A summer game.

A little over an hour's drive from here is where the Triple A affiliate plays...the Albuquerque Isotopes. The best way to enjoy baseball (in terms of crowds, prices, interaction with players, you name it) is through the minor league games.

It's a scaled-down version of the insanity that is Major League Baseball. The players are very pleasant.

A day at Isotopes Park.

We all greatly enjoyed a trip from Santa Fe to Albuquerque today to see the Isotopes (the farm team for the Florida Marlins) play the Tucson Sidewinders (farm team for the Arizona Diamondbacks). Beautiful day, comp seats behind home plate from a kindhearted reader of my baseball blog, hot dogs, ice cream, and to boot our youngest got to race Orbit the 'Topes mascot around the bases in the first inning.

Is the first base coach checking his cell phone?

Far away from the hometown team....

....the New York Mets.

Unfortunately I can't whip up interest in the Albuquerque Isotopes (Pacific Coast League Triple A notwithstanding) because they are a farm team for the Florida Marlins, a team in which I can't even generate the tiniest iota of give-a-darn.

I was born a full-tilt, down-the-line-on-both-sides Roman Catholic. I find that being a Mets fan is a suitable stand-in thanks to the comparable aspects of guilt, anxiety, belief despite disappointment, hope, and inevitable letdown.

Here, this fellow has a great blog about being a transplanted Mets fan. He totally gets the joy and old fashioned poetry of a baseball game. The Baseball Desert and the baseball library are also good reads.

Ok, so the Met logo guy is pretty odd.. I never said Mr. Met wasn't alarming. But tell me that you don't like his hat. Go ahead, I dare you.