On Sunday, May 1, 2011, Tim and I set off for Philadelphia and our first non-doubleheader game of the season.  Just like last May 1st, the Phillies would be taking on their division rivals, the New York Mets.  Unlike last season, this game was a night game.  In fact, it was the ESPN Sunday night game.

We arrived before the gates opened.  But there was a problem:  we were staring down 2.5 hours of batting practice, but while still in the parking lot we discovered that both Tim and I forgot to pack our gloves.  Oh, no!

But on this date, baseball gloves were not necessary.  With five lifetime baseball at Citizens Bank Park, we were about to have an unprecedented day.

Immediately upon entering the stadium, he headed to the LF corner and ran into former-Mariner, Raul Ibanez:

Raul gave us props for our Mariners shirts, and then tossed us a baseball.

Thanks, Rauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuulll!!!

After a few minutes, we abandoned LF and headed to the Phillies Hall of Fame area behind the batters eye.  We checked out the empty bullpens (and noticed a Phillies BP baseball down below in the entrance way to the bullpen area), peered around the batters eye to watch some BP…

…, and checked out the various displays that teach you how to grip the baseball to throw different pitches.

While behind the batters eye, they opened up the rest of the stadium.  So Tim and I headed to the corner spot in RCF (section 101, row 1, seat 1).  There is some extra space in the corner pasted seat 1, Tim literally “hung out” there:

Phillies back-up catcher, Dane Sardinha, was shagging baseballs right in front of us.  While we were trying to figure out who in the world Sardinha was, Antonio Bastardo ran down a fly ball in straight away CF and then tossed us our second baseball of the day:

It was our second baseball, and I barehanded it just fine.

The Phillies’ ”Four Aces” (minus the day’s starting pitcher, Cliff Lee) were hanging out in front of Section 103…

…and Roy Oswalt was doing all of the shagging.

At one point, this groundskeeper walked by…

…and grabbed that baseball out of the bullpen entrance way.  He walked over toward us (by the way, RF was filling up, but for some reason, not a single person joined us in section 101), and tossed the baseball up to us.  Amazingly, without any gloves that was our third baseball of the day, in all of the games we’d attended with glove-on-hand, we’d never got three baseballs at a Phillies game before.

Eventually, the Phillies vacated the field and the Mets started taking their hacks.  Mets third baseman, David Wright, was putting on a show.  He jacked homer after homer into the bushes behind the CF fence.  In fact, we watched so many baseballs fly into the bushes, Tim found this little birdie in the bushes:

Tim started telling me all about this birdie and his life and family.

By the way, this was our view of Citizens Bank Park from section 101, row 1, seat 1:

While hanging out in the corner spot, there was one close call with a BP homerun.  Some unidentified Mets batter hit a homerun directly over our heads.  It sailed about 5 feet over our heads.  In seat 1 of section 101, there is no second row and it was not possible to back up to try to bare hand the homer.  It sailed into the Phillies bullpen, bounced off of the back wall, and came to rest in the middle of the bullpen grass.

A little bit after 7:30, Cliff Lee headed out to the bullpen flanked by pitching coach Rich Dubee and bullpen catcher Jesus Tiamo:

As Lee started stretching, Dubee headed into the bullpen and grabbed some baseballs out of the baseball bag.  Tim asked Dubee if he could have a baseball.  Dubee motioned/shrugged as if to say, “sorry, we need these baseballs to warm up Cliff Lee” (it was a highly communicative shrug).  Dubee made eye contact with me and I pointed toward that Mets homerun ball that had flown over our heads.  Dubee nodded as if to say, “yep, that one is all yours.”  He then called to Tiamo and pointed to the Mets homerun baseball and then to Tim, “Give it to that little boy.”

After Tiamo carried out Dubee’s instructions, I snapped this picture of the two coaches:

After Tiamo tossed us the baseball, Tim and I headed to the speed pitch:

The fastest of Tim’s three pitches clocked in at 26 blazin’ fast miles per hour.  He loved the speed pitch.  On his way out, they handed him a ticket (everyone gets one).  He was sure it was some sort of award for pitching so far.  We wrote “26 M.P.H.” on the back so he’d remember how fast he tossed the baseball.

