It was the question I had asked 162 times of 162 different people over the course of a year and a half. To have it asked of me, by Aaron Judge, will forever be a surreal ending to a project that started in my driveway and finished in center field at Yankee Stadium.

“Hey, Dan!” the Yankees’ star slugger shouted. “Want to have a catch?”

To understand how we got to that point, where my dad, Frank, and I got the chance to play catch with last year’s American League MVP in one of the most hallowed locations in all of sports, first we need to go back.

It was one year into the global pandemic, the end of February 2021. For most of the world, it had been 12 months of missing birthdays, holidays and family get-togethers. I hadn’t seen my parents, any of my three brothers, my nieces or nephews in over a year. By that time, I was feeling quite disconnected from the people and places that I loved, and from the way that life used to be. I was looking for a way to regain some of that connection, to “catch up” with those I hadn’t seen, and at the same time, possibly reach out and forge some new friendships.

The idea I came up with was simple enough: What if I invited people to play catch with me? In my mind, doing so would be the perfect socially distanced activity. It would allow me to combine my love of baseball with the chance to meet up with people from around the country -- people who love the game, who have some connection to it, and who, like me, wouldn’t mind getting out there and throwing for a bit.

I decided to set a goal of playing 162 games of catch to coincide with the number of games each Major League Baseball team plays in a given season. Due to the pandemic, teams played only 60 games as part of an abbreviated schedule in 2020. By starting this project in early 2021 and aiming for the number 162, the idea was that this, too, could signal a return to the way things are supposed to be.

Before I began, the only two throwing partners that I knew for certain were the first one and the last. I wanted to have catch No. 1 with my daughter, Addison, the youngest of my four children, and then subsequently throw with my wife and three sons down the line. The final catch, No. 162, I knew I wanted to have with my dad, a two-time cancer survivor and lifelong Yankees fan. My original goal was to go with him to the “Field of Dreams” in Dyersville, Iowa, to play our game of catch there and recreate the moment that Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner) and his father have in the movie of the same name. Little did I know that our Field of Dreams moment would play out not in an Iowa cornfield, but in a location a bit closer to home.

Early on, I threw mostly with people that I already knew: Tim Gradoville, a friend of mine who played in the Minor Leagues with the Philadelphia Phillies organization and was their bullpen catcher in 2009; Bronx native Mario Flores who, like so many fans, remembers exactly where he was in 1979 when he heard the news that Yankees catcher Thurman Munson had died in a plane crash; former college softball player Stacey Huntington, who played at the University of Pennsylvania.

As the project grew, so did the circle of people I was able to connect with, and as a result, so did the stories that I heard. I had the chance to throw with then-85-year-old Howie Bedell, a member of the 1962 Milwaukee Braves and the 1968 Phillies, who ended Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale’s 58-and-two-thirds-inning scoreless streak by hitting a sacrifice fly, scoring teammate Tony Taylor, in June of ’68. My brother Jason and I made our way to Brooklyn and located the site where Ebbets Field once stood, playing our game of catch in front of the marker that signifies the exact spot where home plate was.

The youngest person I played catch with was my niece Evelyn, just four weeks old at the time. The oldest? 1952 American League MVP Bobby Shantz, who was born in 1925 and pitched four seasons for the Yankees from 1957 to 1960, during which time he won his first four of six straight Gold Glove Awards. The nonagenarian, still sharp as a tack, told me about the time he took over in center field for Mickey Mantle.

It was September of 1958 in an otherwise meaningless game. The Yankees were beating the Orioles, 6-2, going into the ninth inning, a comfortable lead for the eventual world champs against a Baltimore team that would finish the season under .500. After coming off the field in the eighth, Mantle asked Yankees manager Casey Stengel if he could skip out early to get to a speaking engagement he was scheduled to attend in Manhattan. Incredibly, Stengel obliged by granting his star center fielder’s request.

Shantz had just tossed a scoreless seventh and eighth and was prepared to close out the contest in the ninth when Stengel called down from the other end of the Yankees dugout. “Hey, Shantzy! Mick’s gotta go. You’re going out and playin’ center in the top of the ninth!” The undersized left-hander had never taken the field at any position besides the pitcher’s mound in his entire career. “I swear, I hadn’t played the outfield since I was in a church league in middle school. And now Casey is putting me out there in a Major League game, in center field, in Yankee Stadium!”

I asked Shantz if the ball stayed away from him, letting him be a bystander to a game’s uneventful end. “Of course not!” he replied. “Just my luck, the [fifth] batter of the inning hits it right in my direction.” Luckily for the eight-time Gold Glover, he was up to the task and made the catch with relative ease.

