Sliders game… yay or nay?

Okay, Springfield bloggers- or at least you half-dozen or so that responded to my first post about it- the interest is apparently there for us to meet for a Sliders game.

Now we need to decide when.

As I stated in the last post, July was the overwhelming preference (which is smart, considering there is only one home game left in June now). The problem is that it looks like someone might get left out. AnonCom can only go on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in July due to his work schedule. (Speaking of A.C., anyone know why he’s gone AWOL from the bloggiverse since late May, and if he’s coming back?) Allie cannot get back from New York until mid-July some time. Mr. Cacciatore is only available until mid-July, and then he’s closing up shop down on Sullivan St. (across from the medical center) and heading for the land of Boilermakers. Therefore, unless we wind up having more than one get-together, someone may have to miss out, and I hope that doesn’t have to occur.

Anyway, now that we know the interest is there, how do we want to solve this pickle? Also, I’m assuming we decided on a family and/or kids night, correct?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

George Carlin 1937-2008

Rest in peace.

Springfield Bloggers night at a Sliders game?

There appears to be at least some small measure of interest in an unofficial Springfield Bloggers night at a Sliders game. I’m not necessarily spearheading the effort to coordinate this, but I’m just going to throw the home games dates out there and then we can use this forum (or any other of your choosing…) to banter back and forth on what dates work and what dates don’t, and if there is enough interest, we can pick a night and call it “Springfield Bloggers” Night at the Ballpark. (And of course, this is all contingent on the weather.)

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Remaining Sliders home game dates and day of week, along with any special nightly promotions, according to the Sliders website:

JUNE:

• 6/19 Thurs- double header (first game starts at 5:30), T-shirt giveaway to first 500 fans;
• 6/23 Mon- Fredbird at the park; free ice cream sandwich giveaway to first 400 kids <12
• 6/30 Mon- free hot dog and soda to first 500 kids <12

JULY:

• 7/2 Wed- post-game FIREWORKS display for Independence Day
• 7/7 Mon- first 500 fans will receive an envelope containing cash from $1 to $20
• 7/11 Fri- Jimmy Buffett night: first 500 fans >21 receive a can coozie; $2 cheeseburgers and “Landsharks” all night, whatever those are
• 7/12 Sat- team poster to first 750 fans
• 7/13 Sun- ice cream sandwiches to first 400 kids <12
• 7/15 Tue- two Reserved tickets for $5
• 7/17 Thurs- logo baseball for first 500 fans; $2 admission for fans wearing Chicago Cubs apparel
• 7/18 Fri
• 7/24 Thurs- Throw Cancer a Curveball Ladies Night: $1 for each ticket purchased will go toward cancer research; specials all night for ladies; ladies can run the bases after the game (wooo-hoooo! )
• 7/25 Fri- Guns vs. Hoses (po-po vs. firefighters) charity softball game; $3 admission
• 7/26 Sat- mini-bat to first 500 kids <12; $2 admission for fans wearing Cubs OR White Sox apparel
• 7/27 Sun

AUGUST:

• 8/2 Sat- Speedy the Slider bobblehead to first 500 fans
• 8/3 Sun
• 8/4 Mon- Dog Days of Summer: doggie bandana to first 500 fans, also bring your dog to the park; $2 admission for fans wearing Illini apparel- full price for fans sporting other Big 10 schools (BURN!)
• 8/8 Fri- free children’s book to first 500 kids <12
• 8/9 Sat- Fan Appreciation Night- ice cream sandwiches to first 400 kids <12; giveaways all night long

*** WEEKLY PROMOTIONS: ***

• EVERY MONDAY: Paint the Park Red- $2 admission for fans wearing St. Louis Cardinals apparel
• EVERY TUESDAY: Two-For Tuesday- two-for-one concessions
• EVERY WEDNESDAY: Guaranteed Win Night- if the Sliders lose, redeem your ticket for a free ticket to a future home game
• EVERY THURSDAY: Bang For Your Buck Night- $1 beer and soda (I’m guessing this will likely be the most popular promotion…)
• EVERY FRIDAY: post-game fireworks; kids run the bases after the game (charity softball game on 7/25 not included)
• EVERY SATURDAY: Giveaway Saturdays; kids run the bases after the game
• EVERY SUNDAY: Family Fun Day- free game tickets available at County Market stores

Dang… I sound like I work in the Promotions Dept. for Springfield Sliders Inc., don’t I?!

