This crook threw top cops a curveball.
An NYPD baseball team, made up of some of the country’s best investigators, was thwarted by a lowly street thief — who swiped their jerseys and forced them to cancel a championship game at a tournament in Dallas on Friday.
“Being a victim sucks. We’re not too often on this side of things — making the police report, not taking it,” said New York’s Finest Baseball Club manager José Vasquez.
His team was set to face off against the Dallas Fire Department’s team, The Dallas Fire Heat, in the final match of the Dallas Fire Department Classic charity tournament, Vasquez said.
But a ballsy burglar broke into the team’s silver Nissan minivan, which was parked at a Marriott Suites hotel in Dallas, law- enforcement sources said.
The morning of the big game, at 8:45 a.m., players discovered the crook had made off with $15,000 worth of sports gear including gloves, bats, and seven of their blue and yellow uniforms, Vasquez said.
Instead of hitting the field, the sluggers spent the morning filling out police reports, fouling up their chance of taking home a trophy, Vasquez said.
“The guys are really upset, they’re devastated. They were even willing to play this afternoon in shorts; that’s how much they love baseball . . . Some of the guys would rather their luggage be stolen than uniforms,” said Vasquez, a retired NYPD officer.
The 18-member team, which is self-funded, is set to fly home on Saturday and can’t reschedule the game, he said.
No winner will be named in this year’s tournament, which featured two cop teams and three firefighter teams, sources said.
The New York ballplayers each forked over roughly $1,000 to participate in the round-robin tourney, where they earned a 3-1 record.
It was a tease to come that close to winning, said Vasquez, explaining the team won two tournaments last year.
“We were ready to take the south . . . We were going to take home that trophy,” he said.
Scott Mills, who plays for the Dallas Fire Heat, feels his pain.
“He was upset. He got a lot of young guys who play and they got ripped off . . . They were mad, and I don’t blame them,” said Mills.
Van windows were not smashed and it looked like a “professional job,” Vasquez said.
Dallas cops dusted the van for fingerprints, law-enforcement sources said. There were no surveillance cameras at the scene.