The Ethics Of Ballhawking
Is Zack Hample the baddie?
Incredible as it may seem, in addition to meaningful September baseball for the San Diego Padres, 2022 has given us the most exciting homerun race since the magical, possibly PED infused, bonanza of 1998 between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. However, in 2022, the race is pitting two legendary sluggers not against each other, but against time. With the season quickly winding down, Aaron Judge of the Yankees is relentlessly assaulting the long-standing AL single-season homerun record of 61 set by Roger Maris in 1961. Meanwhile over in the NL, Albert Pujols, who many reasonably believed was finished in baseball after being released by the Angels in mid-2021, is the latest to miraculously discover Ponce de Leon’s elusive fountain of youth in St. Louis; and looks poised to become just the fourth member of the 700 club… 700 homerun club that is, before he retires at season’s end. As of this writing, both men stand at baseball history’s doorstep with Judge sitting on 60 homeruns for the season, while Pujols stands at 698 homeruns for his career.
Predictably, these two massive milestones have coincided with another, albeit quirkier, facet of America’s past time, ballhawking. For the uninitiated, ballhawking is a form of baseball fandom centered around acquiring baseballs at baseball games. Anyone who has been to a Major League Baseball game and had a ball leave field of play and come near them has felt the adrenaline rush that attends such an event. Some of us have even participated in the scrum a baseball entering the stands sometimes induces. A special subset of fans have made it a personal mission to experience that feeling as often as possible. These are not your average fans, these are competitive ballhawks, and they’re everywhere.
Sitting atop the ballhawk tree is the famous, though increasingly controversial, Zack Hample. Hample, now in his 40s, has been a dedicated ballhawk for a long time. In his career he has shattered every known ballhawking record. If you’ve been at a game where a historically significant homerun was likely to be hit, Hample was probably there too. Through extreme dedication to his craft, he’s amassed a jaw-dropping collection of over 8,000 baseballs from major league games, including several historic and extremely valuable ones. If that sounds incredible, consider this: his lifetime total is actually over 12,000 accounting for the many balls he gives away. Perhaps even more astonishingly, Hample has parlayed his penchant for acquiring baseballs into a full-blown career as an author of several books and is currently a YouTuber, with his videos aggregating into the tens of millions of views. In his videos, Hample tours major league ballparks, tries the ballpark food, interacts with fans and players, and of course, acquires baseballs. Hample’s videos showcase his methods for acquiring baseballs, which run from the straightforward direct request for a toss up from a player, to the more inventive cup trick and everything in between. It all seems like good wholesome fun.
But not everyone sees it that way. Through his seemingly insatiable desire for acquiring baseballs, Hample has also acquired a reputation among some for his purportedly cutthroat approach to his craft. For example, Hample has more recently been labeled a latter-day baseball grinch who takes souvenirs away from children, thereby robbing them of priceless childhood baseball memories all to feed his addiction and ego.
Now that you’re up to speed, it is worth noting that with the Cardinals in town mid-week, Hample was spotted at Petco Park, no doubt with an eye for Pujols’ 700th homerun ball, which will likely be worth life changing money to the lucky fan who catches it if/when it is hit. Due to dominant Padres pitching, Pujols failed to reach the milestone in San Diego, and now the Pujols circus travels to LA. That got us thinking not just about the tantalizing prospect of catching such a valuable and historic homerun ball, but also about the ethics of ballhawking itself.
Readers of a certain age will recall an era not so long ago where fans lucky enough to catch a ball were not obliged to find the nearest child and give them the souvenir. It used to be all fair game, if you got it, it was yours to do with as you like. We do not recall adults giving or even offering us one of these coveted souvenirs when we were kids. If we wanted a baseball, we had to go for it. Being kids, we were often outmuscled and slower than our grown-up competition and so we almost always lost the race for the ball. Thinking back on it, there was a life lesson in there, one that probably made its way into our subconscious.
Fast-forward to modern day and it’s not uncommon for a child to find the adult who caught a foul ball and straight up ask for it. Amid thousands of onlookers, this adult, who is probably coming down from the rare thrill of catching a Major League baseball that just seconds earlier might have been in the hands of a legendary pitcher or left the bat of a future hall of fame hitter, is now under immense peer pressure to “do the right thing” and give it to the kid. What should the adult do? Either way, there is a small life lesson in it for the kid…
So, against this backdrop of lived experience, while understanding that times and attitudes change, Zack Hample seems to be caught in the middle. Are Hample’s critics sanctimonious pearl clutchers with nothing better to do than denigrate someone for pursuing his quirky and eccentric passion or… is Zack Hample the baddie?
Ethical quandaries are often clinically and formally approached through the following lenses:
Autonomy: the deontological standard that liberty and agency are essential.
Beneficence: promote the good.
Nonmaleficence: reduce harm.
Justice: fairness of distribution on a societal as well as at the individual level.
Each of these principles are a prima facie good, yet when used as an analytical framework for a real world situation, there are inevitable tensions between the individual principles that those who sit in judgement must weight according to their personal values. Here we will attempt a dispassionate analysis of the ethics of ballhawking and let you decide, is Zack Hample the baddie?
