Take me out to the… oh, never mind

We have become a baseball house.  Whenever the Mets are on TV, we are watching it unless they’re playing on the west coast which means we are probably sleeping. 

It wasn’t always like this.  We never really paid much attention to baseball unless the Mets were looking like they were going to make the playoffs, but this year, Freddie has decided that we are going to be Baseball Fans.  So that’s what we’re doing.

Apparently, his new goal in life is to take Jillian to Shea Stadium for a game.  I haven’t even been there for a game – I only saw Bruce Springsteen there once.  I’ve been to a Yankees game, but apparently we are not allowed to root for them in our house (and good thing, too because there is a very loud sucking sound coming from the Bronx right now).  So the Mets it is.

Jillian might do very well at a Mets game, but we didn’t want to drag all of us out there only to find that she’s going to be flipping out all over the place.  So we tried a dry run with our local crappy minor-league team, the Somerset Patriots.  Last night was absolutely gorgeous and perfect for a game so we decided to check it out.  Never mind the fact that Jillian’s bedtime perfectly coincides with the start of the game – we were determined to go!

She did really well, actually.  Because our team sucks so much, we were able to sit anywhere we wanted, so we opted for a seat behind the net.  There wasn’t a lot of activity in the stands aside from little kids running around all hopped up on Pepsi and cotton candy, except when the mascots came over and everyone lost their minds.

Jillian kept looking at me like “Woman, I am supposed to be in bed right now.  What the hell are we doing here?”  I responded by shielding her head any time a foul ball went up and over the net.  I would gladly take a foul ball to the head for my daughter!

Toward the end of the third inning, Jillian started her Meltdown Countdown, with the throwing of things, the yelling, and the blowing of the raspberries that signal her displeasure.  She’s so funny when she’s mad, like an angry old man.  It didn’t help that eventually the guys on our team figure out that you have to HIT the ball with that wooden thing and managed to hit a couple of home runs.  The crown started cheering and Jillian freaked out from the noise.  I tried feeding her, but she wasn’t interested and wouldn’t be calmed, so we packed up and took off after the fourth inning.

We made it home and got her into bed around 9, which is a full two hours later than usual.  I thought maybe she’d sleep a little longer than normal, but at 7 this morning, I could hear her in the monitor “ehhh ehhh  ooooh!  aaaah!  bababababba!”

We’ll try it again with the Patriots, and maybe by the end of the season we’ll be confident enough to try Real Baseball.