Last Sunday I drove out to Modesto to watch a minor league baseball game between the Modesto Nuts and the Stockton Ports. The idea of spending a sunny California day plunked down in farm country watching baseball somehow appealed to me. Plus, I know one of the Nuts’ mascots. There are two mascots, actually. A walnut and an almond. I know the walnut.
The drive to Modesto surprised me. It was beautiful. Bald green hills, the valleys between them stuffed with trees. Lines of silver and white windmills stretched across hilltops, blades slowly churning (clean energy!). Endless fields of strawberries and asparagus and walnut and almond trees, all perfectly aligned in their rows, flickering by as I drove. Also flickering were thousands of butterflies - 'painted ladies' making their yearly migration north in big numbers (I looked it up). Unfortunately a good two dozen of them were unaware of what flying in front of my car would mean for their travel plans. Windshield smack. Yellow splatter. Wince.
The sensory overload didn’t end there. The game was about as 'all American Sunday afternoon in farm country' as it gets. Crisp, simple baseball – the crack of the bat, the yell of the ump, the smell of burgers grilling, people licking ice cream cones and yelling 'Way to go, Nuts!' I was a little taken aback by how peaceful it all made me feel. It was as if someone had just stuck a giant American pacifier in my mouth, and I wasn’t resisting. Wait, shouldn’t I put down the soft pretzel and do something really urban, really blue state, like bash Bush to that guy in the 'GO NUTS' shirt, or talk to the little girl sitting next to me about the dark power of evangelicals? Right, well, actually, this is a really good pretzel. And the Nuts are playing so well here in the fifth. And I should probably check my program to see how I'm doing in Nuts Bingo....
Turns out I didn’t get to see the walnut, though. An independent troop of big furry mascots (Krazy Kreatures, they called themselves; giant primary-colored Elmo types) had descended on Modesto for the weekend - a special stadium promotion that precluded the need for the walnut but did, I think, cause some measure of brand confusion. The almond did make a brief appearance in the first inning, while I was still parking my car. Next time.
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