Take me out to the ball game!

Rather than having a big Fourth of July celebration *on* the 4th, we decided to celebrate early with the "All-American Pass Time."  Despite all our advance planning, though, we learned quite a few lessons from our first outing to the ball park with 2 small kids.

Lessons learned:

1.) Pay attention to the sun.  It can make or break your entire day.  For example, if a day that was forecast to be  cloudy and potentially raining turns into a 95 degree scorcher, telling your child to "sit down" may *actually* become a form of torture, as the seats will feel as though they are 350 degrees and appropriate to slow-bake brownies.  Of course, the rain option isn't entirely pleasurable either... as sitting in the middle of a downpour will not be the "adventure" with your kids that it might have been on your first date with your college crush.  So, a word to the wise: Don't worry about sitting in the front row for your first game.  Spend your money sitting in a double letter row under the mezzanine level or somewhere in the shade where neither rain nor unrelenting sun will  destroy any hope of your child even looking at the field, which she or he can see just as well 10 rows back.

2.) Plan to eat your way through the game.  You may have the strength of Hercules or the will of Athena, but I can guarantee that it will do you no good in a hot ballpark with people eating all around you.  Sure, you can bring your factory-sealed water bottles (and you absolutely should) and your single-serving factory sealed snacks (again, don't leave home without them), but this will decidedly not take the place of the allure of cotton candy, hot dogs, lemonade, and ice cream.  Your children will most likely turn into midget-sized eating competitors who can slam 2 hot dogs before the end of the first inning and learn how to whistle for the lemonade vendor before the end of the third inning.  You will be out of your "factory sealed" snacks and desperate just to get to the end of the game at this point.  In the past, you may have come up with all kinds of tricks for keeping an eye on your wallet, but those are for grown up thieves.  Kids are much more devious... have you seen the pick-pockets in the BBC Dickens movies?  Before you know it your child will be hailing for peanuts and tipping the usher, and they will learn this before they know or care what the seventh inning stretch entails.

3.) Apologize to anyone sitting between you and the aisle early and often.  If your luck is anything like ours, once you do bribe the usher to allow you to sit in the more expensive and slightly shadier rows, you will not be on the end of that row.  Instead, you will be stuck 5 seats in with 2 of the largest people you've ever met sitting on either end.  Those 2 (or in our case 4) people will have a super-jumbo sized cola and a bucket of nachos balanced on their bellies, which they have wedged into place during the first inning and had no hopes of moving until the bottom of the ninth--that is until you come along.  Be assured that you will single-handedly ruin their game.  Instead of inhabiting a couch-transported-to-public-space for 2.5 hours or more, their seat choice will now constitute the most exercise they'll see this month... all because of you and your brood.  No matter how many times you have asked your children if they "need to go to the potty" before taking your (new) seats--and even if you have dragged them kicking and screaming to the bathroom in advance--chances are that within the first 10 minutes they will have to go to the bathroom again.  And then most likely they will need to either go to the bathroom, get a drink, meet the mascot, find a balloon artist, or sign up for the motocross speedway raffle every 15 minutes for the rest of the game.  This involves getting in and out of your seat.  You will look back and forth between the two ends of the row wondering which single nacho eater will hate you the least for making them get up *every* time, but it won't help.  You are stuck, and your usually quiet, and patient child will turn into a ticking poop time-bomb who would like to announce at top volume, "I HAVE TO USE THE BATHROOM!!!!" And at that point, with all hopes of discretion lost, you'll have to slink down to one end of the row and say "excuse me... so sorry..." Your row-mate will look up at you, sigh *deeply*, and begin to shuffle the 5 course snack-meal around so that she or he can desperately press him or herself toward the seat-side of the row, and you can very uncomfortably try to slide out without making unwanted or inappropriate body contact.  Not that this happened to us...

4.) Have something to look forward to *after* the game.  I know. Right about now, you're thinking, "Um, but the game is supposed to be the treat."  Yeah right.  The game is an elaborate attempt to teach your kids that going to public sporting events and behaving in public will ultimately be a skill worth having.  Don't be fooled.  It's not about loving baseball or doing something they've always wanted to do.  And chances are that if you don't do a very good job early on, your child will end up like the obnoxious and drunk 22 year-old recent college grad who sat behind us and explained at the top of his lungs why he hates his job and his commute and whom most of the people sitting in our section wanted to kill with the white-hot anger of their "evil eyes." When you have a child younger than, let's say, 9 years old, going to a game is still about teaching your child how to behave in a public space... pure and simple.  It's like going to the mall or to a restaurant where you can't order out of your car window.  And as with most adventures in parenting, the carrot always works better than the stick.  In this instance, it was that the kids would get to "run the bases" at the end of the game.  They were so excited to get out and onto that field, that holding that up as the carrot worked when it needed to, and in the end, watching our girls round third base and sprint for home was better than the 9 innings of professional baseball that proceeded it.

You're probably wondering at this point whether or not it's worth it.  Why go?  Why make the attempt and the effort if in the end you're hot, tired, your kids are whining, the entire metropolitan area knows that you torture your children by making them sit on hot seats and drag them screaming to the bathroom?  What could possibly be fun about that? Yes, it was worth it, and it was worth it because it was never about the baseball.  It was about time together as a family, about enjoying the chaos.  It's one more adventure in the "roller coaster" parenting that the grandmother describes in the Steve Martin movie Parenthood.  If you never go, you won’t learn that your youngest child can swear like a sailor at tall people to sit down.  You will miss out on singing "Take me out to the ball game" with your kids at the top of your lungs and spilling an $8 ice cream on the floor when you realize you are all on the Jumbotron monitor.  These are the things you'll remember with all the fondness and nostalgia and selective memory that you can muster when you are 70 and your kids take their kids to their first game.

So, sometime in September, if you see a family singing at the top of their lungs at the end of the row in the cheap seats of a televised National's game... we're waving to you.  Come join us.