We found the man sitting in the white, 7.90 AM van, received the bumper sticker, and then exchanged it at the window (defeating, it seemed, the sticker's putative promotional purpose) for two $7.90 tickets.
Our seats were 19 rows behind home plate. In the first two innings Nolasco gave up 14 hits - I wondered if this were some kind of record - without receiving a single visit from the dugout (a record for sure). "Jack must have nodded off," John said.
In the 6th - score 14-3 - John and I moved to seats in row 11 halfway between home and first base. In the middle of the 7th, people stood and sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" softly, obediently, but also with a strange kind of conviction. There's something about this moment that always moves me.
In the top of the 9th the Marlins sent their centerfielder to the mound. "He's the new Dontrelle Willis," someone shouted. After he walked a batter, someone yelled in the direction of the ump: "Don't want to ruin his ERA." The third out was a high fly ball to the deepest part of centerfield. Happily, the Marlins had put a new centerfielder there. Petersen, the outfielder-turned-pitcher, got a standing ovation from our section as he headed to the dugout.
I had sat in this section late in games before, but never at such a lopsided game. I discovered that the people who stay till the bottom of the 9th of a rout by the visiting team are just the sort of people you want to sit with in the bottom of the 9th of a rout by the visiting team. We were like one big happy ironic family. "Thank God," someone said after Dobbs grounded to first for the next-to-last out.
