I’m going to stray from my usual blog meanderings today and switch into Proud Dad Mode regarding this past weekend. If there’s one advantage to interleague play, it was the fact that it allowed me to take my daughter to her first MLB game and see her dad’s hometown team. Last weekend the Tigers came to town and, as fate would have it, the Saturday game was at 3:55 PM since it was a Fox broadcast. Most games I can’t take her to as a 1 PM game is around her nap time and 7 PM is only an hour from her bedtime.
Anyway, I was very happy to see the Tigers and also thrilled to bring Ally along. I had set my DVR to record the game, totally expecting a 3-year old to last maybe 6 or 7 innings but she lasted the entire game. Leaving early has always been a pet peeve of mine at sporting events so I was relieved we didn’t leave until the final out was recorded. My baseball fan friends will be pleased to know Ally has known the lyrics to “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” for well over a year now.
If there’s one thing that I learned about certain baseball games in certain cities, it’s this:
1 – Never get a ticket for a game at Wrigley prior to May 15, except for the home opener due to the bone-chilling winds whipping in from Lake Michigan. Unless, of course, there is a marquee team coming into town.
2 – Never get a ticket for a daytime Braves game at Turner Field unless the seats are in the shade. It’s more comfortable to sit inside your kitchen oven than it is to be exposed to the horrific Georgia sun for 3+ hours while drenched in 90% humidity.
3 - The White Sox suck balls and play in a ballsucking stadium in a ballsucking neighborhood for ballsucking fans. 
With it being a 97 degree day, we totally lucked out that our seats were the first row in the shade. Even in the shade it was still hot. Disgustingly sweaty hot. The kind of hot where you feel your soul evaporating from your body. In the right light, you can actually see it drain out your pores, much like seeing your breath in the winter air. Sweet mother of God, this is why Georgia will not be the place where I retire. This Pale Blue Scot has had about as much hot weather as his north European roots can handle, but that’s another blog post for another day.
One thing I’ve decided and my conclusion has been reached after being in ballparks across the country. Is there any way to recruit the workers from the country’s Chinese food places in any mall and use them instead of the current stadium concession workers? Chinese food places are the hallmark of “Move the line fast and then move it even faster” technology and it is desperately needed in certain cities’ ballparks. Ally and I missed two goddamned innings trying to get frozen lemonade for her, only to be told when we finally got to the front of the line that they were sold out. Thankfully they had regular lemonade or we might have had a crisis that would have involved me having to make a phone call from jail for someone to bail me out. Far be it from me to want to add to the bottom line of any concession-based company, but I truly believe they lose additional money by how inefficient their employees are. People see a long line and either avoid it or drop out after making no progress in 10 minutes.
I had bought tickets for Sunday night’s game with a friend in case I missed some of Saturday’s game. With it being an ESPN game, that meant it was an 8 PM start which is way too late for a night before a workday. If there was one plus, Sunday was just as ass-droppingly hot so having a game at that time of evening made it possible for me not to sweat through every article of clothing I had on, unlike Saturday’s game.
There was only one memorable event on Sunday which kind of threw me for a loop. I wasn’t paying much attention to who was sitting in the rows behind me but there was this really loud person who was almost unintelligible. To my untrained ear, I assumed it was a drunk Cajun and paid him no mind as it is refreshing to actually hear someone at an Atlanta-based sporting event show some life, even if that person was shouting phrases I couldn’t understand at the top of his lungs.
I finally turned around by the 4th or 5th inning just to get a visual of the guy. Maybe he would be visibly sloppy drunk or have a crooked hat on or be wearing a dirty wifebeater shirt. To my surprise, and partial embarrassment, the guy turned out to be retarded! Now the gibberish made sense. It wasn’t some drunk dude. Again, it didn’t bother me that he was so loud but I actually felt kind of bad thinking it was just some hammered wino from the bayou and it turns out to be a guy with an altered chromosome set.
Here are some pics of Ally and me on Saturday. At this point we have lost 20 combined pounds of water weight.
Mmmm, dippin' dots. She was also introduced to cotton candy for the first time and, holy shit, she's in love with it. Big surprise, I know.
Yes, that is a pink Braves hat she is wearing and it was not purchased by her dad. Grandma got her the hat (Megan was too pregnant to go to the game). That actually didn’t bother me. What I didn’t like was that Ally was into the Tomahawk Chop. She and her grandma did that one while Daddy continued his lifelong self-imposed ban on such a stupid gesture.
"Daddy, why are all the people with an 'A' on their hat, not including me, so Lame? And whay are all the people with a 'D' on their hat just so frickin' cool?"
