The Good Day

A whole week off from school and there was only one day when the three of us (I don't include Daddy, who had to work) had a really good time. Not surprisingly, we weren't all together either. A friend of Daddy's had offered to sell us her season ticket seats for the Giants game on Wednesday. I wasn't about to pass up that offer, so I found a benevolent friend to take Mam for half the day and drove Smunch up to the park.

We drove only because we would have missed the train. Having paid the $30 to park, I will make more effort not to miss the train again.But this face was worth the $30. He was happy the whole time. And I was psyched to be there. It was a beautiful sunny day and the weather was just right at AT&T park. The weekday, season ticketholder crowd is a lot different from the Saturday night crowd. The people surrounding us weren't yelling obscenities or speaking in ways that made me want to cover Smunch's ears. They appeared to be largely retirees who had decided that retirement meant more chance to see their team play. The "older" woman in front of me even had her scorebook and kept score the entire game. I watched over her shoulder when I wanted to see how she score the in-the-park home run by Aubrey Huff or the latest strikeout (amounting to 11) thrown by Jonathan Sanchez.We were so close to the visiting team's bullpen that it felt like their pitchers were only about 10 feet away from us.Naturally, that meant there was a lot of heckling going on around us. Smunch's favorite epithet? "Hey, Hanrahan, you've just been traded to the Brewers for an Italian sausage!" Even the heckling was relatively polite.

In the end, Smunch got to witness his first in-the-field home run...or he would have witnessed it if he'd been taller anyway...and two more home runs to the bleachers. The Giants beat the Pirates 6-0.And one of the fans behind us complimented me on what a nice boy I have. "Yes," I said. "As long as he's at the ballpark, he's awesome. At home? Not so much." So nice to have one fun and happy day with the little guy though.And Mam? She had such a grand time with her friend that she had a big tantrum about leaving when I arrived to pick her up 5 hours later. Let the fun begin again!