Wrigley

A few days ago, I returned from a 3 day-mancation with my dad and some of his buddies from work. It was epic. And I totally would have blogged about it earlier...except that the hotel we stayed at (Hyatt Regency) didn't have free WiFi. Or a pool. Or a hot tub. 4 star hotel my ass. I'll bet you even the Bates motel had free WiFi.

Ah yes, thank you for coming so quickly sir. I was in the middle of a shower when some guy with a knife came and tried to kill me. I'm not sure I'll be coming back unless you take care of that situation. Or unless you get free WiFi.

Our trip overall was very awesome- aside from the fact that we had a bout with a half-sleeping cabbie who enjoyed braking at the last second. And the fact that we hoofed it around the city about 4 miles on our first day because we were idiots.

This trip was all about Wrigley field, and it didn't disappoint. It was my first trip to Wrigley. Actually, it was my first major league game that did not take place in old Tiger Stadium. I've never been one of those guys who wants to see games in every major league stadium. I didn't even care if I saw another baseball game again.

But my dad, who retired in June, wanted to go, and he asked me if I wanted to go. I figured it'd be a neat opportunity, so I said 'sure'.

It hadn't even been ten minutes after the game and I was already excited about our next trip (hopefully Fenway)! That one game restored baseball in my soul. I still don't want to see every ballpark- but I want to see as many as I can. Walking into Wrigley made me feel like a little boy again- that's the magic of the ballpark.

I'd pit baseball right up there with hockey as being sports you HAVE to see live. They work on TV...but not nearly as much as they do when you are there in person. The crack of the bat, and you swear that every single fly ball is going to leave orbit. Of course, it ends up being a routine infield fly-ball...but it's just so amazing. Football and basketball are cool, but you can totally get by just watching those on the tube. Baseball? Hockey? If you get a chance, see a game.

We had an absolutely beautiful day- it was probably lower-to-mid 80s, no clouds, low humidity. We sat in section 202, which, as we found out, was underneath another section. That means that we got to sit in the shade (maybe like a half inning of some sun seeping through), with a nice cool cross breeze. We had very minimal obstruction (couldn't see 3rd base very well).

Probably the coolest feature of the stadium was the way the outfield bleachers were set up. In the stadium itself, there weren't a significant number of bleachers. But on top of the buildings across the street, there were bleacher sections set up. Looking at it from where we were, it looked like the stadium was bigger than it actually was, but it was really neat to find out that the top half of the outfield sections were not even in the stadium!

The game itself was great. We saw Ryan Howard hit a 3-run homer. We saw Cubs fans throw the ball right back. We saw last year's AL Cy Young winner, Cliff Lee, pitch 8 innings of strong ball for the Phillies (oh, by the way, we got to watch the defending World Series champs). We got to take part in the 7th inning singing of 'Take Me Out To The Ballgame', led by Jim Belushi. Congratulations baseball- you have been returned to my heart. Fenway (or another ballpark), here we come!

The old school hand-operated scoreboard. Needless to say, we were scoreboard-watching the Tigers, as they beat the BoSox 2-0.


(Sigh)...those ivy covered walls were so beautiful!



If you get a chance to see a game in Wrigley, I HIGHLY recommend it. Even if you don't like baseball, the chance to take part in this piece of history. And who knows, maybe you'll become a baseball convert like me.

In the next couple days, in honor of the upcoming college football season, I'm going to post a diatribe on the state of the NCAA bowl system (of course, I'm not really sure what diatribe means, but I obviously wanted to use it. So I did.)

PIC:
Norman Bates: http://www.legendsofhorror.org/images/bates/ppic1.jpg

Kids will be kids...and kids are idiots...and kids are idiots because their parents are idioters.

Well, I just finished my paper...and you know what that means...a blog post! With my full attention! For you!

I'm going to try and do this differently. Normally, I try and set up stories and my blog posts just end up getting long-winded and very wordy, very quickly. So instead of trying to set up the story, I'm just going to tell the story. Ironically, in my attempt to cut down on the length of my blog post, I have inadvertently added a whole paragraph that will, at the end of this whole shebang, make the blog post longer than it would have been if I had just tried to tell you this story. So....

How hard is it to be a parent? Well, it's not hard...and yet it's the hardest thing you'll ever have to do. So much of it is 'common sense'...so much of it is 'OMG I have no freaking idea what to do?'. See, there are three 6-7 year old girls that live in our apartment complex. Delaney loves them- she's always looking out the window, seeing if they're out there. She always wants to go play with them. If they're outside when we're outside, then she'll go racing over to them, excitedly saying 'Hey guys, whatcha doin?'.

