I took my mom (and my dad, too) to the Twins game on Sunday for mother's day. My mom's a big fan. I enjoy baseball, too, but I enjoy watching my mother watch baseball almost more than I enjoy watching the game itself. I like they way she gets into it. It turned out to be a great game, even though they lost (they pretty much always lose whenever I go to a game, so I was kind of expecting it). For one thing, there were enthusiastic, chatty fans sitting near us, so we had a good time. I gave my mom a copy of the book Baseball in Minnesota, recently published by the Minnesota Historical Society as a mother's day gift. The woman sitting on the other side of me noticed what my mom had just unwrapped and said, "my husband wrote that book." Apparently, in addition to writing, he works in the press box doing "datacasting" for the Twins web site. Not only that, it just happened he had come up to section 227, where we were sitting, to say hello to some people sitting nearby, so she got him to autograph the book for my mom. How cool is that?
The first inning was the most exciting, with the Twins scoring 7 runs. After that, things didn't go so well, but we did get to see a rare triple play (even if it was when the Twins were at bat) and watch Gardenhire argue with the umpire and get thrown out of the game. Also, Kevin Garnett was at the game, sitting in the section directly under us. So, at least it wasn't boring!
The teams were both using pink bats in honor of mothers' day and breast cancer awareness. Most of the players only used those bats for the first innning, but some of them opted to continue using them for the rest of the game. It was interesting watching who stuck with the pink bats -- mostly those who were getting hits and apparently thought the pink bats were lucky.
We also got free pink visors with the Twins logo on them. Free stuff is cool.
I'm planning to attend the game against the Dodgers on June 26th. This is fair warning to anyone else who was planning to go to that game and is hoping to see the Twins win. Since I'll be there, the odds, sadly, are low.