First Baseball Game

Last night, we took Lizzie to her first Indians game. Liz won free tickets from the library's summer reading contest (lucky girl), so it seemed like the perfect time to introduce her to baseball.

Though we didn’t watch much of the game, we did walk around the park a lot and Lizzie seemed to enjoy checking out the other spectators and breathing in the fresh summer air. When we ventured up to the second level of the stadium, we discovered a play area with lots of Little Tikes type toys (houses, cars, wagons, etc.) so we stopped to play.

At the same time Lizzie was playing, these guys came out…

They are basically three people dressed as hot dogs who have a race around the base in between innings. There is Ketchup, Mustard, and Onion. Onion is the only girl of the group and, for some reason, she carries a purse (why would a hot dog need a purse, I do not know).

So the hot dog people come out and they're walking around saying “hi” to all the kids. People are smiling and waving and taking pictures. Onion decides to come into the play area where Lizzie is calmly sitting in a wagon. "Hi, Onion!" all the kids begin to shout and then Lizzie looks up and sees a six-foot tall hotdog towering over her and instantly begins to scream her head off. Shawn goes over to pick her up and we can both tell that Onion feels bad for scaring her because she is trying to wave to Lizzie to signal something like, "hey, even though I'm in a giant, creepy costume, I'm still nice." But Lizzie is not having it. She looks right at Onion and starts to yell, "No! No! No! No way, hot dog!"

Shawn and I practically collapsed into laughter. The poor child was completely frazzled by the giant hot dog looming over her, but she still had the gumption to try to tell her off!

Since it was close to Lizzie’s bedtime and it was clear our child had been emotionally scared for life by this incident, we decided to leave. On our way out, the people at the gates were giving away stuffed animals. As we approached, we could see that the team was giving out tiny plush versions of the racing hot dogs. I stuck my hand into the throng and came back with a small, cuddly version of the very onion-flavored hot dog that had terrified our child.

Luckily, Lizzie seemed much more comfortable with this version and she cuddled it the entire way home.

Don’t worry, Onion, all is forgiven.

-- Lisa