Baseball...not just for Americans!

I took friends of mine and their kids to a minor league baseball game yesterday down in Richmond. What fun that was! The kids live in Lithuania and are visiting here for the summer. This was their first American baseball game.

We had a great trip, The weather was perfect, the seats were good, great in fact, and by the time the game started the sun was low enough that we were shaded nicely by the stadium roof. Lukas and Tina quickly caught on that for kids a ball game is not about watching the game but about getting a game ball as a souvenir. By about half way through the game they had realized that the place to be was down at the railing next to the field so they spotted a couple of unclaimed seats and planted themselves there. Neither of them was successful which is probably just as well. The chances of them both getting a ball were really slim so one of them getting one would have created another source of sibling discontent.

They had cotton candy and some kind of ice cream thing that looked like a cross between pelletized limestone and kitty litter. They seemed to enjoy that but then they are kids so allowances must be made I suppose.

I had a contact in the fan relations office who was going to put together a package of team goodies for them and also put their names up on the big electric sign board. Turned out that she was no longer working there so that fell through but they were giving away backpacks to all the kids so my two little Lithuanian tourists will go back to school this fall in Vilnius sporting Richmond Braves backpacks. I got them two “previously enjoyed baseball gloves which were a big hit with them well. They got them autographed by a couple of players and the team mascot, the “Diamond Duck”. Their English is very very good. They had even learned the words to “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” and sang it with us during the 7th inning stretch.

So all was well.

That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it….