all-star baseball, without bananas

The best thing about being at Grayson Stadium on this Sunday evening?
Having my family right there with me!
To my absolutely amazement and delight, I actually got all five of us in this shot!
How very fortuitous!
As I told Tony, if I had been trying to take such a photo, it would have taken forever.
Here, I had just pointed, hoped for the best, and clicked...
i thank You, God!
I especially love that we were all captured at random.
Well, all, except that youngest brother of mine!
He's grinning right at the camera and it's loving his look!
(smile)

This was my second favorite thing about being out for baseball tonight.
My dear friend, Scott, was able to eat nachos at the game!
Remember, he has a lot of self-made rules to insure his team wins, right?
Well, one of those involves eating that favorite Mexican treat.
Rather, it involves him not eating it.
However, as I impressed upon him, he had no team playing tonight.
This was day one of the All-Stars and no Bananas were on the teams playing.
For the first time, he had carte blanche to eat whatever he wanted at a game!
Naturally, he chose the Garbage Can Nachos, with its four orders of nachos, three cheeseburgers, three hot dogs, and a perfectly scandalous covering of cheese -
chomp, chomp!
He had plenty of leftovers for lunch tomorrow.
(smile)

Another favorite moment came much later and was a total surprise for me.
We had gallantly waited through a three-hour rain delay for play to resume.
Yes, I said "three-hour delay" and "resume".
These were the All-Star Quarterfinals and rescheduling was not an option.
By the time the second inning of the first Quarterfinal continued, it was after 10 PM.
The temperature had dropped considerably, with the overhead fans still running.
Mister Willie had not dressed for such temperatures and was very chilly.
I had gotten Berry's attention and Rashad had loaned Willie his jacket...
and Tony was gone when I had returned to our seats.
"He's downstairs, buying a jacket for Mister Willie", Laura told me.
Sure enough, that's what he had done!
Here he is, having presented the Bananas hoodie for baseball's biggest fan.
Wow...
I am so proud of Tony.
He has become such a good man, the good man I knew he could be.
i thank You, God.

So, what did we do for the three hours while we waited for the rain to cease?
If my Ex had still been up in the box, we would have been grooving to songs about rain.
Those days are long gone, however, and Jesse Cole is now ringleader...
the circus still played on!
One of the freak show events was a Garbage Can Nachos-eating contest.
Each guy, Clint and Tim, got their own trash lid of food to consume in a set time.
One of the guys gagged and had to back off... and that's when everyone stood up.
Notice the expression on Scott's face - priceless!

So, those were my favorite moments.

The Home Run Derby was certainly different, but ended up taking too long, in my opinion.
One hitter from each of the six teams had two minutes to hit home runs, from four places on the field, including home plate.
The number of successful hits was then used to determine the playing order ("seed") of the teams.
The guy at bat is Chris Crabtree, of Durham, representing the East All-Star team.
I wonder if he's kin to Kevin?

Whether he is or not, he placed such that his team played in the Quarterfinals.
They shut out their rival, the North All-Stars, with two runs.
That was about five minutes ago.
That was the second three-inning game of the night.
The first game was played between the Fan Vote All-Stars and the West All-Stars.
After that extensive rain delay, the former - with one run - beat the latter.
No Savannah Bananas were on these four teams, as luck would have it.
If the Home Run Derby results had been different, we might have been watching the South All-Stars or the Hometown Savannah All-Stars in one or both games tonight. However, the representative hitters for those two teams, Gabe Howell and Ethan Baucom, respectively, who happened to also both be Bananas, nabbed #2 Seed and #1 Seed, respectively, gaining spots in the Semifinals.
So, as I had told Scott before he went down to the concession stand, we truly had no teams in the fights on this date.

Tomorrow will be different.
We may well end up with Bananas playing against other Bananas in the Championship game.
The two Semifinals will pit each Banana-laced team against one of tonight's winners.
The Fan Vote All-Stars will face the South All-Stars, which has only three Bananas. The South's Bananas are hitters Gabe Howell and Mike Williams and pitcher Dustin Saentz.
The East All-Stars won the right to face the #1 Seed team, the Hometown Savannah All-Stars. This time, there will be six Bananas, with three hitters - Ethan Baucom, Bill LeRoy, and Cory Heffron - and three pitchers - Kyle Luigs, Tyler Lehrmann, and Alex Degen.
The winners will then face off in the All-Star Championship.
All games will be three innings in length.
Barring rain delays, I hope to have Mister Willie home at a decent hour tomorrow, as if we were at a regular ballgame.
That sure would be a nice difference from tonight.
All of my family left before play had resumed and Scott left moments ago.
Now, it's just me and Willie and he's ready to go, so we're off.
(smile)