The good old O's!

They won! It was a great game.

We got there just as the national anthem was being sung (badly) and as these Army Paratroopers were sailing down into the stadium (VERY cool). We got our very orange freezer mugs and found our seats. We were in club level seats on the first base side (yeah, I didn't skimp on these) and could see everything beautifully.

The one drawback (and believe me there was only one)? It was disgustingly hot yesterday. It got up to 95 and with the humidity we had a heat index on 105. We all got a little sticky. But who could complain when our boys were playing so well? Well except for the fifth inning when they played horribly. But we'll ignore that fact becaues it made for a thrilling extra inning play.

Baseball's a terrific game and so much more fun when you're actually there watching it with other people. Plus there's the food. Of course you need to bring about $1000 extra bucks just for food because water is $4 a bottle and it only goes up from there. But you can't go to a game without having your beer and your hotdog. Or your nachos, or whatever your preference is. I'm a hotdog girl myself.

Plus when you're at the stadium you get to watch the people. In case you hadn't guessed, this is one of my favorite pastimes. There was the little boy in front of me who was probably about 5. He thought it was completely necessary when drinking from a sports bottle to lean all the way backwards. His head hit my knees everytime he was thirsty. Then there were the 30-somethings that came in and sat behind us and were trying desparately hard to be teenagers again. And the woman two rows up who should have been cut off way earlier than she had been, because she stood up and literally fell on her ass. Hard. She stood up laughing and just barely managed to get herself into her seat before slumping over onto her comrades.

It was an incredibly fun night. The game was a very thrilling game, the seats were good, and we hard a sound effects guy that wouldn't quit. Literally. I think there was maybe 2 minutes of silent baseball the whole game. Plus whenever I go to a baseball game I think of the movie Bull Durham. It's just a good funny baseball movie. There was one point in the evening when the Padres were up on the mound talking to the pitcher that was particularly reminiscent of a scene from the movie.

Now the fun part. The extra inning. Are we going to be here all night? Please please please just let one of them hit something. Get a guy on base. Then there was that beautiful hit where the whole stadium held it's breath. Will they catch it? Will it go foul? It's outta here!!!

As we were leaving we started following the mob out towards the stairs, but decided it would be easier and a whole lot cooler to stay inside and walk around to the 3rd base side where we'd parked. We had walked about 20 feet past two stadium workers before turning around and deciding to come back the other way. One of them stopped Andy and demanded to see his ticket saying he was allowed on the club level. The game was over at this point. What were we going to see? Were other people not allowed to shop at the nice shops on club level? Andy started trying to explaining that we had walked in front of him about 10 seconds earlier and had not come in off the street. I dug out our tickets and flashed them in front of the guy and he backed off. I guess that was just his job. And he's very good at his job. It doesn't matter what time it is, or if the game is over. His job is checking tickets. It's his job! The poor guy was about 80 years old, so if it makes him happy to have a task to do and do it no matter what, then God bless 'im.