Fan catches ball in beer cup

It’s the start of the baseball season in the US and that means the start of fans catching – accidentally or otherwise – stray balls in their beer mugs.

The latest in this increasingly popular meme happened at Wrigley Field in Chicago at the weekend as the Cubs faced the San Diego Padres.

Cubs fan Krista Dotzenrod claims she wasn’t even watching the game at the precise moment the ball came her way. She told the Chicago Tribune: “I did not see it coming at all. I was in a conversation, just holding my beer. I look down and my cup of beer is foaming like crazy.”

She recovered quickly however and downed the beer in her cup – a “Green Line” from local brewer Goose Island – to cheers from surrounding fans. She later told various media outlets that the ball is now sitting safely at her home.

According to MLB.com, the chances of a catching a foul ball is one in 1,189 and catching one in a cup of beer much smaller than that.

But it doesn’t stop people succeeding, that same weekend another Cubs fan claimed looked like he caught a ball in his cup on Sunday (judge for yourself) and a St Louis Cardinals fan also used his cup to catch a well-struck ball at the weekend – although he was too excited to think of drinking his beer afterwards.

Claims that this is a “new tradition” for Wrigley Field are somewhat overblown however, the feat has been performed many times over the years with the beer being drunk afterwards for example at a Seattle Mariners vs, Houston Astros game in 2013 and another fan at a Boston Red Sox-New York Yankees game that same year being just two examples.

However a Toronto Blue Jays fan attempting to catch a ball recently forgot that he was holding a beer with rather different results – the Jays were playing the rather aptly named Milwaukee Brewers.

Interestingly enough, at another Jays-Brewers game last year, a Brewers fan also dropped a foul ball and spilled his beer so the television commentators themselves pitched in to buy him a fresh brew.