The Time I Went To A Baseball Game

Oh summertime. The time to celebrate all things outdoors, pay $4.50/gallon for gas and give praise to America (Jesus). Good times. To help celebrate this summer I did the most American thing possible: I went to a basebol game.

The Greensboro Grasshoppers are a minor league team with a pretty nice stadium (in a pretty shitty part of town) and I just so happened to have worked for them last summer. I won't bore you with the details of that, but let's just say I got paid pennies an hour to film semi-drunk fans acting full on drunk for 3 hours a night 4 nights a week. Good times.

I decided to take this trip (15 minutes up the road) to see one of the Mets' minor league teams. This could be cool because maybe one of these players will eventually be on the Mets in 3 or 4 years (but probably not). I get to the game around 6:45 and pass up the chance to pay for parking in lieu of walking one extra block and free parking. I get to the box office, buy my lone ticket, and get into the stadium just as my old amigo Jim (the announcer) introduces the national anthem. (Note: Jim has a very deep voice, I spent a whole summer with him and the only thing I know is that he has a deep voice, may or may not do professional voiceovers and thinks he is the shiznit because he gets to announce minor league games in a stadium full of 2,000 people every night. He is incredulous and rude and I hate him. Last year when a minor league coach in another city was hit by a foul ball, and consequently passed away from it, Jim was kind enough to offer these words of wisdom to the fans: "Fans as you may or may not know, yesterday Ron Bla Bla was hit by a foul ball.....(hold for dramatic effect) anddddddddd DIED, so watch out for foul balls!")

I went alone because Amelia had work and ummm... I don't have any other friends in Greensboro. So yes, I was the creepy guy who sits by himself. Anyway, I find my seat and realize that Glenda at the box office put me right next to a group of 3 guys (these guys will come up again later, make a mental note). There are 12 other empty seats in the row, but I have to sit right next to the 3 amigos. So I rebel and move a seat down. I'm 3 innings into the game when a group of 4 comes down and guess where they are sitting! That's right in my row, in my seat. I slide down next to my new best friend and prepare myself for the shit that is about to hit my ears. (Also, who comes 3 innings late to a minor league baseball game? It's not LA, there is no traffic, what's the point if you are going to be an hour late.) (Also note, that the entire row in front of me was empty, but Glenda had to shove a whole row full of people together. Note to Glenda: scatter people, it makes them feel more comfortable).

So here I am crammed in between a guy progressively getting drunker and 2 women and their 2 children. (Also included with this deluxe package is some knee chaffing thanks in part to my spider legs hitting the seat in front of me. Good times!) The Mets' team apparently sucks and so 3 innings in I want to leave - they are being no hit and are already losing 7-0 (Man ...the real Mets are gonna be awesome in 3 years!) What makes this whole ordeal even worse is the people surrounding me.

The 3 amigos seem nice enough, they aren't loud or obnoxious, but I just feel uncomfortable around them because they are all wearing boat shoes and dockers to a baseball game (no chance of waves in this stadium fellas). As noted above, the guy directly next to me is on his 3rd tall beer and he has way too many flecks of grey in his otherwise perfectly styled hair (He is also ripped and so our elbows are touching. This is when I get hot and bothered and move onto the next group.)

The guy two rows in front of me is in a group of about 8. He is probably mid 50's and clocking in between 280 and 320 (I couldn't see all of his rolls, his back was to me, sorry for the big guesstimation). He was semi loud and obnoxious. He was a Grasshoppers fan and anytime the Mets' team did something wrong he was on them (normally I don't mind these people, it makes the game fun, but this is a minor league game and no one really cares who wins or loses and considering that I am the only Mets fan in a stadium full of "Hoppers" fans, it's not really worth talking shit.) The Mets' catcher wasn't great and so he heard it from the fat man. The problem was the fat man wasn't really yelling so the guy couldn't hear him and there was a bit of a language barrier (Do you think Francisco Pena understands English?) Regardless, the only one who heard his low brow insults ("Hey idiot, try CATCHING the ball. SNORT CHUCKLE SNORT.") was me.

