Baseball and Tennis

Today, Beck and I took off half a day from work, and went to the first “Businessman’s Special” game at the new stadium.  I’ve been excited about this all week, and was happy to see the date finally get here.

As expected, there were snafus all over the place — where to park, new traffic flows downtown, trying to get food on the as-yet uncompleted concourse we were on — but on balance, things went pretty well.  We got the stadium, found our seats, got some dogs, and started watching the game.

In the sun.  Did I mention that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, no shade on our side of the ballpark to be found, and that it was 88 degrees outside?  Blecch.

We slathered on the sunblock, and after eating my two kosher dogs (the absolute best hot dogs around, and my favorites at the stadium), I pulled out the camera, and starting firing photos of action at our first game in the new digs.

In the old Busch, the 200-level seats were somewhat under cover of the upper deck.  For this set of 200-level seats — down the third base line and four rows back from the edge — there was no upper deck to cover us.  It wouldn’t have helped if there were — the sun was almost directly overhead, and slightly in front of us.

In four innings time, we became lobsters — even with the sunscreen! — and were just dying from the heat.  It was at that point, we decided to wander around the cooler parts of the park, and eventally head home.

For those of you keeping score at home, this was the longest game at the new stadium, going 11 innings, and resulting in a loss for the Cards.  The relief pitching is looking a little suspect.

But, I digress.

So after a few stops, we got home in time to see the 11th on TV, and vegged for a while.  I had tennis tonight, so I relaxed, ate dinner and headed off.  I felt pretty good about tonight’s play since I had time to rest and get a good meal in me before heading up to the racket club.

Three games into the first set, that all crashed around me.  Literally.

I went up for a tremendous smash — one of my favorite shots, and ones I usually do pretty well with — and came down funny on my right foot, bending my foot sideways, and collapsing me into a lump on the court.  My comrades in arms collected around me, and kept asking if I heard anything pop when I went down.  I guess I looked pretty ugly in real time.  Once the first big waves of pain got past me, I went to the bench, sat down, applied some ice, and in due course, headed home.

So, very swollen and painful is my ankle.  Walking is a bit of a chore, and I’m sure that I’ll be at glacial speed for a few days at least.  I also think I’m probably done with tennis for at least a week while it heals up.  Ugh.

I guess it could’ve been worse, but that certainly wasn’t what I had in mind for tonight’s play!