Hey Stars. Can you come out to play?

Wednesday July 14th. The return of the All Star Game to City Island. 22 years after the last one. A long time coming. And as I awoke that morning, it was raining. Can't say that I was surprised. It wasn't going to be a smooth road to game time. I was going to be at the island by 8:30 am for setup work. But by the way it was coming down, I thought I'd wait awhile. At about 9 I decided to head downtown. Of course it was still raining, although more lightly than it had been, when I arrived. When I got in, I donned my mud clothes. All the years on the grounds crew have made me Mr. Practical. I brought along several changes of clothes, knowing that I would be a muddy, sweaty mess by game time. We had decided to wear something special for this game, to show off a little bit. We would all be wearing a black and red, Dri-Fit, all-star game logo-ed polo, khaki shorts and red hats. The dress for most games is the same in that we wear the same Carolina blue t-shirts and that's about it. But for tonight we would look like pros. No guarantee on acting like it, though. I headed for the dugout to hang out with everyone else to watch the radar screen and watch it rain. When I got there, Jordan, Doug, Asheleigh, and Knute were there, staring at the laptop. The word was that, hopefully, by 11ish we could get things started. All the boys were supposed to be in tonight, arriving at various times. The rain did finally slow down by 11, so we dumped the water off the tarp and got ready to roll. The first event was to be the semi-finals of the high school home run derby. high School kids from the area competed through the season to compete today. It was to start at 1 pm. we couldn't get things ready quite that fast, so it was pushed to 1:30. It did finally get started at 1:30 and went off smoothly. So far, so good. The preliminary round for the big boys started at 2:30. Chris Marrero represented the Senators and made a fine showing, hitting 8 homers, the last of which was a moon shot. his strongest competition would be Hector Gimenez of the Altoona Curve. The high school derby wound up after the big guys were done with a young gentleman from Lower Dauphin High School taking the honors. The Eastern League final round was a tight battle between Marrero and Gimenez duking it out with Gimenez coming on top with a couple of monster shots, the last one landing on the Island drive behind the team office building. and then it was onto the game. The rest of the crew had shown by then with all the guys dressed in their finest. We had more than a few compliments about how good we looked. one of the highlights of the pre-game festivities was the appearance of NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick. His Nationwide Series car is sponsored by Ollie's who just happen to be owned by 1 of our minority owners, Mark Butler.He got to take the car they had brought out around the warning to the loud cheers of the more than capacity crowd. He asked Tim beforehand if he could do some donuts on the field. Tim replied something to the effect of 'Sure, but it might be hard to drive your next race with 2 broken legs" or something like that. As a plus, though, Frank got to autograph the front of the infield machine. Its the first time in about 12 years that its value went into the plus column. Once the game got under way things settled down nicely, with Tom Milone of the Sens getting the start. It went back and forth for a while with each team scoring a couple of times, but the West blew it open in the 7th with Chase D'Arnaud striking the big blow with the grand salami. The next batter Andy Dirks of erie added a solo shot and the put the West in front to stay, the final 10-3. Ther was a huge post-game fireworks show, which I actually watched part of for a change. (My non-love for fireworks are well documented in earlier posts) Since Thursday was back to regular games, we got things cleaned up, but with the size of the crew, it was done in record time. Be nice if it was like that every night. So, 7 more game to this home stand and then a break. So until next time, later