Labor Day baseball!

I love Labor Day, because I'm lucky enough to go to a college that still takes the day as a holiday, so it's like a Monday that's not really a Monday. This year I stayed at school for Saturday and Sunday and then drove to Pittsburgh on Monday morning for an afternoon Braves-Pirates game.

It's only about two-and-a-half hours to Pittsburgh from school, and I was a little nervous because it was my first time driving out of state by myself, but I was fine until I got into the city. This was my third time going to Pittsburgh, and the previous two times my dad got totally confused on the way out because of construction and closed streets and other nonsense. This time, I got lost on the way into the city. Apparently they've just re-numbered all of the exits to coincide with miles on the actual road, rather than distance from the city limits, as they used to be. My GPS, Lucille, was telling me to take exit 7A, and there was neither a "7" nor an "A" to be seen on any of the signs. So I just drove around for a while, totally lost, crossing the river to the wrong side and winding up in residential areas, while poor Lucille worked really hard to get me back on track. The problem with Pittsburgh is that there are so many places where you have to make a turn from the far right lane and then half a mile later you have to make a turn from the far left lane and it's just not possible!

I survived, thank God, and finally made it to the stadium. I allowed myself almost an hour of extra driving time, so I still had a while to wait in the parking lot for my family.

My dad, my sister, my grandma, and my aunt drove up from Central Ohio and picked up my cousin Matt at his fraternity house. (He goes to Carnegie Mellon University.) We had all had to laugh, because my dad, my sister, and I all had on our Braves hats (of course), Grandma was wearing her Tigers hat (because she's from Michigan and we took her to a game in Detroit last summer), Matt was wearing a Giants shirt (because he's from the San Francisco area), and Aunt Kathy forgot her Braves hat so she bought a Pirates one to keep the sun out of her eyes. It was too bad my sister hadn't worn her Cubs shirt, since they're her other favorite team!

PNC Park is really a beautiful stadium, and we had fantastic seats (between 3rd base and home, about fifteen rows back). The weather was perfect, probably the best baseball weather I've ever experienced. It was a good game, but the final score was a disappointing 3-1 for the Pirates. They're already eliminated, and we totally should have beat them! There were at least two occasions where the Braves had the bases loaded and were unable to get a run in. Our up-and-down offense has been the biggest issue this year, and we're really going to need to pick it up if we're going to make the playoffs, let alone win the division. The Phillies scare the crap out of me, and as of today they've taken the division lead by a half game.

Matt and I spent the whole game talking about every aspect of baseball, from the "battle royale" that's coming with this postseason, to great bloopers that we've seen in person or on video, to reminiscing about games we've been to together. He told me about the NLCS game where the Giants clinched the pennant in 2002, which he attended. SO COOL! We watched the right field scoreboard for other games obsessively, glorying in the Phillies' loss to the Marlins. (Matt also wants the Phillies to crash and burn, because the Giants are in second place in the Wild Card race.) Unfortunately, the Phils and Marlins had a double-header that day, and the second game didn't turn out to our liking.

Matt, my sister, and I also had a blast gauging the trajectories of the balls flying into the crowd. I'd never seen so many fouls into the stands before! Early in the game, a ball landed about five rows in front of us, and two guys dove for it. One came up with the ball, and he shook hands with the other guy and gave him back his hat, which had been knocked off. Then the guy who got the ball noticed the other man had three little girls with him, and he gave the ball to the girls! Our whole section applauded his generosity, and the dad bought the nice guy a beer when a vendor came around. Maybe two innings later, a ball went way up into the first deck, right above us. I was watching my left side to see if it would come back down, and it came down on my right side and bounced away! Matt was like, "BALL!", but I didn't see it before it was gone. It went forward, though, about five rows, and wound up with the guy who had given up the first ball!! That's karma for you. It was an awesome thing to see!

I'll write again soon and talk about how school is going. I desperately needed to write about something happy, today, though, so you got this instead. (That should give you an idea of how school is going.)