The First of Many from Baltimore’s Finest

Dedication and irritation as an amalgam usually causes
demise to a person or a subject at hand, with the latter the cause of fatality.
Instead, dedication and irritation were the two things that led to the creation
of Baltimore’s Finest.

Different people are irritated by different things. Usually
the irritation comes with the failings of another, especially of another in the
same field as you. Say you’re a plumber and you get called to a house to do
some work with the piping on the sink, or God forbid the toilet, to only find
that they guy in there before you screwed everything up. Apply that to whatever
occupation you hold – computer technician, mechanic, or even doctor. The
failures of that other guy may give you more work but the good news is you have
more work.

As a writer, or an aspiring, wannabe one at least, my
irritation comes from the poorly written posts that spew over the web full of
grammatical errors and misspellings. When I read a post today on ball hawking -
another passion of mine – written by a fellow that will not be name, that hails
from Pittsburgh, and claimed to have found the Washington Monument one mile
away from Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, Maryland; my irritation
reached the peak.

Showing dedication, if in proper moderations, can exhibit
fantastic character. Everyone has a passion for something; no matter who,
where, or what. A passion that is sweeping the baseball world is that of ball
hawking – the art of catching baseballs at Major League Baseball games. There
is mygameballs.com where the hawkers post their game-by-game stats all in an
attempt to make the leaderboard and maybe even challenge the all-time leader,
Zach Hample with his 4,540 balls as of 7/25/10.

In roaming mygameballs.com and joining just a few months
ago, I have noticed, along with people posting their ball totals, that they are
posting blogs with pictures and descriptions of the day of hawking. I had some
interest in joining in with the blogging. I have somewhat of a writing
background with articles on informativesports.com and isportsweb.com as well as
posts on fannation.com, helium.com, and a soon-to-be a column on mygameballs;
so that wasn’t the big issue. The problem was gathering all the data while
shagging balls. Hawking in Oriole Park at Camden Yards is hard enough when you
aren’t taking notes and pictures. Now, I am up for the challenge.

Or should I say we
are up for the challenge. Baltimore’s Finest plans to be a double-dose of
hawking from me, Tim Anderson (gu3 on mygameballs), and Ben Huff (bhuff on
mygameballs). Between the two of us, we have compiled 52 balls through only 15
games in 2010 with many more hoping to come.