A Twister??!! A TWISTER!!!!

The irony is absolutely delicious. The short version is....Chrissy won a trivia contest at our local library...the question was...."Who wrote 'The Wizard of Oz?'" Chrissy responded correctly with "Frank L. Baum" and won us 4 tickets to our local minor league baseball team's Friday night game. The name of the team? The Worcester Tornadoes. See the irony? Tornado? Dorothy and Toto? Tornado? House uprooting and landing on the wicked witch an' what-not? The irony's not lost on me. Anyway....It was our family's first time to the ballpark all together and we had a stellar time. Here's what it looked like:


The Leo Family Unit at the ballpark. We commissioned a cool stranger to take our picture. I love how, when you ask someone to take your families picture, you explain to them how to use your camera like they've never seen a device like that before. Oh really???? You press the big silver button? Who knew? Are you sure this thing doesn't steal your soul??!!Anyway....


The boy chomping on something blue. Nothing like managing a sugar high while confining your child to 2 square feet of bleacher seating. But hey....that's what baseball's all about...no?


Random Silliness. By the way. The Tornadoes hats we are all rocking came free with vouchers that we got with our tickets. Pretty cool little benny for us....granted...they were cheap little lids probably made by a 6 year old with no shoes who earns a cup of rice a day for 16 hours of hard labor in some remote Indonesian village sweatshop but......it was still a nice touch.



Chrissy giving "knuckles" to the Worcester Tornadoes mascot "Twister". The irony gets even deeper considering the biggest disaster ever to hit Worcester was a deadly tornado in 1953 that killed over 90 people. Add to that the recent tornado that left hundreds homeless just miles from Worcester....Not to bring this blog to a downer but...just for a second, let me throw this out there....isn't it kind of weird that sports teams name their franchises after natural disasters that kill thousands of people worldwide every year? Like the "Tornadoes" or the "Hurricanes" or the "Avalanche". Why don't they just name sports teams after devastating diseases like the "Minnesota Lung Cancers" or the "Denver Strokes". I dunno...maybe I'm old fashioned. Anyway...this photo of Chrissy and Twister begins a 3-4 inning stalking of this pudgy canine. Gavin was a little sketched out by him at first, but managed to get close enough to let Twister sign his hat:




Ivy also got close to Twister. The result?



Freak Out City.
We cornered Twister several innings later up above the third base line as Gavin was locked in on now getting him to sign mama's hat, too. He's warming up to this chubby mutt by now:



Ivy?




Not so much.
Gavin stalked this glorified muppet for a while longer...determined to get mine and Ivy's cap signed. On his third approach to the fuzzy mongrel, Ivy had a breakthrough:



Success!! She even managed to give him a solid high-five. Over the course of the next inning and a half, Gavin managed to get all of our hats signed by Twister. All in all, it was a fantastic night.
The home team spanked the visitors by a final score of 11-2 and treated us to some great post game fireworks:



Why is it that pictures of fireworks always come out crappy? I dunno. I'm probably doing something wrong...anyway. All in all....a just-about-perfect night at the ballpark with the fam. If you have a minor league or independent team in your area....you should do yourself a favor and check them out....especially if you have kids. These places are so crazy family friendly and a family of 4 can easily have a great time for under 50 bucks....unless you are a Wizard of Oz genius like my wife....in which case it's on the house.

Root Root Root for the home team! Cheers!!