There have been hits and misses every year that I have chased lineup cards.  2026 followed suit, thankfully with far more hits than misses.

First, the misses.

• Mariners @ Red Sox, 9/1 – I started off September in Boston, got the thumbs up from the Seattle bullpen before the game, but Lazaro Montes homered in his MLB debut, and the M’s wanted to give him the lineup card. It made sense, just not good for me. As a consolation prize, I got a Seattle 50th anniversary baseball (image below).
• Guardians @ Orioles, 9/8 – The odds were stacked in my favor: The O’s bullpen gave me a pre-game ‘yes’, and I was also able to ask the umps for their cards.  But the umps ignored me and the Baltimore coach forgot the card in the bullpen.  Major bummer.  As a small solace, I did get Baltimore’s bullpen card the next night.
• Flying Squirrels @ Yard Goats, 4/14 – This one is on me, or even more so, the weather.  I went to the game with my wife, got a CarMax Park inaugural season ball from the Richmond bullpen, but heavy rain was forecast to start before the game ended, so we left early.  It was the only Yard Goats game I went to this season, so it is a bit of a bummer not to get at least 1 YG 2026 card, but so it goes.

Plenty of hits to highlight. I’ll limit it to 10:

10) Princeton @ Brown, 3/28 – I like chasing different leagues/conferences and teams.  For the Ivy League, I had cards from all but Princeton and Brown, so heading to Providence on an early Spring Saturday to see the Tigers and Bears was a no-brainer.  And thankfully, I got the batting order cards for both teams from the umpire after G1 of a DH to complete the Ivy Lg collection.

9) Loyola Marymount @ Wake Forest, 2/27 – Continuing from above with regard to schools and conferences, the fact that Loyola Marymount from the West Coast Conference was playing at Wake Forest in North Carolina was fantastic.  I largely set up a week of southeast college baseball around that game, and got batting order cards for both teams.

8) Bulls @ WooSox, 9/16 – So many WooSox games to choose from – I went to 10, and got at least 1 lineup card at each – but I’m going to go with the last one, with the iconic Durham Bulls playing at Worcester.  I was there with a nephew, and we got dugout cards from both the game we went to as well as the previous night’s game.

7) Aigles @ Titans, 8/8 – The wife and I were in Ottawa, Canada for vacation, and the Frontier League’s Trois Rivieres Aigles were playing at Ottawa’s Titans. The night worked out great, I got the ump cards and Ottawa’s dugout card, which is one of the nicer minor league cards I have seen, affiliated or independent.  The Titans would go on to win the Frontier Lg championship in September.

6) Nats @ Orioles, 3/22 (Spring Training) – I headed down to the Baltimore-DC area for an Orioles-Nationals home-and-home series to wrap up Spring Training. I ended up getting shut out in DC on the 23rd, but thankfully, the home plate ump hooked me up in Baltimore the day before. I had not gotten MLB ump cards since early 2024, so this was a little bit special. The game also marked Pete Alonso’s first game at Camden Yards in an O’s uniform.

5) Orioles 9, Guardians 5, 9/9 – As mentioned above, I got shut out at the September 8 Guardians @ Orioles game. Thankfully, I didn’t leave Baltimore empty-handed. I did get Baltimore’s bullpen card the next night, and love the script “Baltimore” watermark at the bottom of the card.

4) Red Sox 4, Cubs 3, 9/25 – I thought the Cleveland-Baltimore game immediately above would be my last MLB game of 2026. I was wrong, thankfully. I ventured into Beantown for a Friday afternoon first game of a split double-header, and was rewarded, not only with my first card with Chicago’s Pete Crow-Armstrong (PCA), but also a Cubs 150th anniversary commemorative ball. As I write this, PCA is exactly 4 weeks away from being named the 2026 National League Most Valuable Player.

3) Red Sox 3, Brewers 2, 4/7 – Misiorowski against Crochet…could this be a preview of 2026’s AL and NL Cy Young Award winners? Misiorowski is on his way to holding up his end of the deal, but Crochet’s season was cut well short due to injury. On this night, the Sox would get the best of the Miz, handing him one of just 5 losses on the season. Aroldis Chapman notched his 370th career save.

