If you arrive early at Dodger Stadium early on any given day during baseball season you will notice both teams taking batting practice (except on day games following a night game). As with every MLB team, the home team always take BP first followed by the visiting team. Another thing that you will notice is that there is a core group of die-hard Dodger fans who always arrive early to take in BP and hopefully catch BP home run balls hit into the Left and Right Field Pavilion – and when I say always, I mean always.

Every now and then a player will hit a BP home run ball that either hits the pavilion roof or in extreme rare cases over the the pavilion roof. As you might expect, guys like Albert Pujols, Matt Holliday, Giancarlo Stanton and Michael Morse are some of the guys who have done so with some degree of frequency but it is extremely rare for a Dodger player to do it. Oh sure, there have been a few guys who have come close, including Joc Pederson who missed hitting one over the Right Field Pavilion roof (in the right-center field gap, no less) as recently as last Saturday, but it missed by about 20 feet.

On Tuesday afternoon, the batting practice group of Adrian Gonzalez, Matt Kemp, Yasiel Puig, and Hanley Ramirez (in that order) put on quite a show for early-arriving fans. The weather was warm, the humidity was (finally) relatively low and there was a slight breeze blowing out – in other words, perfect conditions to ‘hit one out.’ The collective group hit quite a few balls into the stands, much to the pleasure of the “ball hawks,” as they are often called.

What many fans may not realize is that players absolutely love taking live BP (as opposed to BP in the indoor cage or off of a pitching machine) and they often times have a little friendly competition with the other members of their BP group while doing so – and let me tell you, they take this competition very seriously.

In the final round of BP on Tuesday afternoon, which usually consists of only two or three pitches, Yasiel Puig hit a monster BP home run to straightaway center that was a good 420 feet, after which he taunted Hanley Ramirez with a ‘beat that’ kind of tone. It would be Ramirez who would get the last swing.

…and what a swing it was. Not only did Ramirez hit a BP home run on his final swing but it hit the roof of the Left Field Pavilion and left the stadium completely.

Hanley absolutely crushed a batting practice ball off of Dodgers bullpen catcher Rob Flippo. It quite possibly is the first ball that a Dodger player has hit completely out of Dodger Stadium this season.
(Video capture courtesy of dodgerfilms)

Whenever a ball hits one of the metal pavilion roofs it causes a loud bang and the loud bang of Hanley’s ball hitting the roof (just to the left of the giant Video board) was followed by a loud cheer from Dodger fans and teammates alike. And what did Ramirez do immediately following the loud bang and cheers? He did the Mother of all bat flips in front of Yasiel Puig among the laughter of his teammates.

It was epic and it was captured on video by Bobby “dodgerfilms” Crosby.

Seeing a Dodger player hit one completely out of Dodger Stadium is rather rare and exciting news and, as you would expect in today’s social media world, it was on Twitter within minutes.

News of Hanley hitting one out of Dodger Stadium hit Twitter within seconds.

But wait, there’s more!

As the old saying goes: “What goes up must come down,” right?

David Baltazar is a Dodgers season ticket holder. In fact, he’s been a season ticket holder for 16 years and he himself often arrives early for BP. But on this Tuesday, Baltazar decided to skip BP and hang out in the patio area of the new Think Blue Barbecue in the Left Field Plaza. As he was enjoying a Dodger Dog, Baltazar heard the loud bang of Ramirez’s ball hitting the pavilion roof and he immediately knew what it was and was immediately in motion.

“As soon as I heard it hit I knew what it was,” said Baltazar. “It bounced off the pavilion roof and then bounced off the Wall Street Journal canopy [located on the Left Field Plaza] and it started to roll towards the stairs [leading to the LFP]. I got to it just as it was about to roll down the stairs and picked it up.”

Getting a ball that was hit out of Dodger Stadium is quite a treasure for baseball collectors. The problem, of course, was that Baltazar had no idea who had hit it.

“When I got back to my seat I sent a text message to a friend of mine who was in the Left Field Pavilion for batting practice and asked him who had hit it out,” said Baltazar. “When he replied that it was Hanley, it made it all that much better. I didn’t really want a ball hit by a Padres player. Besides, I don’t think they have anyone who could do it anyway,” added Baltazar with a chuckle.

David Baltazar of Long Beach was lucky enough to get the ball that Hanley Ramirez hit out of Dodger Stadium. (Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

Ironically, someone from the Dodgers Social Media Department incorrectly thought (and Tweeted) that it had been Yasiel Puig who had hit the ball out of the stadium which, of course, was not the case – although Puig’s blast to center was impressive in its own right.

It was undoubtedly an honest mistake that the Dodgers tweeted that it was Puig who had hit the ball out when it was actually Ramirez – unless, of course, they were just messing with Hanley.

Regardless, it’s great to see the Dodger bats beginning to come alive again. It most certainly couldn’t happen at a better time.