The Playoffs

What do you do when you are at your mom's enjoying some home made tostadas and your phone rings and it's your favorite sister in law calling to let you know that her husband just scored not one or two nor three or four, well actually not five or six and not even seven but (drum roll playing here) EIGHT tickets to the first playoff game at Chase Stadium, the Arizona Diamondbacks vs. The Rockies?

Wow, that was one long question wasn't it? Well if you say eat your tostadas pretty fast and hurry home to pick up your "chica" and grand kid then you are right.
I got home and it only took us about ten minutes to be on the road. Considering we were late and all the parking lots were full, not to mention that they gouched the prices to $20.00 where they normally charge $5.00, I told "mi chica" to drive a couple of blocks away from the stadium to see if we could find something. About five blocks away we found one space left against a company loading dock that was closed so we parked there and it didn't cost a thing.

We started walking towards the stadium when one of the bicycle guys told us he would take us, as you know they work for tips only so when we reached the stadium I gave him my only bill I had which happened to be a $20.00, I told him to keep five but he pretended not to find enough change so winded up keeping eight. Considering the parking was free and we got to the gate when the third inning was about to start I just told him thanks and we went on his marry way.





To get to our seats (keep in mind these were free tickets) we had to go through two sets of escalators and then 108 (yeap, I counted the suckers) steps to get to our seats. Did anybody say nose bleed? I'm telling you these seats were the third row from the very top. After about 75 steps or so, both "mi chica" and I were totally out of breath. These steps are very steep, a second smaller brake before finally reaching our destination and we were finally seated. My sister in law, was prepared and gave us a bottle of water which I think we drank like in two sips.


Yes, those little tiny puny dots on the field are in fact PLAYERS.

It was an uneventful game, yes the Diamondback was losing and tempers were flaring when in the seven inning a controversial (or not) call caused irritation on the local fans and lots of debree found its way into the field. The constant booing and bottle throwing forced the teams to leave the field for about 10 minutes, the noise just never died down, luckily being so high up we didn't get the worst of it. For a minute there I thought the term nose bleed was going to be taken literally.




Diego went on his second game and he had a great time. The only other time he had been to the stadium was about two years ago, so this time he enjoyed it a little bit more. After carpeting the floor with a nice cover of sun flower seeds and peanut shells we decided to start making our way towards the exit. They announced that it was a sell out but I still saw many empty seats. It was nice to see the stadium full again, so let's hope that tomorrow we even the score so that we don't go to Colorado with a deficit.

All in all we had a great time, and the best part was that it was all free, how can you beat that?


Nino! While my daddy concentrates on the game, my brother pretends he is watching, my mom makes faces at the players, just take a picture of me, yeah that's the ticket, I'll pose for you.

Simple Things in Life

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Sometimes something as simple as a baseball game can give me and "mi chica" an opportunity to spend quality time together. Due to my position at work, I often get invited to sporting events. Tomorrow will be one of those occasions as we will be going to watch our snakes eat some fish.

I think the Diamonbacks are having a winning streak so I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that it continues, it's always exciting to go to the ball park and watch a game, but it's far more exciting when the home team gets the victory.

For those of you that really, really love the game, watching a baseball game at our stadium here in Phoenix is like a mixture of game night meets the mall, yes Chase Stadium does have a mall feeling to it, there are plenty of food concessions for everyone's taste, and plenty of smaller carts that sell things like caramel apples or gourmet coffee.

What ever happened to the days of peanuts and Cracker Jacks?

But still, going out to the ball park is always an enjoyable experience specially when the seats are great and free, all we have to worry about is paying for parking, how can you beat that?

So what do you think, is baseball still America's #1 pastime, or has it been surpassed by basketball, hockey, and now soccer? Does anyone miss Reggie Jackson, Nolan Ryan, Steve Garvey, or Pete Rose?

With athletes nowadays taking so many steroids and other enhancing drugs, is the fun and excitement of watching them brake records the same?

These are all questions I ask myself, but the bottom line is when I go to the ball park I put all the politics aside so I can just have a good time.


I took this picture the last time I was there, it shows the evolution of the bat and the ball.