As I Was Saying...

A few weeks ago, I promised I'd tell some recent stories that happened this summer, and to this point, I've forgotten to do that.

It's been a lazy few months at the blog, and I apologize to my millions and millions of readers. More blogs are coming. And they won't ALL be Phillies related. I think.

The two stories I had meant to tell involved a night at a Jackhammers game, and a lost afternoon trying to find my family at a park in Joliet.

Neither went as planned.

Back on July 4th, we had a pretty good amount of rain during the day, and the threat of significant rain remained for the evening hours as well. We decided to squash any plans to go see fireworks in the area, not wanting to sit and get drenched.

Our oldest daughter, Megan, was fine with it, and we promised her we'd take her somewhere to see fireworks sometime soon.

The most obvious choice -- from a close to home standpoint at least -- was to take her to a Jackhammers game on a night when fireworks would follow the game.

We rounded up some tickets for a Friday night in late July, and I took both of my daughters to the game (my wife had plans to go out with a few friends that night).

The game was set to start at 7:05pm, and since I had to work the next morning, I was pretty confident that I'd still be able to get out of there by 10:00 or so, and be home in enough time to still get a good night's sleep.

I mean, how long could these lower level minor league games last? There's no TV timeouts, there can't be a ton of managerial moves, etc. that typically drag out a major league game, right?

Well, the one thing I didn't take into account was bad baseball. Really bad.

The night we chose to go, the Jackhammers offered up a clinic on how not to pitch, hit and field. And considering how bad the 'Hammers were this year, that's saying something.

Fargo-Moorehead was the opponent. They scored early, and often. So did the Jackhammers. Inning after inning dragged along with bad pitching, fielding, and bad feelings building up inside your friendly blogger as the time kept on ticking away on a balmy Friday night.

Megan, 9, kept asking if the game was almost over. I couldn't give her any assurances as I was wondering the same thing. Our youngest, Sarah, 3, was getting sleepy by the 7th inning.

Again, so was I.

We finally reached the ninth inning at around 11:15pm. Sarah's asleep, daddy's getting cranky and Megan looks as bored as a nine-year old can look.

Of course we can't get a 1-2-3 inning so the dozens of fans that are left can get the only thing they came to the game for in the first place.

Nope, the Jackhammers start to mount a "rally" scoring several runs, prolonging the torture.

And to cap it off, as the ninth inning dragged on, one of the pitches from the Fargo-Moorehead pitcher came in a little to tight for the liking of whoever was batting for Joliet, so we almost had a bench clearing brawl.

We had the bench clearing part, but no brawl. Look, if you're going to give us an a game that lasts over four hours, at least treat us to a nice bloody brawl, right? I wasted precious space on my digital camera recording what ended up being a group of about forty players and coaches walking around the field puffing out their chests, with not a single punch thrown.

Disappointing.

thankfully, the game ended soon after, and the fireworks show took place moments later. Megan and I enjoyed the fireworks, but Sarah slept through it.

We got home shortly before midnight, but at least Megan got to see fireworks, and for better or worse, a more memorable night I 'm guessing.

Story number two is coming up in another post later.