Baseball collector breaks world record after catching ball thrown from helicopter

Heads went way, way up this weekend when a sports collector caught a baseball dropped from a helicopter hovering 1,000 feet above his head.

Zack Hample, an avid sports fan who's made a name catching baseballs at major league stadiums, posted on his blog that he would stand on the field at Edward A. LeLacheur Park in Lowell, Massachusetts on July 13th and try to earn a world record for the highest catch ever recorded.

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He says he broke the record, though no one from Guinness World Records attended to verify. The Telegraph reported the previous record for highest baseball catch was from 822 feet.

A video of the stunt shows Hample standing on the field, glove in the air and then catching the ball as it plummets toward him. He almost makes it look easy, but there's a good chance it wasn't.

Hample said he worried about his safety, including the possibility that he could lose a few teeth like Joe Sprinz, a professional baseball player who fractured his jaw along with five teeth when he tried to break the record in 1939.

Hample wrote a lengthy post last year about his first attempt to make this catch, which ended after he missed by about three feet and then organizers called off any further attempts because of high wind, according to the post.

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He wrote that a practice catch he made before that attempt, from about 762 feet, slammed into his glove and made his middle finger go numb.

This time he pulled through with all of his fingers, toes and teeth intact.