take me out to the ballgame (m)

Abby emailed me weeks ago.  She is doing a charity run for wounded warriors called Run to Home Plate at Fenway Park in Boston on Sunday, May 22nd.  She's ordering tickets to watch the game that evening and would we like to join her and her family? 

Abby lives near San Francisco.  If she is coming to Fenway Park, then I think I can make it to the game  too.

We arrange to meet at a pub on Landsdowne Street.  A friend's husband is co-owner of the pub and he gets us a reservation.  Good thing as the lines are long even 2 hours before the start of the game. 

Abby and I order the spinach salad with grilled chicken.  I drink ice tea, but everyone tells me to get a beer...it's a ballgame, after all.  I get something called Blue Moon which is good.  About 8 points.

My friend's husband surprises us by sending appetizers "on the house" our way.  Smoked mussels, potato chips with melted cheese and stuffed potato skins.  Ab's husband and I have most of the mussels.  I have several potato chips with the cheese.  I drink all my beer.  I eat all my salad.  Must be about 29 points right there.

We walk to the bleachers and hike up 28 rows. 

The view is spectacular. 

We start out watching the game but then the rowdy drunks around us start fighting.  Security is called.  People get ejected.  The three nice Chicago Cubs fans in front of us want to start a pool to see who will be thrown out next.  Will it be the man in the blue helmet?  The girl in the pink hat? The Patriots fan who threw peanuts at the Cubs fan in the blue helmet?  The older man in the red and yellow hockey shirt (he was first)? So many choices.






Fans waiting to see who will be evicted



Fenway Park has many traditions.  One of them is that each player has his own "psyche up music" while coming to the plate or the mound.  The big-stud reliever, Jonathan Papelbon fist-pumps the chubby policeman and then, as the gate to the mound opens, they play "Shipping up to Boston" by the Dropkick Murphys.

This makes me wonder what music they would play for me.  There a few songs with my name in them but I think the one that captures me best is "She's a Brick House."  Though after tonight's food orgy, it might be Cheeseburger in Paradise."

Ab and I talk the whole game.  More drunks get evicted.  I field a phone call from my friend Susan.  If there were a quiz at any given moment asking me the score or which inning we were in, I would have flunked.

And yet, it is the best ballgame I've been to in a long, long time.