Sunday, July 13, 2014

All-Star Sunday, Joining Twitter

     I went to All-Star Sunday at the Twins stadium this afternoon. I liked seeing the Futures game, though I thought it was odd to have Puerto Rico as part of the World team when it is a U.S. territory. But I have heard the joke before, like on the 'Uncle Buck' TV show. 'You can't make up your mind, what are you, Puerto Rico?' Since it often functions like a separate nation but isn't. As host team, the Twins had 3 players in it. No surprise how all players were used in it. There was 25 to a side, both teams had 10 pitchers. My guess is all 30 major league teams had at least one player in it. The USA team won 3-2. My hometown Iowa Cubs, out of Des Moines, had 2 players- 1 for each team. In last month's game against Albuquerque, I saw both players in their lineup. There was Kris Bryant, at third base, and Javier Baez, at shortstop. The former was just drafted last year. Baez had a home run in today's game, with one on, for the world team in the 6th. The USA team also had a 2-run home run in the bottom of the same inning. The program says the Futures game goes back to 1999. There is an ad for the Arizona Fall League in the program, I did see one game there in 2005. Prince Fielder played in the game I saw. It was part of a visit to the Phoenix area where I saw 2 football games in Tempe, in October.  
    There was a celebrity softball game after it, lasted 6 innings. There were pictures of 17 famous people in the program, along with baseball card photos of 10 retired players. Now I have some celebs to look up on Wikipedia, as I don't know all of their names. I understand they were mostly actors and musicians. Some others were local athletes in other sports, such as Adrian Peterson (Vikings), Maya Moore (Lynx), and Zach Parise (Wild). I understand there were 2 others added, I think they were wounded veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. I knew the names of all of the retired players, many of them were stars from the 1980s like Ozzie Smith, Andre Dawson, and Rickey Henderson. As expected, it wasn't a serious game, proven by the shorter timeframe of 6 innings as well as shorter fences. I did speak of in advance how I had seen celebrity editions of game shows like Jeopardy and Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The celebs often don't take the show seriously as they are guaranteed certain amounts to go to their chosen charity. There was a band that performed 2 songs between games, don't recall their full name- something about 'At the Disco'. There was fireworks after the second game, it lasted just 15 minutes and I had no heartburn about it as I wanted to get home. I left in my car to get to the park and ride for light rail just after 3pm and got back home shortly after 10pm. But it was well worth it to be there. I bought 5 souvenirs besides today's free game program. I got the official All-Star Game program, a Charlie Brown and Snoopy All-Star Game pin, a full size All-Star Game pennant (already had a small version), a button, and an Peppermint Patty figurine. So now I have 2 figurines from this series, as I have the Snoopy that was a giveaway at a Twins game in early June. Of the ten characters, I said I wanted Patty as she is holding a bat. I like Linus the most from the comic strip, but he is holding a blanket and sucking his thumb in this one. In the earlier series he is just holding a blanket, I could accept this much easier.
   When I returned home, I had an invite for joining Twitter from my Ohio friend. So I accepted as I hadn't heard from her in a while, but I did send a message recently on Linked-In so this is possibly what prompted the Twitter invite.  I spoke of being at All-Star Sunday in my first tweet- to her- and said thank you. It didn't take long to get followers, I had 3 before logging off for the first time.  

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