A Rough (riders) Day

It was a Rough day…for the San Antonio Missions.

They were no-hit by our Frisco Roughriders!

Today, the Roughriders played a doubleheader against the San Antonio Missions, both AA affiliates of the AL West (the Roughriders being the AA affiliate of our Texas Rangers).  Because of that, the first game was only 7 innings, but the result was still the same: our starter pitched a no-hitter!  The official line won’t sound nearly as good:

Pitching >

All told, he threw 120 pitches in the no-hit bid, and had the game gone the full 9 there is no way he would have been able to make it, but it was still exciting.  As unbelievable as this may sound, in all the games Matt and I have attended we have never before witnessed a no-hitter.  The last no-hitter I attended was my brother Dan’s stellar high-school performance in the Regional Championship game against archrival Loyola in 1979.  That game was really exciting, too.

We had a double-header commitment there as well.  Originally we were attending as part of the McKinney ISD Spirit Day, with a small McGowen contingent in attendance.  We purchased those tickets in February.  However, this week we found out that SHW was having a SHWarty on the SHWerrace there, with FREE FOOD and FREE COVERED PARKING.  Suddenly, we found our allegiance shifting.  So we officially attended as part of the SHWentourage and enjoyed all the advantages associated with it.

Good plan.  They had a full lunch of hot dogs, hamburgers (with all the fixin’s), chips, cookies, watermelon, and cold drinks.  We managed to find a table with some shade and enjoyed a true ball-park feast.  We sauntered into the stands midway through the first inning, just in time to see the 3rd out recorded, and proceeded to bake ourselves for the next 2 hours.  The kids and I took a brief break to get free balloon creatures and face painting which allowed us to get out of the sun for a little while.  We even bumped into some friends from PCBC who we hadn’t seen in a number of years (since Crisana was a baby) and enjoyed catching up with them.

The children were invited onto the field to run the bases, but that wouldn’t happen until after the second game.  We were just too hot to stay much longer, and the no-hitter was a spectacular enough ending for us, so we left after the first game.  We cooled off in the air conditioned car and grabbed some Baskin-Robbins ice cream on the way home.

Too bad it was such a rough day for the Missions.  For us, it was definitely a Roughriders day!