Rivercats

The boys got picked up early today and Evelyn and I just lounged until Mamaw and Debby showed up to take me to the Rivercats game with them. It was appreciation night for the police departments and I'm so happy I got invited to come with them. We had 45 minutes to get to the stadium before the game started but we didn't plan on the absurd traffic. Two broken down vehicles on a road that is already poorly designed sure didn't help us. We were in the car (off the freeway, minutes from the park) for almost an hour. We made it to the game at the bottom of the 3rd inning: Rivercats and Grizzlies tied 1/1 and the Rivercats *already* had one error. Our seats were on the visitor side (never sat on that side before), but they were awesomely close (not as close as I used to get, but those tickets are long gone-moving on).

After that particular traffic catastrophe I wanted a cold beer. 20 minutes later (and $11 out of my pocket-BS prices) I had my beer and I returned to my seat only to discover that the Rivercats let the Grizzlies score 3 runs. I'm a Rivercat fan, but I have to give credit to the Grizzlies this year, they are a stellar team- I will return to watch them again.

At the bottom of the 5th the Grizzlies took the field to warm up, and minutes later the field was cleared. Every player went to their dugout, the bat boys moved, and the umpires walked off the field entirely. No announcement was made about why, but the field stayed empty for a very long time. Many people got up and left and we considered it, but I paid $25 for my ticket and watching 1 inning was not a quality way to spend my money. Besides, if they were canceling the game in the middle, they'd have to refund my money, but only if I was still around to be refunded.

When the game finally resumed (I was later told by another patron that it was stopped because one of the umpires got injured) it had a stereotypical boring baseball aspect to it. Nothing interesting really happened. I take that back, nothing really interesting happened on the Rivercats side. The Grizzlies got a double play, strike-outs, and an awesome fly ball captured out of the stands. I may actually drive to Fresno to watch them again!

The 8th inning didn't help and I wasn't thinking too positive when it started out with another point for the Grizzlies. Then, somehow our team managed to wake up and started playing ball. 4 runs later (1 was home run with a man on 1st base) the game was a tie. Finally! This is the reason I love this game!

It was a very tense 9th inning to see if the game would go into extra innings, or if we'd manage to pull out a win (or loose in a gloriously undignified fashion).
Bottom of the 9th- we're up and the batter gets walked.
Runner on 1st and the pitcher beans beaned batter.
Now 2 runners. I'm happy our odds of scoring have gone up, but it just wouldn't be very satisfying to win by being walked and beaned.
3 balls.
1 strike.

Runner steals 3rd.
Batter hits a line drive down center field, forced out to the runner on second, 2 outs, but the runner on 3rd scores a run!

I love this game! 

As we left the stadium and walked back to our car I took the opportunity to get everyone's picture in front of the stadium. Mom was the best photographer that night and captured a perfect photographic memory.

The rest of the pictures 

One of the only interesting plays in those middle 4 innings

*Note: after reading the official scoreboard of that last inning I may have mixed up the order on some of the plays. It all happened. It all happened at the end. We did steal 3rd and then score the win off of an infield hit. Other details really aren't that important*