In any child's life, there are always many important firsts
that deserve to be documented. First steps, walking, rolling over, crawling,
eating solid food. All of those are very important. However, they pale in
comparison to a child's first Royals game.
Ok, so I may be overselling things a bit. In 2016 when Ellie
attended her first game, there was definitely an aura of excitement as the fan
base was still on fire from the back-to-back World Series appearances. Today,
as the Royals are early in the process of rebuilding, it can be considered a
good day at the ballpark if the boys in blue get three hits. Lucky for Ethan,
he doesn't know if the Royals are good or not (spoiler: they're not). He's just
happy he gets to experience the great outdoors and also gets to spend three
hours strapped to his mommy.
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| How I pine for those days... |
Now, one thing you should know about Bethany and me is that
it is unlikely we would decide to tackle taking both kids to a Royals game at
this stage of life. Fortunately for us, it was DFA Employee Appreciation Day at
"The K" meaning that our trip was free. In other words, if things
went completely off the rails, we could simply retreat to the car and call it
an early day. In my humble opinion, anything after the third inning would have
been gravy!
I will say this was one of my more eventful trips to
Kauffman Stadium and that's not because of the game either. For one, we spent a
decent amount of our afternoon on the move around the stadium. While we had
good seats out in front of the Hall of Fame in left field, the midday sun
radiating over the heads of our children would chase us from those very seats
by the middle of the third inning.
Now, I realize the middle of the third inning seems like a
very arbitrary time. However, there's a reason for that and his name is
Sluggerrr. Yes, I am referring to the Royals' adorable anthromorpic lion mascot.
During the fourth inning of every home Royals game, Sluggerrr makes his way to
the outfield experience to meet his young fans. Well, it just so happens that
Ellie fancies herself to be quite the fan of Sluggerrr. Therefore, Bethany and
I wanted to do everything we could to make sure she met her fuzzy friend.
Knowing from experience that the line tends to grow out of
control rather quickly, we rushed and found ourselves third in line. Between
five and ten minutes of our arrival, Sluggerrr pulled up on his tiny yellow
motorcycle to begin meeting fans. Before we knew it, Ellie's turn had come. As
we began to walk towards Sluggerrr, Ellie was suddenly intimidated by the
lion's height, choosing instead to abandon her place in line and run to the
safe embrace of Bethany who had been standing off to the side with Ethan. Try
as we might, we could not coax Ellie to give Sluggerrr another chance. With
that, we headed back to the game to enjoy some more baseball action.
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| So fearsome... |
Honestly the rest of the game was relatively uneventful as
the Royals and White Sox traded hitless innings back and forth before we left
during the eighth inning. The only highlights to be had were Bethany getting
Ethan's first game certificate, Ellie and I enjoying a half-inning from the second
row, and Ellie repeatedly whacking the lady sitting in front of us in the head
on accident. Poor lady; all she wanted to do was knit. Who would have thought that
a baseball game wouldn't be a good place to knit? #DaddyWrite
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