Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Baseball Experience: The American Way

So my friend, Chi, invited me to go to a baseball game last night with her, her children, her sister in law, and her mother in law. Oh, and little poet #2 went as well since Chi's daughter and my daughter are best buddies.

For starters, the seats were great - right on the first base line. And even though we were watching a triple A team play, with all of the vendors milling through the crowd and the between inning entertainment, the venue had a Major League feel. Right away they noticed that the chairs came equipped with cup holders. "Americans prepare for food and drinks for every activity," they giggled. "It's the American Way", I sarcastically assured them. Throughout the game, I explained some of the ins and outs of baseball to Chi (baseball is not as popular in Nigeria as it is here). Then Chi bought a round of nachos and hot dogs for everyone after the fourth inning (which, she was surprised to discover, ended after the third out...and it was taking forever to snatch that third out). I could not convince the sister or MIL to take a bite of cheesy nachos - which I assured them was also "the American Way." Chi noted that the nachos were a little spicy. "A little?" I puzzled. "You Americans don't know spicy," she giggled. And I know from experience that she wasn't kidding. Between one of the innings, the mascot shot hot dogs from an air gun into the crowd. Chi's oldest son caught one!

We left before the game was over. It was getting late, and it was a school night for the kiddos. On the way home, little Chi rode with me. The whole way home, all I could hear was giggling. Good times!

BTW: Anyone know how to fix my "Read More" widget? I'm not a JS pro, and even though I've had a looksy, I don't know how to fix it!

9 comments:

Aniket Thakkar said...

LOL.

Surely the American way it is. The whole of Madison was painted red for the Badgers match, when I was there. :D

And even I have to do something about that read more thingy.

I'll let you know if I figure out a way. Aerin would surely know, but I won;t let her have the satisfaction of telling me. :D

My bro. is a web designer so he is the last resort. :D

Aniket Thakkar said...

Ha, I cracked it. :D

Go to Dashboard->Layout->Edit HTML

Save full Template, so that you don't hunt me down later if anything goes kaput. :D

Then Click on Expand Widget Templates and in the code search for "Read More".

Comment the following piece of code as shown:

[!--
[span id='showlink']
[a expr:href='data:post.url']Read more...[/a]
[/span] --]

And voila! 'Read more' troubles are gone.

Aniket Thakkar said...

Since Blogger doesn't allow me to paste html code here. I had to alter the code in the above comment. Just replace [ with < and ] with > and you get the code you want to comment.

Karen said...

This sounds like a fun evening. I think it's interesting that they picked up on things we don't give a passing thought. My daughter-in-law is from Germany, and when her parents visit, I seem to be more aware of "The American Way."

JR's Thumbprints said...

Did you know those baseball tickets come with a disclaimer: If you're hit with a baseball, it is agreed upon that the purchaser of the ticket cannot hold the baseball team or its owner liable. Thank goodness flying hotdogs were coming your way. What about t-shirts? That's another popular flying object.

Catherine Vibert said...

That sounds like fun. Do they really shoot hot dogs into the audience? I guess its been a few years since I've been to a game. They've added to the entertainment! :-)

bluesugarpoet said...

thanks ani - i'll have to work on that today

@karen - yeah, we are an indulgent, commercialized bunch in America. It's kind of embarrassing at times.

@JR & Cat - I was actually disappointed that it was only a hot dog! The thing is wrapped up in newspaper and saran wrap, and it is shot out of a bazooka type air gun. We thought he won some kind of cool prize and began to unwrap it, but luckily someone clued us in that we had to take the thing to a hot dog stand and exchange it for a fresh hot dog.

PJD said...

I bet your area does minor league pretty well. I loved going to the St. Paul Saints game a couple of summers ago. It was YMCA day, and they had SO many groups of kids there that they actually set up lawn chairs in deep left field and put caution tape up or something to make left field more shallow. When they announced the attendance, the PA guy said "8,312... that's WAY above capacity!"

They also had some dancing banana doing a "peanut butter jelly time" song. It was a little troubling, actually.

iron girl traveling said...

Love the ladybug posts...where were they on our run? Had fun catching up @ bday party