The Ball Game - part 3

This is the third post about my trip to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. The first post is here and the second post is here.

Now we get to the game itself. It was a perfect day. The temperature was in the 70's (that's Fahrenheit - it was in the 20's in Celsius). There was a bit of a breeze and my seat was in the shade so I didn't have to worry about sunburn. But what did I do with that other ticket? I was going to sell it for about half of its face value of $95. You're not allowed to sell tickets for more than their face value and I thought $40 to $45 would be fair and pay for the parking, subway fare and lunch. I walked into a ticket office and asked what seats in the Loge section would be worth. Our tickets were in the section I circled in the top picture to the right - the circle on the lower right of the blue arrowed line. He asked if I had two tickets. "Well, I want to use one," I said but he answered, "No, I'll trade you your tickets for a single seat closer to the field. And I'll give you $50." Well, how could I argue? The ticket he gave me was in the section behind home plate that I've circled on the upper left with the arrow pointing to it. It was only 10 rows back of the field. That's where you see me standing in the picture of the first post.

OK, OK - the game. The Red Sox were playing the Detroit Tigers. They shouldn't have had much trouble with them but the night before, the Sox were way behind the Tigers going into the final inning when David Ortiz hit a Grand Slam Home Run to bring them to within one run but the rest of the team couldn't get any more runs and the Sox had lost. So, the team and the fans were out for revenge. The Red Sox pitcher was Daisuke Matsuzaka. He is a good pitcher but is not very consistent. Well, the whole team has been inconsistent this year.

Things didn't go well through the first seven innings of the game. The Tigers were ahead 4 - 0. The Red Sox kept getting men into scoring position only to strike out or hit into a double play to waste the chance. One of the bright spots was a player playing in his first major league game. Ryan Kalish got a hit in his first time up and ended up with two hits and knocked in a run for the Sox. But going into the bottom half of the last inning, the Red Sox were still two runs behind the Tigers. Once again they loaded the bases and who should come up but David Ortiz - the guy who had hit a grand slam the night before. Could he do it again or would he leave men on base as he'd done earlier in this game? The picture to the left shows the men on base waiting for Big Papi (David Ortiz' nickname) to get them home.

He did! He didn't hit a home run but his double was enough to drive in the three runs the Red Sox needed to win the game and keep it from going into extra innings. The last picture shows him swinging with the bases loaded but, unfortunately, this wasn't the swing that drove in the runs. I think this was a foul ball just before he hit the double. But it was the most exciting ball game I'd ever been to. I just wish my son Evan had been able to make the trip with me. We'd have talked about this for the rest of our lives.