Results tagged ‘ Jr. ’
Mariners at The Jake (8-22-09)
After returning home from Boston back in July, it started to hit me that, if Griff decides to retire after this season (and I sincerely hope he DOES NOT), Tim and I would never see him play again. I didn’t like that idea. So I reviewed the rest of the M’s schedule to see if they would visit anywhere even remotely near southeastern Pennsylvania.
They had one more trip to Cleveland on the books. Cleveland is in northeastern Ohio, and Ohio borders Pennsyvlania to the West. I determined that fits within the definition of “anywhere even remotely near southeastern Pennsylvania.”
Therefore, just 4 days removed from the conclusion of a wonderful roadtrip with my dad, Tim, my wife Colleen and I piled into the car and headed across Pennsylvania on the PA Turnpike.
After camping out a night in Washington, PA, we headed north up the Ohio turnpike to Cleveland and after taking 80N-to-480W-to-77N-to71 we cruised into town on 9th Street and this was our view:
Ah, Jacobs Field…the Jake. (I think that is a typo on the sign, that’s not how you spell ’Jacobs’). It was good to be back to the first field where Tim ran the bases. And it was great to be in the same city as the Mariners.
We came into the city early to see what we could see in the Land of Cleve. Unfortunately, we knew nothing about the city…except that its on a BIG lake. We ended up driving through downtown and spotting the Rock’n'Roll Hall of Fame and the Cleveland Browns Statium. So we turned left down a street heading toward the water. Next, we turned right down a long road that ran by some water and an airport before finally reaching a marina. Here are some pictures of what we saw:
Check out that lake! Tim was asleep when we pulled up to the marina. We woke him up and pointed out the huge lake. He responded, “No, Daddy. That’s not a lake. That’s an ocean!” Its big. In that top right picture, that’s the R’n'R Hall of Fame. Below, is a Blue Angels jet resting on a stand in front of a Navy facility by the airport. Pretty cool stuff.
And, that was the extent of our city touring. We had a game to go to!
After parking in a garage a few blocks away, we walked up to a misty Jacobs Field. The clouds were just spitting a little bit. No need for an umbrella or a hood. And I figured it would be no problem for BP.
I was wrong.
Colleen and I had made a deal. We would come early to this game so I could watch some BP. But we wouldn’t come early the next day (which was a day game and might not have BP anyway). But as a approached the gates, I could see the in field was covered. No BP.
There was a sign that said the stadium was open at Gate C. So walked over to Gate C in RCF:
We’d never entered through Gate C before (we’d only been here once before). Below to the far left, that is what it looks like…
In front of the Gate C entrance, there is a statue of Bob Feller (middle) with which Tim posed. I didn’t think it was a very good statue, at least compared to the extremely life-like statues at U.S. Cellular Field. [NOTE TO THE MARINERS: When Griff does eventually retire, use whomever made the statues at U.S. Cellular for his statue. Also, use a classic Griff pose, not the pose with both arms over his head after hitting a home run.]
As we entered Gate C, there were two display cases just inside the gate with lists of the two teams’ starting line ups. Oh, no…no Griff!
Despite my disappointment (which I was prepared for because I knew a lefty was pitching for the Indians), I thought it was a cool feature to have the line-ups posted like that.
Below is a view of the RF concourse…
…we quickly learned that we were trapped in the RF seats and/or concourse until 6:00 p.m. — a full a hour away…and most of the food stands were not yet open (and as I mentioned, no BP). What ever would we do to kill the time?
We walked down into the field level seats as close to the RF foul pole as we could get (the Mariners bullpen is between the seats and the foul pole. Here was our view:
As shown above, there were a couple Mariners on the field. David Aardsma ran out to the bullpen (shown above) to grab some baseballs for playing some catch with his colleagues in the M’s bullpen.
The big draw on the field was Ichiro. He played catch (with his interpreter, I believe)…
…and then he did some running.
Then a couple Mariners relief pitchers played catch by the tarp over the in field. Because we were stuck in RF, we couldn’t get very close. I couldn’t recognize anyone from out there except David Aarsdma.
Ardsma and his buddy were the last two playing catch. His partner threw a ball passed him that rolled out and sat in the grass just off the tarp behind second base. Aardsma pulled another ball out of his pocket and finished playing catch.
