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Squirrelball!
Jun. 11th, 2016 10:58 pmSo, a couple months ago, I happened to hear about a minor league baseball team called the Richmond Flying Squirrels. Folks who have read this for a while know I have a thing for squirrels. So, I'm perusing their website, and notice that they are going to be playing some games against the Manchester, NH Fisher Cats. I check the Fishercats web site and lo and behold, after the thursday evening game, there would be fireworks! Squirrels and fireworks, two of my favorite things to watch.
So onto the website and buy myself a ticket, and heck, it's only 8.50 more for reserved parking in the VIP lot, so I bought that also. Now, understand that I am not a sportsball fan. Last professional baseball game I attended was in Baltimore, in their old ball park, around 1990 or 91. I did work for a season more recently as game day security at Foxboro stadium, which left me with an intense desire to never attend an NFL game again in my life, unless they could somehow guarantee that there would be no football fans there.
So, thursday rolls around and I took off early from work and drove to NH. It was a cool and windy day, I definitly should have worn long pants, I was seriously considering leaving early it was so uncomfortable.
I was going for a blood sugar test the next morning, so I couldn't eat anything that had a lot of sugar or starch in it. This is, you understand, just about everything that is served in the concessions that doesn't have the word diet in it's name. So the only thing I had to eat was one hot dog that cost me $4.50, and I skipped most of the bun. The only hot drinks for sale was hot chocolate or coffee, neither one an option for me.
I also intended to buy some Flying Squirrels merch. Hats, t-shirts, whatever. I was prepared to drop fifty bucks or more on overpriced logo clothing. There was no flying squirrels merchandise for sale. Which surprised me. Minor league baseball is missing an opportunity here for their out of town fans to buy merch at their away games. I mean, each park would have to allocate a space for the visiting team to setup their booth, and their would have to be space on the equipment truck for a pallet that would unfold into a booth and spare merch would ship on top of that pallet sized box. Probably have to hire a gameday employee to sell the opposing teams merch, rather than have the visiting team have a full time traveling employee. ALthough that traveling sales position could be used as a reward for the part time game day employees from their home park. They get a free trip with the team to whatever city and only have to work maybe six hours each gameday.
So I watched the game. They had the net up behind home plate to catch balls heading for the stands. But I was in the next section out from where the net ended. I was surprised at how many times the batter swung and just sort of deflected the balls into the stands. A couple of them landing only several feet away from me, and one I was convinced was going to nail me coming nearly straight down from up high, when it encountered one of the support cables for the net and got deflected into the next section of seats.
The squirrels scored first, and maintained the lead until the 9th inning, when the fishercats got three runs in on a home run hit, reducing the lead to only one point. But the squirrels managed to keep them out and won the game 6-5.
Then we celebrated with fireworks, and I went back to hotel sweet hotel and resumed regular life. IF I keep up this interval, my next professional baseball game will be in 2044 or so. Somebody remind me then.
So onto the website and buy myself a ticket, and heck, it's only 8.50 more for reserved parking in the VIP lot, so I bought that also. Now, understand that I am not a sportsball fan. Last professional baseball game I attended was in Baltimore, in their old ball park, around 1990 or 91. I did work for a season more recently as game day security at Foxboro stadium, which left me with an intense desire to never attend an NFL game again in my life, unless they could somehow guarantee that there would be no football fans there.
So, thursday rolls around and I took off early from work and drove to NH. It was a cool and windy day, I definitly should have worn long pants, I was seriously considering leaving early it was so uncomfortable.
I was going for a blood sugar test the next morning, so I couldn't eat anything that had a lot of sugar or starch in it. This is, you understand, just about everything that is served in the concessions that doesn't have the word diet in it's name. So the only thing I had to eat was one hot dog that cost me $4.50, and I skipped most of the bun. The only hot drinks for sale was hot chocolate or coffee, neither one an option for me.
I also intended to buy some Flying Squirrels merch. Hats, t-shirts, whatever. I was prepared to drop fifty bucks or more on overpriced logo clothing. There was no flying squirrels merchandise for sale. Which surprised me. Minor league baseball is missing an opportunity here for their out of town fans to buy merch at their away games. I mean, each park would have to allocate a space for the visiting team to setup their booth, and their would have to be space on the equipment truck for a pallet that would unfold into a booth and spare merch would ship on top of that pallet sized box. Probably have to hire a gameday employee to sell the opposing teams merch, rather than have the visiting team have a full time traveling employee. ALthough that traveling sales position could be used as a reward for the part time game day employees from their home park. They get a free trip with the team to whatever city and only have to work maybe six hours each gameday.
So I watched the game. They had the net up behind home plate to catch balls heading for the stands. But I was in the next section out from where the net ended. I was surprised at how many times the batter swung and just sort of deflected the balls into the stands. A couple of them landing only several feet away from me, and one I was convinced was going to nail me coming nearly straight down from up high, when it encountered one of the support cables for the net and got deflected into the next section of seats.
The squirrels scored first, and maintained the lead until the 9th inning, when the fishercats got three runs in on a home run hit, reducing the lead to only one point. But the squirrels managed to keep them out and won the game 6-5.
Then we celebrated with fireworks, and I went back to hotel sweet hotel and resumed regular life. IF I keep up this interval, my next professional baseball game will be in 2044 or so. Somebody remind me then.
