5
JUNE MEETING REPORT
by Bud Vye, Retired CFM
After several days of heat, the 12th saw a mild cold front roll in from
the northeast which brought with it some 70 degree weather with a
slight misty drizzle that felt like it might turn into rain, but never did. A
nice turnout of 57 for our group, 20 of whom were from MOI, found
their way to the Diamond's ORC picnic pavilion out by the home
team's bull pen in right field as Sponsorship Chair Brian Workman
had turned the event into an outing for his entire MOI workplace.
With the food being offered at the serving table seeming to be
something of an improvement over previous years, everyone ap-peared
to enjoy their picnic. Nutzy and Nutasha came through and
participated in photo ops and a Marine Corps contingent training at
Fort Lee practiced their unfurling of a huge flag that would be done
a little later when the National Anthem was played. Before we
knew it, Squirrels staff came to get Chapter President Adam Larsen
to head for the pitcher's mound to throw out the first ball represent-ing
our group, and we realized that we'd better get the swearing in
of our new officers done, which I promptly handled the honors for as
I have for several years. Unfortunately, our President had been tak-en
away and we'll have to find out how his first pitch was,
and swear him in prior to our next Board Meeting.
As game time was upon us, we picked up our tickets from our hospi-tality
team of Andrea Neidhammer & Stacey Brooks at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the
Bull Pen Bar and into the Diamond proper. From there we began our walk around the con-course
to get to our seats in Section 113, which is over on the 3rd base side, in front of the
ServPro box which Past President Kathy Taylor had kindly made available for us to use as our
event HQ. Since the misty drizzle seemed particularly close to turning into rain at that point,
most packed into the box, while some of us opted for the row of seats right in front of the box,
and others for their ticketed seats which were several rows further down. Fortunately, the driz-zle
subsided and the weather was actually quite comfortable for the entire duration of the game.
As I had been told that my stint in the broadcast booth would be in the top half of the 4th inning,
and someone from the Squirrels staff would be down to get me and escort me up there, I had to
pay attention as the game was moving along pretty quickly as Portland (a farm team of the
Boston Red Sox) scored an early run but beyond that neither team was getting any runners on
base. Soon, here came my guide and up we went to the press box where I passed through two
areas to get into the home team's broadcasting booth just in time to replace announcer Jay
Burnham and join his color man Sam Ravech in the very small booth as the 4th inning be-gan.
Remembering how quickly my half inning had gone last year when it seemed like all three
batters had swung at the first pitch and gone out before I had really gotten settled in, it seemed
a little more leisurely this time as a runner reached base and a few pitches were thrown. Good
thing I had gotten my explanation of what IFMA stands for completed fairly promptly as the next
batter hit into a double play, again cutting short my time on the air.
Back down to rejoin our group, as the game continued to move quickly along with Portland
ahead 1-0 and neither team mounting much of an offense. As each inning went by, portions of
our group bid us goodbye and headed for the exit, leaving a few of us still hanging in as the
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