The big reveal

Back in Toronto at the Blue Jays game on Monday, we entered a stadium with a closed roof. The stadium seemed much smaller than I remembered it being back in the 80′s. I guess lots has changed in the meantime or I didn’t pay much attention way back when. In any event, before the game started, I looked around, took a little walk and picked up some sausages and Diet Cokes for the game. Our seats were awesome – field level at the 3rd base line. I squeezed by my family to our seats and started watching the game. The Blue Jays looked good right from the start and we all cheered and the Jays. About half way through the game, I felt a big waft of cool air and looked up to see the retractable roof starting to open up. Over the next few minutes, this is what I saw overhead:

I’m not sure why I was so surprised to see the CN Tower so close, but it was pretty cool to see this view when the roof opened up.

But back on the field, we saw so much action.

Just before the game started, the catcher walked past us. As Mike pointed out, the catcher’s masks are starting to look more like goalie masks. The Texas Rangers’ catcher had a similar fiberglass mask. My Aunt told me that it was actually a Blue Jays’ catcher who started looking into how goalie masks are made after he got pegged in the throat with a baseball (OUCH.) I guess this is starting a new trend in catcher’s masks – those old style cages may be phased out.

We watched Romero pitch the first 5 innings or so. He’s a big hometown favourite. The crowd cheered the loudest when he came out on the field.

We also got to see Jose Bautista – another favourite of this hometown crowd. I think it’s his batting stance. But it could be because he was given the player of the month award just before the game started.

And here we all are wearing the shirts my cousins had made for us so there was no confusion as to who’s birthday we were celebrating.

These shirts were good because we could all find each other easily if we got split up AND most importantly, people were wishing Grandma Wilson happy birthday whenever they looked at our shirts. Once we got home, Grandma told us happily, “So many people wished me happy birthday when we were out today!”.

Yup. It was a lot of fun. I’m so glad we went and got to do this for Grandma.