When he was finished, he walked out to grab the ball behind second. We were now all alone in the seats in RCF. I called out, “Hey, D.A.!!!!!”
The D.A. immediately picked up the damp ball and threw it REALLY far and directly into my glove:
In this picture of Tim, that is Aardsma to the left of Tim’s head. D.A. threw the ball to us from about 2 feet behind the tarp right behind where Tim is holding up the ball. It was a great throw.
After throwing the ball to us, a bunch of people in RF yelled Aardsma’s name and he turned and threw his other baseball on a line all the way to the back of the RF seats. The throw was very impressive.
Here is a panaramic view from where we caught the ball from Aardsma:
And here is a look to our left. Check out how thick the OF wall is. I’m not sure, but this seems to be designed so people do not interfere with borderline homeruns:
By the way, Aardsma’s second throw landed at the top of that last section, just under the overhang.
Here is a view to our right:
The red arrow points to our seats in Section 184, Row B. They were excellent seats.
Next, we went to Heritage Park.
Heritage Park is the Indians’ outdoor Hall of Fame. Its pretty cool. As you can probably tell from the bottom picture, Tim and I played catch in Heritage Park. Colleen didn’t think it was appropriate to play catch in there. I told her they’d tell us to stop if they didn’t like it.
After a couple minutes, a stadium usher type standing behind the plaque in the bottom left corner of the picture above called me over. Uh, ho. I figured we were, indeed, getting shut down. I walked over to him.
Todd – “Yes?”
Usher – (pulling a baseball from his pocket and whispering while staying behind the column) “Throw this one back to him.”
So, how about that? Instead of getting told not to play catch in Heritage Park, we were rewarded with a ball. Not bad.
“Thanks, Usher-guy.”
Tim was happy to add another ball to his collection.
After playing some more catch, we walked down the stairs to the lower section of Heritage Park. While down there, Colleen found this:
This was literally the first and only plaque Colleen read. So, as a big-time migraine sufferer, she was mighty surprised to see she’d picked the plaque of a ball player whose “Career was curtailed after 1941 season by migraine headaches.” That is something you don’t hear every day.
Finally, they opened the rest of the stadium. We were eating some nachos by this time. We relocated to the seats just a little bit down the line from 1B. We were at the top of the section when two individuals popped out of the M’s dugout and started walking toward the bullpen. One of them was Jason Phillips, whom you might remember from our trip to New York and Boston in July. We had a couple interactions with Phillips in Boston and New York this season, and he’d already given us 5 baseballs so far this season.
I ran down to the first row and arrived there just as he passed:
Todd – “Hey, Jason!”
Phillips – (looks over and give me a big smile) “Hey, how you doing, buddy?”
Todd – “Good, man. Nice to see you. Any chance of you hooking us up with a warm up ball today?”
Phillips – (I couldn’t understand exactly what he said, but it was something like) “I’m sure we can make that work.”
Then he said something like, it would be a little bit because he had to do some stuff first.
I went up to talk to Colleen and Tim. And we relocated down to the bottom of the field section. Eventually, Jason and Felix Hernandez started playing catch, and we watched:
Then Felix and Jason walked back into the dugout. As Jason walked away, he looked over to me and held up a finger as if to say, “Hold on a minute.”
Tim and I hung out in the RF foul corner and scoped out the scenery…
…like this weird little “chalking” machine that really shoots white spray paint onto the ground…
It didn’t do a very good job. A chalk line looks about 10,000 times better than this painted line, even after the guy took two passes at it.
We scoped out the bullpen, which has a seating area in the front with the pitching mounds behind…
…just above the OF fence in foul territory, we noticed what looked like a wedding party.
In a little bit, Jason came back out and went into the bullpen again. Again, he looked over to us and gave us the “hold on a minute” finger. He put on some shin guards in the bullpen and grabbed his catchers mitt.
Then he walked out of the bullpen, came straight over to us and set a nice looking ball showing some warning track dirt marks into my glove.
Then we all posed for a picture:
“Thanks, Jason!” He has been mighty cool to us this season and I am hoping he sticks on with the Mariners as bullpen catcher and eventually as a coach (that is, unless he has an opportunity to make a comeback as a player).
Next, we headed out to our seats in the LF bleachers — Section 184.
