Miller Snags Rookie's First Grand Slam
Ballhawk Makes Impressive Snag, Returns Ball to Rookie Catcher J.P. Arencibia
by Alan Schuster, June 6, 2011Miller presents Arencibia with the game ball from his first career grand slam.J.P. Arencibia isn't the easiest name to say, but Baltimore ballhawk Avi Miller has been saying it a lot lately. That's because on Friday night at Camden Yards, Miller snagged Arencibia's first career grand slam, and the following night he got to meet him and exchange the ball for a signed bat. It was semi-crowded in the left field bleachers when Arencibia came to bat in the fifth inning on Friday, and Miller jokingly told a buddy that he wanted to catch a rookie's grand slam. And even though the die-hard Orioles fan really didn't want his team to give up a four-run bomb, he got his wish. "Arencibia smacked a shot to my section, just a chunk of seats down from me," Miller wrote on his blog. "Funny thing is, and if you watch the video you'll see how it is I react, but I didn't see it coming until its flight down (was probably preoccupied talking or something), so I jumped up and ran over, avoiding two dudes. I got to the spot, it bobbled off of two other people and right into my glove. I closed it, held with two hands, and got out of the mess of drunk people. That's how I remember it. But yeah, watch the clip to see." The fans around him began taunting him to throw it back, and as an Orioles fan Miller was happy to meet their request. Of course, the ball he chucked back onto the field wasn't the real ball, it was a decoy ball tossed to him by his friend Tim. "Let's just say the ball had some obnoxious stuff drawn on it, and when Adam Jones picked it up in CF, he cracked up and gave us a thumbs up, and kept laughing as he threw it in," Miller wrote. "We also got later word from a friend that he saw guys in the Jays dugout laughing at a baseball. Funny." For the full story on Avi Miller's Grand Slam snag, visit his blog