Afternoon game with my dad

One of the board members over at theclevelandfan.com decided to give away two great tickets to an Indians game. They decided to make it a contest asking why you deserved the tickets. I figured I didn't deserve the tickets but then saw it was for a day game on May 13 which happened to be my dad's 59th birthday. So I wrote a quick paragraph and figured I would take a chance.

As sweet as the seats were the best part was telling my dad we won. I handed him my laptop and showed him the post about the contest. Then I scrolled down and showed him my post. He laughed remembering how he put hot dogs in a thermos and cringed when he saw I mentioned we put them in the reduced bread we bought from the old Millbrook factory. He laughed again when I discussed scouring the Municipal Stadium parking lots for bottles and cans to recycle and how we used to sit in the yard listening to Herb Score on this giant radio he saved from the trash working for the refuse department. He would have us kids remove screws from old aluminum chairs so he could recycle them for extra cash that he used to send us to parochial school. When he got to the part where I wrote I had no idea we were lower middle class until I got to high school, his eyes teared up. It was a pretty sweet moment.

He was so excited. He wanted to get there as early as possible for batting practice. I told them they didn't have batting practice on afternoon getaway games but he wanted to get there as soon as the gates opened just like he did when we were kids and we sat along the right field foul poles for a buck. We were all smiles when we went to the will call and as fate would have it-- there were no tickets in our names. It was a very stressful half-hour as I had no idea what the real name was of the generous man who donated the tickets. But the wait was worth it when the tickets arrived. We sat in row BB in section 152 right behind home plate. Neither one us had ever sat that close at the old or new park. Fouls balls were peppered just behind us or to our right all game. We were two rows too close to have a real shot. But man was it fun thinking at any moment we could get a ball.

Martinez homered in the first and Cliff Lee had no-hit type stuff for the first six innings. My least favorite player Ryan Garko blasted a two-run homer and LaPorta ripped the first of what is hopefully many doubles in his career. Betancourt 's one inning of work was trouble free and Wood went 1-2-3 in the ninth. Tribe wins 4-0. The rain held off and it was a great day spent with Dad.

Thanks again to the cool people at The Cleveland Fan for honoring my dad with the tickets. It meant a lot to him and we had a great time.