I trudged up the stairs and into the upper CF corner in Section 185 and took this panaramic view:
I didn’t get much in the way of action shots at this game. But here is a classic Ichiro pose:
Here is Mike Saunders, who made an error in LF and got hounded for the rest of the game by a bunch of guys three rows behind us:
There is our OF corps for the night:
Of course, Tim wanted to play catch several times during the game. And he wanted to play in the tunnel from the LF concourse into the LF bleachers. I told Tim we’d certainly get kicked out of the tunnel and told to either stop or move elsewhere…
…I was wrong. Instead, we were encouraged by the Section 184 usher. In fact, you can see him watching us in the picture to the right. He thought it was great that we were playing catch in the tunnel, even as people passed in and out of the tunnel.
Here is another action shot: (i) to the right, Fister nailed someone in the head (he was okay) and everyone gathered around to check him out and (ii) Josh Wilson about to catch a pop up…
…see that bat boy running in from the right side in the Josh Wilson pop-up picture? There was a runner on 3B and that kid came sprinting in like he was Usain Bolt. The guy behind us got all excited and thought it was the runner trying to score. He was right to get excited. It was pretty strange to see that bat boy come sprinting in like that.
Midway through the game, the Indians mascot, Slider, came to our tunnel with a pizza and gave it to some guy in Section 185. Tim and I left our seats and I asked Slider’s chaperone if we could get a picture with slider — of course we could:
A great picture. But what exactly is slider supposed to be?
Soon it was time for ice cream. We had to walk to the Pierre’s booth behind home plate. On the way, I took this action shot of Mariners rookie pitcher, Doug Fister, through the foul pole:
The Jake has some interesting art hanging around the park. Here is one of Pronk.
Pierre’s had real ice cream and multiple desirable flavors at a reasonable price! I couldn’t decide if Tim would enjoy chocolate chip mint or moose tracks better. So we got both and shared them both:
Tim loved having two flavors.
The game itself was a good one, but disappointing. The Mariners led most of the game on the strenth of an Indians error and a Russell Branyan HR in the first inning. But we wouldn’t score again and the Indians would tact on a run at a time in three different innings. The game headed to extras.
Griff didn’t play, but I could see him in the dugout…
…he started carrying around a bat while wearing his batting gloves. The M’s had pinch hit for DH Mike Sweeney late in the game (or maybe it was pinch ran for him) with Ryan Langerhans. I was sure Griff would pinch hit for Langerhans in the 10th or 11th inning. With his bat in hand, it looked certain. But then the Indians brought in another lefthanded reliever, and the M’s kept Langerhans in to bat. So, no Griff. Bummer
Late in the game, Colleen wore my new grey zip-up sweat shirt. And Tim wanted to share the hood:
Tim was happy to have “mommy” join us for this game.
In the bottom of the 11th, Luis Valbuena (a former Mariner) hit a walk off homerun. Double bummer.
To make up for dissappointing us by beating our M’s, the Indians put on a huge and extremely cool Rock’n'Roll Fireworks show. We had to relocate to the infield seats (you’ll see why below). On our way, we got a nice family picture (featuring Colleen’s nice new hairdo and fireworks being set up behind us).
Here’s why we had to move, we would’ve been blasted with fireworks:
The initial blast scared Tim. Then he started enjoying the fireworks…but finally the loud music put Tim to sleep…
…so we took off early to beat the traffic.
We would be back the following day and we’d be hoping with all our might that Griff would be in the line-up.
Season Fan Stats:
26 Games (plus one 5+ hour rain out with no game)
12 Stadiums (Safeco Field, Camden Yards, Citizens Bank Park, Citi Field, Nationals Park, Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, HHH Metrodome, Miller Park, U.S. Cellular, and “Jacobs” Field)
24 Teams (Mariners, A’s, Rangers, Rays, Orioles, Tigers, Twins, Indians, Red Sox, Yankees, Royals, White Sox, Phillies, Mets, Nationals, Cubs, Braves, Padres, Dodgers, Cardinals, Marlins, Pirates, Astros, and Brewers — and sort of the Giants)
22 Ice Cream Helmets (Mariners (4), Phillies (5), Mets, Nationals (3), Red Sox (3), Yankees, Twins, Cubs, Brewers, White Sox, and Indians (and 1 Brewers Cheese Fries Helmet))
25 Baseballs (14 Mariners, 2 Rangers, 1 Phillies, 1 Red Sox, 1 Umpire, 1 Nationals, 1 Pirates, 1 Twins, 1 Astros, 1 Royals, 1 Indians)
MLB Closed Out (NL Closed out on 8/16/09, AL Closed out on 8/17/09)
4 Autographs (King Felix Hernandez, Jason Phillips, Ronny Cedeno, Ryan Perry)
4 Player/G.M. Photographs (King Felix Hernandez, Jason Phillips, Jack Zduriencik, Ryan Perry)
10 Mascot Pictures (Mariners Moose, Orioles Bird, Slider (Indians), 3 Presidents (Nats), Screech (Nats), 4 Running Sausages (Brewers) – Honorable Mention: The Green Monster statue bench)
Weekend Project: TheTrap-Eze-ification of a Non-Trap-Eze Glove
Tim and I went to D.C. on Wednesday and, although we did not actually see a game, that was our game for the week. No game this weekend. So I needed a weekend project.
