All that being said, I really wanted to go to the May 16th game against the Sox. Not so much for the game, per se, but for the Mark Trumbo bobble head that was the giveaway that night. I had found cheap tickets after some negotiation with ScoreBig.com and both Lauren and I would be off work in barely enough time to head over to the Big A for the game. Then, reality hit. Lauren was sick and had been invited to see an opening day showing of the new Star Trek movie, which interested her much more than the Angels game. I was now at an impasse.
I really wanted that bobble head, but I had never been to a baseball game solo before. I am actually very loathe to be solo in public, as I irrationally assume that everyone is staring at me and wondering, "Who is the weird guy with no friends?" My desire for the knick-knack that I have no need nor space for outweighed my social anxiety and I decided I was going to go it alone.
Lauren picked me up from work and brought my change of clothes so I wouldn't have to drag a bag full of smelly work clothes into the ballpark and dropped me off, en route to her theater for the movie. Since I had paid for 2 tickets, I was certainly going to get both the bobble heads that I had paid for. I initially thought that to get both bobble heads I would need to engage in all sorts of trickery and enter initially through Gate A, exit Gate B, hide the swag and enter Gate C, all while changing shirts and using a fake mustache to avoid being recognized.
In reality, I walked up to the ticket scanner, told the woman that I had 2 tickets, that Lauren would not be joining me but that I did want her bobble head. She looked at me, asked if I was sure Lauren wasn't coming and upon my assent, yelled for the distribution elves to give me 2. Painless, but not nearly as exciting as my imagined spy mission.
I made my way out to right field and found my seat in an empty row and sat down to begin my solo adventure. I had the row to myself for awhile, until the sorority girls came by. They added quite an interesting element to the game with all of their insightful comments, which included the statement that they weren't going to boo at all, because "...that would be, like, really bad sportsmanship" and the need to share details about exactly how they wanted their future weddings and boyfriends to be. And, of course they were ignorant Disneyland passholders. With no other human being to talk to, I got to listen to this banter for the entire duration of the game. Yay, lucky me.
Meanwhile, on the field there was a baseball game. The Angels actually held the lead for a vast majority of the game supporting a fairly solid outing from Jerome Williams until the fantastic bullpen duo of Dane De La Rosa and Michael Kohn made an appearance in the 8th. De La Rosa gave up the tying run and Kohn decided that Jeff Keppinger, he of the .188 batting average, should get his first walk of the season. With the bases loaded. With a tie score.
This, sorority girls, is why you boo.
The Angels failed to mount a comeback against Jesse Crain and Addison Reed and, despite having Reed on my fantasy league team, I felt no joy.
My first solo game was a success and I had lots of friends ask me if I would do it again. Absolutely, I would. The only change is that I think I'd bring a small FM radio to listen to the game. I had my iPhone with the MLB AtBat app, where I could listen to the game, but there tends to be a bit of a delay there and I didn't want to be listening to a game on a 30 second to 2 minute delay that was happening live in front of me. That's how accidental time travel occurs and nobody wants that.
Until Next Time, Keep Tripping Baseballs.
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