A baseball fan's training wheels

I couldn’t think of a better way to prepare my son for a lifetime of misery as a Seattle Mariners fan.

Sunday’s afternoon game between the Everett AquaSox and the Yakima Bears of the short-season, single-A Northwest League was the perfect setting for his first professional baseball game.

Minor league teams have really figured out how to make an enjoyable and relatively cheap outing for families. Two tickets in the front row behind the home team dugout ran us about $25 total. And there was enough going on around us to keep the boy engaged.

The AquaSox are our local minor league team and a Mariners affiliate. The team is comprised of guys not much older than you’d find on a high school squad and it’s sometimes their first professional gig.

It was refreshing to see a coach pull a player aside and teach the game. It was also nice not seeing that player then throw a Gatorade cooler from the dugout and complain to the newspaper afterward that he’d been disrespected.

In the stands, there were a few things that kept my boy in the game, mostly a steady supply of diet Pepsis, popcorn and M&Ms. Even the youngster sitting next to us looked on in horror as I told him that my son was on his fourth soda.

The caffeine and chocolate fueled his indecipherable catcalls between pitches and I couldn’t have been prouder. Not going to win father of the year on that one.

Unfortunately, the “Frogs” looked a little too much like their major league brethren in Sunday’s game, falling behind in the first inning 3-0 to the hated Bears. Everett made a game of it, however, and clawed back with two runs in the ninth, but still lost the game 7-6.

Did my son understand the nuances of the game? Absolutely, not.

Did he figure out how to yell at the players and get the attention of “Frank” the hot dog mascot who was tossing free wieners to the crowd? Absolutely, yes.

And those are the things a father hopes for when his kid makes his rookie outing to the ballpark. Learn the fundamentals of being a baseball fan (food and making loud noises at umpires). At least now we have something to build on.