Today we went to the early church service (9:00 am) cause my dad had given us two tickets to the Angels game that they gave away to employees of unsold tickets.. We parked by Rubio's and had lunch, having paid our $5 parking fee to park there near the Amtrak and walked a short distance to the entrance to our left field section 101 just behind the foul pole where if it landed near us it was a home run and slightly to the right was foul. Juan Rivera's home run landed here later in the game...
Prior to the game there were some kind of promotional "kids" involvement where they came onto the field during warm ups and got baseballs signed, one was the announcer for a couple of innings... it was exciting for them, for sure.. After a rousing singing of the Star Spangled Banner by a young woman Kelsie.. the game began.....
Now the game started off rather dismally for the Angels, beginning with pitch #1 that went for a double.. Santana was the pitcher and the first three innings were a slug fest for the Seattle Mariners and they racked up 6 runs.. It didn't pick up any and we as a crowd of spectators were wondering why NO ONE WAS VISITING THE MOUND or pulling the pitcher for a lackluster performance when the score swelled to 0-6... The Angels managed to have a home run from Napoli and gave us what appeared to be at least one run.. and not a skunked outcome.
The innings just kind of droned on in the middle, they did pull Santana in the sixth, who slumped his shoulders and did the death walk to the dugout... and they put in Rodriguez.. We managed to put five runs on the board over the last few innings and bring the score to 6-8. I think there was one more pitcher and than they ended with Speier (sp?).. it was the bottom of the ninth and Seattle brought in a new pitcher for the Angels last at bat.. a walk, another walk, a single which scored one, and put runners at 2nd and 3rd, an intentional walk of Vladimar Guillero to load the bases, and than... a walked in run to tie the game.. and than Juan Rivera comes up with 2 outs and bases loaded and bam knocks a ground ball passed the shortstop out into left field and game over... Angels win 9-8..
WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT... we were certainly surprised at the turn around from a team that early in the game looked the they were little leaguers with no inspiration or idea of how to play aggressive defense or conjer up some offense. Thankfully Seattle started out hot and fizzled on offense at the right time.
My dad came over at about the 8th inning before he left for home to say hi... he had been working an upper section for four hours across on the other side of the stadium. He had left long before the game made its comeback.. That was his last day working at the stadium for awhile as they leave for MN in the morning and will be there for the summer.
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