Some statistician or probability expert somewhere can come up with the odds of one baseball fan catching a home run in the same park three nights in a row, but I'm not that person so I won't even try. I can say with a high degree of certainty, however, that the odds of a baseball player hitting a home run on each of three consecutive nights are better.
The scene: Camden Yards, this season the setting for so many home runs leaving the park off the bats of not the Orioles.
The dude: Tim Anderson, a 17-year-old high school senior, who had nothing better to do for three nights in a row in August than to go to Oriole Park and see the O's play the Chicago White Sox.
The common denominator: a plaid pattern on the dude's shorts.
So the first home run Anderson managed to snag came off the bat of Chicago's Carlos Quentin. It's not every night that a fan can get his or her hands on a home run ball, but Tim Anderson did. He was sitting in the left-field bleachers, and he undoubtedly had some sort of expectation that he had a better opportunity to catch a home run than some other fans in his part of the bleachers, simply because he had a baseball glove with him. And he didn't keep it under the bleacher seat; no, this guy was wearing the glove and up and ready each time a batted ball came his way. (As San Francisco Giants announcer Mike Krukow is fond of saying, "Bring a glove, you get ball."
So Anderson stuck up his glove up and snagged the ball after it "left the park." And the next night, he did again, although he might have been a bit happier to have caught that home run, since it was hit by Baltimore's own J.J. Hardy. So presumably, Anderson did a bit of a happy dance that night, not only because he had caught another home run but also because his team had knocked one out of the park and won the game.
But the real happy feet routine would have come the third night running, when Anderson — clad once again in plaid shorts — caught another home run, this one off the bat of Chicago's Alexei Ramirez. Anderson had to work for that one, jumping high in the air and contesting the catch with a few other fans in the left field bleachers; but catch it he did.
Given the Orioles' propensity to hang around the American League East cellar this season, Anderson might have found himself wishing, along with many other fans, that the Orioles had won the three games — and a few score more. As it was, the White Sox managed to win the games in which their homers landed in Anderson's glove, as did the Orioles.
For the record, even though the photo montage doesn't show it, Anderson was wearing three different kinds of plaid shorts — not exactly rally cap stuff, but there you go.
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