Take Me Out to the Ball Game

To my left, the "Ascot Opening Day" scene from My Fair Lady is playing, and it's as priceless as ever. If you have never seen this movie, see it. Immediately. Even if you're the sort of person who doesn't like musicals. If you are the sort of person who doesn't like musicals, there are a couple of songs you'll want to skip ("On the Street Where You Live," anyone?), but on the whole, you'll still find something to love at least three times a minute through the entire excessive duration of the movie. Promise.

Anyway. Kirsten's mom gave us Mariners tickets for the game today vs. the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, so we took the ferry over and walked to Safeco Field. We discovered on the way over that it was LUNCHBOX DAY (!) for children 14 and under. Or, in Kirsten's case, for children at heart who smile largely and say "Hello!!" to the high school kid who's working at the gate and thinks they're cute. I think I may use the lunch box at work in the future. It's a nice souvenir. Kirsten likes it too.
We were on the top deck on the third base line, and it was nice view of things. It looked like this:
We were sitting just a couple of rows in front of a boy named Gus, who had the privilege -and I don't know just how he got it- of stealing second base during the seventh inning stretch. There was a corporate sponsor for it, of course, and he got to run out of the break in the outfield wall, charge down to second base, pull it out of the dirt, and bring it back to his seat as a souvenir. I never played baseball as a kid, and I've never really been a big fan myself, but this made me wish I could go back and fix things because... Well, gosh, second base!

Jock: I totally caught this foul ball!
Ten-year-old Gus: I stole second base.
Jock: I'm ashamed of my arrogance.

The scoring started in the third inning with a home run by Tampa Bay. Seattle answered with their own home run in the same inning, and then from there, I don't remember exactly what happened when, but a bunch of bad pitchers from Seattle gave up some nice hits that were handled poorly by fielders of both in- and out- persuasions, and by the end of the afternoon, they dropped the game 9-2.

If you haven't been keeping up with the Mariners (and I haven't, I've just been informed), you know that it's been a tragic season. Three games out of first place, and then they dropped 15 of 17 games and they just can't pull out of the nose dive. (Root, root, root for the home team / if they don't win, it's the same...) But it was still a ton of fun to watch. The stadium's nice, and the crowd likes to cheer, and it's just a cool spectacle. There are also legendary garlic fries. When you eat them, insects and wives keep their distance for weeks, and you have to buy a new toothbrush. It's pretty awesome.
There are also salmon things and fish and chips and clam chowder and clam strips as well as the normal concessions like hot dogs and pizza. It's very Pacific Northwest.

The mascot for the Mariners is the moose, and he wanders around through the whole game giving high fives and posing for photo ops. He also delivers prizes to people whose seats are chosen at random, and someone fairly close to us got the coolest prive ever today: 121 bags of Chee-tos. Incredible. He was picked for the prize over the park PA and the scoreboard, and then, "Let's see what he's won... 121 bags of Chee-tos! Brought to you by another corporate sponsor."
It was a really fun day, and I'd go again. I'm not stepping in line to pay a ton for season tickets, but it would be fun to go back every so often. Especially if we start winning. Come visit us some time, and we'll take you too.

And this is more or less without context, but Kirsten snapped this picture of me when I was looking at the Sound from the Bremerton ferry dock. I'm used to these telescopes costing a quarter, but Washington is cooler than other places, so it's free.