Thursday afternoon at the baseball game

I am a bit of a sports fan. If you’ve ever spent any time with me you might know this to be a bit of an understatement. I’m the kind of person who watches ski cross if it’s on television never mind the big name stuff i.e. hockey, baseball, football (either soccer or NFL almost never CFL).  About the only things I cannot watch: basketball, golf, bowling. Even darts and billiards are okay if I’ve got a pint and my knitting to keep me company as well.

I am, with the sole exception of hockey, pretty much a “casual” fan. I kinda sorta know the rules. I might kinda sorta have a team I cheer for (Toronto Blue Jays, Toronto FC/Tottenham Hotspur, Buffalo Bills, anyone Canadian, Latvian, or Danish). But I don’t always “get” it. Nothing is more fun for me than watching an NFL game with my brother. Eventually he just throws something at me. So my plan for this summer is to try and learn more about baseball and soccer – rather than just go to Jays and FC games and have a beer or two, I’d try and pay attention, learn the strategy and so on.

Dad and I have season tickets to the Toronto FC and Mom and I went in on two Toronto Star Blue Jays season passes so that part of the process is taken care of. The Star season passes didn’t include the home opener so Toby and I watched from home – turns out Toby actually likes baseball and was telling me a bunch of stuff about left-handed vs. right-handed pitchers and playing the outfield. So far no one on Twitter or Facebook has offered up anyone good to follow to learn about the game though. I’ve just checked the Chapters/Indigo website and found Baseball for Dummies – in print the last one is from 2004 but there’s an ebook from 2011.  So this is a first, I’m downloading their ebook desktop app. Then I’m gonna buy my first ebook! Sort of like buying stuff from iTunes on my iPhone though – this could get expensive once I figure it out! (yes, although my reading time has vastly diminished, I still get excited enough by books that I need a couple of exclamation points thrown in.)

Toronto's Angry Bird

There have already been six home games for the Toronto Blue Jays, which is a bit crazy if you ask me. There’s such a huge range: 16 in the NFL (and they’re fighting about increasing it to 18), 82 in the NHL and 162 in MLB. The sixth home game was an afternoon game on Thursday April 7, 2011 against the Oakland Athletics. I figured an afternoon game wouldn’t be as busy as a night game and would be good for testing out Q’s attitude to the whole endeavour. I put out a call on facebook and a law school friend whose son switched birthdays with Q said she’d love to come and we had a date. Here are some pictures from the game.

All bundled up

Q wearing his ballgame stripes

Proof my boy can sleep anywhere

Needless to say, there wasn’t a great deal of attention played to the game – more to the boys and each other. Jays lost 2-1 and we both missed the winning run. Maybe a couple of games with my friend’s other half (a big sports fan) and my cousin David (the kind of cousin someone who wants to learn about sports wants, this is the guy who dreams of being on sports radio and should be too!)