Anyway, that’s the remaining schedule for Sliders games, if anyone’s {seriously} interested. As I said, we can kind of kick dates around and see what nights work best for the most people. Of course, I suppose there’s nothing saying we only have to do one night, but we can jump off that bridge when we get to it.

UPDATE (6/18 2:45pm): So far, we have a vote from Allie for “mid-July or later”, and then we have votes (all from Mr. Cacciatore) for any of the following:

• July 2
• July 7
• July 11
• July 12
• July 13

Again, understand that I’m not necessarily assuming the role of Julie McCoy, your cruise director, and putting all of this together, but if we can get enough interest and decide on a date or two, hopefully we can all work it out. Who knows- it might actually be fun to meet the faces behind the blogs for a night of baseball and beers* and what not.

* The question was posed by Dan at BFS as to whether this was to be a Bloggers ‘n Beer night or a Family (i.e. bring the kids along) Night. I suggested in return that we could at least in theory have one of each, but I also know how difficult it potentially will be to decide on ONE date, let alone two. What are everyone’s thoughts on the kids-or-no-kids, spouses-or-no-spouses, etc. thing?

UPDATE (6/19 8:53am):  Apparently, July is the overwhelming preference.  I’m not suggesting we chisel this in granite yet, but how do people feel about the Sunday the 13th game?  Or maybe Saturday the 12th?  Or maybe other suggestions?

(And thanks for all the interest and the great comments!!!)

Pretty damn good time for $13

Last night the eldest l’il Johann and I went to the Springfield Sliders game.

I know I’ve posted before about going out and supporting the team, but you’re going to sit through it again.

Folks, just suck it up and go. I decided I’d “splurge” and get tickets in the diamond boxes, which come complete with wait staff (”wait staff” = a seventeen-year-old chickie who takes your order and then goes and gets your snacks and beverages- beer included, strangely enough- for you so you don’t have to). That set me back all of $6.50 each. We sat in the second row, just to the left of home plate. Folks, for seats like that at Busch or Wrigley, you’ll likely be dropping minimum $75 per. (I don’t know how much a field level box costs at either stadium, but I’m guessing it’s a tad more than $6.50.) Plus, you don’t have to burn nearly as much gas to get there. Oh, and don’t give me the shit about the “quality” of the game. Yes- Pujols, Soriano, and their cronies are quite a bit “better” than a bunch of juco college kids. But then again, these kids also haven’t yet been turned into little bitch primadonnas by the ridiculous bullshit contracts, either. In other words, they still play because they enjoy it. And it’s simply a relaxed, very enjoyable way to spend an evening with the family.

The Sliders wound up losing the game 9-3 (ouch), but it was still a good game and a lot of fun for me and my seven-year-old. They had all these little activities throughout most of the game. First of all, it was Hat Night, since the first cap giveaway night got rained out, so we got Sliders caps. Kinda cool, since they’ll likely become collector’s items, due to not enough local support (assholes…). Anyway, they did all sorts of things from human tug-of-war to air guitar contests to closest chip to the pin to throwing newspapers with your “other hand”, all for Cardinals tickets. Some of them were kind of comical. The air guitar contestants all pretty much sucked. I could have kicked all their asses- especially considering the musical selections they used (standard 80s cock rock: AC/DC, Def Leppard, Billy Squier). For the closest chip to the pin thing, they had a couple (a guy and his girlfriend) at the left field foul line try to chip-shot it to Speedy out in the outfield. The guy stepped up and duffed it big time, and then the girl knocked it way the hell into right-center. They had kids dressed up as a hot dog, a bottle of mustard, and a bottle of ketchup, and they raced from the bullpen to home plate, a la the Sausage Races they have at Miller Park in Milwaukee.

