Ebjournal Revisited.

Mas Beisbol (de menor)

Spring is still here.

With the advent of spring cometh the Sport Formerly Known as the National Pastime: Baseball. Here at the homestead, we are rabid baseball fans. Not crazy over-the-top-broom-carrying-voodoo fans, but pretty excited about the change in season. It is not limited to me, either.

TLEMK loves baseball. In fact, her pedigree is much better than mine when it comes to baseball; her father pitched for the Illini, her grandfather was in the Cubs minor league system, and her uncle was a relief pitcher for the Schaumburg Flyers until this season. Needless to say, (but said anyway!) baseball is in her blood.

Ask her to sing the Dodgers song to you some time. Just make sure you have five minutes to be wowed.

We are fortunate that we live all of six minutes from a minor league baseball stadium. Elfstrom Stadium is currently home to the Kane County Cougars, a very minor-league affiliate of the Moneyball famous Oakland A’s. Last year, we purchased a five game pack of tickets; one game a month over the course of five months, always on a weekend. How many games did TLEMK get to go to last year?

Zero.

Now some of you may think that is unfortunate happenstance—summer is a busy time, with weddings, reunions, and The Plan to be done. I happen to believe she is jinxed.

Bear with me.

Despite her previous history of not being able to go to the games last year, we nonetheless purchased another 5-game set for this year. This first game was this past weekend, versus the terrible, horrible, no good Clinton Lumberkings. Our seats are 5 rows behind the first base dugout, but we left our gloves at home, lest we raise the ire of Siberia, Minnesota, and headed to the ballpark under dreary skies and the occasional drizzle.

When we got there, the tarp was on, and they made announcements to the effect of, “We are in close contact with the weather service.  We are planning to play this game.  We will let you know at 4:30.” It was 3:45.  And it did stop raining, for like 10 minutes.  They took the tarp off, lined the field, and the players did their hoppy stretches.
We thought that maybe they would play through the drizzle.  We were excited.

Then they put the tarp back on.

TLEMK is jinxed.  She’s destined not to see an actual game.  We got refund tickets for this Thursday.  It’s supposed to be sunny.  But I know what’s next: locusts.

In other news, to satiate my need for minor league baseball, I recently finished The Last Best League, which is the story of the Cape Cod Collegiate League. They’ve made a movie about the Cape Cod League, called Summer Catch.  Haven’t seen the movie; I’ll add it to my imaginary queue. (After reading the IMDB synopsis, the movie seems nothing like the book. Don’t see the movie. Read the book.) The book, even though it wasn’t the best baseball story I’ve read, made me want to go tour Cape Cod and catch all the games. Interesting stuff– if you like baseball, you’ll like the book.

I’ll let you know if we made to the baseball game on Thursday.

RSS Trackback URL 1. May 2006 (18:56)
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