Blankets

Ain’t blankets great?Go to a baseball game on a chilly October night in Baltimore and you can barely enjoy the crack of Adam Jones bat as he smacks another triple down the third base line because you are so cold, you are so cold that you are shaking BUT then you go on a hunt for a delicious and nutritious National Bohemian Beer topped with Old Bay (crab cakes and football that was maryland does!) and then you see an attractive woman approaching you but decide to follow the mascot into the gift shop where you see a blanket that looks warm, but it’s very expensive (ball park prices duh!!!) so you weigh your options when suddenly it hits you, that the mascot is probably the warmest  guy at the ballpark and he gets paid to be toasty!

But then you start to think about how hot it would be wearing that suit in the dog days of summer and the overall direction the Orioles organization is headed and decide that you don’t want to start a career as a mascot, you just want to be the mascot for the night. So you go in for a hug and you whisper in his fuzzy Oriole ears: “hey must be warm in there” and he responds with a very animated head nod. With your steamy suspicions confirmed, you decide to keep following him around the ballpark and watching him from afar, waiting for nature to call the mascot.

After an inning or two of stalking your prey, the Oriole Bird finally dips behind a door and you just sneak right in behind him, watch him take off his mask and endure the horror similar to that of a five year old child watching a mall santa take off his beard and hat as he reaches for the hooch as he climbs into his 68 oldsmobile with the license plate “swolnbls”.

Once the mascot has revealed he is in fact human, you ask if he has a spare costume cause you wanna lighten his load and you are really cold. He, of course, is very insulted that you would think just any joe schmoe off the street could do his job and begins to shout “YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST WALK IN HERE AND BE THE ORIOLE BIRD?! I’VE WORKED MY WHOLE LIFE TO GET HERE,BOY! I SLUNG THE HOT DOGS, I WAS MICKEY MOUSE AT THAT GOD FORSAKEN OCEAN CITY AMUSEMENT PARK!!!! I WAS-” and then you just interrupt him and say hey man I’m just cold and those blankets are really expensive and then at that moment you realize that you are actually walking around in an empty ball park because its the year 2047 and the Orioles haven’t played a game in October in 21 years. It starts to rain as you see the ghost of Delmon Young at the plate and wait a minute, is that Cal Ripken walking toward you,hand outstretched, offering you a big orange and black down comforter? You walk to the top deck, gazing over the Harbor and silently wonder “where did it all go wrong?” as you slowly close your eyes to endure another sleepless October night when so much seems to be going wrong, your blanket feels so right.