St. Louis

We drove to St. Louis on Wed to meet friend from my youth Rick.  Rick loves baseball more than anyone I know -- he works for MLB.com and takes vacations to watch baseball games in person (He gets to the stadium when the gates open to watch bp.  He gave one of his 6 bp home run balls to Clara.).  I'm proud to say that I once watched a game in a stadium he'll never match -- Montreal!

We picked a good game to watch, or mostly watch.  A 1-year-old and a 2-year-old in the bleachers need vigilant supervision (or ours do at least).  However, it was through no fault of Clara's that a guy in front of us spilled his beer on her bunny.  The Cards beat the Dbacks 5-2.  Clara and I were walking down a staircase when a Cardinal hit a home run.  All the girls went back to the hotel in the 7th inning.  

We stayed at the Millenium hotel which is located between the arch and the stadium.  On Thursday morning we swam in the pool and looked at the arch.

I'm getting a Manu Ginobli bald spot.

After lunch with Rick at a nice pasta restaurant, we wandered around downtown.

We waited out the super thunderstorm in a McDonalds in Vandalia, eventually getting home to some cheese, peas, and apples.

Finally, our church softball league concluded this week.  We were undefeated prior to the championship game and led by 1 run going to the last inning.  The red guys scored 4 runs in the top of the inning.  With 2 outs and a man on first, I came up to bat (having gone 1 for 3 so far) and grounded out to 2nd.  Ugh.  I was surprised how bad I felt after the game.  Generally, I don't take softball results seriously (it's softball after all!).  Probably we would have won if I got a couple more hits, and making the last out of the year is a real drag.

My hitting was super inconsistent this year.  I had a couple really good games and a couple really bad games (including the championship) mixed together with mediocrity.

After the game, a red guy asked me if we were missing any players, an indirect way of asking how we had been undefeated.  I didn't punch him.