Let's just watch the game

Some (many?) blogs are by their very nature exercises in selfishness. When folks ask me what my blog is about, I have to be pretty honest. Me. There's more to it than that, I guess. I'd like to think it's God and me, but the me is definitely in there. Anyway, I try to avoid navel gazing as best I can, but today's post will fall into the selfishness category..

As I was running last Sunday morning, I tried to think of a fatherly thing to do with my kids and wondered if the Milwaukee Brewers were in town so I could take my 5-year-old to a game. I came home, checked the paper and the Brewers were playing at home. I actually prefer going to Milwaukee to see baseball these days. It's only about 75 minutes away, the parking is better, it's a new park, and seats are available. Most of the time.

We headed north right after church, I only answered "How much longer?" four times, we played some intense games of "I Spy," and made it there about 20 minutes before the game started. But it took forever to get into the parking lot. I decided to pay more ($12) for "Preferred Parking" so we wouldn't have to walk as far, but we were stuck for quite some time in a long line of cars. I turned on the radio to listen to the game and Bob Uecker (the announcer) noted the size of the crowd. He wasn't surprised, after all, because "it's a sell-out." I couldn't believe it. I didn't even check before I left because Brewer games are never sold out. We waited another 20 minutes or so to park (and the parking wasn't that preferred) and I wondered if we'd wasted $12 for a game we couldn't attend. They did have standing-room-only tickets so I bit the bullet and decided we'd chance it.

We made our way up to the top level of the stadium and came upon a kids area with a playground. They had a special kids concession stand there, too, so we ordered our food, found a spot on a bench and ate our hot dogs. I watched the game on a TV monitor and Caroline eagerly awaited to play in the playground. We finished, made our way over there and the woman stopped Caroline.

"She has to have socks on."

"What?"

"She has to have socks on to go in there." Caroline was wearing sandals so was barefoot at this moment.

"How about if she puts her sandals on?"

A shake of the head. "Nope. Only socks."

"You've got to be kidding me."

"You can buy some socks the gift store."

Of course you can. Caroline took this better than I did. I was muttering as we walked away and then a roar from the crowd came through the gates. I grabbed Caroline's hand and we ran out to see what happened. A Brewer home run and Bernie the Brewer sliding down his special slide. I spotted a couple of empty seats, asked the guy if we could sit there and he nodded. So, we actually watched some baseball for a couple innings and Caroline seemed to be enjoying it. We took off to explore some more and, at one point, Caroline said to me, "Daddy, can't we just watch the game?" Beautiful words to my ears. If only we had seats.

There was another kids area with one of those enclosed trampolines and she had fun doing that while I had a great view of the scoreboard and a bit of centerfield. After the 7th, I asked if she wanted to go home and she said yes pretty quickly.

I rarely have had such a frustrating and completely enjoyable experience. Hmmm, a little like fatherhood, perhaps.