NO BALL TODAY

I spent my evening away from baseball at Quest For Tech, where I secured two tickets to a Wilmington Blue Rocks game this Saturday via their DSL connection. The person to whom we give out this computer will probably be very confused as to how www.bluerocks.com got into their Internet Explorer history. One of the founders also had me look up ticket availability for a QFT outing later in the year to Citizens Bank Park. This will probably be the only time I go this year, since my wife, being a genteel Southern lady, hates Philly fans. She does like the QFT people, though, and even volunteers with me. She likes going to Blue Rocks games as well, since Delaware people are almost Southern, for all intents and purposes, and behave far better than the puerile denizens of Broad and Pattison.

I'm also looking forward to my first MLB game of the year in two weeks at Don't Call It Enron Field in Houston, where the Astros will take on the Giants, sans Barry. My wife and I are heading to Houston, me on business and she visiting family. I've been to D.C.I.E. Field twice before. The concourses are huge and spotless, and the grass is a noticeably bright green compared to the old Astrodome, but the fans are the same old transplant idiots who can't show up on time, can't stay in their seats for more than an inning and can only cheer when the scoreboard tells them to. Still, it's a pretty park, and I can't wait to see a real major league game again. My next foray into the majors will be at, of all places, Oakland Coliseum, scene of the '73 Mets' final curtain. My wife and I have booked a vacation to the Bay Area for late June/early July, and a ball game was my only prerequisite. The Athletics will face the Mariners in what should be, if nothing else, an intra-divisional game if not a heated rivalry. Plus, I'll get to see the traveling circus freak act that is Ichiro, or "Ichiro!", as Baseball Prospectus calls him. Aside from these two games and the QFT outing to Citizens, I'm hoping to get down to RFK for at least one game this year. They sell killer french fries at the concession stands there, and there are no bad seats in that venerable old dump.

A day off for Baseball Dreaming. Ain't it great?