Then, apparently for each game they (whoever “they” is) pick a player on the opposing team and designate him as the Roly Poly K-Man, meaning that if this guy strikes out, then they hand out coupons for Roly Poly sand-a-wiches. (Note the words “hand out”…) So this guy, Justin Wilson, I think was his name, sac-bunts his first time up, then I think grounds out and then gets a hit after that. Finally in the seventh inning, dude strikes out and the place goes nuts. Then we discover that “hand out” means they run through the main aisle between the levels and just throw the coupons in the air, leaving the fans to run after them and scavenge and fight over them like all the little white trash bastard children that go after candy at the State Fair parades. L’il Johann was pissed. He kept saying “I’m serious- I am NOT leaving until I get a Roly Poly coupon!” It was cracking me up. The guy came up again in the 9th inning and the roughly 60 of us that were left in the stadium at that time were dogging him BAD. Even L’il Johann was yelling “I want my saaaandwich, Juuuuustiiiiiiiin”. Then, a chant started of “ROLY…. POLY…” which rather reminded me of that timeless water sport Marco Polo. I’ll be damned if dude didn’t strike out again. The place goes nuts again. So here comes another guy with a fistful of Roly Poly coupons, and since there was hardly anyone left, I let L’il Johann try to get a coupon. Well, he came back without one, and was even more pissed than he was before. Finally, a kid sitting across the aisle from us obviously had heard {enough of} his lamenting over this friggin’ coupon, and he gave us one, saying he had two. So whoever that was out there, thanks.

It was fun. As I’ve said before, not exactly the hi-tech full-on multimedia gang-bang assault on all senses that a game at Busch is, but then I actually have money left afterwards. I did enjoy the 6 seconds of most of the songs they played pretty much between every pitch. It kinda became like Name That Tune, trying to guess what the song was from a tiny little snippet. And then there were the three Like Totally Bitchin’ Girly Girls that were sitting behind us until the 7th “quarter” (yes, one of them said “quarter”, even when the other two kept correcting her). At one point the loudspeakers started rocking the opening bars of “Jump” by Van Halen, to which the following conversation unfolded:

Like Totally Bitchin’ Girly Girl #1: This song sounds all futuristic and stuff.

LTBGG #2: Um, NO, this song is, like, SO oldies. Like, my grandpa used to listen to it in school or something.

It was all I could do not to go all dickhead on them. It was bad enough we had to listen to “ohmigod, he is SO hot!!!” for seven quarters, but then to get BURNed by three little dingbats like that was just wrong. But I probably shouldn’t say anything too disparaging about them- they did apparently think enough of me to ask me to watch their purses (WTF?!) while they went to the car and got their blankets. (I know, I thought it was a pretty bizarre thing to ask a total stranger at a baseball game as well.) I imagine I reminded LTBGG #2 of her grandpa.

Bitch.

Anyway, to sum it up, it was a lot of fun for very little money. We’re definitely going again. And I hope as many of you that are reading this will not only go yourselves, but also take people with you, so that the Sliders can hopefully stick around a while.

Maybe we can still work out something for a Springfield Bloggers night at the ball park!!!

Happy Father’s Day

… to my dad and any and all fathers of any sort out there. Allow me to take today as a respite from my usual litany of cynicism and random ragging.

Yeah, right. Like THAT’D ever happen.

