Luck strikes twice! O's fan snags two balls in two innings

BALTIMORE -- Avery Jacobsen had caught foul balls at Camden Yards before. But the 22-year-old Orioles fan from Lancaster County, Pa., had never come away with a ball in play.

That changed on Thursday night -- in fact, it changed twice, so he decided to share the wealth.

First, Jacobsen -- seated in the first row of Section 94 in right-center field during the Orioles' 2-1 loss to the Blue Jays -- caught Coby Mayo’s home run with two outs in the bottom of the fourth inning, a solo shot that knotted the game at 1. And if that wasn’t cool enough, guess what happened an inning later?

With two outs in the bottom of the fifth, Blaze Alexander hit a ground-rule double to right-center. The ball bounced off the warning track, over the wall and ... directly into Jacobsen’s hands.

Jacobsen already had the Mayo homer ball as a souvenir. So, he decided to turn around and gift the ball from Alexander’s double to a younger girl seated in the row behind him.

“You got to give balls to kids. You want them coming back to the ballpark,” said Jacobsen, who recently graduated from Loyola University Maryland. “It’s good.”

If it hadn’t been for Kyle Weaver, then Jacobsen may not have even noticed Alexander’s double coming into the stands. Weaver, also 22, was a classmate with Jacobsen at Loyola and was seated right next to him at the game.

“Dude, I didn’t even see it off the bat. I heard Kyle, my friend over here, he just went, ‘Ooh,’ and he stood up,” Jacobsen said. “I looked up, and it just bounced right to me. Thanks to Kyle -- he was paying attention. It caught me off guard.”

But Jacobsen knew Mayo’s homer was heading right to him, so he was fully prepared.

“I could see it in the air. It just started carrying right to us,” Jacobsen said. “It was an awesome experience.”

And certainly an experience that Jacobsen, Weaver and the fans sitting around them are sure not to forget.