Bryce Harper’s first World Series home run ball was caught by none other than a Laurel man.
Andy Hartstein, 37, made the lucky catch from his right-centerfield seat during the first inning of Game 3 at Citizen’s Bank Park on Tuesday night.
“If I didn’t catch it, it would have hit me in the chest,” he said. “I can’t explain to you how perfectly it landed in my hands.”
Hartstein was at the game with his 9-year-old son, Hudson. It was Hudson’s first Major League Baseball game.
“The look on his face,” Hartstein said. “It was, like, euphoria. … Hudson jumped into my arms and people were screaming and embracing us.”
It was Hudson’s clever opportunism that brought the Hartsteins to the game. While Andy Hartstein was celebrating one exciting Phillies playoff moment, Hudson asked, “Hey, if they go to the World Series, are we gonna go?”
“In a moment of excitement and weakness, I said, ‘Absolutely. Of course,’ ” Hartstein said.
Initially, when it became apparent the Phillies were going to the World Series, Hartstein balked at the ticket prices. When someone approached him with Game 3 tickets for sale, he turned to his family and friends for advice, hoping they’d talk him out of it.
“They were all like, ‘It’s once in a lifetime, you should do it,’ ” Hartstein said.
He shelled out the money.
After spending a few hours on the Wiffle ball field at Citizen’s Bank Park on Monday before the game was rained out, the Hartsteins returned Tuesday night. It was the bottom of the first inning when Harper hit the two-run homer seemingly straight to them. Someone sitting behind Hartstein recorded his catch on video, which had racked up millions of views online by Thursday.
“My phone was going bananas,” Hartstein said. “I had to go charge it in the sixth inning.”
He kept the ball in his jeans pocket for the rest of the game.
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“Hudson was reaching in my pocket to push it down every 30 seconds,” he said. “At one point we were jumping around, there was another home run, and he was like, ‘Hey, hey! Stop jumping around, I don’t want it to come out.’ ”
The Phillies have not reached out to Hartstein about the ball, which he finds surprising. He’s ordered a protective case for it and is keeping it behind lock and key.
“I have daughters that are 3 and 7,” he said. “I don’t want it to end up with a smiley face on it.”
Hartstein’s father and grandparents were from New Jersey, “just across the river” from Philadelphia. He inherited his Philly fandom from them, he said, as his kids did from him.
“My experience is way different from my kids. Hudson’s seen a World Series, a Super Bowl in his time,” Hartstein said. “For me, as a kid, there was a lot more disappointment than success. A lot more up and downs. But it’s an incredible time right now.”