Days like Father’s Day are the reason for {at least some of} my cynicism and random ragging. Why? Because Father’s Day has long been treated essentially as what I call a “disposable” holiday. Kinda like Columbus Day- yeah, it “means something”, but the day really has no actual significance. Gotta love that double standard. Oh come on- if you don’t bend over backwards on Mother’s Day with flowers, candy, jewelry, expensive dinners, and what not, you’re an ungrateful little bastard child. And I’m not referring to my mom, or to Mrs. Johann, or to any other woman specifically- I mean on a “societal acceptance” level. You’ve all seen the Helzberg and Kay Jewelers commercials from a month ago- “this year, buy Mom the This Diamond Necklace Proves I Love You™ pendant”. Yet Father’s Day is basically a “buy him an ugly tie from K-Mart and then send him out to mow the lawn, change the oil on the cars, and unclog the toilet” kind of day. What gift idea commercials do they show for Father’s Day? DQ cakes in the shape of a necktie, Home Depot gift cards, and Craftsman tools. And most show the dad as essentially a fat lazy bastard asleep in a Barcolounger or hammock or whatever. Ah, play right in to those stereotypes that people SAY they are trying so hard to eliminate.

I guess SOME stereotypes are okay, huh?

It isn’t that I, as a father, or any other fathers out there, expect or necessarily even want a bunch of bling-bling ka-ching on Father’s Day; it’s the widely-accepted principle that women should receive everything they want and men are just along for the ride and don’t deserve shit, but rather should consider themselves extremely damned lucky to be kept around, let alone to actually receive anything. Why do you think so many men hate Valentine’s Day? Because it’s a contrived holiday on which the man is “expected” to buy flowers and expensive jewelry and surf & turf dinners- which apparently means prime rib and lobster tails, not a Big Mac and a Filet-O-Fish (who knew)- yet the woman is not similarly obligated to get him anything. She shouldn’t be “obligated” to get him anything, so why is he “obligated” to get her all sorts of cheesy gifts?

Again, most of your average men- or at least fathers, in this case- really don’t “want” to be showered with all manner of trinkets shiny and sparkly and electronicky per se. Myself, I’m perfectly okay with a “Happy Father’s Day” hug and kiss from my kids- which I got this morning. I’m just saying let’s even out the “importance” scale a little bit. Not all fathers out there are Al Bundy or Homer Simpson, just as not all mothers out there are June Cleaver or Claire Huxtable.

Ahem. Um, sorry.

Happy Father’s Day, guys.

Ban fireworks! Cancel Independence Day! My child needs sleep!

Once again, it’s time for my time-honored tradition of ripping apart one of the many writers of dumb-assed letters-to-the-SJR-editor. Today’s lucky winner is Mike Locke of Springfield. He bitch-eth thusly:

Fireworks not in harmony with festival

On Friday evening, from 7:30 to 9 p.m., I was in a battle of wills with my 15-month old daughter to get her to fall asleep. She was extremely tired but was fighting it just as hard. Finally, at 9 p.m., she had given up her fight and was laying numbly in my arms. I put her to bed and got started on some of the daily chores I had yet to finish up before going to bed myself.

I was sitting at the computer desk paying bills when at approximately 9:10 p.m. a war zone broke out in my backyard. I jumped up at the first explosion and ran to the back door to look out. As I stepped out onto the deck, I realized the explosions were fireworks being set off four blocks east of my house in Washington Park. The windows in my house were rattling and the house was shaking with each explosion.

I could not see a single firework in the sky, but I knew they were from the Carillon Festival, which was held at Washington Park this week, as I quickly remembered them from years past. Within minutes of the first three or four explosions, I felt my blood start to boil as I heard the screams of a 15-month old little girl. All I could do was pick her up and comfort her until the war was over about 25 minutes later.

The Springfield Police Department stated they had been receiving complaint calls from the moment the fireworks started going off.

I understand the Carillon Festival is an international event (I read that in the SJ-R last week) but I don’t understand taking an event which is supposed to be peaceful and soothing and ending the night with such ferocity. This has to be stopped!

Mike Locke
Springfield

How eloquent, yet utterly self-serving. First of all, Mr. Locke, the obvious: I have two kids, so I can relate. Hell, ALL parents have had troubles at some point getting their kids to fall asleep and/or stay asleep. But aren’t we being just the slightest bit overdramatic (”a war zone broke out in my backyard”)? Jeez, I thought I was the only one with a flair for making mountains out of molehills. Like I say, I know how frickin’ frustrating it can be trying to get an infant-slash-toddler to go to sleep (it doesn’t get any easier until they turn about 5, my friend), only to have them stirred awake, sometimes by the most incidental of things, and sometimes for the rest of the night. And I know how pissed I used to get when my kids were awakened by something by which they really didn’t “need” to be awakened (i.e. the fucksticks with the loud car stereos, for one example). But with all due respect, Mr. Locke- for God’s sake, stop being such a little bitch.

