Winner! Winner! Chicken dinner! And thus my career at winning radio contests continues. Today it was a pair of ticket's to tonight's Nat's game, plus 20k points in the Washington Post Reader Rewards program (whatever that is). Sweet.
I planned on picking up the tickets from the station at lunch (WJFK's studios are down the road in Fairfax) and had to find someone to go with. Before I could get a response, the station called to confirm my address. After confirming, I asked Meghan (the station rep) whether there were two or four tickets.
"Two tickets," she said, but then asked "Do you want four?"
"Sure."
"They'll be ready for you when you swing by, plus a parking pass."
After returning to the office, I checked the seat locations (1st base side, behind the dugout, about 20 rows from the field) and called D with the news. We made plans to leave the house at 5p. M had been to an O's game when she was five, but didn't really remember it; N hadn't been to one at all. Both of them were pretty excited about the prospect of going to a professional baseball game, and I was excited about going as a family. (Typically I'll go w/ colleagues as weeknight games can be pretty late.)
Traffic was normal on the way down to RFK. It took just about an hour, with us hitting the normal backups at West Falls Church and getting across the 14th Street Bridge. Once we got in the parking lot, we scoped out a spot in Lot 8 and set up our seats to get a little tailgating in before heading into the stadium. Both M and N were excited about the prospect of filling their bellies with snacks, both in the parking lot and inside the stadium. D was more concerned about staying warm (as was I -- I should have dressed warmer, but didn't think about the wind near the river being as bad as it was). Fortunately, once we got in the stadium, the wind died down and we were a little more comfortable.
We headed into the stadium in time to get to our seats, where we witnessed the National Anthem and the ceremonial first pitch (I can't recall whether I had ever done that before). Barbara Harrison was there w/ Joe (that's it, just Joe) as part of her Wednesday's Child series. He actually tossed out a pretty good pitch.
We stayed long enough to see the Nat's get a three run lead, but had to leave early in order to get the kids to bed at a reasonable time. (The Nat's ended up winning in 13 innings, so it was a good thing that we did, otherwise we wouldn't have gotten home until past midnight.) M has testing this week, so we didn't want her getting to bed too late (and N would have fallen asleep on D's lap had he laid his head down long enough). Before we left, though, we had our share of good times. Screech (the Nat's mascot) came around and we were able to snap a pic of him w/ the kids. He gave free pizzas to four guys behind us and in the hoopla surrounding that, we got our mugs on the jumbotron. As a bonus for those of us in the surrounding area, we received coupons for a free pie from Papa John's. The winning just didn't stop!Overall, we all had a great time (except for having to leave early). Hopefully the next time will be a day game so that we can stay for the whole game, even if it goes into extra innings.
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