Panting Like a RiverDog
June 16, 2010
As Tom Hanks once declared, there is no crying in baseball. In Charleston, however, there is sweating. There’s a lot of sweating, and not just in the cheap seats. Even non-VIPs like me who somehow scored a spot in the air-conditioned luxury box were gripped by the Sweaty Fist of Oppression™.
But you know what? It was still a lot of fun, and the place was packed.
It was firefighter appreciation night at Joseph P. Reilly Park, as the Charleston RiverDogs hosted the Augusta GreenJackets. The baseball action was pretty much what you would expect for the minors, as hungry youngsters played with a passion and earnestness that, for the most part, they always seem to lose once they nab their million-dollar contracts. For the record, the game was a series of tie scores until the bottom of the ninth when the Dogs got the winning run, 4-3.
The real story at The Joe and every other minor league park is Family Fun. The crowd engagement is constant, and it goes well beyond T-shirt cannons and the antics of the costumed mascot (who was actually very good.) For instance…
Some lucky little league team got to take the field for the National Anthem, with each kid standing next to the pro whose position he shares (deeply cute.) A bunch of kids got to take batting practice with (surprise!) water balloons. Three boys dressed in huge, padded hot dog suits raced around the bases. Of course, being boys, they tripped and tackled and body-slammed each other the whole way. A random group of fans raced toward a line of RiverDogs t-shirts to see who could unwrap, unfold and don them the quickest, but (surprise!) the t-shirts were frozen solid. BTW, my wife had the best idea of the night – selling frozen T’s to sweaty fans! Firefighter night included a bout between two firemen sweating to death in those ridiculous sumo suits, the prize being a deluxe grill for their firehouse. And hopefully a shower, a saline IV and emergency oxygen.
My personal highlight was when a foul ball powered right toward my face at a speed in excess of 80mph (thanks, Wikipedia!) The ball hit the safety glass so hard I could count the stitches in the smudge it left behind. That is, when I wasn’t wiping the sweat from my eyes.
To sum it up, RiverDogs baseball is a crapload of fun®. So grab your buddies and your kids (and your sweat rag) and head on down to The Joe! And remember - this blog post may not be reproduced without the expressed, written consent of minor league baseball!
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11:52 AM 06/16/2010, By Ginny |
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Sounds like a lot of fun!!! |
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