Father's Day at Pawtucket

Yesterday was a great day for me. From the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed I had a blast.

I was awoken with breakfast in bed. An egg, bacon and cheese on a toasted bagel, with coffee, OJ and a toasted bagel with cream cheese. Then came the presents which turned out to be my uniform for the day - new shorts, a "Greatest Dad" shirt and a "Greatest Dad" hat.

After breakfast came the let's leave dad alone to read the papers time and then we were off for McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket for a family outing at the ball park.

Pawtucket is a great place to watch a game. No bad seats in the house and it is quite inexpensive when compared to Fenway Park (come to think of it - every other major league park is inexpensive when compared to Fenway). It was $30 for tickets for a family of six - how can you beat that? The movies are more expensive than that!

It was a beautiful day for baseball and the stadium was almost at capacity. I would love to see a comparison between crowd statistics between Pawtucket and the Montreal Expos because I bet the PawSox have them beat. Maybe the one disappointment was the fact that I wouldn't be able to get together with SportZine publisher and Hot Club raconteaur Jim Dawson who has season tickets but was missing the game today to go out to dinner with the family.

The opponent for the day was the Norfolk Tides (the Mets AAA team). The starters for the day were Frank Castillo (and his 82 major league wins) against Aaron Heilman (a once very highly thought of prospect for the Mets who seems destined for Brian Rose-ville).

The PawSox ended up losing the game 6-5 but the game featured six-HR and was very entertaining. Brian Daubach took the donut and looked awful at the plate (but I will give Daubach the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to just an off day). Earl Snyder and Kelly Shoppach were the offensive standouts for the Paw Sox while Craig Brazell was the standout for the Tides. If I was Ty Wiggington - I would be nervous about Brazell because this kid can really pound the ball.

After the game the Paw Sox allowed kids on the field to run the bases with their dads. The line took about 1/2 an hour to get through but I must admit it was fun to run the bases with the kids. Once you got to home plate there was another line. This time the line was to get an autograph from a player who I didn't recognize and who my wife couldn't find in the program. The kids got an autograph anyway and just after the line I asked the usher who was guarding one of the dugouts who the player signing autographs was.

"Oh that's Joe (something something). He's the bullpen catcher. He's not in the program because - well he's not really a player," she said with a good natured - glad to be of help smile. Both my wife and I thought that this was just hilarious. (I'm not sure if we share the same warped sense of humor or if she has kinda adapted mine after all these years.)

We stopped on the way home at Appleby's for dinner (more because it was on the way home than any other reason). Dessert was an ice cream cake at home and I ended my day by reading my youngest two stories. After the two stories were read - we closed our eyes and both of us were out for the count.

The perfect end to a perfect day.