The local paper had a special promotion–spend a certain amount at certain retailers for back-to-school stuff and get 4 free tickets to a baseball game. We’d been talking about taking the kids to see the Nationals this summer and just hadn’t gotten around to it, so we sent in our entry and got free tickets! (As long as you disregard the price of the $16 hot dogs and whatnot.) A bunch of other family people got tickets for the same day, so we had a crowd of relatives to go with, too.
Anyway, this was, I think, my second baseball game. I have a vague recollection of freezing to death during a game at Wrigley Field as an undergrad. But it was the kids’ first game. On the way there, on Metro, I tried to explain to them that you should cheer when your team does something good.
Me: So then you clap! And you can yell things like “Good job!”
Wesley: I’m gonna yell “Thanks for doing the right thing!”
Anyway, we went to the ballpark and watched our team lose (they’ve been winning all season, but not this time!).
Mary took a few pictures.
She’s currently obsessed with the fisheye lens function on her camera:
This was her view of the game (from behind Claire):
Here are Wesley and John cheering:
The kids pestered everyone by climbing up and down the two rows we were using (well, asking other people to lift them up and down). They ate hot dogs and ice cream and peanuts. It was all good fun for the first three hours or so. The game went on for FOUR hours, which is a bit much baseball if you ask me, but they held up pretty well and were still in good spirits afterward, which is more than could be said for many of the people around us who got cranky when the other team started beating us.
I got this pic of Mary, who was simultaneously delighted and scandalized by her cousins’ antics:
I think it was a success, for the most part.
greenepiece 