Sunday, August 9, 2009

Pittsburgh Pirates Game

Yesterday, we decided to head to Pittsburgh to see a Pirates game. We assumed that since the Pirates' record isn't exactly great, that it would be no problem to just go and buy tickets when we got there. We had to park on the opposite side of the river and then walk across a bridge to get to the stadium.....must have been at least half a mile. I had Nicholas in my front pack, then Matt and I held hands with the kids as we made our way over to the stadium. It was so sad to see, but there were lots of homeless people shaking their cups at us along the way. I actually saw more homeless people in that one walk than I have in my entire life. Along with the homeless, there were ticket scalpers about every 20 yards or so. We had several try to sell us tickets, but we decided to go to the ticket booth instead.








(the bridge)





When we finally made it to the ticket booth, we found out that the game was sold out. It was something like the 700th game at the stadium, and there were going to be fireworks after the game....so obviously this drew a large crowd. So our next step was to head back over toward the bridge to find an alternate means of getting tickets. We were able to get someone to help us (of course) and bought 4 tickets for $100. Matt didn't have enough cash on him, so he and the guy headed to the ATM so Matt could get out some money. Matt got the money, handed it to the guy, and the guy gave him the tickets. As soon as Matt looked at them, he started walking after the guy to tell him that the tickets weren't all in the same section. The guy told him "not to worry about it" and that we would be able to find seats. As Matt had this little conversation, I looked over at the ATM to see that his card was still in the machine. As I was reaching for it, the ATM ate it. Wow! What a way to start the trip.
Fortunately, when we got to our seats, we were able to all sit together....for a while anyways. The kids did great. We ate hot dogs, drank some drinks, and enjoyed the game. Matt and I had discussed whether or not we should stay for the fireworks and thought that we might. But, in the 6th inning, some young guy came up and sat right in the middle of our family and announced that he had these seats and that he had about 8 friends on their way up. There were probably 6 or 7 empty seats above us that we could have moved to, but decided to just go. I was so appalled that this guy didn't offer to sit in the row above us. I understand that those were probably some of his seats, but seriously.....how ungentlemanlike to ask a family of 6 to move a row considering how much stuff we had to move with us.










We left the seats and decided to just hit up the little play area for kids. We let the kids run around for about 20 minutes or so and then headed back to the parking garage.







We ended up getting home around 11:30 pm and then put the kids to bed right away. Even though the night was a bit hectic, it was still a great outing for us.

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