The Sewing Mom

I hope everyone has enjoyed a nice weekend! We started ours off by driving to Arlington to watch the Chicago White Sox play the Texas Rangers at Rangers Stadium.

As you can see from the above photo, it was a rainy evening in the Dallas area! We weren’t even sure if the game was going to be played, but we had purchased our tickets months prior and were hoping the rain would ease off before the game start time. We walked under raincoats and umbrellas to the stadium, quickly found our seats, and this is what we saw:

We felt very fortunate because our seats were on the lower level, situated under an upper level overhang which meant we had dry seats! After sitting in the stadium for at least an hour, an announcement was made that they were hoping to have first pitch before 8 pm., it was supposed to have started at 7:05. We thought that was okay, although we knew we had to be up early the next morning because my daughter was playing in a softball tournament. But, we opted to wait it out, we’d spent too much money on tickets to go home now! There was even a little bit of excitement when Juan Pierre, the White Sox Right Fielder, popped out onto the field to sign autographs… in the rain! There weren’t to many fans from Chicago, so my daughter was able to get his autograph and is completely thrilled! (that’s him signing her jersey!)

Eventually, the announcement was made that the game would begin at 9:30 pm and they expected an end to the rain. The grounds crew came out to begin the process of removing the tarp from the infield. This was a very interesting process and it’s absolutely amazing how ginormous the tarp really is!

It is so huge, and was completely covered in water, so they had to pull it all the way to the outfield to drain the water off (flipping it upside down), then pulled it back onto the infield where they began folding it. After folding it on half, it was roller onto a giant tube where it is stored.

The grounds crew brought out dry dirt for the infield and spent time sifting and raking it in. Then they marked the batters box and foul lines before the game got started. It was all a very interesting process to watch, usually this is all done before we ever get to the stadium.

The game was very exciting and worth waiting for. In the top of the 9th inning, with 2 outs and 2 strikes against him, Mark Kotsay, White Sox DH, hit a double to left center that brought in 2 runs, giving the White Sox a 5-3 win over the Rangers! We were thrilled, even more so when we got a text telling us the softball tournament had been canceled due to rain! That meant we could stay to watch the stadium fireworks show before heading home! A great night!