My wife and I went to our first college baseball game of the year this week. It was an almost perfect game — not in the sense of a pitching gem, but in the overall experience.
The weather was perfect, there was a loud enthusiastic crowd and the home team won. The game was entertaining from the start until the end, with one home run, a great double play and a spectacular outfield catch that ended the game. And as with most college games, there were a few errors to spice up things.
In the end, the New Mexico State Aggies beat archrival University of New Mexico 8-6, handing the Lobos their first loss of the season.
What I’ve always liked about early season baseball games is the memorable smell of the event. It’s an ever changing blend of women’s perfumes, hot buttery popcorn in a bucket nearby, hot dogs cooking in the food truck outside the stands and other olfactory offerings. I never seem to get those same smells at other athletic events.
I think it has to do with the temperature being a little on the chilly side, along with a slight breeze to mix things up and for us in the desert Southwest — maybe a little unexpected spike in the humidity from an intramural sports field being watered nearby.
For me, it’s always made these games more memorable.
The game was pretty good. The Aggies got on the scoreboard first with one run in the second, followed by two more in the fifth, one of them a single home run. And just when you thought we were looking good, the Lobos bombed in three more runs in the top of the sixth to tie it all up.The Aggies got one more run in the bottom half of the sixth to get one run up, but the Lobos came back with three more runs in the next inning. They were ahead 6-5 as we moved into the 7th inning stretch. But the Aggies managed to put together a series of base steals and hits to put three more runs on the board before the last out for the Lobos in the top of the 9th.
It was mostly cheap fun. The tickets were $12 apiece (a $2 premium over regular tickets and another $2 more than I remember paying for them last year), hot dogs were $3 each but water — the essence of life — went for $5 a bottle.
The entire infield AND outfield of the Presley Askew Park is now artificial turf, which as a bit of a purist is not appealing to me. (I mean, for Pete’s sake, we’re an agricultural college — we ought to be able to grow good grass).
And at one point, I spied pitchers in the bullpen tossing around a football — where was the pitching coach???!!!???
But in the end, the game experience was really good. I urge you to try to make it to a college baseball game sometime this spring. Lots of mostly cheap fun (and good smells.)
aero-cordero.com 