Iowa Girl on the Go

Here’s the thing about baseball. It’s really fun to be at a major league park. The atmosphere is happy and friendly. It’s nice to be outside. There’s a sort of energy, beginning in the parking lot (where it seems like EVERYONE tailgates) and all around the concourse and through the pre-game stuff, all the way until… the game starts.

And then you just sit there for 9 innings (if you’re lucky and don’t go into extra innings).

My family loves baseball. Me, not so much.

I used to be a KC Royals fan back in the 1980s when the team was awesome and I lived in Missouri. I loved George Brett and Frank White and all those guys. I cheered as loud as anyone when they won the World Series in 1985.

And then they went into a slump and I had a couple of kids and a job and moved to Iowa and, well, until last year I could not tell you the name of ONE player in the Royals lineup. Not one. Not even the manager.

My husband, Dave, has been a long-suffering Royals fan all these years. He never gave up hope. Last year was super exciting for him, because the team went to the World Series again (for the first time, literally, since 1985).

He got us tickets for the first game of the Series, and that was really fun, even though we lost. I learned the players’ names and everything. For Christmas, our daughters bought him tickets to the May 16 game against the Yankees. So we went to Kansas City last weekend.

The two teams played Friday night (May 15), and the Royals whomped the Yankees 12-1. They played again on Sunday (May 17), and the Royals once again dominated 6-0.

But the game we went to? They sucked it up. I don’t know very much about pitching, but I’d have to say it was pretty awful. At one point, the bases were loaded and the Yankees hadn’t even gotten a hit. So, yeah, pretty sucky pitching. (I am talking to YOU, Danny Duffy.) The Royals ended up losing 1-5.

Oh, and did I mention that it rained? Yeah, it rained really hard.

And did I further mention that the food is overpriced and bad? I got a pretzel with cheese and spent nine bucks.

My family doesn’t like it when I point this stuff out, so when they go to another game in June, they’re leaving me home. Which is just fine with me.

Oh, here was the bright spot of the day: Our daughter, Lauren, who used to live in Kansas City, took us to a hole-in-the-wall pizza place called d’Bronx, somewhere near Westport in a really grubby neighborhood. But the pizza was really good, and they also had black-and-white cookies, just like New York.