hree hundred and fifty-six days out of the year there’s no place I’d rather be than at a baseball game That’s why I’m really lucky to work as a batboy for a minor league team It was my second season with the Pine City Porcupines and it’s the best job a kid can have The other nine days a year there is one place and only one place that I would rather be the state fair A baseball game can go back and forth up and down The state fair has the Whipper Whirl a ride that whips you one way and whirls you the other at five hundred miles an hour
WHIPPER OHIRL S It MID UPD IOD 9 LG
Baseball has corn dogs and waffle fries and cotton candy and soda pop The state fair has all of that plus cheeseburger wontons deep-fried pickles on a stick bacon-butterscotch mini-doughnuts and a thousand other things you didn’t know even existed until you saw them at the fair Baseball has the crowd singing Take Me Out to the Ball Game in the middle of the seventh inning The state fair has a parade every morning right after the gates open with a marching band and a long line of convertibles old trucks and horse and buggies Don’t get me wrong Baseball is still my favorite thing in the world almost all of the time But baseball goes for the entire summer The state fair only lasts nine days And this year I was going to miss all nine of them We were spending a few days at Grandma’s and when we got back I had to work for the Porcupines On the first day of the state fair I was on an airplane to Arizona with my mom and dad We were flying to Tucson to visit my grandmother Why don’t we go see Grandma at Christmas I asked Because she’ll be coming to visit in December said Dad She wants a white Christmas and it rarely snows in Tucson So why did she move there if she wanted snow Because she was sick of cold weather Dad explained Hmm It sounded to me like Grandma wanted to have it both ways
