Take Me Out to the Ballgame

On this Mother's Day we did things a little differently. Jennifer had an open house she had to host so I was going to have Benjamin for the day and I didn't want to sit around the house all day so we (we being me) decided we'd take a trip downtown and watch the Astros take on the San Diego Padres.

Thankfully, the Astros are easily the worst team in the National League, so we were able to score tickets for WELL below face value on Stubhub a couple hours before first pitch.

With such well priced tickets I picked up a third and invited Grumpa to join us - my treat.

For the last couple of weeks when I get home from work and sit down on the couch, Benjamin comes up to me with the remote control and says, "Bayball. Bayball. Bayball." So with majority rule in the house we find whatever baseball game is on that evening and he gets all excited. I figured he should see it in real life now that he is at least conscious that it exists (remember his first baseball game was our trip to St. Louis last summer when he was 8 or 9 months old). Since the Astros are drawing as poorly as they are I figured we'd be able to find some seats together with some room for him.


We got into the ballpark after first pitch but still in the top of the first inning and were able to snag some empty seats in the wheelchair section at the mezzanine railing. It was perfect because there were a couple of recycling bins behind us and it gave us a nice little play area for Benjamin that he was contained in.

Benjamin really liked it when Roy Oswalt threw a strike or an Astro got a hit because everyone clapped and he liked to clap along.

After he had explored the area to the point of boredom we loaded up and took a walk around the ballpark to show him some different views. On the way Grumpa wanted to buy some ice cream so we got one of those mini-helmet ice creams and Benjamin was in heaven.....until we ran out of ice cream.

Panic ensued.

That pretty much ended the ballpark experience. He made it through 5 full innings, which by MLB rule is an official game. Thank you ice cream.

It was a nice little excursion for a Sunday afternoon.....especially on $2 tickets.

Many more pictures are uploaded in the May photo album.