College World Series

Friday night, Adam, Andy, Kim, Jeff, and Cara went to the College World Series Opening Ceremonies where the teams were introduced, paratroopers landed, famous baseball players like Barry Bonds appeared, and fireworks went off.

Saturday morning Adam and Andy went down to the stadium at 9:30 to look for tickets and finally ended up scoring some General Admission tickets for only $10. Then, they waited in line for about 1.5 hours just to get into the stadium. They had a long wait for the game to start but got to watch the teams practice.

The game Adam and Andy watched was between TCU and Florida State. TCU was the underdogs (or underfrogs, as I like to call them) since this is the first time they've ever been to the College World Series. I've always been a little fan of TCU since I drove down there for a college visit my Junior year of high school. I had big dreams of going to school in Ft. Worth and loved the campus and the programs, but somehow my used mini-van didn't fit in so well with the Lexuses (Lexi?) in the parking lot and I didn't know how Texas people who think there is a big distinction between "old money" and "new money" would feel about those of us with "no money'.

TCU won with the help of their ace picher, Matt Purke. Adam and Andy both got hats and now have dreams of having a "baseball room" with memorabilia from all their future trips to the CWS. Kim and I are taking a "wait and see" approach which is a little patronizing but a little less dream-squashing at this point.  But Ryan liked the hat.

It was a big deal being the last year in Rosenblatt Stadium and Adam got down with his sensitive self and took some artsy-fartsy pics of the stadium which have now replaced the action shots of the Iowa-Iowa State game on our laptop desktop. Good thing we have these sporting events, otherwise I have no idea what picture we'd use for a desktop background. It's not like we have a kid or anything.

I think it's hard to be sentimental when this is the first time you've been to the stadium, but it's easy to get swept up in the hype. I guess in this case, it's "when hello means good-bye." *sniff* *sniff*

Sayonara, Rosenblatt.