Five friends, an MLB ballpark road trip and jars full of players' spit

Adam Bloom and his four buddies had just graduated from college in 1996 when they set out on a summer adventure. Huge baseball fans, they embarked on a road trip to MLB parks around the country, and along the way managed to convince a host of MLB All-Stars to play along with a simple yet unusual request: Please give us your gum or spit into a glass baby food jar. That's right -- spit in a jar. Bloom's story of that road trip with his friends began with his own dream of visiting every MLB park and ended with an appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" showing the jars of gum and spit they had collected. The journey is the subject of an SC Featured, "Spitball," scheduled to air Sunday morning on ESPN. Bloom and his buddies -- Kevin Berson, Pratik "Pate" Patel, Anthony "A.Y." Young and Charlie Cook -- were joined by Tracy Abbott, a producer from the Tonight Show. They kept a journal of events, including: • At Dodger Stadium, the first player they asked to spit in a jar was Chicago Cubs right fielder Sammy Sosa. He did. • In Atlanta, the players were friendly, and several gave them their gum. Braves outfielder David Justice spit in a jar and joked around. • In Baltimore, Jim Palmer spit. Chuck Knoblauch spit into a jar, drank the spit, then spit again. • At Yankee Stadium, Wade Boggs would not spit into a jar because he was "very superstitious." Manager Joe Torre and pitcher Daryl Strawberry did, however. During their Tonight Show appearance, Leno drew laughs when he told the friends: "And you know the nice thing about this stuff, it'll all go up in value over the years." Bloom has kept the jars, with names of donors written on the caps, for 30 years.