Today I had the pleasure of bringing James to his very first Blue Jays game at Skydome. I'm not sure when I saw my first game, but I recall the first game in my memory and I can still see Damaso Garcia hitting that long bases loaded triple in a big win at Exhibition Stadium. Today I was passing the torch to the next generation.
It was a perfect afternoon for a ball game, Skydome was open and James was excited. A most amazing thing happened before we even had a chance to get to our seats. On our way to section 124, the first batter of the game, Mark Kotsay of the Oakland Athletics, hit a foul ball that careemed off the stairs and somehow found it's way to us. I came up with it and secured my first ever game ball from a major league baseball game. I had caught a couple of batting practice balls before, but never an actual ball from a game. One batter at the plate and it was shaping up to be a fantastic day.
James must be a good luck charm because the Blue Jays bats were alive and kicking. Rookie Gabe Gross hit a grand slam, rookie Russ Adams hit his first career home run and Carlos Delgado went deep in a 12-5 victory. The seats were amazing and Brian Burke himself was sitting only a couple of rows ahead of us. As first games go this was a keeper.
The game went a little over three hours and James was great the whole time. He got up and cheered at the right time, periodically hollered at the ball players and sat contently in his seat the entire time except for one potty break in the 8th. Today couldn't have gone any better than it did. I think we have another Jays fan on our hands.