Autonomy
No one can doubt Hample’s dedication to his craft. He does his homework so that he can be in the best spot to achieve his goals; and he is amazingly often in the just the right spot, leading some to wonder if he has some kind of supernatural benefactor. On its face, an individual pursuing a passion by exercising liberty and agency is an example of the good of autonomy, at least in this context.
Beneficence
In his many videos, Hample appears to be a fun-loving baseball passion merchant who generously gives away the baseballs he catches to kids nearby and often goes out of his way to find the kid who hasn’t gotten one yet that day and makes sure that kid goes home happy. He is approachable, he poses for pictures with his fans, signs autographs, and does all the things a person in his extraordinarily lucky and privileged existence should do. Practiced in this way, ballhawking can be seen to have elements of promoting the good.
Nonmaleficence
As we said before, Hample’s detractors portray him as a cutthroat who steals baseballs that should rightly go to children. A couple weeks ago, Hample posted a video where he was critical of how he was treated at Coors Field when he was chastised by stadium security for his familiar antics and warned not to leave his assigned section or else he would be ejected. A video posted recently by someone on Twitter interviewed one of the Coors Field ushers involved in the incident, and the usher shed some light on details Hample left out of his video. According to the usher, he had witnessed earlier in the day a child requesting a ball from a coach and the coach generously obliged and tossed the ball to the kid. Unfortunately the kid got his glove on it, but didn’t catch it and it rolled away only to be picked up by, yep, Zack Hample. According to the usher, he suggested that Hample give the ball to the kid and Hample refused. It was in this alleged context that security decided to clamp down on Hample. If this account is accurate it is hard to argue that the actions lived up to the ethical principle of nonmaleficence. More importantly however, even the more benign version of ballhawking Hample is famous for (research and hustle to be the first to the ball) incurs the cost Hample’s critics love to point out: a child is denied the opportunity for a life changing memory.
Ballhawking, as many of us have experienced first hand, can also quickly become a full contact affair and injuries are certainly possible. However, of the dozens of videos we’ve screened on his YouTube channel, never once has Hample crossed any lines like throwing elbows, boxing out, or engaging in other overtly unsafe and reckless behavior. It’s fair to acknowledge that Hample would be unlikely to post such evidence on his own channel.
Through the lens of nonmaleficence, whether it be the pointy elbowed zero sum scrum or the more benign homework and hustle strategy, there is an inherent ethical tension to ballhawking.
Justice
An adult depriving a child of a joyous experience can also be looked at through the lens of Justice. Is there inherently something wrong with adults engaging in ballhawking? One might consider that baseball is not a children’s game. It was invented by adults for other adults, and is practiced at the highest level by adults. It is primarily watched by adults. It’s possible that baseball was, in part, inspired by an ancient English game called Rounders (surprisingly still played) that was popular with school-aged children. But that does not make baseball, as we know it, a children’s game. Still, this popular though incorrect notion of baseball as a child’s game endures. For a child, catching a ball directly from the hallowed field of play establishes a direct connection to the game, creating an indelible memory. Zack Hample, according to his critics, is screwing that up every time he reaches above the swarm of ballhawks (often made up of various ages) and catches the umpteenth ball of his life. Such actions, to some, are an injustice. This same judgement, then, can be applied to all ballhawks regardless of age.
Another aspect of justice is distributive justice, concerned with the just allocation of resources in a society. Notoriously, Hample infiltrated the Ft. Bragg game in 2016 that was meant only for military personnel and their families. Hample didn’t qualify but he wanted the special edition ball from the game and ended up being to able to attend using some ethically questionable tactics. Although there was no coercion of any kind involved, obtaining a ticket to attend a game open exclusively to military personnel and their families as a special honor, is ethically questionable. A societal decision had been made to allocate this resource to an especially deserving cohort, and if one were to accept this societal decision then Hample’s actions unquestionably violated the distributive justice principle1.
There is another aspect of justice to consider, that of the right of an individual within a society to reap the fruits of one’s own labor. Zack Hample works hard at his craft, and therefore, isn’t he entitled to the fruits of his effort?
Conclusion:
As Pujols and Judge try to make history, ballhawks everywhere, both professional and amateur, are on high alert. They are traveling around the country for a chance to catch some of rarest and most prized sports memorabilia in the world. Using Zack Hample as a case study, we identify that there are competing ethical principles inherent to ballhawking. We haven’t seen evidence that Zack Hample is guilty of the cutthroat maleficent brand of ballhawking in particular, but even the more benign versions of ballhawking can be fairly argued to have both elements of moral virtue and malefaction. Yet even weighting the unvirtuous aspects more heavily, it cannot be said that the brand of ballhawking Zack Hample practices is unethical on the whole. Until and unless proven otherwise, Hample should continue pursuing his passion as he has been doing so long as it brings him joy and fulfillment.
Final thoughts: By all means, be magnanimous and generous with kids at the game if you are so inclined. But if you catch a ball fair and square then it is your property to do with as you like. There is nothing unethical about being taller, faster, or better prepared. This is true whether you are chasing your first ball or 12,000th.
Good luck ballhawks!
Hample apologized for the transgression and made a donation to a veterans organization.