Washington Nationals!

We really miss our Mariners so we decided to check out the local team a few times. Josiah really wanted to see the Astro's since his Tball team was the Astros. So, a few weeks ago we went and had a blast! JJ, Jim (the lone guy from C's program) and I went again just the other night. RFK (above) is really old and not my favorite stadium but the games were fun! It was so low key compared to the Mariners game.

We got there early so that we could see batting practice and were amazed at how few people there were. We walked right up to the fence and easily got an autograph from Brad Ausmus of the Astros. Jo was in hog heaven! We had brought our Astros hats so we got some attention from the Astros players! The boys had balls that they got in NY and the security gaurd noticed that sk did not have a ball so he gave her one of the batting practice balls.

This was our view from the $5 seats in centerfield. The players were actually smaller without the aid of the camera. Fortunatley we took advantage of the free seat upgrade program (nobody checked our tickets so we just moved to better seats).

On the way to our new seats we ran into "Screech" the Nationals mascot. He didn't care for S's Astro hat much. He held it to his nose and shook his head!

This was the view from our new seats. Brad Zimmerman of the Nationals hit his 15th HR of the season and JJ ended up with the ball. The ball actually flew into the bullpen (where the pitchers warm up for those of you non-baseball people) and the security gaurd threw the ball up to JJ. As you can see, he was pretty happy about it.

A few minutes later this nice boy who was hanging out and talking to us decided that Jo needed a ball since JJ and SK got balls. What a deal! We really thanked the boy. He had already gotten a different homerun ball so everybody was happy.

JJ wanted to see if we could get Zimmerman to sign his ball so we gave ourselves another curtesy upgrade at the end of the 8th inning and moved down behind the dugout. We got to see Screech again.

All in all. A very nice night for the Kaler's.

The other night JJ, Jim and I went to see Ken Griffey Jr. and the Reds play the Nationals. Griffey went o-5! The Nats won and we had a good time with Jim. Once again we bought $5 dollar tickets and took advantage of the upgrade program. Jim and I both remarked that in our home parks these upgrade wouldn't be possible because the games at Safeco and Boston are almost always packed so there is no place to move!