The thing that I learned, and that I heard over and over throughout the course of this project, was how much every person genuinely enjoyed and needed this time to just play. They needed to remember what it felt like to be a kid again. They needed to stop worrying about work or family responsibilities or emails still in need of a reply. All these games of catch were opportunities to be present and soak up the moments, to lose track of time in the best of ways and share with me their favorite baseball memories, favorite players from when they were growing up, go-to ballpark foods.

The Yankees connection grew stronger as the project continued. I played catch with Yogi Berra’s granddaughter Lindsay and grandson Larry in the shadow of the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center on the campus of Montclair State University in Little Falls, New Jersey. Bryan Hoch, who has covered the Yankees for MLB.com since 2007, joined me at “The Bat,” the quintessential meeting spot at the old Yankee Stadium, and we played catch on Elston Howard Field in Macombs Dam Park. I threw with Sweeny Murti, a longtime Yankees beat reporter for WFAN radio at the time, in Larchmont, New York, across from where Lou Gehrig once lived.

In South Philadelphia, it was former Little League phenom Mo’ne Davis. In Cooperstown, New York, it was Jon Shestakofsky, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s vice president of communications and content. From Dave Sims, the TV voice of the Seattle Mariners, and former Yankees coach Larry Bowa to Jayson Stark and Brian Kenny, baseball lifers from all corners of the country took me up on my offer to have a catch. Black or white, young or old, it didn’t matter. What began as a simple endeavor grew into something more beautiful and extraordinary than I ever could have imagined. And waiting for me at the finish line was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity made possible through the Yankees.

Each year since 2009, the Yankees have celebrated individuals and projects that have brought inspiration to people from all walks of life through HOPE Week -- Helping Others Persevere and Excel. It was truly humbling for me to have 162 Games of Catch recognized during HOPE Week 2022, celebrated for the exact reason it was started: as a way to bring people together and connect over something as fundamental as playing catch together. And the fact that it led to a $10,000 donation from the New York Yankees Foundation to the New York City Parks Department for maintenance and improvements to Heritage Field -- the space where The House That Ruth Built stood for 85 years -- was an incredible legacy to have attached to my project.

The tragedy in the movie Field of Dreams is that Ray Kinsella missed the opportunity to play catch before his father passed away. Through the magic of building a baseball field in the middle of his farmland, Ray was given a second chance. How beyond lucky am I that I was given this chance while my dad is still here and doing well? And to have it in a place that has meant so much to our family over the years, thanks to the team that we live and die with every day, was a gift that is beyond words.

After wrapping up catch No. 162, I was faced with a minor dilemma. Technically, at that exact moment, the project had formally concluded. Game over. I had completed what I set out to do, and it could not have been any more perfect. And yet, a request had been made for one additional round of catch, a 163rd game in a journey only designed to go 162. If it had been anyone other than the soon-to-be-all-time American League home run king, I may have been tempted to decline. But when Aaron Judge asked if my dad and I wanted to throw with him, the answer unequivocally had to be yes.

What struck me about getting to throw with Aaron (in addition to the fact that it was happening in center field at Yankee Stadium) was how similar it was to every other catch and conversation I’d had. I asked Judge his favorite stadium to play in other than Yankee Stadium. The California native told me that both Los Angeles-area ballparks are right near the top because of the picture-perfect weather, the history at each locale and the incredible number of Yankees fans who show up at both places when the Bronx Bombers are in town.

Case in point: He laughed while recounting the curtain call former teammate Didi Gregorius received after hitting a go-ahead home run in the top of the 10th inning for the Yankees against the Angels in Anaheim in 2018.

I inquired as to which pitcher has always had his number. As Judge pondered his answer, I suggested, “You know, a pitcher you’ve gone 0-for-11 against,” to which he responded, “Oh, there are plenty of those!” He finally settled on former knuckleballer R.A. Dickey, saying, “It’s hard enough to hit when the pitcher and catcher know where a pitch is going, and you don’t. Imagine when you don’t know and they don’t know where it’s going!”

I dreamed that something like the catch with Judge would be part of this crazy idea of mine, but when it actually happened, I was blown away. And that’s the thing about hope. What I learned more than anything else during my quest to play 162 games of catch is that if you focus on hope, in the realest sense, truly anything is possible.

Dan Reischel was a 2022 HOPE Week participant. This story appears in the July 2023 edition of Yankees Magazine. This year, the Yankees celebrate HOPE Week from July 3–7, spending five days shining spotlights on remarkable individuals. The initiative is rooted in the fundamental belief that acts of goodwill provide hope and encouragement to more than just the recipient of the gesture. To follow along, visit Yankees.com/HopeWeek. Get more articles like this delivered to your doorstep by purchasing a subscription to Yankees Magazine at www.yankees.com/publications.