Zack is crazy about baseball and he's also catching baseballs in major games for living.
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00:00Hey, my name is Zach Hample, and I am a full-time baseball YouTuber, a professional baseball
00:17nerd, and I have snagged more than 11,000 baseballs at major league stadiums.
00:30I remember watching baseball on TV when I was really little, seeing fans catching balls
00:38and going crazy like it was the best thing that ever happened, and I wanted to experience
00:42that joy as well.
00:47I make videos, I take people to games, and my whole living comes through baseball.
00:55I sell merch, I do shout-outs on Cameo, I've written three baseball books, and just anything
01:03that you can think of in the baseball world that involves other people and going to games,
01:07I'm the guy.
01:11Over the years, I've built up a pretty big following in the baseball world as a result of catching
01:18so many baseballs and also some historic balls.
01:22And there was one in particular, Alex Rodriguez's 3,000th career hit, which was a home run at
01:27Yankee Stadium that I got my hands on.
01:31And so that baseball really took me to the next level as far as getting media attention
01:36and having people recognize me.
01:38Two weeks later, I was back at Yankee Stadium for a press conference with A-Rod, and I gave
01:45him that baseball.
01:46The Yankees made a tremendous donation to my favorite children's baseball charity, and
01:51just the whole excitement of that is really worth more to me than having the physical baseball
01:59or the money from it.
02:03I have a storage unit filled with thousands of baseballs.
02:08I put the more valuable baseballs in plastic cubes, but when you have thousands and thousands
02:14of balls, sometimes it's hard to tell them apart.
02:19I feel like I have two different lives.
02:22There's baseball season, Zach, where pretty much all I do is go to games and travel around
02:27and make videos.
02:28It makes it hard to make other plans.
02:31It affects my dating life.
02:33You know, I can only see my friends at certain points during the year.
02:38For better or for worse, this passion, obsession, sickness of catching baseballs has completely
02:46taken over my life.