Yesterday and today I was fortunate enough to score some tickets to the last two games of a 3 game series between the Braves and Cubs. Now, I have a few nice inside connections, so I usually get good seats, but today's seats were out of this world. We were seated in the second section directly behind homeplate by about 30 rows. It was amazing! As we sat down and became friendly with the people sitting around us I immediately noticed the majority of them were Braves fans too, so I said, "Nice to be in good company!" They all laughed. Well, over the course of the exciting, home run derby game we learned the names of these folks. Turns out the attractive woman sitting directly in front of us was Mrs. Ryan Langerhans (Braves left fielder), the family directly behind us, and who graciously watched our stuff at one point, was John Smoltz's sister and family, and the young ladies sitting next to us were the Braves' VP daughter and friends. Fine company indeed! Lucky for them, the three guys who were Cubs fans sititng in front of us and next to Mrs. Langerhans were very good sports and fun to go back and forth with during the game. Aside from the wild, edge of your seat through extra innnings excitement of the game, there was one funny moment. Pete Orr struck out and argued the call (which was pretty bogus, the 3rd bogus called third strike that day, two against us and one against the Cubs). Well, when he got back to the dugout and went in, the ump turned around and yelled something at the dugout and then tossed somebody, but we couldn't see who! I said, "Well, you know it wasn't Bobby, cause if he got tossed, he'd've come out and gotten his money's worth!" So, Mrs. Langerhans called a friend who was watching the game on TV and got back to us with the report. Turns out Terry Pendleton, our batting coach, got tossed for making remarks about the ump's bogus call. Now, I grew up watching TP play 3B for the Braves and remember when he was NL MVP in '91. But, as she begins to tell us the story, she says, "It was Terry Pendleton who got tossed. Now, he's our batting coach..." I said, laughing, "Yes, thank you, I know who TP is." I wanted to add I probably had been following the Braves long before she was, but refrained. She was, after all, just being nice.

All in all it was a great day, a great game, fun company, and neat people around whom we sat. I'll miss all this free baseball. Well, let me correct myself, free, good baseball. I think they're giving away seats at Tropicana for the Tampa Devil Rays...

-R