Getting to know the 'ballhawks' of Wrigley Field

At the corner of Waveland and Kenmore, across from Chicago's Wrigley Field, the baseballs aren't as plentiful as they once were, but the stories are.

CHICAGO -- In 1959, a self-described "little whippersnapper" rode his bike eastbound down Waveland Avenue. As he passed Wrigley Field, he noticed some kids standing at the intersection of Waveland and Kenmore, one hand of each thrust into a baseball glove, eyes skyward. They were waiting, watching, foreseeing when a ball would clear first the fence and then Wrigley's modestly constructed left field bleachers and bounce off the Waveland asphalt or, if it was a certain hitter on a certain pitch, make it to the corner and into one of their raised gloves, open and rooting the air like feeding pullets. 

As the boy was passing, a ball -- a well-struck ball off the bat of Ernie Banks -- made its authoritative way to that corner -- the corner of Waveland and Kenmore. It struck another boy on the hip and left an imprint of the seams in his skin. The boy on the bike decided he would come back again, this time with his glove. He did so the very next week. It's 56 years later, and he's still here, at Waveland and Kenmore, waiting for baseballs to find their way to him, or to someone else. There's always someone else. 

Ken Vangeloff 

Ken Vangeloff's been showing up at Waveland and Kenmore since 1990, not nearly as long as the boy on the bike but long enough to know things are different now.

"First and foremost, Joe Maddon. His philosohphy is that batting practice all the time isn't worth it. As a baseball thinker, I get it. ... I get where he's coming from. But speaking as a ballhawk, we used to get balls like crazy, especially on a day like today, with the wind blowing out of the south, 15 to 20 miles per hour. Plus, the Cub hitters now? They're good. When they do take batting practice they hit line drives, they go the other way, they actually practice. Whereas back in the glory days it was, I'm gonna see how far I can hit the ball, man. I'm gonna hit the buildings, break some windows. Sosa, Alou, all those guys. It's usually the visiting team that does more damage these days."

Bleacher expansion also made their avocations more challenging. A decade before their ongoing project (ongoing and infernal, some might say), the Cubs puffed up the bleachers first in 2005. "Before that, you could see the ball coming up really well," Vangeloff lamented.

The ballhawks can't see the ball in flight until the last instants of its descent, but Vangeloff notes that most teams follow the batting order for that day when taking BP, so they know when to be ready for, say, a right-handed power hitter who likes to put on a show. 

The latest round of refurbishments has further eroded the ballhawks' vista, as well as placing a physical barrier between them and a number of baseballs that, in earlier days, might've reached their outstretched gloves. That would be the hulking outfield video board that's so sharply divided Wrigley-goers. Vangeloff also believes that dominating presence has allured the hitters. "From a player's perspective," he says, "I think trying to hit the scoreboard has more appeal to them than hitting the buildings. Anybody can hit a building." 

Before the bleachers incrementally became what they are today, the ballhawks would get, per Vangeloff's estimations, 1,000 or so balls per year hit to them. In 2015, that rough estimate cratered to 150.  "Catch it on the fly, no muss, no fuss. If it bounces and rolls, then the young kids run it down," is his other strategy.

There's also an "adult beverage" strategy. "Typical Chicago," he explains. "If you put in a brown paper bag and are cool about it, then the cops usually let you do your thing."

Most of the Waveland-and-Kenmore ballhawks make every Cubs home game, or at least attempt to. Still, life gets in the way sometimes, as does, increasingly, age. 

Art Thorson ("I'm a Swede.")

He has caught three balls in 10 years. Obviously, the wheelchair has a little to do with that modest total, but he has also got another reality working against his tally. "I work, so I'm not up here all the time like some of these guys. These guys are pretty serious about it."

He caught one on Opening Day 2014. "There was this drunk guy, he was sort of corpulent. He fell down, and the ball bounced off of him and rolled to me. It was kismet or whatever."

Thorson worked for the Railcats indy-league team in Gary, Ind. They won four championships when he was there. "I'm pretty proud of that. I'm a washed-up jock, played Division II hockey."

About the other, the thing that very obviously doesn't dim his enthusiam for, say, ball-hawking, he says, "It was after college. I'd been in that pool maybe a hundred times. It was just that night when I dived in. The physics were right, just the right angle. Or the wrong angle, I guess."

He can walk a bit, he says. "But I'm 52. I don't need to prove anything to anybody. Besides, this chair is so comfortable, especially when you've been imbibing."

Rich Buhrke

Almost 60 years ago, he was the boy on the bike. He caught his first home run ball in his second season on the corner, 1960. It was one of six home runs that Don Zimmer hit that season, this one off Dodgers lefty Johnny Podres, a former teammate. "The count went to 2-0," Buhrke recalled on Wednesday before Game 4 of the NLCS. "Podres throws a fastball and tries to get it past him, and Zimmer pounds it out of the park. And Podres screamed at him from home plate, down the first base side, all the way around, 'You bleepin' .220 hitter, you don't swing at a 2-0 pitch,' and Zimmer was just laughing at him all the way."

Decades later, Buhrke got that ball signed, first by Zimmer ("Is that the ball I hit off Johnny Podres?" Zimmer asked when presented with, yes, the ball he hit off Johnny Podres). Zimmer told him that he had ribbed Podres over the years about that home run and made Buhrke promise to get Podres to sign it one day. In 2007, the year before Podres died, Buhrke got his signature at a baseball card show in nearby Rosemont. "Johnny," Buhrke began, "Don Zimmer made me promise--"

"Let me see the ball," Podres deadpanned and then added his signature to the other side of the ball, as far as possible from Zimmer's. 

He has more stories that unfurled before him at the corner of Waveland and Kenmore. He points out the house that Dave Kingman hit, just down Kenmore ... 

"He hit the slats under the window," he says of Kingman. It was back when Kingman was with, of all teams, the Mets. Kingman would hit one to almost the same spot a couple of years later, this time as a member of the Cubs. "That one hit the grass, though," Buhrke recalls.

Buhrke mentions the old apartment building across the alley on Waveland that Mickey Mantle assailed during batting practice before the second All-Star Game in 1962 (from 1959 to 1962, Major League Baseball played two All-Star games) ... 

"He hit one right at the base and then another between the first and second floors. Mantle couldn't even play in the game because he was injured, like he always was," Buhrke says. "But he came here anyway and put on a show in batting practice. The All-Star Game meant that much to him."

Buhrke's been to 37 different ballparks and retrieved at least one ball at 35 of them. "The total right now stands at 3,615."

Surely, given such a figure and such a tenure, that's the most among the Waveland and Kenmore ballhawks. "No, no. That's the gentleman right there." Buhrke says, gesturing to a nearby man in a gray Cubs T-shirt who appears to be a rough contemporary. "He's got the most. He's well over 4,000."

The Gentleman Right There

He -- i.e., the man that Buhrke declared to have caught most balls among the Wrigley ballhawks -- does not do photos or interviews. This did not appear to be a negotiable stance. "Almost 6,000," he says, correcting the estimation just made by the boy on the bike.

The ballhawks of Wrigley Field, as viewed from the left field bleachers. (Eye On Baseball)