There is no Major League Baseball team in the town where I live…but that’s OK. We have a minor league team that feeds into the major league team from the city where I grew up. This means that for $11.00, I can get a seat behind home plate that in my hometown would demand close to a three digit figure…not too shabby.

That’s where I was with the Sea Critters last weekend…enjoying one of my favorite summer pastimes. Maybe it’s because to me it signals an early start to summer. Maybe it’s because I can sit outside for three hours with a hot dog and a cold drink and forget whatever ails me outside of the stadium lights. I love baseball. To follow the game means to lose myself in the focus of it, to be absorbed by the mathematics of it and yet to be entertained by the ridiculousness of the jingles – the little songs that both personify and introduce each player at bat. The fun, I think, is in guessing how the song applies to the player.

Baseball is slow and warm and open-air. It is the antithesis of my day-to-day life…an oasis. And how did the Breeze and the Pony handle three hours in one place without WiFi or Barbies? Fabulously! Dinner was a priority, of course. After that, their energies were turned towards the long promised cotton candy. Of course the cotton candy man will come down to our seats, I reassured them…once…twice…again…and again…until even I started to wonder if we had somehow managed to sit in a “sugar-free” zone! I understood that there would be no peace, no lazy-hazy ball game until this promise was fulfilled. There was nothing else to be done but to get up in the middle of the inning and hunt down this cloud of joy.

…and then all was well…the crack of the bats…the cheers…the runs…and the runs…and the home run! And the chatter of my girls as their sugar levels rose and they could no longer sit still. Still the game played on, as I counted down the innings for my little Pony and watched her do subtraction in her little head. All energy lifted to a fantastic crescendo of the winning out, crowned by a spectacular fireworks show. What a night!

As we made our way home, hours past our bedtime, I hoped that the thirty minute drive would be enough to exhaust the sweet energy that the Sea Babies had consumed…I had one down as we docked. Still I coaxed them to brush their teeth before making their final landing for the night…or else the sugar bugs would have had a sugar high that night!

You wouldn’t know it by this post, but my kids maintain a relatively healthy diet down at the home reef 🙂