And a Drunk Shall Lead Them

I'll explain that title in a minute. I have tickets to 9 Angels games this year thanks to a partial season package that I bought, and I had two tickets for last night's game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. It was HolyCoast Daughter's turn to go, so we headed out to the stadium on the hottest day of the year (so far).

When we arrived at the stadium at 6:30 pm the air temperature gauge on our car read 102 degrees. We had to walk quite a ways across the blacktop parking lot which had been baking in the sun all day, and by the time we finally got to our seats, we were hot.

The seats were in the shade (thankfully) but there was absolutely no breeze, so for the first hour I just sat and sweated. The girl didn't mind it quite so much and thoroughly enjoyed her pre-game Chinese dinner.

It finally cooled off enough to be bearable about 7:45, though it was plenty warm. We did get to see a couple of fairly rare events in last night's game. Early in the event Tampa Bay had back-to-back triples. Triples are more rare than singles, doubles or homeruns, and I would think back-to-back triples must be really rare. I'd love to know the statistics on that.

In the bottom of the seventh with bases loaded and two outs, Vladimir Guerrero cranked a grand slam into the center field seats. Earlier in the game Guerrero drove in his 1,000th career RBI. Vladi was having a good night.

And now to explain the post's title. About the 6th inning a guy sitting several rows in front of us, and who had clearly gotten his share of stadium beer, decided that our whole section was boring because we wouldn't stand and cheer the way he wanted us to. It was during one of his cheerleading attempts in the Angel's big 7th inning that we almost had a cosmic moment that could have only been credited to a merciful God.

The drunk was facing away from the field and berating all of us for not cheering correctly when the combination of a 94 MPH fastball and a late swinging right-handed batter resulted in a foul ball that made it all the way to our section in the third deck. For one brief shining moment it looked like the ball was going to carrom off the back of the drunk's head. Sadly, it missed and landed a few feet away, but I noticed that not a single person in our section shouted a warning to the drunk when it looked like he was going to get hit. We were all rooting for the ball.

We left in the bottom of the 8th with the Angels up 9-2. If they get 10 runs we get free hot wings at Hooters, so I'm hoping they scored again after we left (my wife, not so much).

By the way, I just heard on the news that it was 122 degrees in Indio today. I'm glad we didn't have tickets to a game out there.

UPDATE: No Hooters. Game ended 9-2.