When Major League Baseball decided to play a game at active military base Fort Bragg to honour the American armed forces, they likely didn’t expect Zach Hample to attend.
Hample is the world’s most famous baseball collector. The 38-year-old claims to have caught over 9,000 balls and has penned three books on the topic of his ball-hawking hobby.
The issue with the collector’s attendance was tickets to the special game were reserved exclusively for employees of the Department of Defense, as pointed out by famous MLB super fan “Marlins Man.”
https://twitter.com/Marlins_Man/status/749742126662029313
As a result, when Hample began to Tweet about his Fort Bragg experience, he received sizeable backlash on Twitter, most notably from the 82nd Airborne Division.
https://twitter.com/82ndABNDiv/status/749777155597426688
For his part, Hample pledged to donate $100 for each baseball he caught to AMVETS and said his ticket was given to him by a friend in the military.
https://twitter.com/zack_hample/status/749787289371365376
https://twitter.com/zack_hample/status/749786230464716801
The plot thickened when RT Ohio, a Twitter account focused on the Ohio sports scene, posted a picture of what appears to be Hample’s Tinder account with a bio soliciting tickets to the Fort Bragg game.
The anti-Hample sentiment reached its logical conclusion, as it always does on Twitter, with a Crying Jordan meme.
