I know some time before I had talked about finally finding this baseball/softball scorebook I had bought at a long-dead sports apparel shop called Oshman's when the Mall of America was but a wee toddler. I had put it somewhere unique (if not special), then promptly forgot it when I, suddenly, found it. I then kept it in my closet and knew that I threw it in my closet so I could finally break its cherry when I was going to attend a game that was not going to sell scorecards.
That day was the University of Minnesota baseball team against Purdue. But as I said in a previous Expenses Without Receipt blog post (I think), the game was suspended because of a rain storm. And even though I wanted to stick around because I'm a baseball purist and diehards always stick around to the end of the game, I was too cold and tired to stay. So I left Siebert Field while the game was in the middle of a rain delay. (By the way, as I said before, they eventually pushed resumption of the game till the next morning, which means it was a very good idea to bolt.)
The next time I used my scorecard was in the Minneapolis Regional of the NCAA softball tournament, which the Golden Gophers were hosting for the first time in more than a decade. The game I saw, Minnesota vs. North Dakota St., was very exciting, but I had to leave the game (in extra innings ... I think) because Mother was expecting me home at a decent dinner hour. So even though the U. of M. eventually won in ten innings, I did not stick around to see the end, therefore I could not tie a bow on the game on my card.
I then headed back out to Cowles Stadium the next day for the final day of the Regional, where the U. was facing Auburn. I attended the first game of what turned out to be a doubleheader, scorecard in hand, but this time I knew it was likely I would have to bug out early because the probably run time of the game ran into the home opener of the defending champion Minnesota Lynx. So some time just after the end of the fifth inning, with the Tigers up 3-0, I left feeling that it was a good time to go. Eventually the Gophs would tie it up with three in the top of the sixth and send the game into extras before losing 4-3 in eight innings. (And to further digress in order to complete the picture, Minnesota would come from behind to beat Auburn 8-6 and advance to the Super Regional.) Obviously, I left that game with an incomplete scorecard.
So that's why my scorecard looks like: One incomplete baseball game and two incomplete softball games, games that were completed but not recorded on my handy-dandy (and big) scorecard, the baseball game because it was suspended and the softball games because I had to leave early. I don't know if any scorecard on Earth has its first three entries unfinished. It seems very inauspicious a sign, as if that's the wrong thing to have.
But on the bright side, for both softball games I believe I stood next to new Minnesota women's basketball Head Coach Marlene Stollings, the Bison game on the first-base side of home plate and the Tiger game on the third-base side. How coincidental is that?
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