As can be seen in my entry from Wednesday, I have a black Rawlings Randy Johnson signature RBG10B glove. (You can see me holding it in this picture). I love Rawlings gloves. They are one of the very few things in my life to which I am brand loyal. But it hasn’t always been that way. For a couple years in middle school and high school, I had a Spalding Dwight Gooden signature glove. That was right at the beginning of Ken Griffey, Jr.’s career. And with Griff’s help, I fell in love with the Rawlings Trap-Eze.
During my sophomore or junior year of high school — after a beautiful black Rawlings became my primary glove — I performed surgery on that Spalding. I made it into a Trap-Eze.
This weekend, I decided to perform a similar glove surgery. I decided to turn my Randy Johnson into a throw-back Mariners Trap-Eze. Yes, I did hesitate in doing this because it is a Randy Johnson signature glove and he’s a future hall of famer. But I figured who cares. I want to maximize my enjoyment of the glove, and to do that, it needed to become a throw-back Mariners Trap-Eze.
Here we are at the beginning of the process:
The top picture shows the glove intact. Its a fine looking glove. But its no Trap-Eze. When I made my old Spalding into a Trap-Eze in high school, I just cut certain portions of the webbing out and laced the remaining portions together in a Trap-Ezesque fashion. But I wanted to do this one in a more authentic manner.
I made a glove by hand a couple years ago and (as shown in the top picture) I still have a big roll of black leather. I used the black leather to fashion a sixth finger for the webbing. I eye-balled it and tried to get it the right size and shape. I then punched holes in it for lacing.
As shown in the top picture, I used royal blue lacings like some of the Mariners did back in the day (or some (like Griff) had royal blue gloves).
In the bottom picture, you can see that I removed the original webbing. I kept it incase I was to change the glove back to its normal state some day. But I don’t foresee that. I like it too much.
I use this for all of my glove lacing needs:
That is actually a vein clamp. My mom was a nurse and over the years, she got me several vein clamps — yes, used in surgery to clamp veins — to use for stringing gloves. As a result, I was sorta the go-to guy for my baseball team when anyone needed a glove re-strung. The vein clamp works great because it locks in place once clamped down.
The stringing of all gloves can be tricky if you’re not used to it. The Trap-Eze is probably more confusing than any other glove because it has a lot more going on. Lots of lacing all over the place. But, the project turned out great. I think the sixth finger turned out just right — or as close as I should expect to be able get it by hand and eye-ball.
Here are some before and after shots. First, inside:
And the outside:
Finally, here is a shot showing some comparisons with a real Trap-Eze:
No too shabby, eh? Much better than my original Trap-Eze surgery, in my humble opinion.
By the way, while at the Rawlings outlet to get the blue lacings, I picked up a face mask for Tim’s batting helmet. He’s recently managed to foul a ball or two off of his face (how does that work?), so I figured a mask would help him avoid injuries.
Here is a look at this helmet/mask in action from this afternoon:
That is it for this weekend. The Mariners are in Baltimore Tuesday through Thursday. Tim and I will be there either Wednesday or Thursday. Getting excited to see our M’s!
By the way, the M’s won today on Griff’s RBI double in the 8th — scoring Ichiro who had 3 hits on the day. Excellent.
