look at me / I can be / centerfield

Today feels like the day after Christmas. You still have all your new presents, but the fun and excitement of the holiday is already over. I still have my ticket stub and my t-shirt and as many pictures as I could fit on my camera, but the All-Star Game has come and gone.
Major sporting events never turn out quite the way you expect. Roger Clemens was set up to be the hero, starting the All-Star Game for the National League in his hometown in front of his home team fans. The stage was set for something incredible…and then the Rocket gave up 6 runs in the first inning. Kind of took the wind out of the sails of all the fans, as the noise in the stadium fell from roaring to a low-level buzz.
Last year Gagne blew a save in the All-Star Game, this year Clemens got rocked. I guess you never know what will happen when the best play the best.
Despite the less-than-ideal start, the All-Star Game was still great. To see so many great players all on one field was just awesome. I remembered to take my binoculars, and I must have spent half the night with them glued to my eyes, just tracking from first to second to short…to right field, staring at each player and thinking “wow, such-and-such is out there, on my baseball field!” (Yes, mine.) Clemens was followed by a trail of fantastic pitchers–Randy Johnson (freakishly tall), Tom Glavine, Ben Sheets, Eric Gagne… It was great.

Jason and Chris and I tracked strikeouts for the National League team, and though they ended up losing the game 9-4 (the AL was helped by home runs from Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, and Alfonso Soriano), they did rack up 8 strikeouts for us to post on the wall below our seats. Gagne was fun to watch in the final inning; I actually like him a lot more now that he blew a save and is human again. I know, weird.

Other notes:

• Fantasia from American Idol sang the national anthem and she totally sucked. I’m sorry, call me old-fashioned, but I think you should just sing the damn anthem and make it sound nice. Don’t improvise a new tune, don’t do all sorts of strange vocal wailings, and don’t scream the notes. She was horrible!!
• Ruben Studdard (from the second American Idol) sang God Bless America in the 7th inning stretch, and he was great.
• The Fox-broadcasted All-Star Game had two singers from another Fox show. Coincidence? Of course not. Fox is annoying.
• Sitting in the handicapped row of a stadium is all well and good until you sit there during a major event where lots of standing room only tickets have been sold. Then you have people breathing down your neck the entire game, and the usher (who’s not really doing his job) keeps running into you.
• Nick got another batting practice ball. He got one from Home Run Derby day and one from last night. Not really fair. 😉
• Minute Maid Park has added some sort of canon, or maybe the fireworks are just really loud. Really loud. As in, take-cover-we’re-being-attacked loud. The booms make me jump out of my seat every time, even when I know they’re coming. Freaking loud.
• More pictures will be online tomorrow. I took 256, and would have taken more if I had a bigger compact flash card.

Oh, and Jen O. retook the Earth quiz I posted yesterday from the point-of-view of living in the U.S. then Ireland then Africa. Apparently, you take up more planets simply by living in the U.S. We are such an evil country.