Padres lose, Rizzo hits first home run

So Anthony Rizzo hit his first Major League Home run tonight.  I found out that no one actually caught the ball.  One of the Guest Service Representatives retrieved the ball from the screen above the out of town scoreboard and had a photogenic girl pose with it for the television cameras.  So it's now in Rizzo's possession... the ball not the girl...maybe the girl.

Usually when a fan catches an important home run ball, the organization will try to strike up a deal with them so that they can retrieve the it for the player.  It may be a signed jersey, bat or perhaps even a meeting.  Who knows how these negotiations work in reality? 

I was kind of imagining it like the end of the the 1992 movie Sneakers. If you haven't seen the movie, you should.  I'm going to spoil the ending right now, so you might want to skip down to the next paragraph.  In Sneakers, Robert Redford's group of specialized yet offbeat experts are able to steal a black box that supposedly can decode all the world's secrets. The U.S. Government wants it back and confronts them at the end of the movie.  Robert Redford agrees to give it to them, but he insists that every person on his team get a wish. 

I asked on Twitter what our followers would want in exchange for the home run ball.  Some of you were influenced by greed, others were selfless and still others had romantic intentions, just like in the movie.

I was trying to think of what I would do if I caught the ball.  I'd probably consider doing something crazy like writing all over the it, tagging my place into his history.  I really couldn't be that big of a jerk though or that crazy.  I'd probably just give it to him or ask for something simple like a handshake or a lock of his pubes. Whichever is easiest.

In any case, it sucks that Ryan Ludwick misplayed that ball in the first inning that cost the Padres a run, otherwise they'd probably still be playing.

P..S.  Those 1936 uniforms looked rad.  I still can't figure out if they were really dark blue or black.  Since all the photographs from back then are black and white, we may never know.