It's that time of year again... you know, when our DVR is completely full because we don't have time to watch any of "our shows" because we spend every day watching baseball. We are all ok with that, though. Yesterday, we FINALLY made it to our first RAYS game of the season. It's late for us, we usually get to opening day or pretty close to it. Apparently, LIFE got in the way of that this year. We had a Fun Family Night at the Trop, even though the RAYS lost.
When Ryan got our tickets earlier in the week, he picked up this shirt for Debbie. Although, chemo is finished, and her hair is starting to grow back:) She should be honored. None of us got new RAYS shirts this year!
Well, actually, we DID get new shirts when we got to the Trop. Friday nights they give away T shirts if you get there early, which of course, we did. This week the shirts commemorated the last game of the last years regular season, 162. Quick apology to all my peeps who are Red Sox fans, feel free to skip over this part of the post. So, game 162 was a pretty Big Unbelievable Turn of Events Deal in Rays Land. Ryan was at the game, texting me the whole time. I stayed up to watch it, as it was most likely going to be the last game of the season. Ryan almost left (um, it was late and he had school the next morning) but decided to stay since he figured he owed the Rays that much of his loyalty. Good thing he stuck around...
For right now at the Trop, they have a little hallway they've put together commemorating the game with time frames and the same for the Red Sox game from that night, too. (hence the apology) It's pretty cool, you know, if you are a Rays fan.
Good times.
Ok, so after we checked all that out, we settled down to eat our dinner that we had brought in (remember, got there early to get the free shirt) and I had just said to Ryan that I needed to go talk to the Group Sales person about getting the tickets to bring all the kids from camp to a, wait for it, Red Sox game this summer. Well, you know, Rays game, and that happens to be who they are playing on the day we need to go. (I'd like to take this time to point out that originally, our camp schedule said, "baseball game Rays vs. Red Socks", which made me laugh for a long time until I got Diane to fix it). ANYWAYS, not two seconds later this guy comes up to us from Group Sales and asks us if we want to change our tickets. I, of course, asked him if he heard me saying I needed to talk to him. Blank look. "Ummmm, no, I just wanted to know if you wanted to upgrade your seats to down on the field?" So, I was able to get the whole camp thing settled AND we swapped our tickets with him to go and sit right behind the opposing teams bull pen down on the field. VERY FUN.
Of course, we have never had THAT vantage point before (they don't usually sell those seats, I guess) and in the end they aren't the BEST seats to watch the game, but they are GREAT for feeling like you are hanging out with pitchers and stuff. Seeing how they were sitting right in front of us. The Rays were playing the Minnesota Twins who we don't play very often, so we aren't all that familiar with their players... but it was fun anyways.
Carly watching batting practice...
McGregor boys...
The starting pitcher for the Twins. Carly said, "Hey Dad... is that Jimi Hendrix?" Oh boy. In her defense, she does play an awful lot of Guitar Hero, but we've got some serious work to do...
The main "problem" with these seats would be how completely DISTRACTED we were during the game! Lots going on all around us... including the empty area behind us where they film various "in between innings" crowd entertainment.
plus, the pitchers right in front of us was somewhat entertaining... commentary on the game and just odd things they do, like this guy has a whole pink and purple caboodle (remember those?!?!) filled with little items he might need during the game, all perfectly organized... bandaids, tooth picks, sunflower seeds, oh yes, I looked when he had it open.
Around the 5th inning, during commercial breaks the pitchers suddenly jumped up and started stretching. Like nuts.
We even got to witness the Call to the Bull pen and watched the pitching coach tell who was up next... just another side of the game we hadn't paid much attention to. It's probably a very good thing that we didn't really "know" these guys, can't imagine if we'd been on the Rays side, Ryan would have been a mess! HA!
Anyways, Rays lost. WHAT??!?!?! But we all agreed it was still a REALLY great game and such a neat experience! And the pitchers gave Carly a ball at the end of the game, which she immediately gave to her brother, you know, since she got one from the home plate umpire before. Oh boy. Oh, did I mention Carlos Pena is back? :)
