How to watch Baseball

My cousin is moving to Hong Kong, he's one of those teachin' fools, the ones who go from country to country teaching kids to speak the English. He and his wife Heather have worked in Poland and Korea (south) and now after a year(?) hiatus in the states they're headed back out there, to be foreigners again. They leave in September, assuming the visas all check out, but in the meantime we've got them for another month. I set a goal with Kevin for the month; go an M's game for each home stand till they leave. That's only like, what, two games a week, tops? Totally achievable.

I love Baseball.

If you don't already know this about me you probably should, (one more confession this week). I love live baseball. I can listen to it on the radio with relative attentiveness or I can nap to it while it plays on the TV, but watching, live, that's where it's at.

The Mariner's came to Seattle the same year I did, 1977, a good year. I don't remember when I saw my first game, (family any guesses?) but I do remember a few key firsts connected with the Mariners. -

The first time I realized I needed glasses.

"Hey Dad, what's the score?"
"What you're saying you can't see the score board?"

Sixth grade and my sister had just been to the eye doctor to get her first pair of glasses, so naturally my parents thought I was exaggerating my difficulty. I don't blame them, I was always coming up with some new story. Like the one where I told my family that I had already had kids and a husband, and was living my life in reverse (grade school). But it turned out that my eyes were worse than my sister's and I've had corrected eyes ever since. Ha! Take that parents!

Last night however, I had two firsts.

1) I finally mastered the art of sunflower seed consumption. Well kinda mastered, I managed to accidentally spit a bit of seed on the person sitting below me, but what you don't know...A great activity for the fidgety; you pack a cheek with seeds and then shell and disassemble them inside your mouth. The salty seeds create a lot of spit so you have to finesse the shell out of your mouth without drooling and without dislodging the hard won tasty seed. From the look on Greg's face I'm pretty sure I looked like an earnest squirrel. What does an earnest squirrel look like? Puffy cheeks, eyes squinting with concentration and tiny furrowed brow.

2) Then there was the 8-1DP, Ichiro caught the pop-up fly all the way out in center and lasered it right to Hernandez who tagged the runner out at home. Everyone lost it, jumping up and yelling and yelling and then I fainted. Seriously. My first faint. I'm not a fainter, not much of a blushing flower but apparently I'm no match for gravity and low blood sugar. We won by the way, in extra innings but we won.

More baseball tom morrow, the idiot Red Sox are in town, I'll try to stay fully conscious this time.