BaseVols in Auburn weekend: Part 1

Hey, look who's blogging!  It's been a while, but such an epic weekend deserves to be memorialized for posterity.  And it's going to take at least a couple of installments, all of which may be a little long.  

I will start by saying that the irony of me posting this in a blog called "Legal, Regal, War Damn Eagle" is not lost on me.  If you know me, you know that I'm a lifelong, die-hard Auburn fan.  More fanatical than most.  Warning: most of the pictures you will see in this series of blogs are disturbing from the standpoint of an Auburn fan. 

You also likely know that I'm a huge fan of the BaseVols and attend a ton of games at Lindsey Nelson Stadium here in Knoxville.  Credit to Alex for having to work on the day of the Wright State game in the 2021 Regionals, and credit to Ben for convincing me to go to the game with him in Alex's place.  For much of the game, I was thinking that baseball was kind of a downer, but then Drew Gilbert hit a walk-off grand slam, and I was officially in love.  With baseball, not Drew Gilbert.  I do love Drew Gilbert, though.  

ANYWAY...

My sports obsessions collided this weekend.  When we learned that the BaseVols would be going to Auburn this season, Alex (who instigates almost all of our sports-related travel) said we should go.  I'm always on board for a trip to Auburn, but I told the guys that I'd just go hang out in Auburn and let them go to the games without me.  I could not imagine cheering for the BaseVols over an Auburn team, or vice versa.  One of the things I love about baseball is that it's much more laid-back than football games, where I usually have an elevated heart rate for four straight hours.  Watching Auburn and the BaseVols fight it out did not sound stress-free. 

I got an email from Auburn athletics (because of course I get all those emails) announcing tickets in Auburn's new "Hall of Fame Club" for sale for individual games this season.  That sounded like a pretty cool place to sit, and the prices going directly through the school were very reasonable, so I got the guys two HOF tickets for Friday night, and I got us three for Sunday.  Because we would have to check out of our rental before the game started on Sunday, I needed somewhere to go during the game, so I figured I'd tough it out at the ballpark.  The Saturday HOF tickets were sold out, but they had "access passes" for HOF that you could use with other seats and go in the HOF area for food and beverage, and also to stand at the drink rail behind the HOF seats.  So I got the guys two general admission tickets and two HOF access passes for Saturday.  

I made several restaurant reservations to show the guys some of the great food in Auburn, scheduled a massage at the Laurel Spa for Saturday afternoon, and planned to just chill at our rental (which had a sweet balcony overlooking Toomer's Corner) and listen to John Wilkerson's play-by-play by myself.  Almost all of my plans went straight to hell over the next few weeks.  😆       

First, I realized that A-Day, Auburn's spring football game, was that Saturday.  So I changed our lunch reservation to an earlier hour and got us some tickets to go to A-Day before the baseball game.  I could do that and still make it to my massage.

Then, I talked to my friend Tex, who played baseball at Auburn back in the day, and asked if he and his wife, Cindy, would be in town that weekend.  He said he would be there but that Cindy would be in Atlanta babysitting grandkids.  I met Tex and Cindy at Cafe Jordan-Hare in 2013.  Cafe Jordan-Hare was a fundraising event that Tigers Unlimited used to do, where fans could pay to have a catered dinner on the sidelines at Jordan-Hare.  I went to that event three years in a row, and then unfortunately Auburn stopped doing them.  Anyway, in 2013 Caryn and I sat at a table with Tex and Cindy; we hit it off; and I kept in touch with them (shout out to Facebook!).  They were going to go back the following year, and we arranged to meet up.  They brought their friends Floyd and Teresa, and we all sat together with a couple of others.  One of the ladies at our table, Ms. Marian, was celebrating her 84th birthday.  We all made a pact to celebrate our 84th birthdays in Jordan-Hare, and that's how Club 84 was born.  Even though Cafe Jordan-Hare doesn't happen anymore, Club 84 (minus Ms. Marian, who passed away a couple of years ago) still gets together whenever we can.  And we are all inching closer to 84.  

I got off on a little tangent there, but that explains why Tex and I planned to get together for dinner with Floyd and Teresa after the Saturday baseball game.  So I scrapped my original Saturday dinner plan.  Then Tex said he had an extra ticket for the Saturday game if I wanted to go and sit with him, so I decided to do that, and I canceled my Saturday massage.  😆 

I was super stressed about what I was going to wear in Auburn.  I couldn't wear Auburn clothes and betray my BaseVols, but I damn sure couldn't wear Vols gear in Auburn!  I mean, sacrilege!  I have a reputation here.  When I was planning on just going to the Sunday game, I bought a gray "I Just Hope Both Teams Have Fun" t-shirt to wear.  That plan would have worked; however, while we were planning this trip, we got a bit of a hook-up and had an opportunity to meet Tony Vitello while we were in Auburn.  Once again, my best-laid plans took a 180.  I can't meet Tony wearing Auburn clothes.  Or even neutral clothes.  It's TONY VITELLO.  

The plan was to meet him after the Friday night game if Tennessee won the game, or if not, to meet him sometime Saturday.  Obviously, then, I needed a ticket for the Friday game.  So I (1) went to Stubhub to pick up an extra HOF seat for Friday night; and (2) canceled my Friday dinner plans.  

