Cheney Stadium Matinee 8/22/06

Well, since my son's babysitter's house burned down on Friday and she's still getting back on her feet, we're tag-teaming with our work schedule and hangin' out some more with the little guy. Checking the Cheney Stadium calendar, I discovered that I could actually pry him away from the tv and catch some sun while watching a ball game. Since I'm a multitasking king, I was able to snap a few photos of the game.

I'd wanted to catch Michael Garciaparra actually playing in a game. Fortunately, the injury bug granted him reprieve, and allowed me to snap this picture of him:



I kept this one darn near 100% full size, so when you click on it to enlarge it, notice the timing of the bat and the ball. You can see the bend in the bat. This, to me, is a better picture than the one I took of the angle of the ball changing after Shin-Soo Choo hit it.

I also noticed one Wilson "Exxon"/"Mr. Coffee" Valdez playing shortstop. He was a popular guy over at The Morsels once. Interestingly, in spite of his reputation for stellar defense, he was caught in -- how shall I say it -- an interesting position by not calling for the ball and waiving off 3B-man Sergio Garcia on an infield popup early in the game:



Finally, it happened to be kids day -- busloads of kids from area summer camp programs probably tripled the stadium attendance. Milwaukee has the Sausage Races -- Tacoma has the "$1 Leftovers" races (between ice cream, cotton candy, and hot dogs) to see which item will have the closeout price over the last two innings. Rhubarb, the Rainier's mascot, ran in from right field, and knocked down the hot dog and the ice cream mascots, and picked up the pink cotton candy mascot (I assume she was a girl) and carried her across the finish line (to the delight of one of the camp groups):



You can find the rest of the pictures that I've uploaded here. Man, I have too many blogs and web sites to keep track of...