We bought a block of tickets to the Lake County Captains this summer.
I cannot begin to recount all the fun times we had. And I hate to say it, but it was rarely about the baseball. It was nice that the Captains were having a winning season, but for the most part, the baseball is secondary.
As a friend of mine likes to cynically remind me, these folks are about publicity, promotion and razzmatazz. If a little bit of baseball interrupts their carnival, they don't seem to mind.
We enjoyed watching the kids run the outfield during the 7th inning stretch. We enjoyed the fireworks, seeing our names and birthdays up in lights on the big board, the games for flipping Kraft Singles, chasing fish around the infield, tossing tennis balls into hula hoops, and dozens of other gimmicks to keep the crown amused. We had fun interacting with Grover and Skipper and Skippy and standing around to get baseballs, cards and programs autographed.
In many ways it's quite different from a Major League game. Which major-league player would have given my daughter a cracked practice bat? (Well, future Major-Leaguer Ben Carlson did, that's who!) I doubt we'd ever have had that chance at a Major League game.
And it was fun to get ramped up with all the electronics, including the scoreboard hullabaloo and all the musical tricks they use to generate excitement.
And boy, was it ever loud!
Except when it wasn't and then the organ or the pre-recorded snippets of sound would wind up and eventually, they'd be telling us "everybody clap their hands!"
As my cynical friend likes to say, "in the old days" we used to know when to applaud the players with out being told to "make some noise"!
And it was that same friend that inspired me to return to keeping score, something I hadn't done in years. I probably enjoyed that game best of all.
I'm still not very good at it but I know for certain I'll be trying to score future games again.
So what was so much fun? A little baseball, a lot of fireworks, a bit of noise and a whole bunch of family.
We shivered through an early April game when it threatened to snow. We sweltered under the sun in August. We camped on the outfield after a great game. We dodged foul balls, ate hot dogs, gyros, hamburgers and ice cream. We brought our rain gear in protest of the darkening clouds.
We had a great summer.
