Odds and ends (mostly odd)

The rest of the home stand for me would consist of Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday. Since I'm writing this post after the fact, I'll try and pick the most memorable moments. There are 2 that come to mind. With all the impending nuptials, (weddings, dude..) those events were a lot of the conversation in the dugout. In fact, we all got into the act, as Izzy decided he was going to order his wedding invitations online from the dugout laptop. The website was walking him through, and he was soliciting advice from the group as he went along. That has probably been one of the stranger goings-on in the dugout in recent memory. I'm not sure if it was the same night, but the Saturday night game stands out in my mind and probably will for sometime. It started on time, no rain delays and was a regulation 9 inning game. However, it took 4 and a half hours to play. It was dominated by the Sens in the early innings, but Altoona battled back. Going to the 9th, the Sens had, what we thought was a comfortable 14-8 lead. The game was running a little long at that point, not too terribly though. But the Curve proceeded to post up 10 runs, giving them an 18-14 lead. The way they got them was the main point of contention. First of all, to be fair, our pitchers couldn't get anyone out. Altoona pretty much hit everything they threw. But with 1 man on an Altoona batter hit a ball to right field. Now everyone in the dugout clearly saw it hit the yellow padding at the top of the wall. Ground rules say it must clear the pads to be a home run. And with the metal fencing above that, a home will make a loud clank and carom off in a weird direction. This ball came straight back, with no sound, to the right fielder. But the ump called it a home run. OK, not too much damage yet. But.... after a pitching change, the bases were loaded again. The next Altoona hitter launched one down the left field line and it was foul by about 10 feet. But the home plate umpire signaled a home run. The ballpark had been pretty quiet what with beating the Sens had been taking up 'til then. The place just exploded at that point. People were screaming for this umpires hide. Sens manager Randy Knorr stormed out of the dugout and laid into the umpire. Needless to say, he was tossed in short order. After he departed the verbal storm from all corners was still continuing. Before another pitch was thrown, Sens pitcher Aaron Thompson was ejected. He hopped the dugout fence and went straight for the umpire. Fortunately, Sens pitching coach, Randy Tomlin cut him off before he could make contact. He finally got him off the field, when apparently some other words were exchanged, and Tomlin went after the umpire, getting right up in his face. I don't think I've ever seen him do that before. they separated before he could get tossed, too. All the while, in our space we had kept up the verbal assault on the umpire. At that point, the 1st base umpire started our way, and not wanting to be next on he ejection list, reeled our tongues back in. However, as the game resumed, we took every opportunity to needle the home plate umpire when appropriate. Altoona pushed across 3 more runs to make it 18-14, completing the comeback. The Sens mounted a small comeback of the own in the bottom half, but could only plate 1 run, to make it an 18-15 final. At 11:33 pm. 4 hours and 33 minutes later. easily the longest 9 inning game I've ever attended. With the typical Saturday night post game festivities, our exit time was around 1AM, far later than I had planned. But since I did not have to work Sunday's game, it kind of worked out OK. I had 2 rounds of golf in he next 2 days, so I was looking forward to that. So until the next trip in, later.