Baseball And Father's Day Weekend

Our season ticket package for the season (Potomac Nationals - single A minor league), had us set up for a game both yesterday and today, but as has happened all season, Mother Nature jumped in and toyed with us.

The P-Nats have had nine rainouts this season, the most for at least 20 years, and the season is now only half over! Double headers have been frequent to make up the games, and there have been times when... well, like this time.

Friday night was supposed to be a double header, but was rained out. Ok, so Saturday would be an evening double header, but the field was still swamped from an early afternoon downpour that they finally called it and scheduled *another* double header for today.

Liz and I knew that they had had some rain on Saturday, so we watched the weather radar and the team website. The notice kept saying "postponed due to field conditions". We called at 6pm and the box office said, "Yep, they're starting the first game now!"

We jumped in the car and got to the stadium but, nope, they'd postponed again. From 6:15 to 7:00 to 7:30. In the meantime, they'd given out t-shirts, baseballs, more t-shirts, had contests and more give-aways and generally kept things going.

Finally, at 8pm they called it, because the outfield was just too sloppy to play on. To make it up to the fans, some of whom had been there since 4pm, everyone with a ticket to the game will get *two* free tickets to a future game. Fireworks were still scheduled, so they let the kids run the bases for a half hour - and gave away more goodies like game used bats - and then did the fireworks. It still wasn't real dark, so the fireworks were different. You could see the smoke from each shell burst, and they'd light up with different colors from the following bursts. It's better in full dark, but this was still pretty cool.

Today we stayed for the first game only. A foul ball ricochetted off the fence by the visitors dugout and zoomed between Liz and I, almost beaning me. Later a high foul popup came our way and the visiting team's third baseman came over the fence and practically into my lap trying to catch it. He was ok, no thanks to the concrete steps that broke his fall.

Later, Liz was selected as the "lucky fan" and if one of the guys had hit a home run in the inning she would have won $100. A grand slam was worth $2800. No such luck. The game ended up 1-0 when they walked the winning run in in the bottom of the ninth. Yay!

Later I talked to my Dad, who's in the hospital. The doctor saw a spot on his lung so they went in to look. It was cancer so they removed about a third of his lung. He's doing fine, breathing on his own and sounding good. We Phipps' are tough, and he'll be going home probably on Wednesday.

How was your Father's Day?