Just Take It Easy, Idiot!

What is it about this game that thrills me so? I’m down in the Detroit area hanging out with old friends and getting ready to go to the Tiger game tonight and I’m as excited as a kid at Christmas. Yeah, it’ll be great to see all the old friends that are going but, and I know this sounds horrible; I’m rather ambivalent about that. I can’t wait to get into the stadium.

From what I can gather there are about 20 of us going and it’ll be great fun I know. I, however, am sitting here wondering how rude it’ll be if I get a scorebook and keep track of each pitch like I normally do when I go to a game. We’ll see, I’m on my way…

Next day:

So we went to a restaurant in Greek town. There were four of us in the car I was in and we weren’t sure how big of a table to get. We told them that we could have up to 16 more people joining us but really didn’t know for sure. They were very accommodating and took us to a kind of banquet area with plenty of room for however many joined in on the festivities. They were very patient with us as more and more people arrived and they were fine with the separate bills. They really did a good job of taking care of us as a total 14 finally settled in. We had a nice meal and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

I always have a problem around this time in any event I’m involved in. I am really weird about being on time to anything. I can safely say, barring a real oddity, I’m never late. As a matter of fact, I usually arrive to whatever place I’m going at least a half an hour early. With so many people in the group, still needing to buy tickets and everyone wanting to sit as close together as possible there was no way that we’d get to our seats on time. It was around 6:30 when we all left the restaurant and we had a good 10 or 15-minute walk to the stadium.

When the ball park came into view we saw that there were pretty long lines to get tickets and seeing that we wanted to sit together, well, the logistics started getting a little frustrating for me. So I’m standing there arguing with myself and telling myself to just calm down, it’s really not that big of a deal. I don’t know what it is but I just get really edgy in situations like this. I am so unorganized in everything I do except for times like these. Be it concerts or any sporting event, I don’t know, I just like everything to run smoothly and like to be in my seat well in advance of the start time.

Of course we got to our seats, though we missed the top of the first inning, and all sat close together. The weather was perfect, a nice breeze to balance the high temperature. I’m sure everyone, myself included, had a great time and for your average, normal person there could be no complaints. Well, this is me we’re talking about.

Here’s another incredibly ridiculous thing about how I am in times like this. This is baseball, a rather sacred ritual to me. This is my church as it were. I’m here to, I don’t know, do my daily meditation, relieve stress and sort of cleanse my soul. Being in a large group certainly doesn’t lend itself to that. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy myself, I did. It’s just that I couldn’t get into the game like I normally would. Whenever I’m out with any size group I always end up feeling that I should have had a better time, enjoy myself more. It’s one of many issues I’m working on. So I spent most of the game yelling at myself about trying to have a good time. I know if I’d just leave well enough alone, I’d have had the time of my life. Like I said, I’m workin on it.