Sunday, August 11, 2013

My Evening (Ferry) Ride

AllTheWoodenWorktools
ThatFitVille


C., the two E's, their Grandma, and me went to see the Victoria HarbourCats play the Bellingham Bells down at the Royal Athletic Park last night.

And, as far as minor-league 'experiences' go, it was, overall, a little too cookie-cutter/khaki-short/casual-corporate for my liking.

But still, the kids on the field, who are all college-aged playing their first wood bat summers while preparing for a (hoped-for) shot at the pros down the line, gave the solid crowd of twenty-five hundred a good game for their 10 bucks, give or take, depending on their seat*.

And just how wide-eyed and not jaded were those kids?

Well...

After the game they all flopped down on the grass in front of their respective dugouts and watched the entire post-game fireworks show with the rest of us.

****

While littler e. and C. are going to stay over on the Island for a couple of more days, E. and I caught the 6:00pm ferry back across the water early this evening.

It was one of the old boats, the Queen of New Westminster, which I remember much more fondly than soccer game Saturday afternoons at Royal Athletic Park as a kid, and even though it was a little cloudy we set up shop and got our instruments out, up top, just behind the bulkhead on the port side.

Anyway....

About halfway through the trip a gaggle of kids from that Bellingham baseball team, who finished their 54 game season earlier in the afternoon against the HarbourCats, came up and sat down right next to us.

And that's when we saw that they really were just kids, many actually younger than E. is now, and who, just like her, will soon be heading back to school. And let me tell you, those kids were really friendly, and they gave us lots of encouragement when they got up and headed back down to their bus one last time.

All of which, I guess, is just another way of saying...

The boys and girls of summer are going fast my friends.

So give your best to all of them before they are gone (or fully grown) and the rains come back again.

OK?


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Still have a bit of tough time swallowing what the Harbourcats charge for something that is way below 'A' ball, but I get it that it is a tough go, what with those extra ferry trips and the long bus rides that the team has to pay for, both going and coming...This is something I've gotten into with one of their many number #1 fans, Tom Hawthorn, who wrote about the team (and the wood bat league they play in) as well as other, older Victoria baseball teams earlier this summer in The Tyee...By way of comparison, we went to a July 4th game in the same league down in Klamath Falls, Oregon last summer for two bucks a pop.
And ya,  just in case you were wondering, Mr. Hawthorn was at the last game of the season today with his daughter...We, instead, went to visit the other two grandparents of the E's earlier this afternoon... A good time was had by all, regardless location and/or venue.
Image At Top Of The Post....Is from years gone by... Taken out back of Martin Luther King Junior High School just up the street from our old house in Berkeley California...littler e is now 14 and Bigger E. is 20...They will still come out to play with me....Occasionally....Which, of course, means that I am a very lucky man.


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2 comments:

Eleanor Gregory said...

I too have been having some lovely Island time with my not so young crew with walks on Whiffen Spit and lunch at Mom's. Years ago when I was working at a law firm and had two then little ones at home, one of the partners remarked to me that I should enjoy them while they were young because they grow up in the blink of an eye. He was right.

RossK said...

EG--

Man, was he ever.

Right, I mean.

Moms!

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