Thursday, June 07, 2007

The O-Royals fared a little better than KC

Tonight brought perfect weather for taking in a baseball game, and the great weather, combined with the facts that school is out and it was dollar beer night, brought an unusually large crowd to Rosenblatt Stadium. The O-Royals were returning home from an 8-game road trip in which they were 4-4.

This home series, a 4-gamer against Nashville, is going to be huge. Nashville is in 2nd place in the PCL American North, and I see no reason why Omaha can't overtake them.

Tonight was a good start: In the very first inning, two Royals drew walks to join Richard Lewis, who had singled, on base. That brought up Justin Huber. Now I ask you... What do you secretly hope for whenever your team has the bases loaded?

Yep, that's exactly what happened. Huber absolutely crushed the first pitch he saw from Nashville's Yovani Gallardo. It had to have gone at least 420 feet -- it cleared the hitter's eye, which is marked 408. He hit another in the fifth inning to bring his season HR total to 7. This made him a natural choice for player of the game, but I don't want anyone to overlook pitcher Ben Hendrickson's performance. He threw 6.2 innings, allowing just 4 hits and one earned run. He walked only two and struck out four. Omaha won, 7-1.

I was thrilled to be back at Rosenblatt, even if I wasn't working. A lot of season ticket holders, all of my coworkers, and even a few players asked how I was, said they had missed me, and so on. Two little girls, who are part of a large family of season ticket holders, came over from about 4 sections over to see me. This amazed me because I wasn't wearing my work uniform, so they must have eagle eyes to be able to pick me out in a crowd. They chided me for getting hurt, and said I needed to get back to work soon so I could high-five them again. I guess they really value the level of fan interaction I display!

- Today at physical therapy, someone asked me if anyone saw me fall when I sprained my ankle. I had guessed that that night's crowd was between 5500 and 6000. It didn't occur to me until tonight, almost two weeks after the fact, to actually look up that night's attendance. I fell down the stairs in front of ... ahem ... 6,259 people. Smooooth move.

2 comments:

Ravi said...

you gotta love the royals huh. they actually have some pretty good young talent but what bothers me is how fast they rush people to the big leagues. they almost ruined zack greinke's career before it even started and it remains to be seen if they actually did. my question is whats the point of bringing alex gordon up with no time in aaa so he can hit .200 for a last place club? give him a year in omaha, whats the rush? anyway, i like your blog, you really know what ur talkin about. lemme guess, award winning newspaper, you went to central? i went to millard north, we won a cornhusker each year i was on staff and i remember central always had a really good paper, so thats why i guessed that.

Ravi said...

You are from McCook? Do you know Willie Williams, Kendra Bates or Paul Putz?