Mariners Win! (5/1/2009)
Friday night was our first Mariners game of the season! Tim and I, joined by my parents, got all fancied up in our M’s gear and headed down to Safeco Field. It was actually our second time to Safeco Field that day. Earlier in the day, we toured Safeco Field — and it was a blast…I’ll write about it later. Anyway, I’ve really only ever sat in two places at Safeco Field — my parents’ seats about 30 rows up from the 3B dugout (visitors) or my buddy Paul’s seats about 5 rows up from the Mariners dugout. So I was excited for this trip because we planned to get seats all around Safeco Field. This night, we had second row seats in the left field bleachers (Section 184, Row 2, Seats 5-8). Here was our view:
And here is a panoramic view from one section over toward CF:
They really are awesome seats. And at $15/ticket, they are a great deal. Here is the view looking over the railing, which I must admit was a bit scary with an active three year old.
Last season, Tim only attended two Mariners games – one in Baltimore that J.J. Putz blew the win in the 9th after Felix Hernandez pitched 8 scoreless innings and one in Seattle where the Indians just beat up on the M’s. Additionally, Tim has only seen the M’s win once in Seattle. It was his first game ever on 9/12/06. So we were looking for the M’s to get Tim back into the win column in a big way tonight.
In the top of the picture, Carlos Silva is warming up to start the game. To put it mildly, Silva has been a huge dissapointment so far. In his last start, he won his first game since June 2008. In between those wins, he had about 14-17 losses…not good. However, we remained hopeful that he would start a winning streak by notching his second win of the season against the A’s. Our optimism proved unwarranted, Silva gave up 6 runs in the third inning. So, we were happy when he earned a no decision.
This was Tim’s first time seeing the A’s. After we see the Rangers in a couple days, he will have seen the entire AL West. It will be the first complete division he has seen live. I’m quite happy about that since, after all, it is the most important division in MLB. By August 17, 2009, Tim will complete all six divisions in MLB.
Anyway, below Silva is A’s starter Dana Eveland. Eveland also would leave the game with a no decision after giving up 7 runs in 4.2 innings.
Anyway, back to the pictures. The left field bleachers are a good spot to get some interesting shots.
Here is a really cool shot looking up at the clock:
Here is the “concourse” under the left field bleachers:
Here are some shots of the “umbrella” (as you’ll see in my forthcoming entry about the May 2nd game, Safeco Field is an open air stadium even when the “roof” is “closed” so it is more properly called an umbrella):
Here are the glorious AL West standings flags showing the the M’s are in first place:
As you can see, it was a beautiful Friday night in Seattle. Here is an interesting picture from pre-game in the bullpen. I don’t know if the bullpen guys are praying or hyping themselves up or what…but its interesting…particularly because you can see a pink back pack on the ground behind the huddle. For those who don’t know, the M’s have a tradition of making their rookies carry stuff around in pink back packs. I’m not sure whose backpack is shown here.
Whatever they were doing, you gotta hand it to these guys. They came through be in this game (as did the Mariners bats) and saved Carlos Silva’s bacon…oh, wait…I’m not sure if the new slimmed-down Carlos can eat bacon any more. We’ll say the bullpen saved Silva’s outmeal instead.
Anyway, here is another cool picture you can only get from the left field bleachers. It is a look into the hand-run scoreboard where you can see the scoreboard operator catching a glimpse of the game:
Next, it was time for me to go on the move. Grandma was keeping Tim entertained in the seats, but he was ready for an ice cream helmet. So I headed to the Ben & Jerry’s shop at the bottom of the stairs at the left field entrance. Much to my surprise, I discovered B&J’s is gone and the space is empty. So I headed to the fan assistance office behind home plate. There, I told my story to the extremely nice and helpful people at the fan assistance office. Some of them were unaware that B&J’s was gone. So, one of them decided to walk with me to find ice cream helmets. She declared as any good fan assistance person would, “I’ll come with you. I need to know where you can get the helmets.” Here was my guide. I was upset I didn’t get her name because I would have emailed the M’s with my compliments and told them to give her a bonus. We found the helmets tucked away in a corner by the Mariners Hall of Fame. As I was buying Tim’s helmet (chocolate chip cookie dough…real ice cream, not soft serve!), I over heard my guide telling other M’s employees how Tim and I get an ice cream helmet at every stadium we visit. I turned around an reiterated, “Except Baltimore! The Orioles don’t have them. Feel free to call them and tell them at the Mariners suggest that they get ice cream helmets!” I think they are going to take my suggestion under advisement.
