The one constant through all the years
Monday morning, folks. Hope you had a great weekend and that you're planning to make it a good week.
We had kind of an interesting weekend. A soccer game featuring granddaughter #2 was to have been played in a nearby community Saturday afternoon, so we planned around that. Weather threatened and the game was postponed, so that left us with some time open, so I used some of the afternoon to do a rescue cleaning of the interior of my wife's car.
It should be noted that 95 percent of the time I'm alone in my travels, so my car gets more dusty than anything, except in and around the driver's seat. However, my wife's car is the the transport for our three local grandchildren, so the in-and-out and snack and drinks and so forth present some different challenges.
What prompted this cleaning episode was that my wife admitted that her non-car-cup-holder-fitting Yeti spilled one day recently, dumping tea through the front passenger seat onto, well, the rear floor. Luckily, we have the rubberized floor mats, so that caught most of it, but some made it to the carpet beneath. Anyway, spent a good ninety minutes cleaning the floors (peroxide is wonderful on carpet stains, in case you hadn't heard that particular tip), seats doors and windows. And it was oppressively humid when I did all of this, so you can just imagine how wonderful I felt after that!
But today's title is owed to yesterday's activities. My son put his son into a Cincinnati Reds-operated baseball camp during the summer and part of the package is that the Reds gave participating families four upper-level tickets to one of two Reds home games. And their game was yesterday, so my son invited me to accompany him and his "big kids," as we've taken to calling the older two, to Cincinnati to see our beloved Reds take on the San Francisco Giants.
We traveled uneventfully to Cincinnati yesterday, I had placed two iPads in the back seat for the kids (a nearly nine-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy, if I have not mentioned recently) for the ride north and they both enjoyed some video game fun. We eventually decided to park on the Ohio side of the river, and found parking in the lot between the Bengals' Paul Brown Stadium and Great American Ball Park, home of the Reds. This gave us a nice straight walk through some parking garages to the ballpark, and we emerged on the plaza level next to the statue of the great Johnny Bench. My family placed a commemoration brick on the plaza when they built this part of the park a few years ago, so the kids always enjoy "finding Poppy's brick," which we did.
Traveled upstairs to our seats, well down the first base line and only a few rows from the top of the upper deck (row R, if I remember). Good climb on a hot day! My granddaughter was sitting closest to me and I kept making jokes about seeing planes below us and that the birds were afraid to fly that high, but it didn't matter. There is something utterly special about taking in a game with my son, to whom I taught the game when I became his mother's husband, and his children.
To me, this is the magic of baseball. It can be such a simple game, but it can also so be so layered and complex. My son continued working with his daughter to teach her to keep score, something I've done a few times but now find that I don't have the proper attention span to do well. He's apparently been doing this for a while, and to watch them talking through the play that just happened and how to record it properly is something to see.
Part of my grandson's Reds camp experience was a field trip to Cincinnati to the same park, where they got to see the locker rooms and other parts of the stadium complex, and it culminated with each camper meeting a player one-on-one. Our grandson's player was outfielder Phillip Ervin, and he played in yesterday's game, and produced a couple of hits and scored two or three times, I believe. So that connected the dots between Reds' camp, the field trip and yesterday's game.
And I always so enjoy taking in a game with my son. His understanding of the game is solid, and I feel somewhat responsible for that. We discussed how the Giants' pitcher was hanging so many pitches in the strike zone during the Reds' offensive explosion in the 4th inning, that the Giants couldn't get that poor pitcher out of the game fast enough to limit the damage, I helped him clarify how he and my granddaughter should score certain plays where there was an errant throw or some other odd element.
But I know how times have changed, because he studied for one of his night law school classes on the way to and from the game.
It was a truly great day of family fun. My wife got to spend the afternoon with our youngest grandchild, bringing her to our house so that our daughter-in-law could get a few things done while she had an empty house. I was a little envious of that, but I think I got the better end of the deal.
Today's title? From "Field of Dreams:" "The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the times." It has, you know.
By the way, I nearly decided to relocate the site that hosts this blog after learning of a couple of features that appeared not to be working, but I think I have that ironed out now. I welcome your comments on formatting and appearance, as well as comments.