Yesterday, we were outside playing. I built a house for a couple of the girls out of some life-size tinker toys (I don't know what they really are...Delaney calls them blocks. Maybe I should just say, blocks). Delaney was really excited that I was building the house, because I had built a block house a couple days prior, and she loved it (I should make it clear at this time that these are not actually our blocks, but they did not belong to either of the kids I was building the house for either. I guess that isn't really pertinent information).

Well, one of the girls, who has a bully rep, didn't want Delaney to play, and she was very vocal about this...not obscenely vocal, but every time Delaney commented on my building of a house for her, the girl (whom I shall call Poster Child) made it clear she didn't want Delaney to play with them.

So I keep building, and I get the little house set up, and the girls go to play in it...and of course Delaney wants to play. And of course Poster doesn't want her to play. So she keeps telling her 'No Delaney', and tries to wall Delaney off from the house, with her arms as the wall. Eventually, they move the house.

Now here is where my heart breaks. I know full well that the older girls have a right to play by themselves. I can understand that they might want some space, and some privacy. But Delaney looks up to those girls- she loves them, she adores them- and all the playground/hierarchy/social crap hasn't hit her yet. She is so naive, so innocent, so unaware of the rejection. All she knows is that she wants to play. Her eyes have not been tainted by the stain that is the dark side of humanity.

So she follows them. She asks me to help her drag along the block box as her own house. At this point I'm torn- I know Poster doesn't want Delaney around them. I also know how much Delaney just wants to be with them. So I bring the box over, because...I don't know why. Maybe I thought Poster would have a change of heart. Maybe I saw a good teaching opportunity. Maybe I just didn't have the heart to tell my daughter 'no' in that moment. Well, obviously Poster moves the house again.

Rather than walk you through all the details, I'm just going to tell you that Poster reached a point where she sulked away (as she often does), threatening to go inside because she wasn't getting her way. As she's headed for her door, she says something like this 'It's all your fault Delaney'.

Um, excuse me? How about, no????

I'm getting a little fired up even thinking about this now. I chewed her out something fierce for saying that (understand in context that I'm not a fierce man, so the objective outsider might not call it fierce. Those that know me, know that it was fierce). Where the hell does she get off saying that to Delaney...a three year old who does not realize in the social world she was doing wrong...because she just wanted to play. With her friends.

Shortly after, I went over to Poster. I apologized. I explained that Delaney loves the older girls, and just wants to play, and doesn't understand their need for space. I told her that I understood where she was coming from.

Because it's not really Poster that I'm angry with. Oh sure, she was the conduit. She was the face at that moment. But what really pisses me off about this situation is the fact that her parents are not around. Ever. I don't know what goes on behind their doors, so I would hesitate to say she is a victim of poor parenting. But when Poster spends most days outside alone, I believe that I can say that she is not getting the attention or supervision that she needs.

Her mom? Nice lady. But where is she? Her daughter is not old enough to be left alone outside all the time, especially when she bullies the other kids. She is extremely manipulative, making threats about 'not being friends ever again' or 'I'll tell your mom you are mean to me'...and the poor other girls get sucked in- because they just want to play. They just want to have fun.

Yes, kids can't be constantly supervised. They need some freedom, they need a chance to fail so that they can learn to succeed. But Poster has had problems before. There have been complaints. There has been many altercations with many children because the same problems that happened months ago have not been addressed because the mom is not around to see what the hell is going on.

Parents, spend time with your kids. Monitor them. Pay attention to them. Love them. I realize that no child is going to be perfect. I realize full well that there will come a day when Delaney loses the innocence, and becomes a child of this world system, where we all file in to our societal roles, and so-and-so is the alpha male, and so-and-so is the pawn...but damn it, don't just give up on your kid. We have a finite period of time in which we can do tremendous good with our children. They are so impressionable, but only for so long. The messages we send in these formative years will stick with them for their entire lives. Oh, they may not know it. They probably won't have any clue. But it will be there. So don't just leave your kids to do whatever. Be there for them. Parenting is hard, I know. But's it's so easy.



So I obviously failed at making a short blog post. Not only that, but I added an extra paragraph, because I tried to tell you how I was going to make this post shorter, when actually I didn't do that. In fact, it's longer because of that first paragraph. Actually, you can probably add this paragraph to the gratuitous length factor. All I can say is, 'I'm sorry'.