Baseball

            Baseball season is finally here. Yeah I am a chick but yeah I am pretty excited.  Baseball means that it is officially Spring and the weather has begun to warm up.  I have enjoyed baseball for almost my whole life and definitely think that is not only different from softball, but also better to both play and watch.

            In case you are some crazy person that just decided now to start reading my blog and aren’t actually one of my friends (which I highly doubt), I work for the local baseball team in my town, The Cedar Rapids Kernels.  This year the Kernels signed and moved their Major League affiliation from the Los Angeles Angels (who they had been with for 20 years) to the Minnesota Twins.  As weird as it was switching affiliations, this has had a lot of benefits for the team.  Cedar Rapids is located in Iowa, in case you didn’t know, this means that we have gone from being hundreds of miles away from our affiliate, to being a 4 hour drive.  We are now the closest affiliate team to the Twins and therefore we are receiving many of their top draft players, and are expected to be the team their injured players will go to.

The bigger thing right now is Byron Buxton, the top draft pick that we have ever had play for the Kernels.  He is currently playing in the outfield and is being paid a six million dollar signing bonus, yeah you saw that right.  If I could get one of his autographs I could already sell it on eBay for $50, but he always seems to be hiding in the dugout during team signings. Hmmm…

Since I work concessions this change has only affected me minimally.  First off, some of the best employees will receive Twins tickets at the end of the season, that is pretty exciting to me and I definitely am going to try to win them.  Second, our attendance is expected to increase as Twins fans come to the stadium to see hopeful future players for the Major League team.  I know our attendance was far better on opening night this year, than it was last year; but last year it was also much colder opening week.

In general, however, baseball is here.  The weather is warming up and fans are coming out to watch the all the players.  I will always love the sound the bat makes when it makes contact with the ball.  From the sound, you can almost always tell if it is going out of the stadium.  Even the crack as the baseball reaches the catcher’s glove after each pitch.  All the sounds are what makes baseball, well baseball.  I’m hoping the weather holds out until the next home stand, I think I might have gotten a little burnt today when I went to watch the game after getting off.  But it’s baseball season, so let’s play ball!

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