take me out to the . . . rain delay?

Only the amazing reputation (not!) of the Burlington Royals could pull the Fords and Iversons (+ a Heilman) together for an evening of family fun. Actually, when Jaclyn and I hatched the idea of meeting up for a baseball game, we chose the Royals purely based on the fact that it's approximately an hour from both of our parents' houses.

The Johnson City Cardinals (being a city we lived very close to, felt like the real home team) were in town for the match-up. After two innings, the score was 7-0 in favor of the Royals - helped by a grand slam.







It's probably good that we didn't look into the teams very much before driving to the game. The league is called "Rookie" and is one step below "A" league in the minors. I don't think the Royals' shortstop actually caught a grounder that came to him.

After the second inning the players came in, the tarp came out (after several readjustments), and the rain settled in. Since the whole purpose of even going to the game was to have time to just hang out, we didn't mind too much. It was fun watching the Cardinals compete in trying to lob a baseball into a plastic cup. I was proud of myself for taking a picture of one of the MANY lightning strikes around the stadium. After they (I'm not really sure who) decided the rain had sufficiently stopped, the tarp was rolled up and the teams proceeded to go through their entire warmups again.

To pass the time, Grant suggested starting a massage line. Notice he's not having to do any massaging. Actually, he gave my mom such a rough massage, her shoulders are bruised today.







We also engaged in Indian wrestling, thumb wrestling, mercy, and playing that game where you try to slap the other person's hands. Dad documented our boredom.






Two and a half hours after the game started, we had begun the 3rd inning. In hopes of catching a foul ball, we watched from the grass beside the empty set of bleachers. Ryan ran outside of a big fence and got one ball and Grant actually caught one on the fly. I hoped to get one, but didn't.

The JC Cardinals made a pretty good comeback. They ended up having 8 runs, but the Royals got 12. Somehow, they only recorded a total of 5 errors for the game, but there seemed to be almost one per play.




Grant, Jaclyn, me, Ryan, Stephanie, and Ken watching from beside first base. There were a couple of throws that could have hit us if the first baseman hadn't jumped.

Even though we didn't leave until after 11:30p, it was still a fun way to spend a weeknight. We had a good idea Jaclyn!