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!!!