The great American pastime

This summer, we had a great opportunity to participate in the opening ceremonies of a local minor league baseball game. The Manchester Fishercats were playing against the Portland Seadogs that night.

We had received word that the local Easter Seals chapter was needing kids with autism and their siblings to help hold the gigantic flag as well as to stand next to the various baseball players during the opening ceremony of that game.    All my girls were able to help hold the flag and also received cool t-shirts promoting a fundraising hockey tournament that supports Easter Seals.

This almost didn't happen as I had written the time wrong and we had gotten stuck in the game day traffic.  I was able to get a hold of the lady with the tickets and she said she was waiting for us outside the ticket booth.  So Arnie dropped all of us on the curb and we raced, hand in hand through the milling throng until we found her and grabbed our special tickets.  We then had to cut in front of everyone patiently waiting so that we could get to the customer service booth somewhere inside.  Once we found the guy there, he had us immediately escorted down into the bowels of the stadium where we saw the large flag and many other families already arranged around it.  We had barely enough time to squeeze into some available space when we were then paraded up through the visiting teams dugout and onto the field. 

Bethany doing her best to hide how cool she thought this was

Kaitlyn and Jessi taking in the sights and sounds of the opening ceremonies

It was a wonderful experience that I hope that the girls will never forget.  The game afterward was not that memorable as Portland beat Manchester 8 to 1 with the only exciting event happening afterward with a great fireworks display.  At least Arnie knows not to waste large amounts of money taking them to a real baseball game like at Fenway.