Just outside the speed pitch, Tim posed for this picture with the Tiamo-Dubee-Mets-homerun baseball in front of the Liberty Bell Citizens Bank Park sign:

And then it was game time.  On our way through the concourse, we stopped for some nachos and then reported to our seats in Section 140, Section 8, Seats 1-2:

As you can see, Row 8 is really the second row of Section 140.  We got these tickets on stubhub and I really loved them.  Great seats.  Highly recommended.

It was a great pitching match-up for this game:  Cliff Lee vs. Chris Young.  Both pitchers were on their game.

After Jimmy Rollins drew a walk in the bottom of the first, Ryan Howard came to the plate ready to get the Phils offense going…

…, but, unfortunately for the Phils, J-Roll got picked off to end the inning:

The two leftfielders both had Northwest connections — Two-time former-Mariner Raul Ibanez for the Phillies and British Columbian and Gonzaga Bulldog Jason Bay for the Mets:

Ronny Paulino led off the second inning with his first hit as a New York Met, a line drive single to center.  But he was left on base when Jose Reyes…

…flew out to Ibanez to end the inning.  Now, Reyes, there is a guy the Philadelphia fans really seem to dislike.

During the break in the action, Tim posed with his Raul Ibanez baseball and the Citizens Bank Park sign:

And for good measure, he posed with his vanilla cookies and the field:

After eating a pack and a half of these tasty vanilla cookies, Tim declared himself too sugared up to get ice cream!

During the game, Tim spent a bunch of time agonizing over his All-Star picks:

The game was 0-0 through the first four innings.  Then, with two outs in the top of the fifth inning, David Wright (another guy who Philadelphians really seem to dislike) hit a single and then scored the first run of the day on Carlos Beltran’s RBI double.

Between the top and bottom of the fifth, Tim and I ran over to section 138 so Tim could get his picture with Emily, the Phillies ballgirl:

And while we were at it, he got a personalized autograph on Emily’s ballgirl card…

…, which Tim put in his baseball card album along-side his Ichiro, Griffey and other MLB baseball cards.  When we got back to our seats, Tim showed his autographed card to all of our seat neighbors.

Between innings (not sure which innings), the Phanatic was ripping his way around the ballpark on his four-wheeler.  I got this cool picture where the Phanatic is in focus and pretty much everything else is blurred a little:

We’d get up close to the Phanatic later in the game.

He was giving up some hits, but Cliff Lee…

…was pitching quite effectively.  The only problem for the Phillies was that Chris Young was pitching just as effectively, if not more so.

After a lot of work and careful consideration, Tim finished his All-Star ballot:

Still training 1-0, the Phillies missed an opportunity in the bottom of the seventh when Ryan Howard was left on base.  The inning ended in a bizarre fashion.  With Howard on 3B and Ben Francisco on 2B, Phillies catcher Brian Schneider seemingly checked his swing to work a full-count with two outs.  Finally, about 5 full seconds after the pitch, home plate umpire Jim Wolfe checked with his colleague over at 3B and Schneider was rung up.

It was the most delayed strike out call that I have ever seen.

And it was followed by the quickest ejection call I’ve ever seen.

Charlie Manuel came charging out of the Phillies dugout to argue with 3B umpire Lance Barksdale, I don’t think Charlie had even reached the pitchers’ mound when Barksdale tossed him from the game.  Charlie continued on his way to Barksdale and got his money’s worth out of the argument:

In the top of the eighth, a Mets leftie (I think Ike Davis) hit a foul ball that skipped around in the crowd before being grabbed by a lady within 10 feet of our seats.  Here is a picture featuring my shoe for perspective:

I’m sitting in my seat, and the foul ball was secured by the lady in the red hat three seats down from “Lee” (i.e., Lee, Manuel, Victorino, foul ball lady).

Right around this time, something odd happened.  I got a text from Avi Miller:

“In case they didn’t tell you at Phils game:  Obama making announcement tonight unscheduled.  Related to national security.”

Then a second text:

“Was supposed to be 10:30, but they’re still setting up so it could be any minute.  Speculation is it could involve anything like Gadhafi, Osama [bin Laden], or even Libya in general.  Who knows.  Has to be big to do a Sunday night sudden announcement.”

Then a third text:

“Multiple sources saying Osama is dead and in US control.  Will let you know.  Obama hasn’t spoken yet, but that’s what all the news sources are saying.”

