to the ballgame

*Disclaimer: This post is a bit out-of-date. We went to the ball game not this past weekend, but the weekend before. I considered not bothering, seeing as it had been a while, but frankly, I don’t get out that much.

You may have heard that David Ortiz was in the area recently. It even made the front page of the New York Times’ sports section!

The article was about how the presence of Big Papi made the people in my hometown a little bit crazy. The games for the weekend were standing room only when usually the stadium’s about half full, traffic was just nuts, and everywhere you looked you saw #34 tee shirts. By chance we had tickets to Sunday’s game, purchased a month ago as a Father’s Day present for my dad. So that morning we headed off to McCoy under the blazing sun.

We made sure to get there early, as we had general admission tickets and needed nine seats together. We managed to get them, but sadly, not in the shade. No matter – we were excited. My dad was easily the most excited; here he is racing Little Brother up the stairs to our seats:

We had some time to kill, but it was too hot to knit (I did have socks with me, though, and my sister was sorely disappointed they didn’t get confiscated. She said that would have been hilarious; I disagreed.) We just hung out, and after a while the players came out and started to stretch.
And sadly, Big Papi never did show up. Apparently he was healed, and headed home early. Jim Rice was there, though:

I don’t really know who is he is, but judging by the way people yelled, "Cooperstown!" when he went up to speak, I gather he is someone important. Even he complained about the heat.

Although we had a good time, and all the kids were relatively well-behaved, we ended up leaving after the 6th inning. The weather just got the best of us, especially Baby Sister. Next time: night game.

One last thing – I promised pictures of Little Brother’s tumbled rocks when they were done. Whaddya think?

We all agreed this one came out especially cool.

The plan is to get some more rocks on next week’s camping trip (!!!), order more of the polishing grit stuff, and start all over again when we get home. Hmmm – maybe it’s teaching him some patience. Imagine that!