MLB playoffs: Who is Zack Hample? Ball hawk denied by Aaron Judge at Stadium

Tom Gatto

MLB playoffs: Who is Zack Hample? Ball hawk denied by Aaron Judge at Stadium image

Zack Hample has a nose for the ball, to put it politely. The self-professed "professional baseball nerd" isn't bashful about promoting his prowess. That, among other things, has made him an unlikable figure.

Call it karmic justice, then, when he missed on one Sunday night at Yankee Stadium, thanks to Aaron Judge.

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Judge reached above the top of the right-field wall to snag a long ball by the Indians' Franciso Lindor in Game 3 of the teams' ALDS.

Note how Hample charged the ball from his bleacher seat and seemed to be in the Jeffrey Maier position (i.e., hanging over the wall).

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Hample says he wasn't in position to interfere.

People might remember that Hample's gift of grab (he has written a book about it) put him in the middle of a controversy two years ago. He snagged Alex Rodriguez's 3,000th career hit, a home run into the Stadium bleachers. Hample at first said he'd keep the ball, then negotiated a sweetheart deal to give it back to Rodriguez, another unsympathetic figure.

Tom Gatto

Tom Gatto Photo

Tom Gatto joined The Sporting News as a senior editor in 2000 after 12 years at The Herald-News in Passaic, N.J., where he served in a variety of roles including sports editor, and a brief spell at APBNews.com in New York, where he worked as a syndication editor. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of South Carolina.