Baseball-Related Program Activities

Seven Octobers now we've been hosting Baseball Open House at the Rocketship, and this year's has to rank as our most successful:

* We had good friends in attendance throughout, ranging from two or three people all the way to a high of eleven (plus me and Stacey) for Kenny Rogers's glorious (pine-tar-aided?) dismantling of the Yankees in the LDS.

* Half a dozen or so friends made their first Baseball Open House appearance.

* We hosted people for every night game in the entire playoffs except three, two of which were graciously hosted by TITANIA, and the other, the World Series opener, which we watched with the whole Stahl family at my brother's house in Indianapolis following my running of the Indy marathon.

* We cooked up a mess of food, relying more than in any previous October on the seasonal produce that we get each week from our membership in a local community-supported farm; in that way, we were closer to the autumn outdoors than ever before.

* Stacey's baseball jack-o-lanterns ran their World Series game-winning streak to 10. Damon went 4-0 in 2004, Ozzie Guillen went 4-0 in 2005, and the Yadi-o-lantern went 2-0 to close out the 2006 series.

* Despite the brevity of many of the series--the teams only played six games over the minimum this October--we saw some very exciting baseball. As my mom put it on the phone minutes after Adam Wainwright struck out Carlos Beltran with the bases loaded to put St. Louis in the World Series, "That one nearly killed me!" Even the fans without a rooting interest in the game knew what she meant.

* We had champagne in the fridge, and we got to use it. We drank some after the aforementioned strikeout of Beltran, and we put back more of it after Wainwright snapped off the same curveball against Brandon Inge . . . which leads to the final reason this Baseball Open House was such a success . . . .

* THE CARDINALS WON THE WORLD SERIES! FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE I WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD AND NOT YET REALLY A FAN!

Thanks, Cardinals. Thanks, everyone who came out. Thanks, Jim, for another season of BRPA. I'll try to be a more reliable poster in 2007, and maybe you can make it for Baseball Open House next October.

The only proper way to end this is to turn the mike over to the Rajah:

"People ask me what I do in the winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring."--Rogers Hornsby

Pitchers and catchers report in about 100 days.

Labels: adam wainwright, brandon inge, Cardinals, carlos beltran, food, tigers, world series