A-Rod to receive 3,000th ball from fan who caught it

Zack Hample, the fan who retrieved Alex Rodriguez’s 3,000th hit, has decided to present the milestone baseball to A-Rod.

The Yankees announced some of the details of the agreement and will hold a press conference later Friday.

The Yankees will donate $150,000 to Pitch In For Baseball, a charity which Hample has supported since 2009 that is dedicated to maximizing the ability to play baseball in underserved communities.

With a solo home run in the first inning against sthe Detroit Tigers at Yankee Stadium on Friday, June 19, Rodriguez became the 29th player all-time to reach the 3,000 hits plateau. He became the second player to record his 3,000th career hit with the Yankees, joining Derek Jeter, who accomplished the feat on July 9, 2011 against Tampa Bay.

Yankees president Randy Levine and chief operating officer Lonn Trost met recently with Hample.

Hample, a collector who claims to have caught more than 30 home run balls and 8,000 hit during batting practice at major league games, snagged the ball when Rodriguez homered to right field off Detroit’s Justin Verlander.

On Twitter, Hample had said he didn’t like Rodriguez and had no intention of returning the ball, but he later appeared to be softening his stance.

“Maybe some perks will come my way at the Stadium, maybe some memorabilia I wouldn’t otherwise have gotten my hands on,” Hample told the New York Daily News recently. “I’m envisioning a scenario where everybody comes out of this feeling good.”

Hample, 37, reached out to Rodriguez on Twitter, asking the Yankees slugger to follow him.

“It’s just a nice, symbolic gesture of goodwill,” Hample told the Daily News. “I don’t expect him to see that tweet, and if he sees it, I don’t expect him to think anything positively about me right now. I had posted some disparaging tweets about him in the days before he hit the home run. I was just being snarky and trying to be funny and didn’t think the eyes of the world would be on me.”

Once scorned and despised by many throughout baseball, Rodriguez with his historic hit continued a remarkable reversal that has included standing ovations at Yankee Stadium. The hit came over a year after he fought Major League Baseball before accepting the 162-game suspension for PED usage, something he admitted to in 2009 but was not suspended for that time.