Tent City

Every once in a while, someone gets a great idea; an idea so great that everyone else can't help their miserable little selves from shooting it down. But how fabulous is it when someone suggests a camp out on the baseball field of a semi-pro baseball team. Although I could hear the cries of, "They'll ruin the field", "They'll trash the place", "The liability is too great", or the all too familiar parental cheer, "No, because I said so!", the Boy Scouts of America successfully sponsored this event at the home field of the Lowell Spinners (a Red Sox farm team) in Massachusetts. It was an awesome evening for me and the boys. My friend Andy has a son who is a Boy Scout and for $33 you got a ticket to the game, a hot dog with chips and a drink, a campsite on the field after the game, and continental breakfast in the morning.

Early the Next Morning: (Our Tent is in the Lower Right Corner )

So while Kerrie was on her Oregon boondoggle, the boys and I braved the barren hinterlands of Right Field.

It was a great evening for baseball, the game started at 5:00, but of course we rolled in at about 6:00. As the game wound down to the 9th inning, it was amazing to see the long line of people waiting like Oklahoma Sooners (look it up) for the game to end so they could make their land claim. What in the world is everyone's hurry?!?

At the end of the game, we went back to the parking lot and brought our stuff down to the field. Andy had his tent and I had mine, plus our share of sleeping bags and blankets. You should have seen the wheelbarrows full of crap that people brought to the park for what was effectively a 12 hour sleepover, as we had to be gone by 9:00 am the next morning.

Although the field filled up fast (you had to stay in the outfield and within the foul lines), there was plenty of room to pitch your tent. We stayed against the foul line in right field so no one would set up behind us and we would have more room. Also, everyone crowded into left field near the video scoreboard where they played movies well into the night.

The first thing I did after setting up my tent was come out and yell at the kids playing ball in front to "Get the heck off my lawn!" I always wanted to do that and they took me seriously. I had to reassure them I was only joking.

You should have seen the McMansion tents that people brought. Some of them actually had adjoining rooms! (Or maybe with the real estate downturn, these tents were their actual homes.)

They played the first Star Wars movie (which is really the fourth) from about 9:30 to 11:30 and then the second Star Wars movie (which is really the fifth) until about 1:00 am. The boys had seen the first movie before (the fourth), and just trying explain why the fourth shall be first and the fifth shall be second without them looking at you stupidly was an impossibility. But the evening was like going to the drive-in theatre of the old days with the deafening audio coming over the stadium speaker system, effectively in sensoround.

The boys sat right up front and Daniel's goal was only to make it to midnight, which got him through the first half of The Empire Strikes Back. I crashed about 11:30 pm, Daniel came "home" about 12:05 am, and Lev wandered into the tent at about 1:15 am, waking me up excitedly with, "Dad, Darth Vader is Luke's father!"

The next morning, a not so great breakfast was provided in the stadium (bagels without cream cheese), but it didn't take away from the enjoyment of having free reign around the stadium, including the field and the dugouts. We were the last to pack up our tent and the groundskeeping crew was anxious for us to leave because there was a 1:00 pm start for the next game. They gladly packed up our our gear on their cart to carry it to the exit and then drove the kids around the warning track a couple of times like the Beverly Hillbillies, while they were allowed to mumble over the loudspeaker system with a portable microphone.

It was a rare and wonderful evening.