We had kind of an interesting weekend. A soccer game featuring granddaughter #2 was to have been played in a nearby community Saturday afternoon, so we planned around that. Weather threatened and the game was postponed, so that left us with some time open, so I used some of the afternoon to do a rescue cleaning of the interior of my wife's car.
It should be noted that 95 percent of the time I'm alone in my travels, so my car gets more dusty than anything, except in and around the driver's seat. However, my wife's car is the the transport for our three local grandchildren, so the in-and-out and snack and drinks and so forth present some different challenges.
What prompted this cleaning episode was that my wife admitted that her non-car-cup-holder-fitting Yeti spilled one day recently, dumping tea through the front passenger seat onto, well, the rear floor. Luckily, we have the rubberized floor mats, so that caught most of it, but some made it to the carpet beneath. Anyway, spent a good ninety minutes cleaning the floors (peroxide is wonderful on carpet stains, in case you hadn't heard that particular tip), seats doors and windows. And it was oppressively humid when I did all of this, so you can just imagine how wonderful I felt after that!
But today's title is owed to yesterday's activities. My son put his son into a Cincinnati Reds-operated baseball camp during the summer and part of the package is that the Reds gave participating families four upper-level tickets to one of two Reds home games. And their game was yesterday, so my son invited me to accompany him and his "big kids," as we've taken to calling the older two, to Cincinnati to see our beloved Reds take on the San Francisco Giants.
We traveled uneventfully to Cincinnati yesterday, I had placed two iPads in the back seat for the kids (a nearly nine-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy, if I have not mentioned recently) for the ride north and they both enjoyed some video game fun. We eventually decided to park on the Ohio side of the river, and found parking in the lot between the Bengals' Paul Brown Stadium and Great American Ball Park, home of the Reds. This gave us a nice straight walk through some parking garages to the ballpark, and we emerged on the plaza level next to the statue of the great Johnny Bench. My family placed a commemoration brick on the plaza when they built this part of the park a few years ago, so the kids always enjoy "finding Poppy's brick," which we did.
Traveled upstairs to our seats, well down the first base line and only a few rows from the top of the upper deck (row R, if I remember). Good climb on a hot day! My granddaughter was sitting closest to me and I kept making jokes about seeing planes below us and that the birds were afraid to fly that high, but it didn't matter. There is something utterly special about taking in a game with my son, to whom I taught the game when I became his mother's husband, and his children.
To me, this is the magic of baseball. It can be such a simple game, but it can also so be so layered and complex. My son continued working with his daughter to teach her to keep score, something I've done a few times but now find that I don't have the proper attention span to do well. He's apparently been doing this for a while, and to watch them talking through the play that just happened and how to record it properly is something to see.
Part of my grandson's Reds camp experience was a field trip to Cincinnati to the same park, where they got to see the locker rooms and other parts of the stadium complex, and it culminated with each camper meeting a player one-on-one. Our grandson's player was outfielder Phillip Ervin, and he played in yesterday's game, and produced a couple of hits and scored two or three times, I believe. So that connected the dots between Reds' camp, the field trip and yesterday's game.
And I always so enjoy taking in a game with my son. His understanding of the game is solid, and I feel somewhat responsible for that. We discussed how the Giants' pitcher was hanging so many pitches in the strike zone during the Reds' offensive explosion in the 4th inning, that the Giants couldn't get that poor pitcher out of the game fast enough to limit the damage, I helped him clarify how he and my granddaughter should score certain plays where there was an errant throw or some other odd element.
But I know how times have changed, because he studied for one of his night law school classes on the way to and from the game.
It was a truly great day of family fun. My wife got to spend the afternoon with our youngest grandchild, bringing her to our house so that our daughter-in-law could get a few things done while she had an empty house. I was a little envious of that, but I think I got the better end of the deal.
Today's title? From "Field of Dreams:" "The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the times." It has, you know.
By the way, I nearly decided to relocate the site that hosts this blog after learning of a couple of features that appeared not to be working, but I think I have that ironed out now. I welcome your comments on formatting and appearance, as well as comments.
Comments
Post a Comment