Buddy Walk 2008

Yesterday was the Buddy Walk in St Louis at the Cardinals game.  This was where after a couple of years of hard work--almost all by my wife, Thomas threw out the first pitch.  The weather was perfect for a baseball game, not hot and overcast.  Our group got separated while in line to get inside and walk around the park.  My parents came in for the game and they were able to stay with me though while Debbie & her parents got a little ahead of us on the field.  I had both Angie and Thomas and they had fun doing the walk after being stuck in line for around a halfhour trying to get into the stadium.

At home plate, Thomas & I had to break off and go underneath the stadium to a waiting room till we came out for the pregame ceremonies.  Thomas at this point was just not too happy about this, he was struggling with me and getting loud saying "no" and "I want to go home now".  I did about everything I could to calm him down but nothing really was working.  Finally we lined up and went out into the stadium and he just got worse.  Debbie and our parents were able to get down to the first row and helped calm him down some what.  We were offering anything to him at this point, ice cream, hot dogs, etc, finally I said we would go grocery shopping afterwards and he kind of went for that.  Then Fredbird came along and mostly all was well then, Thomas could focus on him and not everything else going on.

Thomas and his friend Cade were the top 2 fundraisers so they got to each throw out the first pitch.  Catching it was Jason Motte, a rookie pitcher who throws it hard--96+ fastball.  We both got his autograph on the ball.  Then we went back out with the starting lineup and stood on the pitcher's mound when Adam Wainwright came out.  He also autographed the balls and gave the kids high fives.  Both Adam and Jason were nice and seemed to enjoy seeing our kids.  Thomas ran off the mound when it was over and gave Debbie a big hug behind homeplate.  It was great to see because of all of the hard work she had put in to get him to this point.  

We made it to our seats to then see Albert Pujols hit a 2 run home run in the first inning.  Wainwright gave up a hr to Jacobs I think the next inning and that was all the scoring until late when the Cards added another run.  Wainwright went 8 innings and got the win.  

We had a very good crowd of people there including many relatives and teachers of Thomas--it was fun.  Rose liked taking pictures of everyone and about anything interesting she saw.  I don't know if Angie even knew there was a baseball game going on, she was just playing around the whole time.  Thomas settled in with his clapper and kind of decompressed from all of the excitement from earlier.

My parents went back early today.  They are only home for a couple of days before taking off for MN to stay a night at my sisters and then for a few days of fishing in WI with my brother from Chicago.