2) Orioles 9, Diamondbacks 7, 4/13 – There were only 3 MLB teams we haven’t gotten on a lineup card from a game we were at: Dodgers, Angels, and Diamondbacks. We can now cross that last one off the list as I saw the Dbacks play in Baltimore and got Arizona’s bullpen card after the game. The print is a bit screwed up, but it still works. Pete Alonso hit his 266th career HR. Nolan Arenado, a very likely Hall-of-Famer-to-be, hit career HRs #354 and #355. Ketel Marte also went deep twice.

1. Orioles 4, Red Sox 2, 6/2 – The Orioles and Red Sox again, this time playing each other in Boston. Not much particularly special happened in the game: Colby Mayo and Pete Alonso homered. The reason this card is #1 for 2026 is the Lou Gehrig watermark on the bottom. There are a handful of ‘special’ days celebrated by MLB: Roberto Clemente Day, Mother’s Day, and Lou Gehrig Day, among others. To get an MLB card with a special watermark like this is a big deal, and I was extremely excited to add it to the collection.

I had plans for Friday evening that fell through at the last minute, leaving me with Plan B: Head to Hartford where the Savannah Bananas were playing at Dunkin’ Park (DP).

Actually, it wasn’t the Bananas, but two of their ‘affiliates’, the Indianpolis Clowns and Party Animals. While the Bananas played in Hartford in 2023, they have gotten too big for a stadium like DP, instead playing primarily MLB stadiums.

I would not be able to get into the Party Animals-Clowns game — it had been sold out for weeks — and that was fine. ‘Banana Ball’, as it is known, is essentially ‘baseball meets a loud circus’. It’s not my thing, but a lot of people love it, and that’s great. I could chase foul balls outside the stadium, hopefully. The Bananas and affiliates use their own baseballs. This was a ball I got 3 years ago when the Bananas played in Hartford.

The game started at 7pm. I purposefully got to the stadium about 7:15, wanting to miss the traffic for the sold out exhibition.

My plan was to stand outside the stadium on the 3B line, where I knew foul balls have come out of the stadium in the past. It’s admittedly boring sitting outside a stadium like that, and risky because nothing might come out on a given night. But if/when a foul ball does exit the stadium, it’s a neat rush.

What was helpful in terms of entertainment and knowing when to be ready for a possibiity of a ball leaving the stadium was that I could watch the scoreboard, which was showing the game feed.

I was interested in lefties, who primarily hit foul balls down the 3B line.

This is the corner of Main Street and Pleasant Street in Hartford. Main Street runs along the 1B line (green arrow), and Pleasant Street (red arrow) along the 3B line.

I watched the game on the scoreboard. Even outside the stadium, it was incredibly loud. They play an ongoing mix of high-energy song clips while the game is being played. Between that and the car traffic, I had to pay attention to the possibility of a ball bouncing outside the stadium without being able to hear it.

The first 50 minutes or so, I was the only one on Pleasant Street save for the occassional passing car, but there was no action. Of the 18 batters, I think only 7 were lefties, which did not help my cause.

On a couple of occasions with righties at bat, I walked up to the corner of Main and Pleasant in case a ball might come out of the Main Street side of the stadium. But that street is far busier than Pleasant, so even if a ball came out on Main Street, there was traffic and a few people on the sidewalk, so there’d be no guarantee I’d get it, which is why I mostly stuck to Pleasant.

The 3rd time I walked up to Main Street and just started back down Pleasant, I heard and saw what I was hoping for: A ball flew out of DP, hit the street and ended up on a grassy area on the other side of Pleasant Street.

Awesome!

Here is the ball.

The ball is different than the previous one I snagged the same way: The font size on front is larger, and you can’t see in this pic, but instead of the Banana logo on top of the old ball are the letters “BBCL”, which stands for “Banana Ball Championship League”. I like the old ball better, but was still very happy to get the new one, too.

It was about 8:10pm at this point. I knew the game would end about 9pm, and some people would probably start leaving early, so I had set 8:30pm as the cut-off as to when I would take off to avoid traffic. I stuck around the next 20 minutes, but nothing else came out of the stadium on Pleasant Street, so I called it a night.

No lineup cards on this night — the Bananas and their affiliates use lineup cards, but I thin they sell them at this point — but that was quite alright.