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It was Cub Scout day at the baseball game in Oakland, and I was invited to tag along with D.J. and his friend Zack (and thank goodness D.J. had someone to chatter nonstop about Star Wars with). Tammy and Suzanne and I even got to walk on the field around the warning track with the kids. So it was more an event than a ballgame, which is okay, since I’m not invested in the A’s or Devil Rays, so I didn’t care who won (or if anyone did, for that matter).
So we didn’t see the whole game. We missed the start of it while we were filing in with the other Scouts and looking for our seats. We missed a couple of innings in the middle while we stood in line for food. And we left during the sixth inning, so we missed the last three. But the rest of the game was pretty entertaining – just not as entertaining as the kids in the stands.
It was as beautiful a day as you could hope for at the ball park, and our seats were close enough to the field that a foul ball sailed directly over my head in the first inning. I could have reached up and plucked it out of the air. In fact, I did reach, but then I realized I had the brace on my right hand and I yanked it back to safety. The ball landed a few rows behind us and bounced around enough that it ended up in front of us.
I didn’t mind leaving early, and not just because I didn’t care about the teams that were playing. I had enough sun and fresh air for one day. I protected myself fairly well, but I did get slightly singed on my face, neck and arms. Besides, we had to get there early enough to stand in line with a thousand Scouts for an hour in the parking lot before the game. By the sixth inning I felt as if I’d stayed through a double header. And the boys were ready to leave anyway. | 
