San Francisco’s a (Splash) Hit

By Troy Foster

SAN FRANCISCO — Meet Joe Dirt.

Seriously, that’s his name. At least that’s what he put on the release form I asked him to sign for our documentary.

Joe Dirt goes to every San Francisco Giants game, but he doesn’t have a ticket. He stands just over the right field wall on the edge of McCovey Cove with a fishing pole.

Why?

“This is sort of my gig,” he said.

But Joe isn’t trying to catch fish. He’s engineered a small net onto the end of his fishing pole that he uses to grab baseballs out of the bay.

America’s baseball stadiums have their own personalities. I think San Francisco’s most notable quirk is the whole “splash hit” phenomenon.

Joe told me he has 13 splash hits. There have been fewer than 50 since the Giants moved into AT&T Park, so I assumed Joe had the most. But he says he doesn’t … at least not yet.

But I think Joe will soon take the lead. He’s been lurking outside the stadium on a regular basis since 2003. You’ll see him in the same place every game, standing there with his fishing pole next to an orange chair that says “no parking.” 

Joe told me everything I ever wanted to know about a splash hit. For instance, only home runs are splash hits. A foul ball that clears the right field fence doesn’t count, nor do any of the numerous balls that have flown into the bay during batting practice. No right-handed hitter has ever smacked one into the bay.

Joe says you got about three minutes to get the ball before it sinks, but it depends on how hard it’s hit. A few splash hits have met an unfortunate fate at the bottom of the bay. 

I tossed a baseball into the water to my buddy Nolan, who was in a kayak. He floundered around the ball for about two minutes with about the same level of coordination as a one-legged shortstop. I asked Joe to save our ball and he fished it out within 20 seconds. 

“That’s a fine device,” I told Joe.

He has re-engineered it several times. After all, it’s a race between Joe and the kayakers. They lurk in McCovey Cove waiting for the same prize.

Now that Barry Bonds* is gone, splash hits occur with less frequency. But Joe still waits patiently. He won’t miss a game this season other than the one on July 5. He has a conflict on that day with his other gig. One of the bands he plays guitar in, “The #$%& Ups,” is doing a charity concert.

I assumed there was an economic benefit to Joe’s line of work. Since splash hits are fairly rare, I figured Joe probably sold them to the highest bidder. After all, with the amount of time he puts in he must be after some kind of return, right? 

No way, at least not yet. Joe Dirt’s got all 13 at home, and if you think you’re going to talk him out of one, you might as well eat dirt.

(There’s more on this and our other adventures at BaseCrawl.com.)