Four Year Old Girls Like Major League Baseball Less than 38 Year Old Men (and Other Revelations)

Last night, I took TinyE to the Twins game. I should say the game where the “red hot” Minnesota Twins stuck it to the hapless Los Angles Dodgers.. We were on row 6, just off the protective netting, and very close to home plate on the third base side. Every time a left-handed batter was at the plate, I was convinced they were going to foul one off and hit my sweet anger…er angeL in the head. This would mean that she might be permanently injured and, more importantly, that Mrs. Duf would be very, very angry with me.

TinyE and I both survived unscathed.

On the way to the game, TinyE, as an expression of her excitement, sang “Take Me out to the Ball Game” like so:

Take me out to the ball game
Take me out to the crowd
Buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks
I don’t care if I never get back
[omission]
One…two…three strikes you’re out
At the old, ball game.

If you’re a fan of the best professional game (or traditional song), you’ll realize she left out:

Well we’ll root, root, root
For the home team
If they don’t win it’s a shame
For its…one…two…

So, I gently told her that at the game, when they sing it, they would sing it like this:

Then I sang the whole thing, CORRECTLY. Don’t hate.

She LOST IT. She hated.

She FLIPPED out. She was so angry that she started to cry. She claimed that I was not her best friend (a blatant lie) and that she did not want to go to the game with me (a little white lie).

I asked myself “why did I take this child to the game?” I ask myself that kind of question all the time. Only I sometimes substitute “game” for:

Store
Park
Museum
Airport/airplane
Saloon
Cockfight
Rally
Execution

Then I remembered why:

I bought tickets for the Twins game (Monday night 6/26).
Later, my handsome brother-in-law scored tickets to the Pearl Jam/Tom Petty concert (Tuesday 6/27).
After that, he invited me to join him at said concert.
As a long-time married man*, I realized quickly that if I was to go out two nights in a row, leaving Mrs. Duf with TinyE, I would need a plan**.
I wanted to go to the game and the concert.
TinyE could not go to the concert; so
I took her with me to the game***.

So, here’s the thing. Baseball is a great game to watch when you played baseball, and you’re 38 and you find a freshly-mowed lawn exciting. But when you’re four…well…baseball is not terribly exciting. Here’s what is:

Peanuts in the shell (it can take an hour for a child to open 25 peanuts)
Pretzels (the big soft one – 17 minutes tops)
A malted ice-cream treat (10 minutes – get napkins)
Tee shirts that are compressing into a plastic tube and shot into the air

We left in the 8th inning.

*It’ll be six (6) years in September.
**My wife is cool, but I travel a lot for work, and adding two consecutive nights of personal stuff is…well…pushing it.
***Can I decipher or what?