Crabs Baseball

 We went to our first Humboldt Crabs game in a few years on Saturday.  The Arcata team, founded in 1945, is the oldest, continuously-operated, collegiate, independent, wood-bat, summer baseball team in the country in its eighty-second season!   We first took the kids to see a game and fireworks in 2022 but since Niall has been baseball-curious recently, we thought it would be fun!  Kelvin and I previously went, without kids, in 2012 and 2013.  

The weather was good (a bit windy earlier), but we parked our chairs in the grassy area past the third base line and the kids had space to run around / toss balls with their friends. We parked several blocks away, to ensure our car didn't get smashed by a flying foul ball.  Mateo, our baseball-playing next-door neighbor, joined us.  The Crabs took on the South Bay Storm in the second in a three-game series. We could see some of the action and helped explain to the kids some of the nuanced baseball rules (including tagging up, base-stealing, sacrifice flies, and forced running). I watched a lot of Minnesota Twins baseball games in my middle-grade years, but don't love it as a sport and haven't tuned in at all in recent years.

Why does "Crusty" have a pipe-shaped mouth? :)

The kids discovered that catching a ball in a hat was just as good as a glove! 

 The Crabs (who have something like an 80% win percentage) dominated the game, winning 15-3, although we didn't stay for the ending, leaving in the eighth inning.  I'm not sure if we'll have any baseball-playing kids, but at least they've been exposed to "America's Pastime."