Tuesday, July 10, 2001
By TED MILLER AND JIM MOORE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS

They waited in anticipation of a souvenir and fame, for a towering baseball that never came.

Scattered along a sidewalk on Royal Brougham Way, fans of all ages wore gloves, hoping to catch the first ball to be knocked out of Safeco Field. In the stadium's two-year history, no one has taken a ball deep enough to bounce it off the wall of the Exhibition Hall or onto the sidewalk below.

But the thinking yesterday was that if anyone was ever going to do it, the Home Run Derby would provide the ideal setting: powerful sluggers getting fat pitches to hit on a warm evening that figured to enhance the carry of the ball.

The breeze was negligible, but hot air was detectable along Royal Brougham Way.

"I'm going to catch the ball and sell it for $2 million," said Kuni Wright of Seattle.

"I'm going to catch it all by lonesome," said Dan Austin of Seattle, sitting by himself, about 600 feet from home plate, beyond the left-center field power alley.

Most of the 100 or so wishful thinkers crammed into a small area of the sidewalk, spanning the left-field foul pole to the westernmost side of the left-center-field light standards. That's where they expected the ball to fall.

It would have taken a drive of about 500 feet, and the Chicago Cubs' Sammy Sosa hit the longest, at 468 feet, into the second deck above the Immunex sign in left-center field.

Lee Rosco, Sherry Hermann and Scott Thiessen were the most innovative would-be pursuers. Thiessen used a walkie-talkie to communicate with Marshall Airey, seated behind home plate, to get a better idea of a ball's direction.

"Scott might get a jump on the competition, and he's got a great glove," Airey said.

They had a code for location: "foul" meant foul pole, "A" meant right of the foul pole, and "B" meant even farther right.

Thiessen's competition included Mino An of Tacoma, whose 5-year-old son Josh sat on his shoulders with a Styrofoam "M" on his head.

"It's almost like rebounding a basketball," An said. "You have to want it more than anyone else."

An sounded hungry. Asked what he would do with Josh if a ball appeared, he said, "I'm dropping him and going after the ball."

Many said they would keep the ball as a memento, like Jim McEldowney of North Bend, who showed up with son Patrick, 9, and daughter Shannon, 6. But An said he would sell it on eBay.

Dan Adams was a formidable fetcher who called himself an "M's maniac" and proved he just might be one, period, after revealing his gameplan.

"I'd run in front of that semi to get the ball," Adams said. "This is war."

Speculation had it that the baseball would ricochet like a pinball, introducing the possibility of frantic dashes into four lanes of traffic.

Or maybe it would land in a convertible or garbage truck. Or hit the guy with the plastic artichokes on his head, leaning out of the gray limo as it went by, asking everyone to drink Pyramid beer. He seemed to have sampled a few himself.

Before Sosa and the Arizona Diamondbacks' Luis Gonzalez met in the final round, Thiessen was on his way to the beer garden, giving up. And what about Airey, his companion inside?

"He won't know until (Sosa) comes up," Thiessen said.