Day 54: Let the Baseball Fun Begin!
We are all about making the most of this experience, so when it was suggested to get to the Opening Ceremony at 6:30 a.m. Nicholas and Kelly did it. We are the luckiest: a handful of other teammate families were there to share in the dedication of the experience, and we had our pick of the seats. The tranquil sunrise and quiet while watching all the prep work take place was extra special knowing the chaos of so many people was just around the corner. We sat in right field after chatting with someone who shared it was his 26th Cooperstown. If anyone knows where to sit, it was that guy.
We were in the back row, so we could see all the teams line up outside the stadium before walking into it. Cooper’s Dragon’s Elite team is the blue group in the right corner and the 104 teams wrapped around the entire field this tightly.
Nicholas showed great patience. We arrived at 6:30am for the scheduled 9:30am Opening Ceremony that actually started closer to 10:30. Four hours in a stadium for a parade, and the temperatures were already in the mid 80s as we sat in the direct sun.
After the parade they had the skills competition where each team sends a player to see who is fastest at running the bases (Road Runner), most accurate thrower (Golden Arm), home run hitter (King of Swat) and team effort throwing the ball around the bases (Around the Horn). Cooper’s team players all did really well in their individual events and the team event. His teammate won King of Swat for the entire event (eight home runs out of 10 hits!) so that was super fun to cheer him on and see the excitement from the entire team. These events also gave us a few minutes to talk with Cooper.
Nicholas reenergized after some pin trading, so we were able to watch all the morning activities.
Cooper also woke up at 6 a.m. so no one got enough sleep last night. We were able to check Cooper out and bring him to the RV for some lunch and rest. The kids were thrilled to get to eat lunch in our bed since Rob was working at the table.
We’ve started seeing air bubbles come up in the RV toilet when flushing, which can, um, “displace” some of the stuff in the bowl, which is suboptimal. Rob kindly took a break in his work day to tackle this not-so-fun task. While on the roof seeing if it was the vent blockage causing the problem, a campground neighbor came over to suggest we use his special tool (basically a spinning water nozzle on the end of a flexible tube) that he was sure would fix our problem. Rob gave it a try and sure enough all our toilet troubles are clear once again. Thank goodness for random awesome camp neighbors!
The fun wasn’t over yet. Cooper’s first game was at 7:30 p.m. so we headed back to the fields to get our first taste of game action. His team played really well together and won their first game, a great start. Cooper is number 13 this week, and all teams either wears a red or blue version of the identical uniform depending if they are home or away. See that beautiful reddish colored dirt? Another perk of this week is that the tournament organizers do all the baseball uniform laundry every day and know all the magic tricks (bleach) to get those knickers white again. Cooper much prefers long pants to knickers, so this is a unique look for him, but he is so handsome. This whole setup is much better than trying to wash pants in the hotel bathroom sink when we were in Arizona.
