Giving fandom a bad name – known “ball hawk,*” gets into game reserved for military servicemen and women, boasts about the baseballs acquired at said game on social media, gets immediate backlash to hilarious results
*a person whose life’s mission is to acquire free baseballs at baseball parks by any means necessary, whether they are caught, picked up, found, retrieved via frighteningly obsessive engineering, or begged for
Because I actually detest the existence of this particular ball hawk, I won’t actually use their name. I don’t want to give them any named acknowledgement, and I honestly believe this person is sociopathic enough to periodically run Google searches on themselves to see what the internet is saying about them.
Anyway, tonight, there was a very special baseball game played. Frankly, it’s probably one of the only meaningful games the Braves will play in this season, and there’s an extremely high chance that the only reason the Braves were chosen to play in this game is that because they’re simply the closest Major League Baseball franchise geographically to the desired venue.
The Braves gave up a home game to host the Marlins, in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in honor of Independence Day, and to give a little something back to the armed forces and military servicemen and women in the area. Despite the fact that both teams are kind of meh, it’s still a fine gesture of goodwill and a little bit of payback that doesn’t come close to fully rewarding the military, for their service.
To give it some meaning, the game was intended to be attended by solely military personnel and their families; the average Major League ballparks hold anywhere from 35-50,000 people, and the Fort Bragg stadium holds roughly 12,500. Needless to say, not everyone will be lucky to be able to attend this special game.
My friend and I talked about how cool it was that the game was being played on an Army base; he mentioned that “at least we won’t see (ball hawk) at the game.” I agreed.
Or so we thought.
Apparently, as revealed over Twitter, and the guy bragging about how many baseballs he has in fact hawked, he was most certainly at the game in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on the Army base. I was puzzled. My friend was incensed, as he is actual military. But the best part was that, so was the rest of The Internet.
Naturally, it’s no secret that ball hawk is not military; his larger-than-life internet persona passive-aggressively humble-brags about his background that is just about every insufferable hobby, upbringing and things outside of begging for baseballs. So the question is, how did he get into this historic game?
After being publicly grilled, ball hawk claimed that “he had a friend who hooked him up.” But he seemed to forget that people on The Internet are complete psychos and will actually put forth effort to debunk a claim if it’s possible. Within minutes, numerous people had posted screen caps of a Tinder post, coming from the ball hawk himself, in the Fort Bragg area, basically asking locals that he was willing to pay upwards of $1,000 for a ticket to a game that was primarily reserved for military personnel only.
So the jig was up, and unfortunately, one of our own country’s servicemen was too tempted by the thought of making an easy grand-o. And in spite of the no-resell policy on the tickets, the ball hawk had his way into a sacred playing field.
But, like the subject says, without villains in the world, what would people talk about sometimes? I have to admit the amount and magnitude of hatred that this guy has been getting while I’ve been writing this post has been about as satisfyingly entertaining to me as the season 6 finale of Game of Thrones.
I’m not going to lie, I’m having a grand old time refreshing Twitter and seeing just how much shit this guy is having heaped onto him for his child-like obsession with acquiring baseballs despite the fact that they’re older than I am. People pointing out that he’s at a ballpark full of people who have been shot at, and fought for the country, while he’s fighting elementary school children for batting practice baseballs. Even the 82nd Airborne Division called him out on Twitter. Shit really cannot get any more classic than this has turned out to be.
Ball hawk is pretty much the worst baseball fan in the world. I remember the night I saw him in person; I was having a great evening, enjoying the Braves beating the Phillies en route to clinching a spot in the playoffs. But then I saw the ball hawk on the big screen, in my ballpark, and then my mood was shot. Not only was my mood shot, the Phillies ended up making a comeback against the Braves and ultimately winning in extra innings, which opened the door for the fucking St. Louis Cardinals to sneak into the playoffs, and ultimately win the World Series that year.
I still blame this ball hawk for all of that bullshit.
Seeing him get ridiculed and owned on the internet is among the best things ever. It’s hilarious that my friend said he wouldn’t be at that ballpark, but we both admit that our evening had gotten so much better because he selfishly was.
