Playoff game!

Every once in a while, I get special treatment at work.

My boss and his family are devoted Chicago White Sox fans. They have season tickets, and they have a private box. (the boss's wife comes from big money...very big money.)

When the Sox made the playoffs, they got a large quantity of playoff tickets.
My boss offered me a pair for Monday....IF they won on Sunday, and continued on.

Well, they did win on Sunday, and so there was a game on Monday. They scheduled it for 4:00. But they did not schedule it until the game on Sunday was won!

So, my normal work schedule is 8 am to 4 pm, AND yesterday was the first day for a new trainee. I do all of the training in the office.

I got to work yesterday, assuming that the boss would tell me, too bad...so sorry...you can't leave early today, so I gave the tickets to ....... fill in the blank.

But he didn't.

He helped me figure out how to leave early, and I DID, and I got my brother to go to the game with me! (my sister in law, the Sox fan, was my first choice, but she was out of town.)

While my brother and I are dyed in the wool CHICAGO CUBS fans, how often do we get to go to post season play off games of ANY KIND?
Well, in my case, NEVER!

SO this was a really cool opportunity.

I clapped and cheered and booed at the right times, and I really did hope they'd win, since my Cubbies had lost at the exact same "level" of the season as this game was for the Sox.

The Sox lost.

The Cubs and Sox made it exactly the same distance this season. Perfectly equal.

It was really cool to be at a major league post season game for the first time.
It was also very cool to get to hang out with my brother for something like this (or for anything, for that matter...we usually see one another once or twice a year).

He briefed me in the car about the players and the statistics.

I knew very little about the Sox going in, because I basically ignore them all season!

My brother's life is also : breathe, eat, sleep, baseball....so he knows his stuff. MUCH more than I do, to be sure.

By the time we got there, I felt prepared with basic info about the players. It helped!

We did our best to ignore the insulting things Sox fans say about Cubs fans (on their t shirts, and with their mouths!), and we sort of just blended in. I borrowed a White Sox sweatshirt from my sister in law, so no one questioned my loyalty, or threatened me with harm of any kind.

My brother, on the other hand, struck up conversations with those around us, and was not afraid to "come out" as a Cub fan!

At least no one dumped beer over his head.

Sox fans are really overly rude about us for some reason. We (meaning Cub fans) don't insult them, or have nearly as many nasty t-shirts for sale out side of OUR park!

Anyway...it was fun, and it was nice to be allowed to leave work early, to go see a pro ball game on the boss's dime!

We got to see them shoot off fireworks for 2 Sox home runs (I'd never seen that in person before), and we got to see a major league team, the Devil Rays (I think that's their name...they're in the American League, about which I am clueless), rush the mound in celebration.

I also got to see the Sox stadium FULL. I'd never seen that before. Sox fans are not nearly as ardent as Cub fans, in terms of attending regular season games.

Wrigley Field is full for EVERY game, no matter what....Sox park, on the other hand, is frequently only partially full.

Since I'd only been to 2 Sox games before ever in my life, during regular season play, I'd never seen their park actually FULL.

So that was cool.

All in all, it was very enjoyable, and a rare opportunity.

I am, in a way, sorry that they lost...But on the other hand, that is proof that the Sox are no better than the Cubs, no matter how obnoxious their fans may be in stating the opposite!