It was a beautiful day for a ballgame

Made my annual pilgrimage to The Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field and, as always, had a wonderful time.

This year I took John to the ballpark to celebrate his birthday. We saw the first game of a double

View from Section 204

header against the Nationals. Our seats were in the upper field terrace, further away from the action than I'd like but they turned out to be fine anyway. We were sheltered from the sun, up high enough to catch a cool breeze, and could see all the action.

The highlight of the game was young Dallas Beeler. He was just called up from the minors to make his MLB debut, and his Cubdom was so freshly minted that he wasn't even listed in our scorecards. Yet he went six innings, threw 90+ pitches, and gave up just 1 run. Since the Nationals were able to keep the Cubs scoreless, he still got the loss. But that doesn't mean he didn't do a fantastic job. He even got a hit at his first at bat! It would have been nice to end the game singing our victory song with the 35,000 other faithful, but it was an involving game nevertheless.

I was so into young Dallas' performance that both the people next to us and the people behind us asked me if I knew the kid. No, but I love him. I love all my heroes in Cubbie blue.

After the game we got John a t-shirt and then went to dinner at Chili's. This amused me. Here we are in a world-class city, and we ended up at Chili's. But it was John's choice. He likes their chicken tacos and this location is right in front of the #36 bus stop. OK.

We caught up on each other lives and he spontaneously hugged me a couple times. Maybe it was the 5 beers over 6 six hours, or maybe it was an appreciation of a nearly perfect day, or maybe he was just appreciating our 30+ years of friendship. Maybe it was all three.