Just a plain old fan...

Friday Aug. 27th. I'll be in the ballpark tonight, again, as usual. But tonight I'll just be a plain old fan. I'll be sitting in Dugout Suite C, with family and friends, in a pre-anniversary celebration. My wife and I, my older son, Alan and his new bride, his in-laws Dan and Deb and their daughter Rachel, our friends Lou and Cheri from around the corner, my nephew Dan, and even my younger son Mike. Mike hasn't been to the ballpark in quite awhile, so it should be an interesting experience for him. And for me, as well. I haven't been to a game as just a fan for, well, I can't really remember the last time. In the last 15 years, I could probably count them on 1 hand. But tonight I was going to sit back and enjoy it. I might even watch the whole fireworks show at the end. Never get to do that, because I'm usually cleaning up. The place was in a frenzy when we got there. The so-so crowd they had originally expected, had exploded during the day and promised to be a sellout. And it looked like they would break the single season attendance tonight as well. And they did. Biggest single season attendance going the whole way back to 2001. And with a big crowd expected for Saturday's game, they should pad that total quite nicely. As it should be for a new ballpark. The game started slowly, but got interesting down towards the end. The grounds crew performed well in their role with guest performer Myron Noodleman, sticking their drag time dance moves. And we even had some scoreboard face time, with Dan competing for fabulous prizes in the movie clip contest. He won. As did the Sens, with a huge home run by Marvin Lowrance in the bottom of the 8th to give the Sens a 3-2 lead. Cole Kimball made it stand up, striking out the last 2 batters for the win. After all the post game hoopla, we hung out for a little while, until the traffic thinned out, said our goodbyes and headed for home. Just like the rest of the fans. So until Sunday and the season finale, later...