A 22-year-old Orioles fan from Lancaster County, Pa., caught a Coby Mayo home run foul-ball area shot and then grabbed a Blaze Alexander ground-rule double off the warning track in consecutive innings—then handed the second ball to a younger girl behind him.
When Avery Jacobsen stood up at Camden Yards on Thursday night, it wasn’t because he thought his luck was about to flip twice.
It started in a familiar place for ballhawks: the first row of Section 94 in right-center field. Jacobsen—22, from Lancaster County, Pa.—had caught foul balls at Camden Yards before. But he had never come away with a ball in play.
That changed against the Blue Jays during the Orioles’ 2-1 loss.
In the bottom of the fourth inning, with two outs, Coby Mayo launched a home run that reached the stands. Jacobsen caught it cleanly, grabbing the souvenir as the shot knotted the game at 1.
Then, one inning later, the stadium seemed to hand him a second chance.
In the bottom of the fifth, with two outs again, Blaze Alexander hit a ground-rule double to right-center. The ball bounced off the warning track, cleared the wall, and landed directly into Jacobsen’s hands.
Jacobsen already had the Mayo homer ball. So when the Alexander double came his way, he turned around and gave it away—passing the ball from his seat to a younger girl sitting in the row behind him.
“You got to give balls to kids. You want them coming back to the ballpark,” said Jacobsen, who recently graduated from Loyola University Maryland. “It’s good.”
He didn’t even see the second play coming until it was already happening.
If Kyle Weaver hadn’t been watching, Jacobsen said, he may not have noticed the ball on its way in.
Weaver, also 22, was a classmate of Jacobsen at Loyola and was seated right next to him. Jacobsen described the moment Weaver reacted—standing up after something off the bat caught his attention.
“Dude, I didn’t even see it off the bat. I heard Kyle, my friend over here, he just went, ‘Ooh,’ and he stood up,” Jacobsen said. “I looked up, and it just bounced right to me. Thanks to Kyle — he was paying attention. It caught me off guard.”
The first one, though, he said he had a better sense of where it was going. With the Mayo ball, Jacobsen knew it was heading toward him.
“I could see it in the air. It just started carrying right to us,” he said. “It was an awesome experience.”
For Jacobsen, Weaver, and the fans sitting around them, Thursday night added up to something rare: not just one lucky catch, but two in consecutive innings—followed by a simple decision to share the second moment with a kid who didn’t know luck was waiting for her at all.
It’s the kind of night people remember long after the final 2-1 score fades.
Orioles Blue Jays Camden Yards Avery Jacobsen Coby Mayo Blaze Alexander Kyle Weaver baseball fan story Section 94
Wow one game and he gets TWO? Orioles fans are something else.
Wait so he caught a homer and then also caught a double off the warning track? That’s like a movie scene lol. Also handing it to a kid is kinda wholesome though.
I don’t get how it’s a “ground-rule” double if it literally landed in his hands? Like shouldn’t that be a foul or something? Sounds like Camden Yards is rigged.
This is why I can’t sit anywhere decent at games. As soon as I’m paying attention the ball goes the other way. And then this guy’s buddy yells “ooh” and he just catches it?? Luck strikes twice, but apparently it only strikes near that section.