"Take me out to the ball game....

Take me out to the crowd,
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks..."

Last night was my first visit to see the ICubs this summer. I quite enjoy watching baseball, but even more than that, I love going to baseball games to watch the people. Last night was filled with lots of quirky little events that left me wondering about human beings in general...

First of all, we weren't even a third of the way through the game when the man with the booming announcer voice comes over the loudspeaker and says "Ladies and Gentlemen, could you please direct your attention to the jumbo-screen (or whatever it's called)." Everyone looks over to see a message that said something like "Suzy Jane, will you marry me?" And all of the sudden, the happy couple is on the screen and she's crying and hugging him and he's concentrating on not dropping that ring into the pile of three month old peanut shells, ketchup, and stickyness on the concrete floor below him. It was quite sweet.
*Note to my future husband : don't even think about it.

The best part about this was that as I was licking the salt and ketchup off of my fingers while shaking my head as an answer to my friend's question: "what if that's how someone asked you to marry him?" and they put MY FACE on that darned jumbo screen. There are thousands of people in the stands, mind you, and they picked me at that exact moment. My friend was sitting beside me and starts laughing because there I am, just lapping the condiments off my fingers like a pig in slop, oink oink. Classy!

Soon enough the little cart that shoots hot dogs out of the back comes around. As they take their aim and shoot a hot dog into our section, this cute little blond boy maybe five years old or so climbs up on one step of the railing and reaches out to claim his victory. This flying processed meat in bun is only two inches away from the little boy as this grown woman leans ahead of him, and totally snags the hot dog. She then turns her back on the little boy and passes it off to her 12 year-old-ish, Dennis-the-menace-but-a-little-rounder looking, son who then snickers at the little blond boy as he shoves the hot dog into his mouth. Humanity at its finest.

No game is complete without kids running around dressed as hamburgers, pizza and hot dogs; there was a dancing contest among four little boys; we sang take me out to the ball game, and totally smoked Omaha. Finally, our night was capped off with the last fireworks show of the season. All in all, it was a pretty fantastic evening. I'm going for game number 2 of the weekend tonight with my sister, her husband, and my niece Emerson--we'll see how it compares!