Bryce Harper gets 100th home run ball back thanks to former Make-a-Wish recipient
It's not uncommon for baseball players and their teams to want to retrieve the ball used during a record-breaking or milestone home run, but one can never be sure of how easy it will be to get back those souvenirs.
After all, sometimes it's as simple as trading some swag for the desired keepsake, while other times a renowned ball hawk catches it and convinces an organization to make a sizeable donation to charity in exchange for the goods. And then there are some cases where a ball turns out to be too valuable to simply give away.
Fortunately for Bryce Harper, the Washington Nationals had no trouble getting Harper's memento back Thursday after the slugger hit his 100th career home run, and it's all thanks to a former Make-a-Wish recipient, who ended up with the ball in her lap.
According to the Washington Post, 10-year-old Lauren Martin and her family had just arrived at their seats in right field at Nationals Park when the 23-year-old Harper took Julio Teheran yard in the third inning for his first big league grand slam and the 100th homer of his career. Initially, the ball sailed over Martin's head, but after hitting the scoreboard at the bottom of the second deck, it caromed back toward the field and eventually landed next to Lauren's mom, Misty.
Misty then handed the ball to Lauren, and it wasn't long after that Lauren's dad, Jay, was meeting with a Nationals representative. The two eventually agreed to a postgame meet-and-greet with Harper in exchange for the ball.
There she is. #100HarperHomers pic.twitter.com/eg9d6GTzSg
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) April 14, 2016
"Of course they wanted the ball back and I can totally understand that," Jay Martin told the Post. "When I texted our group about where our seats were, I jokingly said it's kind of cool because that's probably where they hit all the homers anyway."
After the game, Harper and the Nats held up their end of the bargain, as Harper met with the Martins' group of seven, who were in town from Idaho for the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America's annual conference. Harper posed for pictures and signed autographs for the group, including a signed bat for Lauren that included the inscription "Luke, 1:37."
But even after all that, Harper is still only the second-most-famous celebrity Lauren has met in recent years.
At age 5, Lauren was diagnosed with leukemia, and when she was 7, she got a chance, through Make-a-Wish, to meet Taylor Swift at a concert in Portland, Ore. Today, Lauren is in remission, and though she wasn't a Nationals fan going in -- Jay Martin told the Post he's a Mariners supporter -- it seems safe to say that she has a new favorite player in the fellow Swiftie Harper going forward.
