Early morning game, another Education Day. This felt like the busiest Education Day yet, with over 3,500 kids piling into Ernie Shore Field. Built in 1956, the stadium underwent some modest improvements in the early 1990s. As of December 2006, tentative agreements have been put into place to sell Ernie Shore field to Wake Forest University (which is located right next door) after a new stadium is built in downtown Winston Salem for the Warthogs. Did you know… Ernie Shore Field was used in the movie Mr. Destiny with Jim Belushi? Put that one in your back pocket and use it sparingly at cocktail parties when your conversations involve Jim Belushi and baseball. It’s bound to happen at some point in your life.

Later in the evening, we ventured down to Greensboro to see the Grasshoppers. Thanks to Doug, a kind Grasshoppers fan for giving us great seats behind the third-base dugout. The Grasshoppers play their games at First Horizon Park, which was built just two years ago and seats 8,000. It has a nice mix of seats, picnic and bar areas, along with two grassy hills where fans can sit and watch the game. The on-field promotions are also non-stop, and we saw a new one tonight: throwing toilet seats around a pole in what is supposed to be some kind of horse-shoe-toilet-seat game.

The main attraction is Babe, the GM’s dog. Babe has been trained to carry out a basket with baseballs to the umpire in between innings. In addition, he competes with the bat boy—they take turns grabbing bats off of the field after a batter gets a hit. That’s right—the dog trots out onto the field and puts the handle of the bat in his mouth and marches right back into the dugout. It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a baseball show dog. I wondered how the bat boy feels having to share his job with a canine, but he unfortunately wasn’t available for comment.