Despite meeting in Minnesota, my husband and I both grew up in Texas. We spent our youth watching the Texas Rangers, and were always fans. They were never all that great when we were kids, but we watched them anyway. (Lucky for us, we did have the Dallas Cowboys, which won a lot during our youth) After moving back with the kids to Fort Worth, it only made sense that we exposed them to the Texas Rangers and cultivated a love of baseball in them. They play baseball, they watch baseball… and Claire pretty much lives baseball. I’d say she spends 25% of each day thinking in Texas Rangers related activities.
James had some time off at the beginning of August, and we decided to plan a spur of the moment trip to see the Rangers play the Orioles in Baltimore. It is our goal to get the kids to all the stadiums and planned to knock out a few this summer. Unfortunately, our trip through Kansas coincided with a heatwave. Baseball is great and fun to watch. Baseball at 100 degrees after driving 7 hours isn’t. So a specific trip for baseball was the only chance we had this summer.
We flew in the morning of the game and left the morning after. It was a very quick trip, but we still had to get a famous crabcake!
Baltimore’s Camden Yards is a great stadium to visit. The employees and fans were all kinds, despite us being decked out in our Texas Rangers gear. It was the first of the “modern classic” stadiums built in the 90’s, and our beloved Ballpark in Arlington has some of the same feel. The good seats were relatively cheap as well.
We got there early to see batting practice, and the kids got several autographs. They loved it! Mitch Moreland gave my daughter a ball they were hitting on field, and that was pretty special.
So this is major league stadium #2 for Luke and #3 for Claire (she went to an Astros game in Houston that Luke didn’t attend). They’ve also seen the Rangers play in Surprise Stadium for spring training, but that doesn’t really count. Hopefully, this number will grow rapidly over the next few summers.
(I apologize for the camera photos. I didn’t want to tote around the Nikon during a short trip!)