If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you might be thinking that we’ve had new visitors in the nest in our tree. On the other hand, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you also know how much we love baseball! That’s the kind of baby birds I’m talking about today!

On my summer to-do list was taking in a minor league baseball game. Not just a Grizzlies game, but one of the Cardinals affiliates. Our choices were the Triple-A team, the Memphis Redbirds, or the Double-A team, the Springfield Cardinals. Springfield is a considerably shorter drive, so yesterday, we took a road-trip out to Hammons Field to see the baby birds play!

It was a nice, albeit small, ballpark. Since we were at a minor league game, we got to sit a lot closer to the field than we usually do!

The ushers were very helpful in pointing us to our seats, and they were also easy to find, given their Hawaiian print shirts!

One of my favorite things about visiting a new park is seeing who the sponsors are, what kind of shops they have, and what kind of food they serve.

There were some things, though, that were very familiar (including seeing Shane Robinson, who was on a rehab assignment, and Chickadee being mad at me for putting her down so I could get a picture of her with her siblings)!

I also love seeing the mascots. In Springfield, they have Louie (a cardinal, who looks kind of like Fredbird-lite), and Fetch, Louie’s canine friend.

They were giving away Shelby Miller bobbleheads (who was a Springfield Cardinal quite recently), and the children were very excited, because there was no age limit on the giveaway, so they each got one!

We saw a home run (and heard the home run siren!):

And we watched the between inning antics, including my favorite of the night, musical chairs, where, if there was a tie involving a lady, the lady always won!

We also saw evidence of the Springfield Cardinals 2012 Texas League championship:

It was definitely another fun day at the ballpark…maybe next summer, we’ll make it to Memphis to see the Redbirds!