My great night with the Sky Sox

Does Baseball get any better than this?  Read about my wonderful experience below the jump.

I live in Santa Fe, NM, so I waited until the Sky Sox came to Albuquerque to play the Isotopes to get my first fix of PuR ball.

I got to the park early to get autographs. Two years ago I caught a jersey that Dinger fired into the stands. On the follow day I scored Matt Belise and Esmil Rodgers autographs on its sleeves. I wore that jersey and scored a bunch of autographs on its back--Eric Young, Chris Nelson, Charlie Blackmon, Ian Stewart and Jordan Pacheco. Getting Pacheco's autograph was especially sweet as he played his college ball on that very field, which is the home field of the University of New Mexico as well.

The next best part of the game was watching Rene Lachemann, the Sky Sox hitting coach. He was the 1st Base Coach during the game, right in front of where I was sitting.  Between innings, he walk up stands, point to a 5 or 6 year old kid, and yell at him to "Come here."  Then in the gruffest voice I've every heard, he'd offer the kid a baseball if he promised to root for the Sox. If the kid accepted his offer, he'd then start lecturing the kid, once again in the meanest voice possible. He'd say things like:  "Make sure you do what your Mom says. If she says to put your clothes away, you put them on a hanger real nice, not just throw them in your room."  He's also lecture about taking out the trash and eating your vegetables. His best line was, "Fathers day is coming up. You make sure you break open your piggy bank and buy your father a gift."

I was so impressed by this display of citizenship training I witnessed every inning that I got his autograph as well on a ball the Sox 1B threw to a kid next to me. (It was his 3rd ball of the night since Coach Rene had also lectured him, so the kid offered the ball to me.)

All this happened before the amazing 13 batter, 10 run, 9th inning. You can get the play by play of that in Wednesday's Pebble report. But what the report leaves out was that it appeared that Chris Nelson was hit by a pitch twice!  It may go down in the books as a walk the second time, but he really jumped and fell dodging that ball. And he limped to first and was looked at by a trainer--again. Imagine being hit by 2 different pitchers in the same inning.

It was also great to see Pacheco get a couple of beautiful RBIs in front of his homies.

It was a great night to be a Rockies/Sky Sox fan and make the 50 mile trip to see the game!