrator and children’s television performer (he was “Mister Artist” on the long-running “Captain Kangaroo” show).
The elder Hample, who died in 2010, didn’t exactly encourage ballhawking. But he told Zach if he was that impassioned about something, he ought to write a book. Stu subsequently provided guidance and an outline for “How to Snag Major League Baseballs,” the first of Zack’s three books, published by Simon & Schuster in 1999.
The volume is a virtual template for contemporary ballhawking. (Major league teams didn’t allow fans to keep balls hit or thrown into the stands until Cubs owner Charles Weegman in 1916, but it wasn’t until after the 1994 strike that teams encouraged players to toss balls to spectators).
It is all here, including Hample’s advice on wearing the visiting team’s gear to attract attention, along with finding strategic dugout locations for catching tosses after the third out of each half inning.
He discusses his infamous “glove trick,” using a Sharpie pen and rubber band in the glove’s pocket to create tension, then a long rope to lower the glove and seemingly suck loose balls off the field or, as at Turner Field, from the gap between fence and stands.
He encourages a basic facility with multiple languages and can ask for a baseball in 35 languages. Further, he’s emphatic that his protégés strike up relationships with players and coaches, and always call them all by first names.
Wednesday night at Turner Field, a batting practice home run struck the top of the concrete inner wall then shot up — Hample, a stickler for figures, estimated it at 55 MPH — and nailed him below the right eye. Hample has sprained an ankle and broken ribs at a game, but this was his first-ever facial injury. Within minutes he had a bulge the size and color of small plum.
From the field, Rockies pitcher Jeff Francis spotted him holding an ice bag, picked up a loose ball and said, “If you got a pen, I’ll sign this.” Hample explained, “Thanks, but I just want the ball. Autographs aren’t my thing. I like to keep the ball pure.”
Tossing the ball up, Francis added, “I recommend seeing a doctor, dude.”
Later, midway through the game Rockies hitting coach Dante Bichette saw Hample with his disfigured face behind the dugout and smiled before holding two thumbs up. “Way to keep your eye on the ball,” he said.
Hample thought about this for a moment before nodding his appreciation to Bichette. “I like that,” he said. “A good line.”
Maybe even a title if he ever gets around to a fourth book.
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