The Nat Bailey Nooner !

This Sunday saw me and a random gang of other hungover layabouts convene on the compact Nat Bailey Stadium looking to enjoy the sun and nurse sore heads from the previous evenings festivities !

The occaison being the one and only Vancouver Canadians baseball team (can I get a yee ha) fixture against the oh so glamorous and well known Tri-city Titans (give me another yeee ha) in what is known as a 'Nooner' out here. Obviously because it starts at 1:05pm ????? mmmm???

Meeting the token Welsh lad from my office Chris at main street sky train station, we staggered up the road bemoaning lack of sleep and dehydration, swapping tales of woe involving bottles of port until three am in Chris's case and falling asleep on the seabus in mine.

Walking through the door having spent a massive $8 on general admission seats each our faces lit up as we hooked up with Tammy (our receptionist) her man Dave and a random selection of locals and Brits who fabulously generally looked worse for wear than I and he put together !

Only one thing for it then ! One breakfast of lager and hotdogs coming up !

Being of course Hawaiian day all the staff were (as were we) wearing gloriously hideous shirts of floral nature that could only add to the general comedy mood of the whole event ! The classic chorus of Hawaii five oh bleeted out of the PA started things off as it was met of course by every bloke in the stand bearing their guts and surfing their imaginary surf boards in between pitches spilling beer all over the joint !

That mixed with all the other sounds of cartoon nature that only american sporting events can get away with blasting through the PA had me smiling at the whole goon show nature of it all ! As did the fact that it seemed perfectly acceptable to berate any opposition bloke who made it to third base where we home support goons were stationed !

I can remember hearing 'you'll never make the big leagues stumpy' being bleeted out under a hail of empty peanut shells at one point ! Class ! It reminded me of watching the movie Slap Shot but only it was baseball and live in front of me.

Pushing on with the beer kitty and nasty hot dogs I was actually really dissapointed when the game finished at around four pm by which time I had earned another gloroius pair of panda eyes underneath my sunnies, having again forgotten to wear any sun screen !

Not wishing to bail on the good start we had made the goon squad relocated to English bay beach for an evening of volleyball (and a crate of Kokanee) before finally ending up in some chinese joint with palm trees (???) at shift end.

All good fun what ! By all accounts the 'nooners' are generally where all the goons hang out as it is tradition to pull a sickie and head out to the game on a Friday afternoon. Count me in next time !