Forget Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak in 1941. Enough about Barry Bonds’ 73 home runs in a single season. Baseball has a new untouchable record, and this one was set in the stands rather than on the diamond.
On Sunday, a Cleveland Indians named Greg Van Niel caught four foul balls in a single game. That’s right, four. Van Niel and his family sat on the third base line at Progressive Field during Cleveland’s win over the Kansas City Royals. And if you’re going to be a grown man wearing a glove to the ballpark, you might as well make history.
“Three of them were catches and one was a ball I picked up off the ground,” Van Niel told MLB.com’s Cut 4. “The third one, I think was the hardest one … I ended up sprawled across a few rows, and I got some cheese on myself. But the other ones were just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.”
Van Niel also noted that it was the first time he ever snagged a foul ball at Progressive Field. Do we actually know if catching four foul balls in a game is a record? No, and I don’t believe there are records kept for feats like that. What we do know is that it was amazing when that guy caught back-to-back homers and that other fan grabbed three foul balls in a single game. Four is just legendary.
