Saludo a Beisbol latinoamericano!!

Salute to Latin American Baseball

I’m a little bit behind, so bear with me. On June 6th, Michelle joined me for a great game of baseball. We actually took my new Mariner up for its maiden voyage to its first Mariner game!! I had just gotten it back the day before after they put the sunroof and heated seats in it. The weather was actually cold enough that we did use the heated seats. :-) Michelle took a picture of us, which I haven’t gotten yet. We did get our picture taken by someone for MLB. We could see it on the M’s website (we do look very cute!!). To download it, we would have had to pay, so I haven’t gotten it. We were actually in my regular seats for this game. It was Salute to Latin American Baseball night, so they brought the flags of all the Latin American countries out onto the field. If you know them, send me an e-mail with the name of the country that goes with each flag. :-)







The person who threw out the first pitch, was the Mariner’s greatest Latin American player, Edgar Martinez:



He threw the first pitch to Ken Griffey Jr:



Using the sport setting on my camera, I was able to get this series of shots of the starting pitcher, Jarrod Washburn:







Adrian Beltre batting (I love that the ball can be seen clearly):



I had almost forgotten that my college had a get together at the game. The only problem is that you have to get the tickets for both the BBQ and game together (I’ve tried to get only the BBQ ticket and they don’t allow that). Since getting my season tickets, I have picked the tickets for this game before knowing that it is the reunion game. One of these years, I’ll not have tickets for the game and be able to join my fellow George Fox alumni. This time they were mentioned on the board, so I got this picture:



In honor of the Latin American Night, they had some dancers on top of both dugouts. These are the ones on the 3rd base visitor dugout:





Griffey hitting (check out where the ball is at!!):



With Jeremy Reed being traded, I’ve had to find a new favorite player (s). One of mine is Brandon Morrow. One thing I find amazing is that he is a Type 1 diabetic (I’m Type 2) and is able to still play at the MLB level. I think that is awesome!! He’s also been able to help fellow teammate, Mark Lowe, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes last year. Here’s a series of Brandon’s pitching:







Another M’s pitcher, Chris Jakubauskas. I thought this next one was a great picture, because of the placement of the ball above his head:



The M’s closer, David Aardsma:







As a tribute to Latin America, they had the names of the teams in Spanish (thankfully they didn’t have everything written in Spanish or else it could have been a very interesting game):



The final score:

New Toys!!

Back in February, we were having a few problems with Mom’s car, but didn’t really think anything of it. Then we were heading down to Elliot’s house and only got about 2 miles down the road from our house, when we had some major issues. We turned around at the gas station behind my office and went back home to switch cars. My car hasn’t gone that far on the freeway in awhile, since we’d always take Mom’s car, but I was happy that it made it all the way down to Salem. After getting home, the car went into the shop and we were told that the transmission was shot and that it would cost quite a bit to replace it. Since it would cost more to replace it than what the car is worth, we decided that Mom should get a new car. This would be her 4th car ever, which is a testament to how great her cars have been and how well taken care of they were.

We didn’t want to leave Mom’s car for too long at the shop and I didn’t want to drive the car, so one of the men at church borrowed a trailer and we picked up Mom’s car:



We weren’t exactly sure what to do with Mom’s car, so our neighbor beside us (garage side) allowed us to park the car in her parking area. Here’s a picture before we got rid of her car:



We were down to one car for about three weeks, but Mom and I made it work. Mom finally picked out the car that she wanted, a BLUE 2008 Mercury Milan. During one of the test drives, we noticed that it was pretty loud in the car. but only near the back passenger side door. In talking with the Lincoln Mercury dealer, they agreed to fix it, so we were able to borrow a car. It turned out that the problem was different than what we first thought, so it took about a week, but we finally got her car back:



I’ve been wanting to get a new car for about two years and finally was able to go ahead with it. My dream car is a Mustang convertible, but with Mom’s new car, we recently found that I could not get a Mustang in the garage. With a soft top convertible and our Washington weather, I don’t want to be parking outside and I also don’t want Mom to park outside. I’ve also been interested in another vehicle, but wasn’t sure if I wanted to go towards a small SUV and I wasn’t sure if it would fit in the garage. I decided to check it out and according to the website, it looked like it should fit in our garage with Mom’s car. On one of the test drives, I brought it home and it fit in the garage perfectly. So on Saturday, May 23, I bought a 2008 Mercury Mariner (this picture is a little dark):



This one looks a little closer to the actual color (light blue):



In a way, it is hard to get rid of my old car, because my Dad bought it in 1999, the year before he died. :-(



It’s going to a good home and I thought it was time to get a new vehicle, plus this is my first car that I got to choose. The other two cars were given to me by Dad.

I went from a 1988 tan Nissan Sentra to a 1997 red Mercury Mystique to a 2008 blue Mercury Mariner. Mom went from a 1967 blue Dodge car to a 1977 blue Dodge Aspen to a 1994 blue Buick Regal to a 2008 blue Mercury Milan.

