BASEBALL! GLORIOUS BASEBALL!

I was raised by a recovering Catholic and a Frisbetairan (my dad believed that when you die your soul goes up on the roof and no one can get it down. And if you bad you get chewed on by the Big Dog.)

We were introduced to the basic tenets of all religions and encouraged to have philosophical debates.  The closest thing we had to a mandated belief system was baseball.

My sister and I were born, raised- and will die SF Gaints fans.

From spring to fall we worshiped our orange and black clad gods without fail.

After we moved, my husband discovered that Portland is home to the Red Sock’s farm team and a little bit of normalcy retuned to our lives.

I have been to a few games at Fenway and I dislike the experience (unless you have box seats behind the plate.)

Boston is crowded, parking and driving can be a death wish.

There IS a lot of history in that iconic ball park.  Along with $12 beers $10 mini sausages and they don’t play the game on the big screen.   So every time someone in front of you gets up to get an overpriced beer you miss plays.  Some of us are there to WATCH BASEBALL!

-Rant done-

Back to the Portland Sea Dogs!  The park is small, the players are really good and four box seat tickets are under $40!

For the past few years we have been going to as many games as we can each season with the boys and admittedly sometimes without them (best date night ever!!!)

We taught the boys about heckling their first game and it has been a laugh riot ever since.

When I introduced the concept of heckling before the game the youngest munchkin listened quietly and didn’t say much while the oldest parroted back all the old favorites “we want a pitcher…” etc.

As we were walking to the park, hand in hand, the littlest man looked up at me and said “You know what I am going to say?”

“No. What?”

“You’re not very good at that!!!”

He was 3.  Kid got it, really got it.  That moment has gone down in family history.

Yesterday we went to our first game of the year and it just gets better every time we go.

This time we introduced the boys to the concept of haranguing the players into giving away practice balls and signing mitts while they are warming up.

I think the funny hat helped (he made it himself 🙂 )

 

 

 

Five different player signatures in all.   Not too bad for their first attempt at player wrangling!  They even got a practice ball.

All in all it was an excellent game filled with heckling, fry dough, foul balls and most importantly- family.

And mitt masks, lots of mitt masks.