Life as a Baseball-Lover's Girlfriend.

Note Erik's brand new Helena Brewer's baseball cap.  :)

Erik LOVES baseball.  He really, really does.  Especially Minor League Baseball.  He literally knows EVERY Minor League Baseball team in the whole country.  I call it his "stupid human trick" (hey, we all have one, right?!)--if you tell him where you're from, he can tell you the nearest minor league baseball team.  It's an awesome conversation starter that I have seen him use on countless occasions, which is the whole reason he decided to learn them in the first place.  He's grown up LOVING the Mariners, he's worked as "Erik the Peanut Guy" for the last 7 seasons at the minor league park in his town, and he collects baseball caps.  He's been to over 30 minor league ballparks, and he has at least...60-some caps from the parks he's been to.  He even has rules for his collection--he can accept hats as a gift, but he can only buy them for himself if he's actually physically BEEN to that ballpark.  And he likes the old mesh BP caps, 7 3/8, please.  (How confused was I when they went to the stretch-fit type with sizes like Small/Medium and Medium/Large?)  His passion for baseball is awesome.

Montana is so pretty!!  :)  Yay for rainbows and baseball games in Helena!

I, on the other hand, must have been born on a different planet.  Growing up, baseball barely crossed my radar.  I played softball for two years--does that count?  The closest thing I had to experience with baseball was the annoying way my favorite TV shows would always be trumped after school on TBS for at least six months of the year by the dumb Atlanta Braves games.  (Why in the heck would I want to watch the Atlanta Braves?)  And I vaguely remember having to learn the rules as part of a middle school gym class...

I went to my first professional baseball game when I was in college--a minor league game in Spokane--with their local team, the Indians, and I couldn't tell you who they played.  We had to go as part of residence hall staff training (team building, maybe?), and my friend Zandra and I talked all the way through it (hey, we hadn't seen each other all summer, okay?).  I don't think we watched one minute of the game.

And the new Great Falls Voyagers hat.

This all changed when I started dating Erik and got my first real introduction to the Great American Pasttime.  Erik's love of baseball is contagious.  Watching games with him is FUN.  He's not like my dad (God bless him!), whom I love dearly, but who gets so sucked in to whatever sporting event he happens to be watching that you literally have to grab his face and force him to look at you for him to even be aware of your presence.  You cannot watch a sporting event with my dad and expect that he will explain it to you.  He will try for the first few minutes, but eventually he gets sucked in and then HE'S the one on another planet.  Nope, Erik will sit and explain things to me the whole time if I want him to.  He is endlessly patient with me, and believe me, I ask A LOT of questions.  If I'm going to watch something, I want to understand what's going on, okay?  He actually likes (or pretends to, anyway) that I want to understand.  And he understands and embraces the fact that the actual sport is only part of the reason it's fun to go to a baseball game--he's usually the one who first suggests that we walk around, grab a hotdog, and soak in the atmosphere.

At the Great Falls Voyagers game.

All this being said, it was no wonder he jumped at the chance to head to Ty and Kally's wedding in Montana when I happened to mention that the we'd be staying with my grandparents in Great Falls, a town that just happens to have one of the few minor league ballparks in the Northwest at which he had yet to make an appearance.  When I said a trip to Helena (to visit the OTHER ballpark he hadn't been to) could possibly be arranged, he was in!  So my Montana family vacation had a little baseball flair--and it was a blast!  Small town baseball is a whole 'nother ball game.  Literally.  The mascots are weird, the atmosphere's laid back and exciting, and people are just there to have a genuinely good time.  It's kinda like "Cheers," where everybody knows your name (unless you're the random couple of kids from out of town, of course...) 

I mentioned that the mascots are weird, right?

So, since Erik and I became best friends, I've been to a couple Mariner's games (Erik took Amy and I to our first Major League game ever), plus Minor League ballparks (and sometimes games) in Montana, Washington, Oregon, Iowa, Utah, Illinois, Nevada...you get the point.  And you know what?  I LIKE it.  I really, truly do LIKE baseball.  A lot.  It's fun if you know what's going on, especially if you can pick a team to root for.

I'd better watch out--before you know it, the title of this post might have to lose that last word...