Got some tickets for the Astros last week-end when the home team played Seattle in a very Slow game ended 2-1 for Houston.
We chose the Saturday game to leave the Sunday for home-relax: a pity because the very next day the score was 21 (!!) to 1. Anyway, below our lessons learned from our first baseball game ever:
- Rules: foreigners better study the rules well in advance. We tried to use analogies with soccer-basket-volleyball with scarse success.
- Air conditioned: the Minute Maid Park is fully air conditioned. The walk from the parking lot to the stadium is NOT. Leave the jacket home from May till November.
- It’s not true that baseball is boring, maybe it’s not exactly a very thrilling sport. If you are a supporter of Torino just think at the excitment of some 2nd division games we had to watch in the past…
- In fact we had fun even if the game was slow: as soon as our neighbors understood we were not locals we started talking about or lives basically missing anything happened during 3,4 and 5th inning. Texans hospitality is amazing as usual.
- Food: hot dogs and vegetarian burgers are great and will satiate you till the next day. Don’t worry for the long line: the game is slow and you won’t be missing much.
- Bucks: you want to bring water and peanuts from home or be ready to get a loan. I myself, seen the prices, would even try to cook the hot dog and burgers in place on the terraces, but strict regulations would block my LPG cooking gas cylinder at the gates.
The pitcher in my photos is Justine Verlander: a man of exceptional abilities not only because he just entered the exclusive ”Three-No Hitter’ club, but, most importantly, because he married Kate Upton. I had a full set of pictures of Kate posing but while I took a break writing this post Marta has erased them all…. Till the next time then, and Go Astros!!
