Bearhugs Blog

 We couldn’t find anyone to explain the rules of baseball to us, so we reckoned we’d make do with what we know about rounders. Not that different, is it?

We had some great seats and enjoyed the lead up to the game sipping some beer, even Maria is getting into this drinking beer idea. The weather is glorious and warm, and a cold beer is perfect. Maria bought me a baseball bat, I know all about rounders, so if they get desperate I could always go in as a pinch hitter. Mind you I’m not sure I could do the fielding or pitching, these Americans are pretty good at throwing and catching, I bet it’s the mitts that do it (perhaps Maria could get me one of those too). 

 

There is a lot of activity during a game, which team is batting and which is fielding is constantly changing, they keep cleaning the sandy bits, (just between the diamond and the outfield), the mascot (a big red bird, they’re called the Memphis Redbirds) keeps whipping the crowd up, lucky seat numbers get prizes, free t-shirts are thrown into the crowd and the cheerleaders come out (the best bits).

The Redbirds (in red and white) were playing Omaha. There were lots of families, with children of all ages. The food stands were amazing (we had hot dogs, it seemed right).

It was a good game, pretty exciting at times, particularly in the ninth, when Redbirds were just ahead, Omaha was in to bat and the bases were loaded, the batter had had 2 strikes and the pitcher was on the 3rd ball, so either the batter was going to walk it and so they’d get a significant number of runs (and the Redbirds would have to do really well in their last inning) or the batter would get a third strike and the Redbirds would have won.

The Redbirds won!!

There was a bit of a celebration afterward, one of the Redbirds old players was retiring and they were retiring his number, so there were fireworks. I always like fireworks.

Afterwards I achieved one of my great ambitions and met some cheerleaders! John was jealous (I think that is why the camera shook).

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 22nd, 2007 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Memphis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.