Father and son at 2006 opening day

I love the simplicity of this special day that I summarized in an email on 4/4/2006 to a group of people I thought might enjoy it:

Sherry called me today and suggested that I write an email to everyone about my day with Trev yesterday, and since I have some time to kill - what a concept! - between work and a political meetin' (Gone With the Wind reference) at 7, I’ll do it now.  The meeting at 7 is with a Democratic Party group whose main goal is to defeat Rick Santorum. Yolanda, if you don't know who he is, he's our senator and maybe be politically to the right of GW. He’s a very, very bad man.

 

Anyway, yesterday, Trev and I did our annual day together - his 7th opening day, which is pretty impressive when you consider he's only 5 years old (one in utero, obviously).  (Opening Day is the first day of baseball season - the first Phillies home game of the year.)

 

Last year was the first time it was just Trev and me, Cheryl very nicely agreeing that between the expense and the hassle of taking both Trev and Emma, and likely Evelyn too, it would be easier to have it just be a dad/son thing.  And as with last year, I took the full day off from work. Of course, Opening Day should be a national holiday, but we won’t get into that right now.

 

Last year we stopped first at the Reading Terminal Market and pretty much got there and Trev wanted to leave to get to the game, which was still 2 hours from starting which was just too much time to kill with a 4-yr old in a crowd of 45,000+.  But this year, we went again and it went much better.  We had lunch from one of the many homemade food-type vendors– macaroni and cheese and a big delicious piece of cornbread (When I asked Trev if it was better than mommy’s, he said, Yes, but don’t tell her!) and pink lemonade, which we agreed was actually red, since that is the Phillies color.  Then we got some Bassett’s ice cream (I have a picture of me with Anneke eating ice cream there) and then some of the amazing double chocolate chip cookies from the Famous Deli, which I believe is what they’re famous for. I took them home for Ev and Cheryl and brought the rest in to work, where they were quickly gobbled up.

 

Geez, I need to leave soon, so I better speed this up.

 

So we left and got to the game pretty quickly with about 20 minutes to spare, which was good cuz it gave us time to get the most important thing of the day – cotton candy, of course! And we saw the guys parachute in with the ceremonial first ball, which was then thrown out by Kimmy Meissner who just won the world figure skating championship and trains nearby. (Art Garfunkel sang God Bless America at the 7^th inning stretch, but we were long gone by then).  And they had a huge flag covering center field carried by a hundred military types and the Phila Boys Choir sang the national anthem and the Phillie Phanatic was all over the place – all quite the spectacle.

 

Let’s see, well, by the fourth inning, the Phillies were losing 10-0! But more importantly, we had time to go out and get hot dogs and more lemonade and walk all the way around the stadium with Trev on my shoulders most of the way. We only actually sat in our seats for about an inning, which happened to be the inning the dumb cardinals scored 8 runs! And Trev just squirmed the whole time, climbing on me, running up and down the aisle, literally poking the 20-something year old in the seat next to him in the shoulder with his finger and then looking away. And he was showing off his shiny penny that he had gotten squished flat into a pig at the Reading Terminal (long story) to anyone who would look. And generally just being very excitable, not bad, just uh…active. So we left about half way through the game, Trev falling asleep on the almost 2-hour ride home (big traffic jam).

 

So the best part of the whole story is last night, I was carrying Trev into bed, and I told him what a great day it had been even if the Phillies had lost. He paused for a moment and said “They did?!”

I just laughed and told him I loved him and gave him a huge hug.

 

Perfect.

 

Oh yeah, and of course the only bad news is that they won’t be able sell beer at the Phillies games the rest of the year. Why? All together now: “Cuz they lost the opener!!!!!!!”

 

(Uncle Art told me that joke about 40 years ago.)

 

Love to you all.

 - Jame