My first baseball game!

I'm home sick! Not so much fun, but it gives me a chance to update my blog, because all I can really fathom right now is sitting on the couch and drinking tea. I'm also roomba-ing, so the day is not a total loss--thank god for robots.

SO, Emily and Michael so kindly invited me and Steph to the season opener at Safeco field last friday. It was such a blast! Here is the view from our awesome seats right behind home plate.  

It was sold out--that's right, 43,000 people showed up to see the Mariners get their asses handed to them...

But we tried not to let that get us down! 

We sang Take Me Out to the Ball Game at the bottom of the 7th inning and all the quintessential baseball stuff. I bought some hot peanuts from a vendor walking up and down the aisles, and then some cotton candy. Michael had never had cotton candy before!

First bite!

Reaction shot!

We stayed until the very end, even though the Indians scored 10 runs in one inning. 

I can't say for certain, but I think this is the only baseball game I've been to save Reid's little legue--and that was so long ago, I don't remember them.

Being at the game got me thinking about baseball and sports and what the appeal is. Certainly it is not terribly exciting most of the time, but it has the benefit of competition. Viewers have an invested interest in their team winning. Of course, we cheered for the Seattle team because we are from Seattle now, but it seems kind of silly since none of the players are from Seattle--so is there really a geographical tie? When you have allegiance to a team, and to specific players, how do you reconcile those players getting traded to other cities? Seattle's basketball team actually relocated to Oklahoma City for goodness sakes.

Another interesting thing about baseball is how ceremonial it is--so many little rituals. There are specific behaviors at sporting events that may not be acceptable other places, like shouting and dancing goofily and throwing peanut shells on the floor : )  Just more evidence in the file for the fact that all people love dancing, moving, and expressing physically, but have all kinds of complexes about it. We gotta let those feelings out sometime--and some of those baseball fans certainly were!! Maybe there is also a vicarious aspect of it--think of what it must be like to be one of those players and have 43,000 people cheering for you. It can be easy to get caught up in the glory and legacy of a sport!

In dance we have trouble getting people to pay for a ticket much cheaper than a baseball ticket, and a concert with one 100th of the attendees of this game would still be considered successful for a small concert. Maybe appropriate "theater behavior" is our enemy. Would people enjoy a dance concert more if they could yell and cheer and eat and drink beer and talk to their friends? Maybe. Would it be disruptive? Probably, depending on the piece. But how do you reconcile dancers working for free and the Mariners making millions to be pretty mediocre at best? The world may never know.