It's was an adventure not just a game. We started out at about 11:30am for a 1:10pm start time. Depending on traffic, the stadium is 45 minutes from our house, give or take. The trip takes us through downtown Tampa, past the airport, across Tampa Bay and into downtown St. Petersburg. It is a teaser of a trip because you can see the stadium across the bay but there is still another 30 minutes of driving to get there.
My original thought was to get in early, watch some of batting practice and maybe get a good parking space. Well at least we did get a good parking space. Traffic through Tampa was very slow due to a stalled car. It was an extra 15-20 minutes but it seemed much longer.
When we arrived at the ticket booth we learned it was a "Silver" game. The games are graded and ticket prices adjusted based on a number of factors (day of the week, time of day, opponent, expected turnout etc.) and Silver is the cheapest pricing tier, Yeah!!
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| Got'em. $19 each and it seems cheap. |
I think I have a bit of an attitude about ticket prices from growing up in a town with only a Minor League team and honestly not going to many games since I was a kid and after the players went on strike. It's still hard to fathom the amount of money in the game and I know we are a very cheap market. Maybe the cheapest.
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| Time for pre-game lunch at Brewhouse. |
Again I will reflect back to my youth when, at Red Wing Stadium, when you could afford it, you were lucky to wait in line to get a red hot and a coke for fifty cents. I usually opted for a ten cent box of CrackerJack with the prize inside. Wish I had some of those old collectable prizes. Ah, me.
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| Full uniform and hungry. |
Now we are sitting in a full service restaurant at the stadium and there are probably 4 or 5 of them plus the take-away service counters, hallway kiosks and walk-around shouting vendors. We've come a long way baby.
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| She didn't want to wear my Rays cap or anything Rays for that matter. |
We raised our girl to be a Yankee fan and she remains true to her team. She does put up with us when we get excited about any given game though. That is unless it is against the Yankees. I should back up for a second and say I am a Yankee fan as well, unless they are playing the Rays (life is complicated like that sometimes).
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| Splitting lunch was a capital idea, Wow! |
Back to lunch, it has arrived and plenty enough for two. A nice pressed Cuban Sandwich and fries that were hot and fresh., Yumm.
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| Here is where we parked at the park. Pre-game warm ups going on. |
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| All rise for the playing of our national anthem. No singer ~ an off day? |
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| Ready for some baseball! |
The Tropicana Field "rings". Unique to all baseball.
In other climates I am all for a traditional outside field, but down here in Florida, a weather protected dome seems just so smart. I could go for a retractable roof to have the best of both worlds but we are not there yet.
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| "Raymond" Working the crowd, such as it was. |
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| Starting lineups. No B.J. Upton, Zobrist, or Longoria to start, what? |
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| Matt Joyce, local guy made good. Nice to see. |
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| Brandon Allen, recent acquisition, but will he pay off? |
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| Desmond Jennings in center. |
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| "The Shift" is on. That's the third baseman in the Short stop spot |
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| Sean Rodriguez at short stop |
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| Jeff Niemann's delivery. Can you find the ball? |
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| Every third inning a sweep. How pampered are we? |
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| Joyce moved to left. Directly in front of us. |
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| Zorilla subs in to right field. |
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| Raymond gets to do his winner's dance and romp. |
As usual it was a close game and luckily the Rays were able to hold on to a one run lead. Most unusual was that it was not decided by a come-from-behind walk-off hit in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs and two strikes on the batter.
We waited for the bulk of the crowd to leave and browsed through the memorabilia shop just for grins. My gosh, nice stuff, but priced just right out of this world. One thing it did do was make the price of admission seem like an even better bargain.
All in all a nice day of memories for Erin and I though. I'm thankful and happy for that.