While I was exchanging texts with Avi, fans all around the stadium were apparently receiving similar texts from their friends and family.  What an odd place to be, I thought, to learn big international news like this.

Meanwhile, life and the game went on.

It was getting late in the game and the Phils were down 1-0.  I was thinking about relocating over by the 3B dugout soon so we could try to get our first ever umpire baseball at Citizens Bank Park.  First, I needed a picture of us in our seats.  A guy sitting behind us was happy to help:

Then in the bottom of the eighth, things got interesting.  The Phillies tied it up 1-1 when John Mayberry, Jr. scored…

…on an RBI single by Ryan Howard.

Then things go really interesting.  It started in LF, but soon the whole stadium was chanting “USA! USA! USA!”  I missed most of the best and loudest chanting, but I was able to capture a few seconds of it:

Obviously, something was up.  I texted Avi to see what Obama had to say.  His response:

“that’s why.  Officially announced and confirmed.  Osama dead.  Killed by bomb about 10 days ago, they were waiting to confirm body.”

Of course, we have learned over the course of the last week that a lot of the initial news about this event were incorrectly reported.  But the gist of Avi’s message was accurate:  President Obama had announced that U.S. Forces had killed Osama bin Laden.

Every once in a while, the chants came back:  “USA! USA! USA!”  A very memorable way to learn this news, indeed.

We decided to head over toward the 3B dugout.  It can be hard to get down into those seats because the ushers usually patrol it pretty rigorously.    But we slipped into the back row of section 130 with no trouble.  It was really windy in the concourse (it always is at Citizens Bank Park), and Tim was instantly freezing.  There was no one sitting in the last row of section 130.  So we slid by the usher, sat in the last row, and I instantly took off Tim’s shoes and helped him pull a pair of sweatpants over his shorts.

It must have looked like we belonged, because the usher never said a word to us.  Here was our view in the ninth and tenth innings from the back of section 130:

In the bottom of the tenth, Ryan Howard crushed a fly ball to the warning track in deep CF field.  I was sure it was a walkoff homerun, so I grabbed Tim and we ran down the stairs toward the umpires tunnel.  But Howard’s hit died and was caught on the warning track.

Ooops…

We pulled up and grabbed some new aisle seats at around row 10.  Here was our view for the rest of the tenth and part of the eleventh innings:

We were so close, we could practically hear Jose Reyes ignoring the fans heckling him on the on deck circle.  Here’s what he looked like at the plate…

…as the Phillies fans verbally assured Reyes that he is terrible and was destined to strike out.  Instead, he popped out to the catcher.

Finally, in the twelfth inning (at 12:01 a.m.), we made our way to the penultimate seats, second row behind the home plate side of the dugout (Section 129):

The game just kept going and going.  No one could score.  Both teams seemed capable of advancing baserunners to third base, but that was it.  Inning after inning, third outs erased all of the would-be winning runs.

The Phillies fans needed something to inspire them to inspire their Phils to do something special.

Enter the Phillie Phanatic.  He hopped onto the 3B dugout and started running down the length of the dugout toward us giving everyone high fives:

I stood up to get some big green, furry hand.  But as he approached, my hand was left unsmacked as I watched “something” whiz by me.

Inside my head I thought, “What was that!?”

I scan the field and wondered, “Are they throwing t-shirts into the crowd?”

I saw the guy immediately in front of me bend over toward the empty seat to his right, like he’s grabbing for a t-shirt on the ground or something.

But I didn’t see anyone throwing t-shirts!  “What’s going on!?,” I thought.

The Phanatic stopped at the end of the dugout and looked down at us…or, more precisely, at the guy bending down toward the empty seat:

The guy got back up to his feet and his nose was spewing blood all over the place.  The Phanatic, the guys family and everyone watched as the guy stood there bleeding.

The guy was not happy.  The Phanatic bent over, put his arm around the guy, and said something to him.  He (the Phanatic) then walked over to an usher about ten feet away, and said something to him.

The guy sat down holding his bleeding face.  I could tell he was fuming mad and...

…, as his blood dripped down the empty seat next to him, about ten ushers showed up on the scene.