Anyway, so I got the ice cream and walked through the Mariners Hall of Fame on my way back to the seats. I’ll have more on the M’s Hall of Fame in a later entry, I have some ideas of some people who belong in the Hall (for a hint: watch the MLB network). As I strolled through the M’s Hall of Fame, a random M’s employee walks up to me and taps me on the shoulder and says, “Be sure to bring your son over here to get a picture picking off a home run! Lots of fun!” Apparently, this guy had heard of my ice cream helmet quest because Tim was still in the seats with Gma and Gpa and I wasn’t wearing a sign or anything proclaiming that I had a son at the game. I thought it was a thoughtful suggestion. Good going again Mariners employees!
One more word on the M’s HOF, its a nice little display area. However, it is in its infancy. The only members are Alvin Davis, Edgar Martinez, Jay Buhner and Dave Neishaus. Eventually, Ken Griffey, Jr., Jamie Moyer, Randy Johnson and Ichiro will certainly all be members (I hope A-Rod is never inducted, the people of Seattle would BOO him like crazy at the induction ceremony). We visited the Reds HOF and the Indians HOF last years. The Reds HOF is the Gold Standard of team HOFs…I’m going out on a limb saying that because I haven’t visited all 30 teams. It is really an amazing display of the team’s history. I highly recommend it.
Anyway, I made it back to the seats where Tim and my folks were having a good time. But Tim had an even better time once his ice cream helmet arrived:
After ice cream, we started walking around a bit to find some new perspectives on the game. We headed out to CF where Tim threw some coins into the little-batting-boy fountain and we got this nice picture:
Then we ran into the Moose!
We then landed in the RF corner (Section 110) where this was our view:
My folks stayed in Section 110 for the rest of the game. But Tim and I headed over to section 124 to try to find my buddy Paul (and our friend Mark Dewar). Here is a view from the concourse as we scanned the crowd for Paul and Mark:
We ended upon going down the wrong aisle (should have gone down 123) to find Paul. But we found these excellent open seats:
We stood up between innings and watched the players in the M’s dugout. The biggest disappointment of the day was that Griff did not play. But we got this picture of him hanging out in the dugout…and I combined it with this picture of Ichiro walking back into the dugout:
Every time Griff would look over, Tim and I would wave at him. But he never waved back. I told Tim to yell “Hi, Griffey” when we waved. And it was hilarious, Griff would look our way and Tim would whisper so I could hardly hear him *hi, griffey*. Then he looked at me and asked, “Baseball players don’t know how to wave?” I told him there are so many people its hard for them to see each little boy to wave at them. But some day, we’ll get Griff to wave it him!
While we were standing behind the dugout, I saw Jarrod Washburn standing in the dugout (just to the left o Ichiro above). He was wearing a big Mariners jacket and I could see him spinning a ball around in the palm of his hand. Tim was on my shoulders. I made eye contact with Washburn and flashed him my glove as I yelled, “Hey, Jarrod how about that ball in your pocket?” He looked up at me like he really wanted to give it to Tim but for some reason just couldn’t do it. He said something to me, but I couldn’t understand him. But it was essentially, something like, “sorry, I can’t.” I said, “Ah, come on, Jarrod. You can do it. Its for a little boy!” He said sorry again. I turned around and sat down and a whole bunch of people looked at me and they all looked disappointed. One of them asked me what happened. I jokingly said, “Everyone should Boo Jarrod for denying this little boy a baseball!” No one booed, but there was sort a collectivey, “Ahhhhhhhhhhh” that came from the section. I turned around to sit down and the “Ahhhhhhhhhh” had broken Jarrod’s otherwise iron-will. The ball came sailing up to me and I gloved it. I yelled “Thank you” to Washburn. And we sat down and I gave Tim the ball. He immediately tried to throw it back to Washburn. I think he thought we were playing catch. I started to take a camera phone picture of us with the ball to send to my wife back home and a lady in front of me offered to take it. Here is the picture. Its pretty hilarious because Tim is starting to cry because he couldn’t throw the ball back to Jarrod (also, we had just flown from Pennsylvania the night before and it was essentially 2:00 a.m. for me and Tim at the time….which is well passed his bed time. Anyway, the picture:
Anyway, the ball was mighty happy to be coming home with us. And he’s a big Mariners fan so he’ll fit in just great at our house. Here he is giving us a big Mariners smile:
After catching the ball, we headed back to Section 110 and watched the rest of the game with my folks. The game was great. It was a tie game in the bottom of the ninth. The M’s loaded up the bases and one of my favorite young M’s, Jose Lopez, strode to the plate. He had an epic 15-pitch at bat. After the count went to 2-2, the pitcher didn’t throw another ball. Lopez fouled off 10 pitches in a row. Here he is in a blurry far-away picture:
On the 15th pitch, Lopez ended the game with a sharp line drive to left center. MARINERS WIN!!!
