Sunday Funday

The baseball game started at 1:35pm this past Sunday. The Pittsburgh Pirates were scheduled to play the Los Angeles Dodgers in a game for the ages. This was no ordinary game that would start and end unnoticed. The excitement was so intense and electric that you could feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand straight. Our hearts were pounding with excitement, this is it, this is the time, the one that will be remembered, this was my son James first baseball game.

The boy woke up Sunday morning, early and ready. I held him off until about 11am and then gave in; “OK James lets go, but what are we going to do at the ball park for the next 2.5 hours?” I don’t think he cared. We bought tickets through our local synagogue which meant they were inexpensive and high up in the stands; watching on a 13” black and white TV had a better view, not really. It’s not just the game that makes the event exciting, it’s the views, smell of hot dogs cooking, the vendors moving through the stands screaming out the name of the food items that they are selling:

Get your POPCORN here
Get your HOT DOG
CRACKER JACKS, get your CRACKER JACKS
Get your DECAF NO FOAM DOUBLE SHOT SKIM LATTE

What the? That did not happen. He didn’t say what I just thought he said. That man is not selling Lattes, is he? Oh thank god, it didn’t happen; my mind was just wondering. You wait; give it time, IT WILL HAPPEN.

Getting back to the story…..

James and I arrived at the park around 11:15, parked across the bridge which was $5 instead of $20, but only a 5 minute walk. The Roberto Clemente Bridge, the one we walked across is closed during games to allow the mass crowds of people to cross the river to the park. There were many fun activities for the kids to participate in on the bridge leading to the park. There was a real race car that kids could get into to get there picture taken. James loves race cars, but not today, he wanted to go into the park. There was a big blow up trampoline thing for kids to jump in. James loves trampolines, not today he wanted to go into the park. You kind of get the picture.

There was no line to stand in to enter the park because by now it was only 11:20am. Woohoo, 2 hours and 15 minutes before game time. How the hell am I going to entertain my 4 year old son for two hours at a ball park? We walked in and a few of the players were signing autographs, cool, there was a line for that, I could burn at least 5-10 minutes. Nope, James wanted no parts of it; he wanted to go to our seats. We arrived at our seats, section 305 (There was a series on HBO called “From the Earth to the Moon”, for some reason I thought of that as we sat down). We were the only ones in our section because, well, 2 hours before game time. After about 15 minutes of watching the grounds crew watering the grass I asked James if we could go for a walk; nope, wasn’t happening. I forgot to mention, before we got to our seats, we stopped to get licorice and soda, which lasted about 8 minutes. The sugar high was in effect almost immediately and I have the video to prove it. Since we were still the only ones in our section, I let James run freely through the seats. Oh yeah, he was zooming and having fun which is really what this day was all about.

People started to show up and the game was ready to start. We stood for our National Anthem and then it was time. THE BIG GAME!

After about, I’m not joking hear, 5 minutes James turns to look at me and says “Daddy, can we go home now?” Ha, what’d you say? I thought you just asked me if we could go home? I thought that once things started to move along he’d be ok. I started to explain the game to him and point out the different positions the players play. It worked for 2.5 innings and then very politely he asked me again. I acknowledged his request and we went home.

We saw 2.5 innings of a 9 inning ball game which our Pirates ultimately found a way to lose.

Even though we didn’t get to see the whole game, we both had a great time. I’ll chalk this one up as “I was spending time with my oldest son and there just happened to be a baseball game going on”.

Being a dad is cool.

I will paste video and/or pics on this post when I get the chance.

I really do have three other kids and will post about them soon:) Elizabeth will be featured soon.