An usher got someone in the Mets dugout to throw up a towel to clean up the guy’s face.  Another usher brought a bag of ice.  A medic-type-guy arrived and convinced the guy to leave the seats and go get checked out at the first aid station.  The guy reluctantly left.

Oh, by the way, he was a Mets fan.  After he left, the Phillies fans made numerous jokes at his expense.

Oh, by the way, while all of this was happening, Mets pitcher Taylor Buchholz struck out Phillies back-up catcher Dane Sardinha…

…for the third out of the bottom of the 13th inning, and then Mets catcher Ronny Paulino (who enjoyed a five hit night), tossed us Tim’s first ever third-out baseball.

Thanks, Ronny!

Now, back to the bloody guy.  The big question:  what the heck happened to him!?

I honestly don’t know.  I was literally the closest person to him when whatever happened to him happened to him.  But I didn’t see it because I was looking toward the Phanatic advancing from the 3B side of the dugout.  All I saw was “something” red whiz by (something that I initially thought was a t-shirt being tossed into the crowd).

I heard people muttering something about the Phanatic kicking the guy.  I don’t know what that means.  The Phanatic was running down the dugout giving out high fives.  Could he have accidentally got too close to the edge of the dugout and ran into the guy (who I believe was standing up at the time) at full speed?  I don’t know.  Was the Phanatic’s red leg the “something” that whizzed by me as I reached up for a high five (and was left hanging)?  I don’t know.

Bottom line, I have no clue what happened except that this dude was standing their one second, and the next second he was dripping blood all over the front row and the top of the dugout.  I did a search for news articles that might have mentioned the fan getting hurt and found nothing.  I guess I’ll never know for sure what happened.

For the rest of the game, these two guys were on hand-and-knee sterilizing and cleaning the area:

They had little boxes with biohazard signs on them.  They poured white powder all over the ground and sprayed a cleaning substance all over the blood marks on the seats and dugout.

Tim kept asking me why the guys were pouring *sugar* on the blood (they said it was an absorbing powder/gel substance that sucks up the blood) and telling me to point out to the guys that there was a peanut shell full of blood on the ground under the seat.  Tim is very observant when it comes to peanut shells.

Anyway, soon after Paulino tossed us the third out baseball, he hit the game winning RBI hit in the top of the fourteenth.  It was almost 1 o’clock in the morning.

It seemed as if the Phils were folding up shop for the night when they sent Cole Hamels in to pinch hit with one out in the bottom of the fourteenth:

He grounded out.

Tim was really, really tired:

But soon, John Mayberry, Jr. struck out to end the game.  Tim was so tired that I was holding him as umpire Jim Wolfe approached the umpires’ tunnel.  I called his name.   He looked up and saw us.  He grabbed a baseball, and tossed it right to us.  But an extremely large adult fan in the diamond club section leaned over a railing, reached in front of us with his bare hand, and deflected the baseball right into Tim’s face.

That was all the half asleep boy needed:  he burst into tears.  The guy didn’t even notice what he’d done as he scrambled for the loss baseball on the ground.  Jim Wolfe, on the other hand, saw exactly what happened.  And he hollered at me, held up a second baseball and tossed it to me and Tim.

Thanks, Blue.

After we caught the second umpire baseball, the guy who had knocked the ball into Tim’s face had learned what he’d done from some other fans (generally everyone around was very sympathetic to poor little Tim getting nailed in the face) and he came over and apologized.

As we headed up the stairs to the exit, I asked Tim to hold up the replacement umpire ball so we could get a picture…

…”so we can remember what happened to you when we tried to get that ball from the umpire.”  Tim replied, “but I don’t want to remember that!”

The picture and our little exchange about the memory actually helped a lot.  I think Tim was more stunned (and exhausted) than he was hurt.  After our exchange, he dried his tears and reverted to his usual happy little self.

Wow, what a day.  Our first non-doubleheader of the season ended up going 14 innings (and until 1 a.m.), we witnessed a memorable crowd reaction to the announcement about Osama bin Laden, we got a third out baseball, our first umpire baseball at this stadium, and 6 total completely gloveless baseballs (more than doubling our lifetime total of 5 previous baseballs at Citizens Bank Park), and we witnessed the mysterious fan injury as the Phanatic ran by giving high fives and all of the “biohazard” clean-up that followed.

Incredible.