Last in my little ballpark family was the late arrivals. The one who sat next to me looked like a mix between the Oompa Loompa's from the new Willy Wonka and...well a short loud black lady.

Do you want this staring at you for a night of baseball?

She did a really great job of perpetuating the stereotype that black people are loud and talk at inappropriate times (although I thought this was particular stereotype was reserved for movie theaters.) The second she sat down she started announcing (incorrectly) what just happened in the game. This lady is far and way the most annoying person I've never directly interacted with. As I was sitting silently watching the game, she was yelling loud enough for me to not be able to tune her out. I turned to look at her once to find out that she was talking TO ME. She wanted me to respond to her unintelligible statements. I have provided a list of some of the things that came from her lips and graced my ears tonight at the baseball game.

- "Francisco PEENA, boy. It's PEENA or PANA or something." (Pronounced PAYNE-YAH, don't worry it's not a common last name.)
- (Reading off the roster sheet she says "That's Carlos Gomez." (Announcer then says "Up to bat Carlos GUZMAN." She says "whatever."
- "That was a strike" (After a ball is thrown in the dirt.)
- (After a strikeout) "He ain't out, why they throwin' the ball around the bases. I ain't never seen an umpire make that play before." (At this point she looked and me and asked why the umpire threw the ball around the bases. I told her it wasn't the umpire and that's what teams do when they strike someone out.)
- (After a close play at first where the runner was safe because the pitcher didn't step on the base in time) "He's safe because you gotta tag him out." (Her son says he should be out because the pitcher touched the base) "Not uh, you gotta tag him. I'm surprised you didnt know that, YOU PLAY BASEBALL." (Note: In this situation the son was right, the runner does not need to be tagged.)

Throughout the rest of the game, every pitch was either "STRIKE!!!!" or "DANG!, BALL!" (There were also variation such as "mmmhmmm that was a strike" and "that ain't no ball.")
She also was rooting heavily for both teams, I don't know if this was intentional or she just wanted to see a lot of hitting but my guess is that she couldn't tell the difference between the two teams. Her greatest moment came right before I left.

The last batter I saw was up at the plate with an 0-2 count (I remember this because her voice repeated this off of the scoreboard and in doing so, singed it into my ear drum). On the next pitch he was hit in the face by the pitch and he instantly dropped to the ground. I actually uddered "Oh my God" outloud. It was quite surprising, but luckily I was awoken from my shocked state with her yelling "DANG, You see all that blood? Look at the blood just dripping from his face." Classy.

The batter laid motionless for nearly 15 minutes and luckily Oompa kept her mouth shut most of the time, except on two occasions. 1) After about 7 minutes she analyzed that "He look dead. He ain't even movin." 2) About 3 minutes later she asked "Why ain't no one called a medic?" I didn't have a heart to tell her that the man taking care of the player on the field WAS a medic (hence his bag and the fact that he was stopping the blood gushing from the player's face. However, her pleas were answered when an EMT showed up 3 minutes later to take him to the hospital. (In this sequence she was pissed that the Ambulance took so long to get to the player once it was on the field (it has to drive on the dirt, so it takes the longest route possible) and that once it got to the player, it parked directly behind home plate (the closest spot to the player) and consequently obscured our view. She REALLY wanted to see the blood.)

The player got up and so did I, unable to take another hour of this riggormorall. I'm sure the Hoppers won and that Oompa taught her son that they scored 7 touchdowns on some serious 3 point slam dunk Field Goals. So my big summer night out was kind of a bust, BUT I did get to celebrate America - there was one firework burst when a player hit a HR. I thought "God Bless America" but what I heard was "God DAMN that's loud."

Tomorrow - The Time I Became A Delivery Boy
This Weekend - The Time I Experienced Ikea

If you are good I'll post more bear pictures. (See below)