A month of baseball

Okay, so the day is now May 2 and the first month of baseball is over. Well, it hasn't been 30 days yet. But April has gone by. Instead of doing individual posts of each game, I shall just summarize it on here. I may have to split it into two posts if it gets too long. We shall see. I'll post the pictures up on my other blog and link it up to here.

April 6. Opening Day. I bought my tickets about a month in advance. I figured, it would be easier to get tickets to the Dodgers' season opener than it would be to the Dodgers' home opener. Well, I was right. I bought two tickets in mind, thinking either JoAnna, Sherisse, or someone would be able to go with me. As it turned out, I ended up taking a friend from church (Jeffrey) who is moving to Arkansas this summer. He has been wanting to go to a Dodger game, since he has never been to one before. The game started at 4, so we left L.A. around 10:30. Silly me took the 5 and we had traffic all the way to Anaheim. I think it took us about an hour to get that far. Just as we were getting close to our lunch stop, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. It was a car full of guys. Nooo it wasn't the guys who caught my eye. It was the blue caps they were waving at us! Too bad we were just about to get off. We stopped in San Clemente at Pedro's Tacos for lunch. I recommended the carne asada tacos. Jeffrey ordered his, I ordered mine. We were puzzled why he was charged more than I was. Turned out, he got carne asada burritos (which were HUGE) instead of tacos. We got back on the road for the last leg of the trip. Just as we were approaching the city of San Diego ... Jeffrey fell asleep! Too bad, because he woke up as soon as we got off the highway. We drove around for a bit, looking for a place to park. We got to the Stadium. It was crazy! They had a huge block party for Opening Day. Had I known they were going to do that, we might have left earlier. When we finally got to our seats, it was nice to see a few Dodger fans in our section already there. Turns out, Mauricio and I went to the same high school. He graduated twenty years before I did though. He brought some friends who were Giant fans. Now that it's almost been a month since the game, there's what I do remember. I was most annoyed by the guy in the row behind us. His daughter was cute. But I was concerned about her leaving marks on my brand new jersey that I was wearing. I could feel her hands on my back and then hear the mom telling her to leave the lady alone. The dad would say "get this clown out" or call whoever the Dodger up to bat was a clown. Apparently everyone was a clown to him. Either that, or "clown" was the only word in his vocabulary because he used it practically all the time. Thankfully it was "clown" and not some other X-rated word that I couldn't mention on here. During the first part of the game, when the sun was beating down on us, I noticed my knees were starting to turn red. When we were in the shade, it went back to its normal coloring. If I remember anything else, I'll add it in later in italics.

April 15
Jackie Robinson celebration night. As well as opening night. Sherisse called me that morning to let me know that she got the day off work. I had planned on taking the bus, walking to the stadium, and meeting her there. Our plans changed. I got to sleep in, pick her up, and we found a spot on the street to park. While we were waiting for the gate to open, this car pulls up in front of us and shows us that they skipped the "parallel parking" section of their education, test, and gave us a good laugh at their lack of ability to parallel park. Sherisse and I went in an went to my usual spot where I hang around during batting practice. JoAnna shows up and tells me about Opening Day and the dove getting stuck in the Dodger Vision screen. While we're talking, we hear someone call out Jo's name. We look and I see Cat in the very front of the field level. I call her name, she calls mine, and we greet each other like lifelong friends who haven't seen each other in forever. She is the sweetest thing! She showed us pictures of her newest relative, Caitlyn (not sure if that's the right spelling) who is absolutely adorable (as most newborns are) !!!! Later when I went back to Sherisse, she was chatting with someone else. They had ask her if she knew them (me, Cat, and Jo) and Sherisse told her she only knew me. Cat had two seats that day, and offered us one since she was sitting in a better section. Well, since there were two of us, we were hoping that the people in at least one of the seats wouldn't show up. Just our luck. Everyone showed up. So we had to abandon our seat (much to the chagrin of the people sitting there). I think I over heard one of them call us "stupid". It was the same people who I offered to take their picture for them. Okay, so I had the ticket for one of the seats, which I could've stayed in if I wanted to. But I didn't want to leave Sherisse alone. Long story short... the game was quite exciting. Kershaw struck out a career high 13 batters, striking out the side for his final three. Everyone stood up for the final batter, anticipating his 13th strike out. And who says a walk-off walk isn't exciting? It's certainly nerve wracking. You wait and anticipate with every pitch, every swing. Is it a strike? Is it ball? James Loney finished the night with no hits, with three RBI's. How? He had a bases-loaded walk, a sacrifice fly, and another bases loaded walk that brought home Manny Ramirez, the game winning run! It was great seeing JoAnna and Cat again, after a long offseason.

In the month of April, I have gone to four games. I have seen

Go ahead. Call me a nut. I am. Let's hope my May stats can be an improvement from this. I am projected to go to the following games:
May 4 - against the Diamondbacks
May 20 - against the Mets

Possibly
May 7 - against the Nationals
May 18 - against the Mets
So, probably not as many games. We'll see about that :-)