I have a ritual that I follow before I leave for every game where I collect the seat cushions that Trina made and pack them for the upcoming game. This includes retrieving the frozen bottles of water that we’ll take to drink; and filling the seat cushion pockets with whatever treats that Trina has bought to keep us entertained and satisfied for the next 5 hours. I’ll then open my scorebook and make sure that I have at least one more page to record the game. Finally I will go to the counter where I keep the ticket books which contain my season tickets and I will tear out the game tickets for today’s date and place them in an envelope. Sometimes Trina and the kids will complete this ritual packing the bags but the last step of gathering the tickets they will leave for me to do. That way I will have peace of mind knowing that when I grab the seat cushions and head out the door I know for sure that I have the correct tickets. It also gives them plausible deniability since they can plead ignorance if we get to Chase Field and find that we don’t have tickets for the right game (which has happened on a few occasions over the years).
When my season ticket package arrives each spring I sit down and leaf through the pages trying to anticipate what the year will hold and how the team may be doing at that moment in time. I’m filled with the excitement of the unknown hoping that this year might be the year when everything works out as planned and I’ll witness history and see the Arizona Diamondbacks return to the World Series. When I retrieve each game’s tickets it gives me an opportunity to assess how closely reality is tracking to what I had anticipated on that March morning.
I went to the ticket books and retrieved the tickets to pack into the bags. At the bottom of the ticket I noted the date and the game number to make sure I was packing the correct tickets. The game number read Game 41. Discounting the two tickets for the Exhibition Games against the San Diego Padres, these tickets represented the halfway point to the season. Halfway point; I was somewhat shocked to realize that the Arizona Diamondbacks had now played half of their home games for the 2007 season. It seems like only yesterday that I was eagerly awaiting April 9 and the beginning of the season. Now half of the season has gone by. The Diamondbacks are 11 games above .500 and find themselves at the top of the National League Western Division along with the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres. They have one of the top 3 records in the National League and their pitching staff is among the leaders in several categories. While the offense has not kept pace with the pitching it has still been good enough to win the close games. At this pace the Diamondbacks would finish the season with 103 wins which would be a franchise record. If you consider the youth and relative major league inexperience that the team has a most positions; that would be quite an accomplishment. Still, I can’t help but be a little sad to think that I only have half a season remaining before this season is history. But hey that means I am one day closer to seat relocation and seeing another year from a different vantage point.
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