Monday, June 29, 2009

Buy Me Some Peanuts and Crackerjack

They didn't win, and it was a shame. We took the girls to see a Blue Jays game in Toronto yesterday, and despite their defeat to the Phillys, it was a great day anyway.

I love going to baseball games. I hardly ever watch it on tv, although if the Mister is watching one, I'll sort of pay attention, but I adore going to a live game. It's probably the only sport I will pay to watch, in fact. (The NFL doesn't seem interested in coming up with the necessary incentive to get me to pay attention to them, which would be considerable, I can tell you.)

One of the things I love about baseball games is watching the crowd...there's no end of fascinating people at a big baseball park. Like the woman who sat in front of us who seemed to spend the entire game trying to get her boyfriend's attention. (Seriously, he's at a professional sports event, lady, if you showed up naked with tequila he wouldn't pay attention to you.) There were two twenty-something guys sitting beside me who giggled like 11 year-old girls the entire game, and a couple of Orthodox Jews with some little boys who yelled like banshees whenever the Jays got a hit. Everyone was having a ball. I also love that at baseball games, everyone talks to each other. One guy sitting in our row was a Philadelphia fan (in fact, from what I could hear, he drove from Philadelphia to see the game.) and he put up with some good-natured trash-talk until Toronto started trailing, wherein he gave as good as he got.

There is one thing I noticed at the ball park, and that is that there apparently was some sort of convention of People Who Walk Without Watching Where They Are Going meeting there, because no matter where you went, there was someone walking in one direction, and walking in another. They usually complicated matters by carrying vats of Diet Coke and trailing at least one small child with them while doing it.

One of the best things about going to a ball game is the food....for some reason the food at the ball park is unbelievably good. Don't ask me why. But it is heinously expensive. I'm sure the Rogers Centre is no better or worse than any other major league park, but you could easily run through your entire RRSP if you wanted to eat anything there. I bought 2 Coke Zeros and 2 soft pretzels for, get this, $17.00. Seventeen dollars. I saw a woman with a huge box full of hot dogs, at least two dozen, and I bet she had to have a talk with her bank manager this morning regarding that. We did stop off at the grocery store before we set out for the big city, and the Mister found some peanuts there that claimed to be the "official" peanuts of the Blue Jays, so he bought 4 bags for a dollar each. When we got there, the exact same bags were selling for $4.75. So, we felt like we got away with something. (The Mister is always happier when he feels like he's got the financial and moral high ground.)

So much to see and do and eat. You can't beat a ball game on a summer's day.

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