Yvonne Upton has a lot going on, during one of her extended visits to Atlanta – watching her sons B.J. Upton and Justin Upton play for the Braves and enjoying time with her grandson Riley. Now she’ll have another happy “chore” on the to-do list – procuring the bat and ball from B.J’s 1,000th career hit.
Upton, who reached the milestone Saturday night with an infield hit off Reds pitcher Mike Leake, planned to give them to her after Sunday’s game before the team left for Miami.
“She keeps all my stuff like that,” Upton said. “She’ll find a place for it. She’ll probably get it framed and put together.”
Upton said Jason Heyward predicted before the game Saturday he’d probably get it on a bloop, considering he’d had two balls hit hard Friday night with nothing to show.
“It was very similar to a bloop but I’ll take it, and I’ll take the 1,000,” Upton said. “…Any time you can stay around long enough to get 1,000 hits in the big leagues, that’s pretty cool.”
Justin Upton entered play Sunday only 87 hits away from joining his brother in the 1,000-hit club. He was among the 33,702 fans at Turner Field giving B.J. Upton a standing ovation Saturday night.
It was a nice moment for B.J., who heard his share of boos while hitting .184 last year in the first year of his five-year $75.25 million contract.
Upton has been more comfortable at the plate in recent weeks – and had hit safely in 12 of 15 games with an at-bat entering Sunday. He has seen noticeable improvement from the prescription glasses he started wearing Friday night.
Upton said was told as a teenager he should wear glasses to drive at night and he never did.
“My vision is pretty good,” Upton said. “It’s at night. Day games aren’t as bad as night time.”
Still he plans to wear his new glasses during day games as well. The ones he’s worn this weekend are standard glasses, “which are getting annoying at the plate,” Upton said. “I keep having to push them up on my face.”
He has ordered wrap-around glasses from Oakley which he is expecting to arrive by the start of the Braves series Tuesday in Miami.
And yes, he’s heard about the Twitter account @BJGlasses that popped up over the weekend and got mention on MLB Network.
“That’s unbelievable,” Upton said. “My agent told me. All right, cool, I guess.”
