Braves Game! July 28, 2012

My son promised me a Braves game for Mother's Day.  Want to come along with us?

 Turner Field in Atlanta.  This was built for the 1996 Olympics and was used for the track events.  It has been the home for the baseball team since that time, the Atlanta Braves.

I took this photo just before we sang the National Anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner".  Not a lot of people sing along with it.  You know that I always do, don't you? Always, you can count on it.

There are some really nice statues just outside of Turner Field.  This is a statue of Warren Spahn, and in the wording of baseball, " the winningest left handed pitcher of all time".   He played for the Boston Braves and therefore, there is a display about him in the Baseball Museum that we are about to visit inside Turner Field.

This is a a photo of Warren Spahn  and they even have his Purple Heart on display but I am sorry that I didn't get a photograph of that which was alongside his Army uniform.  He is one of those athletes whose career was interrupted by war, in his case, it was World War II.  It seems unfair to look too closely at sports statistics and compare the players when you had men from this time who sometimes had years when they were not playing the game.

Can you see the signature on this baseball?  It is none other than Babe Ruth, who with 714 homeruns had the most homeruns, until Hank Aaron passed this record in 1973 and finished his career with 755 homeruns.  If you are interested in stories about fascinating people, look up both those names: Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron.   Both amazing baseball players with interesting life stories.

This is a photo of my son posing in front of Hank Aaron  who is on the left and Chipper Jones on the right.  Chipper Jones will retire after this year and he has been an outstanding player with the Atlanta Braves.   He has been with the Atlanta Braves for nineteen seasons so that means he has been a large part of my son's childhood.  (Chipper's number is 10, so that is the shirt that C. is wearing!)

Look, just beyond the Chik-Fila cow, giant Coca-Cola bottle, and Delta Airlines' sign, it's Atlanta!

Play ball!    STRIKE HIM OUT!  STRIKE HIM OUT! (Can you see the ball?)

The pitcher, Mike Minor, must have heard me.  This means he had five strikeouts, he would finish with NINE for the night!  (The backwards K means that was a left-handed batter).  When I was a kid, it annoyed me that "K" meant a strike-out.

There was a pretty good size crowd.  We were so thankful that we were not in the sun, it was still in the 90's and not a breath of air. That is my son's hand pointing out something to his aging mother who is having great difficulty in seeing things these days.

Nice clouds though.... wait, I feel a sense of Deja Vu... I can almost hear my Daddy say, "Kay, pay attention, you're missing the game!"  (I always kept score with my Dad at baseball games.)

I wonder how close I can get to Chipper Jones in the batter's circle with the zoom lens of my camera...turns out, pretty darn close!  Hey, Chipper, hit a home run for us!  Or better yet, wait until the NEXT DAY when we are not there to see it!  Yeah, you know it, that's just what happened!

Oh well!  The Braves won on this Saturday night that we were there, 2-1.  Thanks, son, I really enjoyed it!  Hope y'all didn't get TOO hot at this game with us in HOT LANTA.