take me out to the ballgame

As far back as I can remember, I have loved baseball.  Playing catch with my dad in the backyard in Elgin, Illinois is one of those few memories I have of us actually having fun together.  At least once during the summer, he would take my sister and I into Comisky Park to watch the White Sox and we'd come home exhausted, sunburned and full of hot dogs and peanuts.  Before every sport was televised, baseball games would be on the radio and I recall my dad stretched out on the picnic table, listening to a game on his transistor radion, after an early morning chore such as cutting the grass or painting the trim on the house and/or garage.

As an adult, even though every sport under the sun is on some cable or regular t.v. channel, baseball remains my favorite.  In an afternoon or evening, watching a game relaxes as much as (I imagine) Valium could.  A few years ago, my hubby and I started to go to a few summer league games but I admit that the Bank One-Chase Field Stadium in Phoenix for the Diamondbacks sets a pretty high bar for the ultimate baseball experience.  So, for my Mother's Day weekend, more than flowers (though my hubby bought me a sweet peach-tinted carnation bouquet and, with our son, we enjoyed a Sunday evening dinner at Pastiche), what I wanted was to be at a game in Phoenix. 

A couple of our friends joined us and even though the Giants beat the DBacks, we had fun.  We watched, on a high-definition screen, a young man propose to his girlfriend ("April, will you marry me?"); she covered her face in joy and, as he got down on his knee (nice touch), she nodded, "yes."  There were the standard "games" of Mustard, Relish and Ketchup racing on the sidelines with a victory of free cookies from Subway for everyone (31,000 plus) at the game; and another "victory" for a Dad who could blow 10 paper cups off a table, using the air from a balloon he had to keep reinflating.  For that he won the admiration of his six year-old son standing next to him who never doubted his dad "can do it" and Diamondback Bucks to apply to his next ticket.

As the sun began to go down, the stadium dome opened up and few birds, captured the night before when the dome was open, then shut, flew up into the sunset.  In front of us were a cluster of seven year old Brownies from Gilbert, Az., who devoured pizzas and ice cream folded into waffle cones.  On a sugar high, even though in the 9th inning, Dbacks were down 5-2, they were jumping up and down with their homemade posters and shouting cheers they learned from their morning softball game.  Sprinting up and down the steep stairs (we were in the "cheap" seats of Section 319), their badge-ladened vests flapping in the breeze, they couldn't stop giggling and I could easily imagine the quick sleeps they would fall into on the way back to Gilbert, after the game.

We took the light rail, Central to Roosevelt stops, and it was a mere five minutes to be back at a weekend apartment.  So, I am ready to go out to the ballgame again and be guaranteed 3-4 hours of entertainment on and off the field.