The Offseason and The Upcoming Season

It has been a long time since I wrote on this blog, nearly 6 months. Outside of the recent start of spring training, my mind has really been off baseball this winter. Right now, I was to talk about some of my 2010 season, and the upcoming 2010 season.

In 2010, I attented 6 games in 6 different stadiums, two in each of the states of New York, California, and Texas. I caught 23 balls at the stands in these games, averaging 3.83 per game. I know have 33 balls in my collection. The highlight of my year was catching my first career foul ball at AT&T Park off of the bat of Alex Cora. A week later, I set my record of balls snagged by snagging 8 at Dodger Stadium. I was overall a very fun year for me.

Now, it’s time to focus on the 2011 season. In all honesty, I have no idea what will happen and where I will go. What I can guarntee though is I will attend at least 2 (no more than 3) games at Citi Field and at least 1 (no more than 2) at Yankee Stadium. Outside of New York City, I have no idea what is going on. My dad has though told me and my brother that if we ddo well during our school year that he will take us some where to see some Mets games. If this is to happen, the mostly likely places to go would be Washington, Cincinatti, and Miami due to scheduling and distance. We originally had a summer road trip planned with my family that throught the trip would take us to a Nats game and possibly an Orioles game, but that trip is almost definetly off now.

Even though I don’t know how many games I will attend or what teams I will see play, I have listed some goals for this year, ranging in difficulty and whether I can control them or not.

1. See a Met win at Citi Field (Seems easy, but the Mets are 0-3 for me at Citi, 6-17 overall, 7 loses in a row and 11 of  the last 12)

2. Snag at least 30 baseballs (Snagged 23 last year, and now I’m a year older and have a chance to put up bigger numbers)    

3. Snag an Angels 50th Anniversery baseball (Angels come to Queens June 17-19, and I hope to attend one of those games)

4. Snag a Target Field Commerative ball (The Twins come to Yankee Stadium during the first full week of the season, and that is really my only chance to achieve this goal)

5. Catch a BP HR on the fly (Only caught one last year which was on a bounce, but being that I’m an outfielder in baseball (a real one, not one who is just put there) I think that I  can pull off the task)

6. Get a ball from an ump after a game (Citi Field has a good location for this)

7. Snag at least 10 balls at one game (I snagged 8 at Dodger Stadium last year, which is a task many usually don’t achieve, so I think I can pull this off)

8. Collect at least 8 autographs (Not really a big autograph collector, but I think that their cool to get and I have some good ones)

9. Get at least two player pictures and at least one mascot picture (Normally this wouldn’t be too hard of a task, but being that most of batting practice will be devoted to me trying to snag baseballs, it will be a bit of a challenge)

10. Snag at least two third-out balls (Snagging a foul ball will be a tough task to repeat, so I will stick with an easier way to snag game used balls)

Last year, I completed only 5 of my 10 goals, but one basically impossible, and three of them I only had one chance to achieve and did not.

Let’s hope the 2011 season will be a great one!

Feel free to comment.

Mike