Phillies/Reds game
Maria wins things. It's a talent of hers. She won a trip to meet Mia Hamm in 2006, she won an iPod touch in a raffle at Take Your Children to Work Day, and most recently she won a four-pack of tickets to a Phillies game. Monday night, we attended that game, and it happened to be one for the ages - the Phils walloped on the Reds for a final score of 22-1.
Since our game tickets were free, and since it was just me and the kinder, we decided to take a radical approach: We watched as little of the game as possible. Instead, as I told the kids, we would plan on doing three things. One, we would eat food. Two, we would play games. And three, we would walk around the park to see things. Since the kids never get to do all of this when we normally attend Phillies games, they were thrilled.
We decided to take the train and subway to the game, which is always a big hit - my kids love public transit:
You'll note that Nick, the most rabid Phillies fan in our household, is also the only one not wearing a Phillies shirt. Instead, he is flying the colors of Alemannia Aachen, a second-division soccer team in the German Bundesliga. Poor Nick was at a friend's house all day and didn't get a chance to change shirts before we headed to the game. Even so, one of the ushers at the game actually recognized Nick's soccer jersey - turned out he has a German son-in-law.
Anna loved the big statues outside the stadium, so she got a picture of herself with Michael Jack Schmidt, and then took one of me with the Hall of Famer:
Once inside, our first stop was a big playground the Phillies have installed inside the ballpark on the first base side. Again, since we normally go to baseball games to, um, watch baseball games, we'd never seen this before:
Next we got some food - there is a "Phillies Phood" cart especially for kids that is situated near the playground, so the girls loaded up on kid-sized hot dogs, soft pretzels, and juice boxes. This was a nice find - the items there were much cheaper than everything else in the park. Nick, who is very nearly a man now, opted for adult-sized food.
Then it was time for some games. One of my favorite things in the new ballpark is the collection of FREE kids' games located in the right field corner of the stadium. As the kids play games, they receive tickets, which they can then redeem for prizes. The games include a pitching area with radar gun, so you can see how fast you're throwing, and a run-the-bases game. They even have a giant baseball-themed pinball machine:
The kids visited the prize table, figured out what each of them wanted, and then worked together to rack up the necessary amount of tickets. This meant, among other things, that they played run-the-bases about ten times... they even got me in on the action:
At length we had earned all our prizes:
Now, with the Phillies having their own fun out on the field, we did sneak a look at the game and the scoreboard now and then. Here's how things looked in the fifth inning:
We actually sat down and watched the last couple innings at Anna's insistence - I think after all this fun she started to feel a little strange about how unconcerned we were with the main event. In any case, we sat down behind the right field foul pole and watched the Phillies top off the game with a six-run eighth inning. I had just been saying to Nick that the Phils were probably laying off the offensive firepower when Jayson Werth hit a grand slam.
So it was a great night at the park for us, a new experience all around, and young Nick was well pleased with the outcome of the game. Of course, if you're a Phillies fan, you had to know what would happen next - the Phils lost by one run in the game the following night. La saison, c'est la guerre.
Since our game tickets were free, and since it was just me and the kinder, we decided to take a radical approach: We watched as little of the game as possible. Instead, as I told the kids, we would plan on doing three things. One, we would eat food. Two, we would play games. And three, we would walk around the park to see things. Since the kids never get to do all of this when we normally attend Phillies games, they were thrilled.
We decided to take the train and subway to the game, which is always a big hit - my kids love public transit:
You'll note that Nick, the most rabid Phillies fan in our household, is also the only one not wearing a Phillies shirt. Instead, he is flying the colors of Alemannia Aachen, a second-division soccer team in the German Bundesliga. Poor Nick was at a friend's house all day and didn't get a chance to change shirts before we headed to the game. Even so, one of the ushers at the game actually recognized Nick's soccer jersey - turned out he has a German son-in-law.
Anna loved the big statues outside the stadium, so she got a picture of herself with Michael Jack Schmidt, and then took one of me with the Hall of Famer:
Once inside, our first stop was a big playground the Phillies have installed inside the ballpark on the first base side. Again, since we normally go to baseball games to, um, watch baseball games, we'd never seen this before:
Next we got some food - there is a "Phillies Phood" cart especially for kids that is situated near the playground, so the girls loaded up on kid-sized hot dogs, soft pretzels, and juice boxes. This was a nice find - the items there were much cheaper than everything else in the park. Nick, who is very nearly a man now, opted for adult-sized food.
Then it was time for some games. One of my favorite things in the new ballpark is the collection of FREE kids' games located in the right field corner of the stadium. As the kids play games, they receive tickets, which they can then redeem for prizes. The games include a pitching area with radar gun, so you can see how fast you're throwing, and a run-the-bases game. They even have a giant baseball-themed pinball machine:
The kids visited the prize table, figured out what each of them wanted, and then worked together to rack up the necessary amount of tickets. This meant, among other things, that they played run-the-bases about ten times... they even got me in on the action:
At length we had earned all our prizes:
Now, with the Phillies having their own fun out on the field, we did sneak a look at the game and the scoreboard now and then. Here's how things looked in the fifth inning:
We actually sat down and watched the last couple innings at Anna's insistence - I think after all this fun she started to feel a little strange about how unconcerned we were with the main event. In any case, we sat down behind the right field foul pole and watched the Phillies top off the game with a six-run eighth inning. I had just been saying to Nick that the Phils were probably laying off the offensive firepower when Jayson Werth hit a grand slam.
So it was a great night at the park for us, a new experience all around, and young Nick was well pleased with the outcome of the game. Of course, if you're a Phillies fan, you had to know what would happen next - the Phils lost by one run in the game the following night. La saison, c'est la guerre.
