Few sports churn out sappy stories like baseball, probably because it’s “woven into the fabric of our history,” as writers like the late Roger Angell used to point out all the time. The Los Angeles Angels have been producing a different brand of stories this year, but this past weekend they gave us a truly memorable one.
The story revolved around DH Mike Trout’s 400th home run, which finally happened against the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field this weekend. The ball from Trout’s memorable clout represented a clear opportunity for a cash grab, but the fan who caught it thankfully had other ideas.
He was identified only as “Alberto” on an Angels social media post, but this guy deserves some major kudos. He not only returned the ball in exchange for the usual merch—three autographed bats and two autographed baseballs, according to ESPN via Brooks Peck of The Athletic—but he made an additional request that seriously tugs at the heartstrings.
“You mind if we can, like, (have a catch) on the field?” he asked.
Trout knew a good deal when he saw one, so he quickly obliged, tossing a few balls with Alberto by the third base line. The simple request took most of us back to that initial memory that helped get us hooked on baseball—the game of catch with our fathers, or with our buddies before a Little League game.
Sappy? Sure. Given the nature of social media, the fan will doubtless be identified soon enough, and hopefully he gets more flowers for deciding to create a memory rather than trying to start a college fund for his kids.
The exchange helped soften some of the hard feelings from other similar situations with recovered home run balls lately. The baseball that Los Angeles Dodgers DH Shohei Ohtani launched into the stands for his 50th homer that made him the first member of the 50/50 club also launched a bunch of lawsuits between the fans who fought for it, and the payday for that ball ended up being almost $4.4 million.
On a slightly more despicable level, a home run ball that landed in the stands of a game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Miami Marlins sparked a social media controversy when a fan ended up taking the ball from a child.
Civility triumphed with Trout’s home run, thankfully, and kudos also to Rockies fans who didn’t make much of a fuss about the prized souvenir once it was clearly recovered.