{"id":1281,"date":"2007-08-18T12:06:24","date_gmt":"2007-08-18T16:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=1281"},"modified":"2015-03-29T14:50:53","modified_gmt":"2015-03-29T14:50:53","slug":"on-last-nights-baseball-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1281","title":{"rendered":"On Last Night’s Baseball Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

I won tickets to last night’s Aberdeen Ironbirds<\/a> game. They’re a short-season Class A affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles in the New York-Penn League, owned by Cal Ripken, Jr. I remember when their stadium was built — I lived outside Philly at the time, and I’d pass it on I-95 when driving down to Baltimore to visit my grandmother. At work yesterday they held a drawing for tickets for the game, I submitted my name, and lo and behold, I won two tickets to go see the Ironbirds take on the Staten Island Yankees.<\/p>\n

I left work at five, drove up to Aberdeen — about thirty miles north of Baltimore &mash; and got to the stadium pretty much as they opened the gates. I bought souvenirs — a baseball cap, a tee-shirt — and a footlong hot dog. And a monster bag of crackerjacks.<\/p>\n

My seat? Section 100. A6. Smack dab in the middle of the first row, right behind home plate. The usher wiped down my seat. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Batting practice was finishing as I took my seat, and I got to observe firsthand how the lines are laid on the basepaths.<\/p>\n

Four ceremonial first pitches. One was thrown to Cal Ripken himself. A local choral group came out and sang the Star Spangled Banner. What with all the pregame festivities, the game proper didn’t begin until about 7:45.<\/p>\n

The game? Well, it was a shutout — Staten Island 9, Aberdeen 0<\/a>. Aberdeen never really threatened. Aberdeen’s starting pitcher went into the sixth, then the relief pitcher gave up a two run bomb and a couple more runs besides before getting out of the inning. There was an amusing play where two outfielders and the shortstop watched the ball drop in between them.<\/p>\n

I had two pitching scouts from the Yankees sitting behind me. They had notebooks, clipboards, and a radar gun. “Location?” “Was that a change-up or a slider?” They were amusing to listen to, especially when the Yankees’ closer wasn’t particularly effective in the bottom of the ninth.<\/p>\n

The crowd of about six thousand had seriously thinned out by the final pitch around 10:00. By the ninth I was the only person still in the first row. No, I wasn’t expecting a last minute rally — and I chuckled a little when a guy a few rows behind me started shouting words of encouragement to the Ironbirds’ final batter — of course<\/i> he’d wait until the kid had two strikes on him, and it reminded me of a Carolina Mudcats game where, with the eternal optimism of youth, a kid sitting near me insisted throughout the bottom of the ninth that the Mudcats were “going for the grand slam” to tie the game<\/a>. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

As I left the stadium, people were giving out loaves of bread. Loaves of bread. I took two, then drove back to Baltimore.<\/p>\n

No, it wasn’t a great game for the hometown nine (though, really, it’s not my hometown in any way, shape or form), but I had a nice time. I got to eat a footlong hot dog. I got to be about twenty feet from Cal Ripken. I got two loaves of bread, a tee-shirt, and a cap. Baseball in small town America — you gotta love it. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I won tickets to last night’s Aberdeen Ironbirds game. They’re a short-season Class A affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles in the New York-Penn League, owned by Cal Ripken, Jr. I remember when their stadium was built — I lived outside Philly at the time, and I’d pass it on I-95 when driving down to BaltimoreContinue reading “On Last Night’s Baseball Game”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[392,4081],"class_list":["post-1281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball","tag-aberdeen-ironbirds","tag-baseball","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}