This man doesn't leave the ballpark empty-handed

	Fans battle each other and the players for foul balls. Travis Lindquist/Getty Images

For some people, baseball season starts when pitchers and catchers report. For others, it's when Manny Ramirez hosts a Bar-B-Que. But it's not really baseball season until Zack Hample catches his first foul ball.

If you've heard of Hample, it's probably because of the small measure of fame he's achieved by collecting more than 2,900 major league baseballs at games over the past 16 years. I got to chat with Hample recently during what might be the very last time he sits down until November. Between now and then, he'll spend most of his free time running back and forth in the stands of various ballparks trying to get into position to catch a foul ball or home run depending on whether the batter is a lefty or righty.

One of those batters was Barry Bonds, whose 724th home run ended up in Hample's mitt last season and is one of the most prized balls in his ever-growing collection. Hample estimates that about half of his stash is foul balls, another third has been tossed to him by players, and he's scooped up the rest with a mitt he modified into a ball trap that he can lower onto the field with string to grab unattended batting practice hits. He's so good at snagging balls that he doesn't even count the baseballs he's collected at spring training games -- too easy. It'd be like counting my mom in the number of people who read my column. (I'm kidding, of course -- my mom doesn't read my column.)

Oh, and in case you're wondering, baseball is the only sport he does this for, so there's no Hample collection of stray hockey pucks, ping-pong balls, or polo divots.

In 1999 he wrote a book that spilled all his ball-collecting secrets. Secrets like wearing the road team's cap so that visiting players will think he's a fan and toss him a ball. Secrets like knowing how to ask a player for a ball in more than two dozen languages. Secrets like showing up for batting practice, when there are more balls being hit into the bleachers and fewer fans competing for them. Secrets like the best (Camden Yards and Miller Park) and worst (Yankee Stadium and RFK) stadiums for snagging balls. As for other skills, the former college shortstop credits "quick reflexes, solid hand-eye coordination, and baseball intuition."

It's that baseball intuition that Hample has turned into his latest book, Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan's Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks (Vintage, $13.95). The book is a quick read and is written on many levels; casual fans will appreciate the simple explanations of everything that actually goes on during a game, and die-hards will enjoy the nuanced details of those explanations along with plenty of obscure tidbits like the 11-question umpire quiz. (I got one wrong, and I even spent one summer umpiring.)