Awesome game! Awesome seats! Awesome family times! Tim climbed onto Grandpa’s shoulders and we headed to the car. More to come…
Season Fan Stats:
4 Games
4 Stadiums (Safeco Field, Camden Yards, Citizens Bank Park, and Citi Field)
8 Teams (Mariners, A’s, Rays, Orioles, Phillies, Mets, Nationals, and Padres)
3 Ice Cream Helmet (Mariners, Phillies and Mets)
1 Baseball (Thank you, Jarrod Washburn!!)
2 Mascot Pictures (Mariners Moose and The Bird (O’s))
3 Awesome Days of Baseball
1 Awesome Night of Baseball
Let The Games Begin!
So, I have a three year old son, Tim. He is my partner in crime when it comes to baseball adventures. We (read, I) have set a couple “fan” goals for the 2009 baseball season. This weekend, we start our quest to achieve those goals. So, I guess I should let you know what some of those goals are. I won’t burden you with all of our goals, but here are the top three (in order of importance):
1) Have Tim witness Ken Griffey, Jr. hit a homerun as a Mariner. We have 9 Mariners games planned, which isn’t too shabby for living in Pennsylvania. So hopefully we can achieve this goal.
2) Have Tim complete the MLB circuit – see each of the 30 teams play live. Tim is 3 and he has seen 20 teams. To complete the circuit, he needs to see the A’s (May 1-3), Rangers (May 4-5), Royals (Aug. 17), Tigers (May 31), Red Sox (July 3-4), Rays (April 12), Dodgers (May 12), Padres (April 19), Astros (Aug. 14) and Braves (May 10).
We keep track of its all in our handy, dandy, Baseball Log.
3) Visit 11 stadia (stadiums) – Safeco Field, Camden Yards, Citizens Bank Park, Wrigley Field, The HHH Metrodome, Miller Park, U.S. Cellular, Fenway Park, Citi Field, Nationals Park, and (New) Yankee Stadium.
Tim and I will start the quest tomorrow as we visit Camden Yards to see the Rays and Orioles. I love Camden Yards. I’ve go there at least once a year every year…since probably 2000. Its an awesome park. I always get the cheap seats in straight away center. Its an excellent view of the field and you get all of the sights and smells of Eutaw Street (and Boog’s BBQ) just behind the seats.
Tim and Ken Griffey, Jr. at Camden-Yards.
Its odd for me to go to game that does not include the Mariners, Ken Griffey, Jr. (when he was on the Reds and White Sox) or the Phillies (the closest team to our home). I’ve decided that I’ll root for the Orioles. They have a couple ex-Mariners (all the young studs we gave up to get Bedard) and, in case the M’s are in the wild card race at the end of the season, I think one more win in the O’s column and one less in the Rays column would be good for the M’s.
We got a jump start on our season today by attending a short bit of the Reading Phillies game today. The R-Phils are our local AA team. They’re the jewel of the Phillies’ farm system, and of the Eastern League.
I know some of the R-Phils front office staff from playing softball against them in the Reading-Berks Business Softball League. They’re good guys who have a lot of fun. And they put on some great Minor League entertainment at FirstEnergy Field.
Tonight, they had the Phillies Phanatic and the World Series Trophy in town. Anyone could get a free picture with the Trophy. Tim and I wore some Mariners gear so the Trophy could get familiar with the M’s. I told Tim that the next time we visit the World Series Trophy, it will be in Seattle. Let’s hope that days comes some day soon.
Speaking of the M’s. They’re in first place!
Strong D, strong pitching, timely hitting…and all this without Ichiro, who is ripping it up in extended spring training with the Mariners low Minor Leaguers. I can’t wait to see my M’s in Seattle next month!
Cook & Son Bats
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