Morganza Spillway Gates Open; Fan Has Caught Almost 5,000 Baseballs
COSTELLO: People living in the Louisiana Cajun Country know the water is coming they just don't know when and how much. Their homes are in the flood plain created when the Army Corps of Engineer opened a spillway in the hopes of saving more populated areas downstream. Ed Lavandera live in Butte La Rose, Louisiana where people are wondering just how much of their community will be under water, Ed.</s>ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they are trying to figure that out. They were told here in Butte La Rose a few days ago to expect as much as 15 feet of water. But you talk to people around here, not everyone believes it will be that bad. They will take on water, though. Obviously, people around here preparing for the worst. The parish president here in Butte La Rose told me a little while ago, that he believes about 90 percent of this town has already evacuated. In upstream from where we are in St. Landry Parish, there were mandatory evacuation orders that went out yesterday. We saw several hundred people gathering up their homes and collecting everything and heading out. So this is the Chafalaya River. All of the water from the Morganza spillway has been dumped into this river. What happening is as it comes downstream here, it kind of turns the bends and heads into the tributaries and small creeks. And it's that backwater flooding that many residents are worried about here, but this will take a long time to happen. In fact, the parish president here in Butte La Rose says, it is a slow and painful thing to watch this river slowly rise.</s>GUY CORMIER, PRESIDENT, ST. MARTIN PARISH: I guess, the sentiment of the people here and just the atmosphere is that people just know it's coming. They're nervous about it and they're watching it very closely. And we know that we're going to get the water. It's just a matter of when it's going to be here. I don't know, it's a weird feeling. Here it is, sitting on this beautiful cool morning, watching this beautiful sunrise, we're going to be knee deep in water here before too long.</s>LAVANDERA: And we'll give everybody a chance to watch the waters here in Butte La Rose rise slowly as well. If you go to cnn.com/live, we hooked up a Louisiana flooding webcam here in the Butte La Rose community. You can see the perspective that we have there. You can see part of the water and the homes that could very well be flooded out by this. We'll see how long we'll be able to watch that as the floodwater start to rise in. The parish president says he will issue mandatory evacuation orders by the end of the week, Carol.</s>COSTELLO: Ed Lavandera live. Thank you so much. Checking stories cross country now.</s>COSTELLO (voice-over): In Minnesota, an airport spokesperson says a captain for Air Tran was removed from a plane for suspicion of being drunk. Police were alerted after a TSA agent said the captain smelled like alcohol at a security checkpoint. Shirley Sherrod it back to work at the USDA. She'll be helping the Department of Agriculture improve its relations with minority farmers and ranchers. Sherrod was fired as director of Rural Development in July after a misleading videotape showed her making racially insensitive remarks. In Connecticut, the senior who got banned from the prom after taping 12-inch letters to the side of the school can now go to the dance. School officials originally said his nighttime stunt was trespassing. Now the headmaster is reversing her decision because of the international notoriety it caused.</s>COSTELLO: If baseball fan has a hall of fame, Zack Hample would have his own wing with more baseballs you can count. Hample has made a career out of hanging out at Major League ballparks and snagging baseballs. He caught three foul balls at one Baltimore-Orioles game last week. Three foul balls at one game. Zach's career is far from over, but he's closing in on a milestone, 5,000 baseballs caught. Zach has also written a book "The Baseball," which includes tips on snagging balls at Major League games. Zach joins us from New York to impart some of that wisdom. Welcome, Zach.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks for having me.</s>COSTELLO: First of all, why do you enjoy catching foul balls so much?</s>ZACK HAMPLE, AUTHOR, "THE BASEBALL": I just love baseball more than words can describe. And call me spoiled, but even as a fan, I guess I like to be a participant. And baseball more than any other sport allows me to do that. I just -- I feel really connected to the game when I catch one.</s>COSTELLO: But, I mean, how many do you need to catch?</s>HAMPLE: You know, I just -- my goal when I was little was just to catch one baseball. I went to a game when I was 6, but I didn't catch one until I was 12. When you're little and you experience something great, you just want to do it more and more. I have an obsessive personality in general so I've stuck with it.</s>COSTELLO: You've done it more than 4,000 times. So, how do you position yourself at the ballpark in the stand to catch a foul ball?</s>HAMPLE: The number one rule is to make sure that you have some room to run left or right. The worst mistake you can make is to be trapped in the middle of a long row of fans. So Camden yards in Baltimore where these are the three foul balls I caught is a great stadium for catching baseballs because there's cross aisle that runs through the seats. And there's also a standing room only section in the right field, which is great for home runs. A lot of new ballparks are being built without standing room and without cross aisles so you don't really have the chance to move around. Beyond that I just try to position myself differently for left- handed and right-handed batters. I look at the pitching match ups and you know, if a guy throws really slow, I'll know that the batters going to pull the ball. If he throws a 96-mile-an-hour fastball in the zone, guys are more likely to foul it back. So you kind of look at the game like that.</s>COSTELLO: Interesting. Do you have to fight off other fans?</s>HAMPLE: You know, there's a misconception that I must have -- if I've caught over 5,000 balls that I must have knocked down 5,000 kids. I've never knocked down anybody. I've given a lot of baseballs away to kids. Sometimes, isn't the heat of the moment, there's some scuffles that go on. But I always seem to be at the bottom of it and not the one causing the problems.</s>COSTELLO: Well, good luck in catching your 5,000th ball. Somehow, I think you're going to make it. Zack Hample, thanks for joining us this morning.</s>HAMPLE: Thank you.</s>COSTELLO: We have some on-the-field sports highlights ahead. Including the Chicago Bulls taking the lead in their NBA playoff series with Miami. And Jose Bautista, isn't he amazing three home runs in one game? Also coming up, three hot questions in two of the brightest, politically savvy minds on television, actually three. A comedian, that's the third. He's described as a would-be offspring of Will Rogers in Gallagher. Our political buzz is next.