PLAY BALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These are two of my favorite words this time of year. The Mariners started their Season a week later than normal because of the World Baseball Classic, but that start was in Minnesota. This meant that the boys didn’t have their Home Opener until Tuesday, April 14th against the LA Angels. As many of you know or guessed, I was at the game. I took Katelin, an 8th grader from church, who has gone to several games with me. She was excited, because she got to get out of school early and got to ride in Mom’s new car. Mom complains that I never take pictures of those who go with me to the games, so I’m going to try really hard this year to get a picture of who came with me. Here’s my pic with Katelin, taken on my phone:



It was a 3:40 start (pregame celebration starting at 3 pm). The gates opened at 1:10 pm, but we couldn’t get there for that, because of work and school. Usually I could get to a game about an hour and a half early and not have any problem getting into my favorite parking lot (just south of the Safeco Field Parking Garage), but we ended up parking about 2 blocks further away and it was quite expensive. Let’s just say that you probably had to park at least a mile away from the stadium to get any parking under $20.

Gates were open when we got to the field, but I had to exchange a few tickets. I was thrilled with the ones I got (row 14 for a July game and Row 3 for a M’s vs Yankee game!!!) We finally got into the stadium and headed to get some food before sitting down. All the lines were very long and we got back to our seats with one minute to go before the Pregame ceremonies. We have some great seats this year, just to the left of home plate. As you will be able to see in pictures, we have the foul ball net between us and the plate again, so I have to switch my camera to manual focus mode. If I use the auto focus, it isn’t a guarantee that it will focus on what I want and instead it will focus on the net. Here’s a picture from our seats from my phone:



The M’s honored the World Baseball Classic by having the flags of all the nations that participated in the WBC. The M’s had two players (Ichiro and Johjima) on the WBC’s winning team (Japan). I know you can’t see all of them, but the Australian and Canadian flags are at the front, the Japanese flag is towards the middle, and the American flag is towards the end:



If you haven’t gone to an Opening Day game, I highly recommend going. It is so awesome. After the country flags were brought out, they had the team introductions. First they introduced the Angels and then it was the M’s turn. The whole coaching staff, trainers, and interpreters were all introduced:



Then the players came down the red carpet under the balloons. I have pictures of all of them coming to the lineup, but I won’t bore you with all of those pictures. Here are a few highlights though.

Ichiro (who wasn’t starting, because he was on the Disabled List):



Some of the pitchers and non-starting position players:



Now the person who most people came to see and who got the biggest and longest applause out of everyone.......KEN GRIFFEY JR!!!!!!!!





The new manager and most of the starting lineup:



The team:



A close up of the pitchers and some position players:



A close up of the starting lineup (minus the pitcher and catcher):



For the National Anthem they had the Navy Band Northwest perform, which was awesome to hear:



Here’s some of the fireworks and smoke:



This July is the 10th Anniversary of Safeco Field and so they had Dave Niehaus read a tribute and had a video up on the big screen:



Every year they have a child, who is sick or has been sick, run around the bases. This little boy was lucky when he got around to homeplate. He was met by Junior, Ichiro, Felix Hernandez, and I can’t remember who the fourth one is:





If you remember some of the old M’s players, you’ll most likely remember this guy. His name is Harold Reynolds and he played several years with the M’s and now is a commentator for ESPN. He threw out the ceremonial first pitch:



If I remember correctly one of his last seasons with the M’s was Griffey’s first season, so Junior is the current player who caught the throw:



First pitch of the game by Carlos Silva:



Now for the star of the game!!! Griffey’s first at bat, which is what everyone was waiting for. I thought it would have been awesome if it was a night game, so that I could have seen all the flashbulbs going off. You could see some in the daytime, but it wasn’t as powerful (he’s in the batter’s box here):



Although he didn’t hit the ball on this one, I thought it was a sweet swing:



This is as the ball is coming towards the plate:



This is the ball leaving after Griffey’s hit:



The Grounds Crew doesn’t dance at every game, but for the Opening Day game, they always do:



Before the game, we had a moment of silence for several previous players, managers, announcers, and others in the baseball world. One of the players that they honored was Nick Ardenhart, the Angels pitcher who was killed in a hit-and-run accident on Wednesday night, April 8th, a few hours after his pitching debut. What I didn’t know until later (after getting home from the game) was that he was actually supposed to be the starting pitcher for the Angels for this game. Another person that we honored was the “Tuba Man.” He was robbed and murdered by a bunch of teens back in late October. He would play his tuba before and after the M’s, Seahawks, Sonics games, and events at the Opera House. I remember hearing him play many times. During the 7th inning stretch, we had a group of tuba players play “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” for us. It was a great tribute:



Towards the end of last season, I learned a new thing on my camera. It is a “sport” setting and allows me to hold open the shutter and it will take multiple pictures right after another. I wish I would have figured it out sooner, but now that I know about it, I use it a lot, especially when taking pictures of the pitchers. Here’s one of my favorite players, Brandon Morrow, in a series of photos:









Here’s the score after 9-innings!! I think this might be only the second extra-inning game that I’ve been to:



We won in the bottom of the 10th!!!!!!! Here’s the celebration at Home Plate!!!!!



The hand operated scoreboard after the run was added for the 10th inning, but before they added it to the total:



Here it is with the run added to the total:



It was a great start to the new season. I’m sure they’ll have a better record than last season. :-)