I will concede this much: I do find it a tad… I don’t know… odd, for lack of a better word, that they culminate a night of “peaceful and soothing” music with fireworks. Kind of like hockey players and teeth- the two terms just don’t really seem to belong together. But honestly, I don’t really care that they do it and, quite frankly, rather enjoy it. I’ll tell you this much: the Carillon Festival’s fireworks display is the best in town. (Yes, my dear readers that like to point shit like that out, that is solely my opinion.) The Johann family last went to the Carillon Festival two years ago, when my youngest was but one year old. The night we went just happened to be the night of the “ferocious” fireworks display afterward. My wee one sat with his hands over his ears the whole time [the fireworks were going off], but absolutely loved watching them. I gotta tell you, that particular fireworks display was THE best I have seen in this town or any other in many, many years. It was loud, it was “ferocious”, and it friggin’ rocked.

See, Mr. Locke, fireworks are supposed to be loud.

Actually, I wouldn’t have had any problem with this letter in the least- I would have passed it off as just another Grumpy Gary letter- were it not for that last line: “This has to be stopped!” Why, because YOU were inconvenienced? How typical. One person- or even a handful of people- out of thousands has a problem with something and takes it upon themselves to decide that that something needs to be eliminated. I shudder to think what you’ll want done to Gus Gordon the next time your child is awakened by thunder. Can’t speak for last Friday’s fireworks since I wasn’t there (though we did watch out the window the best we could with all the trees), but the year we went, there were at least hundreds of people that thoroughly enjoyed the “ferocious war zone”, as you called it. I guess their enjoyment means nothing to you. But then, why should it, right? As long as you get what YOU want, to hell with everyone else.

If you were brand new to Springfield, I could be willing to cut you a little slack. Heck, even if you were new to your “house in Washington Park”, I might even have a little bit of empathy for you, though probably not much. But since you said “I quickly remembered them from years past”, that means you knew about the Carillon Festival and you knew about the fireworks displays therein. Plus, you obviously at least receive the SJ-R (whether you actually read it or not is another story…), so you should have seen in the paper that the fireworks display would be occurring that night. I did…

Again, I can definitely relate when you say you had difficulty with your daughter getting to sleep and/or staying asleep. Honestly, though, I’d rather my kids were awakened by fireworks displays (or thunder or tornado sirens or F-16s or bad dreams or marching bands or just about anything) than by all the jackoffs who set off multiple entire bricks of firecrackers nightly from mid-May until what at least seems like about mid-August. You want to scream about eliminating something, how about eliminating those douchebags?! And the douchebags with the loud car stereos? And, just for good measure, how about eliminating the douchebag that should be residing in that big house on 4th Street but considers himself too good to live in a dump like Springfield? God knows his antics have kept me from sleeping well for the last nearly six years.

Bottom line is this: every parent’s child has been unceremoniously disturbed from the arms of Morpheus at some point, and every parent has endured countless sleepless nights trying to get their kids [back] to sleep. And as pissed off as it makes you, all you can do is try your hardest to get them back to sleep. Welcome to parenting, pal. Get over yourself.

Thanks to both of you

About a month ago, Just Two Guys did a poll asking for the Springfield blog scene’s choice of Coolest Blogger(s). John and Micah acknowledged that, due to there being so many good area bloggers, it can be hard to choose one in spite of another, so they allowed multiple votes (within reason…).

Their poll has been closed for a few days now, and it seems that ol’ Johann here received two votes out of the 78 selections made. And no, I did not vote for myself. Honest.

So to both of you who voted for me, I’m honored and humbled.