Day 127 – Crazy Winds and Free Tacos

Checked out of my hotel in the morning and since it was so hot I decided to just spend most of the day in a mall working on blogs. It was just a fairly small mall so there wasn’t a lot of stores to look at.

One of the giveaways they do at the ballgames is if the Rangers score a run in a particular inning (the 5th) then everyone wins a free taco. The good thing is they don’t require you to use your ticket stub like Toronto does for their pizza pizza promotion. Instead the ushers hand out a little certificate that you can use to claim your free taco. For somebody like me who likes to keep all his ticket stubs, this is definitely beneficial, especially this year. So I’ve been saving my coupons to use them all at once for one meal. Including the series they played at the start of the year I had 4 free tacos to claim so that was my lunch for the day.

When I went in to the Taco Bueno and I asked for some water, they gave me one of those small cups most places give you when you ask for water. However, on second thought he says I’ll give you a bigger cup you look like you need it. Yes, it was once again over 100 today, and I certainly did need the water, so it was nice not to have to keep refilling the small one.

Connected to the ballpark they have a baseball museum. They have a nice system on a lot of game nights where if it is before 5:00 pm you can go into the museum and leave and come back as you want. Then after 5 once the ballpark gates open you can go in the stadium and still get back into the museum as there is a door from the ballpark to the museum that you can go back and forth between the two. So it allowed me to look around for awhile in the afternoon then leave to get those tacos. I came back once the gates opened and watched BP for a bit before going back to the museum.

The museum had sections on Texas baseball, baseball’s greatest moments (Carter’s WS HR was #16, #1 was the Shot Heard Round the World), ballpark era’s and the building of the Ballpark in Arlington, baseball equipment, Sammy Sosa and the 600 HR Club, an interactive kids learning zone, of course Texas Rangers history and even some hockey focusing on the Dallas Stars.

In the bottom of the 8th inning there was an unbelievably strong windstorm that blew in. Unfortunately, sitting in the stands that meant garbage was flying everywhere down the rows. At least being in the upper deck it wasn’t long before most of the garbage flew down to lower levels. For those of you watching the game you may have noticed the right-center field was just littered w/garbage. The wind only lasted about a half inning, and then it calmed down. At least it cooled off the temperature. They actually have the temperature posted at the ballpark and I think the temperature went from around 98 down to 91 by the end.