It's the kind of day you dream of in grade school and don't think would ever happen at college. A power outage has forced all classes to be canceled in our part of campus. On top of that, it is an absolutely gorgeous day. I see friends sitting in the grass outside of SEO and I join them and hang out for about half an hour. Plus, now I don't have to be late to see the novelty I was planning to see.
Because of an incredible series of hurricanes (Charlie, Frances, Ivan), the Florida Marlins can't play home games until later in the week. They have already had several games postponed, but there's not enough time left in the season for any further postponements. Plus, the Marlins are still in the Wild-Card race, so these games actually have a lot of meaning. Oh, and they're the defending World Series champions. They've been in Chicago this weekend for a series against the Cubs, so Major League Baseball decides to have them play the first two games of their series against the Expos at Comiskey Park (not its official name anymore, but that's what I'm going to call it) with the Marlins as the home team. The Marlins won yesterday, and today is the last chance to be a part of this unusual situation. Tickets are $15 with $5 going to the Hurricane relief fund.
I get a ride to the red line from Ahuva, a Jewish first-year math grad student, whom I have just now met on the lawn. (Normally I wouldn't specify Jewish, but she wears it on her sleeve and weaves it into every conversation.) I ride the train to the stadium and talk to some other fans intrigued by this bonus baseball in the Windy City. I get my ticket and have to give up my water bottle to get into the stadium (should have thought of that before). I enter the park just before the first pitch. This is the 2nd baseball game I've attended this year, and the Expos have been in both. Maybe I'm a closet fan. It's the 10-year anniversary of "What Might Have Been," as the 1994 Expos (with Larry Walker, Randy Johnson, and many other stars now on other teams) had the best record in baseball at 74-40 when the strike hit. Also, they will be moving to Washington next season; no more shuttling back and forth between Canada and Puerto Rico for home games. So they are an interesting team.
I walk straight down to the field level right behind home plate. I mean, it doesn't get any better than this for a major league game. I'm apparently sitting in the scout section, as the few guys around me have bags and notepads. The guy next to me (3 seats over, as there's plenty of space) has sunglasses with straps, multiple bags, printouts, notebooks, table, a stopwatch, a radar gun that says "Mets," and many accessories. He's taking lots of notes, timing people, and gunning pitchers. Not every pitch, but he guns each new pitcher for a few pitches. Eventually I see the "ML Scout" ID badge on his bag. Are these great seats or what?
I notice that the Expos shortstop is Alex Gonzales, the former Cub who made a crucial error in the infamous 8th inning of last year's NLCS Game 6 against these Marlins, a game that will forever live in Cub infamy. Now he's on the Expos, and he's opposing the Marlins' shortstop Alex Gonzales just as the same-named-shortstops faced last fall. There are some Cub fans here who wish they could forget that. But they're rooting for the former Cub today to beat the Marlins, as the Cubs and Marlins are two (of basically four with the Astros and Giants) of the teams competing for the wild-card spot.
The stadium is setup to try to be as much a Marlins home game as possible. Billy the Marlin is here, the Marlins brought up their PA guy, they play the players' music before each batter, and the jumbotron has all Marlins graphics. The White Sox non-color scoreboard has positive reactions whenever the Marlins do something good. The funny thing is, some of the scoreboard graphics still have Sox on them. During the 7th inning stretch, I was curious to see what would happen. The scoreboard scrolls all the words, and after "root, root, root for the" I listened closely to the fans. The guy next to me shouted "Cubbies" real load, but I heard lots of defiant volume elsewhere. At this point, the scoreboard cuts to a blank screen filled with "MARLINS" in big letters. That was fun to see.
With such a small crowd (a little over 5,000-hey, that's a good crowd for the Expos!), I notice that heckling is much more effective than usual. You can clearly hear an annoying fan from quite a distance away. I move seats several times to take advantage of this opportunity and to get the biggest variety of views. I have two different seats behind home plate, then a couple different ones in left field, and finally end up in dead center for the 9th inning. This seat in dead center has a countertop for eating-this must be a pretty pricey seat at a usual game. But as it is, no ushers are checking any ticket stubs today. I see the TV camera just below me-yep, I'm in dead center.
I like the way the Expos play ball. They are scrappy, they move runners over, and they steal bases. Down 8-6 with 2 outs in the 9th, they pull off a double steal! Wow, that's gutsy; I love it. So the tying run is in scoring position, and the batter hits a line drive…caught by the right fielder. So that's the game and the scoreboard says "Thank you Marlins fans!" The jumbotron has a sweep graphic, but I think that's premature, because this series continues tomorrow in Florida. I guess this could be thought of as its own 2-game series in Chicago. As I exit the stadium, I'm just thinking how watching this was such a novelty. As I'm thinking this, I see an ice cream truck drive by.
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