This afternoon we took Ian to his first ever live sporting event: A Portland Beavers baseball game. The Beavers are a Minor League farm team for the San Diego Padres. Unfortunately, they may not be in Portland much longer because their home field - PGE Park - is in jeopardy to due the arrival of a Major League Soccer team in Portland soon. (Apparently Portland is more of a soccer town than baseball town, so the Beavers may be gone by 2011.) Which made it even more imperative that we make it to one of their games! Plus, Sundays are kids' day at the park where kids eat free before the game and they have a game area set up for them, in addition to other activities.PGE Park is on the edge of downtown so rather spend a couple of hours in search of street parking, we opted to take the "electric train," as Ian calls it. Of course this mode of transportation also earned us triple bonus points for the day given that the ride there and back was half the fun. A mere $15 got us all in the gate for general admission seating which allowed us to pick any seat we wanted in the upper half of the stadium. Sadly, the crowds were not huge (perhaps more evidence why the Beavers may not be around much longer) but it still had all the makings of a good day at the ballpark: a warm day, overpriced food, (relatively) good music and vendors circling with every type of junk food you can imagine.
The actual game portion of the outing kept Ian's attention for approximately three innings before he became more interested in walking around, climbing the stairs and generally not sitting still for more than two seconds. That said, he is a very loyal and enthusiastic clapper and always took a moment out from other activities to participate in cheering on the home team. By the fourth inning we headed over the kids' area where Ian participated in a little batting practice himself before he announced that he was ready to hop the train back home. We were really hoping he'd make it to the seventh inning so he could hear Take Me Out to the Ball Game given he recently learned that song at school and has been quick to add it to his concert repertoire at home. However, it clearly wasn't meant to be for today, so off we went to catch the
train for the few stops to our home station.
As for me, that was my first Minor League game ever, I believe. I did have a moment where I wished that we had the opportunity to take him to a Washington Nationals game in their new stadium (the stadium was still being built when we moved) and of course taken the Metro to get there. Boy, he would have just been beside himself with the whole Metro system! But, as Jeff rightly pointed out, he could care less about the difference between the minors and majors or what stadium he's in....he was just happy to be part of a real sporting event. (Though, we do have hopes of taking him up for Seattle for a Mariners' game at some point.) Maybe next time we'll even make it to the seventh inning stretch.
Until I write again.