When the Stubhub guy sent me the Friday ticket I purchased, he said that he had four seats and couldn't figure out how to split them, so he just sent me all four tickets.  SCORE!  Of course, I had already bought two seats for the guys, so I now had six.  I gave one to Tex so he could hang out in HOF with us pregame (he's superstitious, as we are, and as is the norm with baseball, and he wanted to watch the game from his own seats); and I gave the other two to my friends Harold and Glenda, whose season football tickets are just a couple of seats down from mine at Jordan-Hare.  It was Glenda's 75th birthday!

We rolled into town at about 3:30 on Friday and couldn't check in to our rental until 4, so we hit up Toomer's for some lemonade.

We then checked in to our rental, which was super cute.  

Fabulous view

So far, so good.  I wore a pullover in what I like to call "Ambiguous Orange" on Friday night.  I was feeling pretty good about managing my split sports personality.  We got to the stadium and saw my Auburn friends, and all was well.  

Me with Harold and Glenda

Auburn is in the middle of a stadium renovation just as we are, but their stadium is already a really nice facility.  The HOF area is super cool.  Free food and non-alcoholic beverages and private bathrooms, as well as a full cash bar (where, by the way, I acquired a tequila soda for cheaper than a beer costs at LNS), in a climate-controlled room with like 35 TVs.  The HOF seats are two rows of field-level seats between the two dugouts and, as mentioned, a standing rail behind those rows.  Alex went in to scope it out while I talked with my friends in the food and beverage room, and he came back out and said, "You can just walk right into the dugout!"  I was disbelieving (sorry, Alex), so I went in to see for myself.

Y'all.  You could literally just walk into the dugout.  There's not even a net between the seating area and the dugout.  I feel like they'll have to change that at some point, because while Auburn fans are generally extremely friendly, at some point a game is going to get chippy and some visiting team is going to get abused by hostile fans standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them WITH NOT EVEN AN USHER STANDING THERE KEEPING THE PEACE.  As that scenario played through my mind, I decided we had to stand on that rail next to our dugout to protect our guys from hostile Auburn fans.  

Wait, what?  I want to protect our guys from...Auburn fans...like me?  Knife in the heart.

Anyway, there we stood for the entire game.  

Pregame selfie, and YOU CAN LITERALLY WALK INTO THE DUGOUT.

Pregame selfie with Tony

The look you get when you try to ambush the dugout and yell at Tony for conversation instead of being respectful, scheduling a meeting, and waiting until it's a good time for him.

The man is working, for goodness' sake.

The game did not go Tennessee's way Friday night.  Bats were hot for both teams to start.

KT on deck

Ensuing HR celebration

KT with the fur

CMo HR celebration

However, our starting pitcher struggled just a little bit more than theirs did, and bats for both teams kind of died for the rest of the game.

Disappointed Robbie and Causey.  But have all the mercy with Rob's hair.  It's outstanding.

My faves are not looking happy.

Combsy in relief

Kirbs in relief.  The reason I cut the top of his head off is that I was actually taking the picture with mega-Zoom to determine whether his pants were partially unzipped.  I was definitely going to tap on Frank Anderson's shoulder and tell him to tell his pitcher to zip up if necessary.  Thankfully, that was not necessary.

Peebs with the bat spray.  I swear, we had so much bat spray on us by the end of the weekend that we could've glued ourselves together.

Auburn was up and stayed that way.  It was a good win for Auburn and a pretty good punch in the mouth for Tennessee.  It hurt my feelings more than I thought it would, and I realized that I had really wanted Tennessee to win.  WHOA.  

Let's not take that any further than it needs to go, though.  I still love everything about Auburn.  I even love Auburn's baseball team.  As it turns out, I just love the BaseVols a little bit more.  I mean, I spend 2-4 nights a week with these guys, so there's a personal connection that I don't have with the Auburn players.  I assure you that I will still be cheering for Auburn against any Tennessee team other than this baseball team, so don't think I'm dropping 35+ years of Auburn fandom.

Still my home away from home

That was another tangent, but anyway, we would not be meeting Tony Friday night.  Nobody wants to talk to Tony after a loss.  

We went back to our rental, which, as I mentioned, was very close to Toomer's Corner.  In fact, the only thing separating it from the Corner is a building housing a bar called Southeastern.  And Southeastern on a Friday night is a happening place.  And LOUD.  The VRBO listing was very up-front about the bars (and, knowing the location, I knew about the bars).  But a bunch of people in the reviews said that the noise machines and box fans that the rental company provides make the noise "manageable" and that they "didn't have trouble sleeping."  Y'all.  I don't know what time those reviewers actually went to sleep, but we DID NOT SLEEP UNTIL 2:30 AM.  It. Was. Miserable.  Great location.  Walkable to the stadium and pretty much everywhere else on campus or downtown.  Great view of the Toomer's Oaks.  Super comfortable beds.  But NO SLEEP.  At 1:00 that morning, I was lying in bed booking us rooms at the Hampton Inn for Saturday night.  No way I could go through another night of that.

Saturday and Sunday to come in Part 2!