Upgrade? Yes Please!

Everyone knows I'm a huge baseball fan.  If you didn't, now you do.  I just love baseball!  I can't get enough.  I'm lucky enough to be married to a huge baseball fan too.  And with the Tampa Bay Rays playing right here in my own back yard, it's a match made in heaven (well if they'd start playing better).  While we're not playing so hot right now, the Rays have been in the playoff hunt all year long.  My brother noticed a ticket package called 162 Strong package.  You get tickets of any 3 games of your choosing, an awesome highlighter yellow tshirt, and discounts on food and goodies.  He asked if the Hubs and I wanted to get tickets with them and we instantly jumped on the opportunity.

Tuesday was the first game we picked.  It was a game against the Boston Red Sox.  I am very loyal to my teams.  I love the Rays (my AL team) and the Atlanta Braves (my NL team).  I am most definitely not a fan of our AL East rivals, the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.  I just don't like them.  But since they're our big rivals, I love going to those games.  They usually draw a big crowd and are usually a little rowdy.  Well this season, Boston is kinda bad.  OK, really bad.  The Trop was practically empty.  Boston is considered a "Gold" game which means only the first 100 cars with 4 or more people get free parking.  So when we were only meeting at 6pm, I knew we'd be paying the ridiculously steep $20 parking fee.  When we pulled up to the gate, we got waved in with free parking.  It was our lucky day!!!  We parked really close (that should tell you there was absolutely no one at this game) and headed in.  We grabbed our amazingly bright shirts and went up to our seats in the upper deck.

Once we got settled, a cute young Rays employee approached us and asked if we would be interested in a free ticket upgrade.  I'm always up for a ticket upgrade.  All we had to do was trade our ticket stubs for tickets in the front row.  Yes.  The FRONT row!  Hello!?!?!?  Of course we're interested.  We swapped our tickets and headed down to our brand new seats, which just happened to be at the Boston bullpen.  As much as I dislike Boston, I love baseball players and appreciate their talent.  I love meeting them, getting pictures and autographs.  Remember I'm the 30 yr old girl who brings a baseball with her just to get signatures (which I didn't bring).  Sitting right behind the players, regardless of their team affiliation, was a dream come true!  I was in hog heaven.

I still can't believe how this all went down.  So we get to our seats and being that close just puts you in a great mood.  We were all having a blast.  Dustin Pedroia (the Boston 2nd baseman) hit a foul ball down the wall right in front of us.  The bat boy grabbed it and quickly tossed it to me.  Foul ball from a game...check!  However, it is still a goal of mine to actually catch either a HR ball or foul ball, not just have someone hand it to me.  But either way I was stoked!  Even got a little air time on TV (which was super funny because I was so excited!)

Thanks to whoever took the picture and texted it to Sharon.  I had just caught the ball.  Look how excited we look!!!

The rest of the game was a bust.  We lost 7-5, which is not what we need when we're in a race for a wild card spot and it was the longest game on the face of the planet.  Over 4 hours and we didn't even go to extra innings.  I wanted to die by 10pm.  But we stuck it out til the end and it paid off.  The bullpen catcher tossed a few more balls our way and the Hubs ended up with a 100 year Boston ball.

Ours isn't as clean since it's they actually use it during bullpen warm ups but I forgot to take a pic
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I can't wait to head to the Trop again on Saturday.  We're hoping for seat upgrades again (fingers crossed) behind home plate.  I'm sure that won't happen but a girl can dream, right?