To perform my patriotic duty as an American, I elected to spend my Independence Day celebrating the fine American traditions of baseball, hot dogs, and shooting stuff into orbit. That much of my day would be spent in my German automobile or that 46 minutes would be spent watching Germany and Italy kick a ball around is no consequence.
After stopping by my new place in Clearwater, I rode the MBR (that's McMullen-Booth Road, not master boot record) to St. Petersburg, stopping (with a few other cars) in a Lowe's parking lot to see if I might watch my first live shuttle launch. Except for a tiny arcing plume of smoke, that might not even have been the shuttle, I didn't see much... clouds everywhere. Oh well, I... sort of saw a shuttle launch. I hurried to the Trop, where a WDAE tailgater was in action, snagged a third-row left-field ticket (because Right Field Sucks) and headed into the Brewhouse to watch the first half of Italy vs. Germany. I ended up standing next to local sports talk guru Steve "Big Dog" Duemig -- a guy I rather loathe but listen to daily anyway. I do like his appreciation for soccer, though, and we chatted a bit during the game.
I like going to major league games on special days -- Memorial Day, Opening Day, or the 4th of July. The festivities are a little more... festive. This day was no different, with mascot Raymond in an Uncle Sam outfit, a Jumbotron speech from our esteemed President of the United States, a mumbled statement from Commissioner Bud Selig in which he managed to not curse the name of Jose Canseco, and a cool tribute to our airmen at MacDill Air Force Base. Jorge Cantu appears several times in the Pledge of Allegiance bit; did he become an American citizen at some point? He played for Mexico in the WBC.
The game started, and I realized that while in the crowd of 21,000 Red Sox Nation was in full force, my section of seats was solidly in Rays gear. Killer. After a few innings, a Sox fan who vaguely resembled my high school buddy Dave Christlieb started putting on a Superman costume. He didn't have a phone booth, and needed help from his friends putting it on, but eventually he found a way to strut his stuff.
Casey Fossum was on fire, striking out eight in five innings of work. The family next to me, a seven-year-old with his parents, got up during the fourth to get food. When they returned, I discovered an abomination.
See, I love the new Rays ownership, and they've made $10 million in changes to Tropicana Field to make it a more pleasurable place to watch a game. However, they've made one change that I find almost intolerable: they've changed the old Hebrew National brown mustard to the more common French's yellow. Like any Cleveland Indians fan, I'm a mustard snob, and believe that mustard comes in one color: baby-puke brown. Yet mustard is mustard, in a lot of ways, and I deal with it. A dog at the game is a dog at the game, and I dutifully buy one loaded with kraut and French's every game I attend.
The family returned and I found the child had not brown Bertman's mustard or even yellow French's but... *gasp* catsup on his hot dog.
I looked at the hot dog, then at the boy who was eager to tear into it.
"Son, why do you have catsup on your hot dog," I asked.
"I like catsup," he replied.
"Don't you know you put mustard on a hot dog?" I inquired.
The boy's mom intervened. "Catsup is a perfectly fine condiment for hot dogs," she explained.
"You, ma'am, are a bad parent," I answered, laughing, and turned back to the other 20-somethings in my row.
Alas, no video for that interaction.
The best part of the evening was the extended Maddon shift. If you haven't been watching Baseball Tonight lately, Rays manager Joe Maddon shifts the infield every time David Ortiz bats for the Red Sox. My increasingly-drunken left field crew started calling it the "Sloppy Shift." 3B Aubrey Huff goes to deep left field, SS Julio Lugo sits in very short straightaway center, 2B Jorge Cantu heads to middle-right, 1B Ty Wigginton to short right, and LF Carl Crawford in left-center. Or just watch the video where Ortiz finds himself entirely unable to get a hit even with 50% of the field completely empty. Yeah, that's me screaming on the video.
Okay, I lied. The best part of the evening was telling a woman she was a bad parent for letting her child put catsup on a hot dog. Oh, and the fact that we beat the Red Sox for the second night in a row. That was nice, too.
you were perfectly right, of course. She IS a bad parent for teaching her child that it's okay to put catsup on a hot dog. I weep for the future...