Sarah's First Baseball Game

The last week in August, a friend of mine at work was talking about how he was going up to see the Northwest Arkansas Naturals, a Royals farm team based in Springdale, that upcoming weekend. I had been thinking that Benjamin and I, at least, hadn't been to a game this year like we did last season with the Arkansas Travelers (Angels farm team, Little Rock).

I checked their web site and, sure enough, the Travelers were in town that weekend as well, playing the Springfield Cardinals (St. Louis farm team, so always a plus). Not only that, but Sunday's game was an afternoon affair that had the promotion that an entire family could get in for $10 with a church bulletin. Meron was good with that and, since Sarah had never gone before, we thought it'd be nice to take her to her first game.

With the changes in our church worship schedule, where now the traditional service is at 9 AM and our Sunday School is at 10, this was the first time that the Sunday afternoon game was a doable thing. So, after church and lunch, and seeing that the weather was going to be unseasonably mild for the end of August, we headed down to Little Rock.

What the promotion didn't say was exactly where those seats were going to be. They were berm seating, which meant grass down the lines and out past the outfield walls. We took some seats above the grass down the third base line. This allowed the kids to do a little more running around and playing. I'm not sure just how much of the game got watched!

Meron took this picture from our seats. As you can tell, we had to have popcorn soon after we got there. However, since it was a 2:00 start, too late for lunch and too early for dinner, it might be the only time I've ever gone to a ball game and not gotten a hot dog. The kids enjoyed the popcorn and had some of Meron's frozen strawberry treat later on in the day.

What parts of the game I got to see, it was a pitcher's duel. The Cards led most of the game before a towering home run in the 8th off of a promising relief prospect tied it up. This became a plot point later on, but let me take it in order.

Somewhere around the fifth inning, it was time to head to the gift shop. Benjamin and I wandered around first while the girls hit the bathroom. When Sarah got to the shop, she immediately picked out the yellow foam finger as what she wanted. (She wanted her brother to get the blue one, but he finally--after a ton of deliberation--picked up some Travelers playing cards since he's gotten into games like War and Crazy Eights and Go Fish.) Momma was especially thrilled at this selection and tried to get her to go a different route, but with no success.

We moved on from the gift shop and went over to the play area behind right field. There were a lot of the bump and jump, blowup type things out there for kids to play on. H owever, when we got over there, we found out that it cost $3 for each kid (and our cash was too low for that) plus it closed in the seventh and it was already the sixth inning. This devastated Benjamin, who tends to get worked up pretty easily. However, I settled him down with the idea that, if he stayed until the end of the game, he could run the bases after it. This was acceptable and calmed him down.

We made it back around to our seats, but by that time the sun was getting a little warm, so we decided to move to some vacant ones closer to the field. We wound up over on the first base side a few rows up from the dugout.

However, Benjamin and I didn't stay there long because the announcement was made after the end of the eighth that kids that wanted to run the bases needed to get in line. Th ey actually had two lines, one for five and under, one for six and up, and they let the younger kids go first. The line formed up not far from where our new seats were, so we were lucky enough to basically be at the front of the line.

Remember I said something about that tying home run? Well, neither team scored in the ninth, of course. Which meant that we had extra baseball, which normally is a fine thing, but not so much when you are standing around waiting in line. The above is about the angle we were at, waiting on the stairs of a section for the game to be over. Thankfully, the Travelers won it in the bottom of the 10th. If it had gone much longer, I'm not sure what we'd have done.

As the players started filing off the field, the line moved down a little closer, so as to be ready to let the kids take off as soon as they could safely run around on the field.

If you look really closely (or maybe if you click and the picture gets bigger), you can see a red shirt with a white number on the back of it right next to second base. That's Benjamin, who was wearing his Albert Pujols shirt that day. They let them run starting at first base and I was figuring they'd let them do the circuit and finish up at first. In fact, I positioned myself right at the bag to get a good shot of him coming down the line. Instead, though, the run ended over at home plate, so I had to hustle over to get to him before he got lost in the crowd.

All in all, it was a good day. I think the kids were a little bored by the game, but that's too be expected at that age. They got snacks, they were outside, and Benjamin got to get on the field, so it's tough to beat all of that. I look forward to taking them again next year!