Rosa Barbosa, the Indian, and me

The true reason for visiting Atlanta was of course to go see a Braves game. Going to the game was the real reason the trip even happened. I have been a fan of the Braves ever since I can remember. I know what you are thinking..."Why was some girl from Idaho such a big fan of a team that was on the other side of the country?" Well, the reason is really because my dad was a fan, and who knows why he was a fan, but his fanship rubbed off on my sister and I at an early age. Our obsession began with keeping charts and graphs of who won what games, players batting averages, ect. We wrote letters of thanks to TBS for carrying such extensive coverage of their games. We started to collect memorabilia. I even had a subscription to "ChopTalk", the official magazine of the Braves. My love of the team did not extend beyond the TV, however, until I was in the 8th grade when I got to go see them play in St. Louis with my dad and sister. We sat in the nosebleeds and my favorite player, Brian Jordan, was out with an injury, but I was still in complete bliss. Fast forward to this year. In casual conversation between Camille, Ronnie and I in mid-May, we jokingly suggested that we should all go to Atlanta to see the Braves. No one thought that we would really ever do it, but as the weeks went by, a little good luck came our way and we planned a date to take the trip.

Monday we arrived at Turner Field around 12:00 for the game to start at 1:00. I was so excited as I surveyed the beautiful ballpark that was home to my team. I didn't care about anyone else at that point, I was bound and determined to have an amazing time at the game. Ronnie and I had decided before hand that we needed to sit together because he was the only other true fan of the Braves. He would be appreciative of the actual goings-on at the game, whereas the others were there more to humor me than anything else. During the course of the game, they did prove to be more interested in napping, eating the world's largest hot dogs, or taking a thousand pictures of randomly chosen objects.

Upon finding our seats, we were amazed at our good luck! We were in right field right next to the foul pole, 5 rows up. Before the game was over though, Ronnie and I had found our way to the first row. It was there that we met some very interesting characters who added a bit of variety to our visit. The first was a man decked out in full-blown Indian attire. He looked as if he could have been the mascot for the Braves. Upon talking to him, we found out that he has been to 634 home games in a ROW... in the exact same seat. Talk about die-hard! Camille asked to have her picture taken with him and he seemed smugly pleased about that.

The second was a lady named Rosa Barbosa who, no joke, ate everything the ballpark offered. She had an extra seat just to house all her food. Rosa was a 65 year old Puerto Rican who took great pride in shouting random things at the right fielder, Jeff Francoeur. She informed us that she was starting a fan club for Jeff and that she would let us in if we would email her a picture of his tooshie. That didn't seem to be asking too much, actually it gave me a nice excuse to take a picture of his butt. Rosa was even kind enough to shout to Jeff, "We have two girls from Idaho here that love you Jeffy..." I thought I saw a smirk cross his face as he pretended not to hear. As a parting gift, Rosa was kind enough to offer us some random coupons, baseball cards for players that neither Ronnie or I had ever heard of, and a date with her 25 year old son. Rosa is coming to Provo in October for a meeting and she excitedely announced that we would definitely have to get together and go to dinner. I don't know if Rosa will remember us, she did seem to be drinking a lot during the game, now that I think of it. But, It would be a real pleasure for me to consider her a friend.

The game ended quite sadly as the Braves choked 4-1. I know I cursed them; they were on a 6 game winning streak and won the day after as well. Oh well, the whole experience was a fabulous one indeed. I can only say that I was disappointed when Ronnie, Jason, and Gabe didn't exert any effort at all to catch a Pirate homerun that flew right near us. Gabe was too busy thinking about Lucy, Jason was stuffing a hot dog in his face, and despite the fact that Ronnie had promised to go after any ball that came near us, he covered his head and screamed like a girl as the ball came near. We found out later that the ball that had come so close to us was hit by a rookie and it was his first major league home run. An official came to talk to the boy who caught it and told him that the player wanted to buy it from him. This news caused me to have a little outburst, but I settled down and we all ended up ok.

Leaving the ballpark was bittersweet. I enjoyed the game thoroughly, it was something I have waited for my whole life. The loss was a little tough to handle, but I must say that the other experiecnes we had there definitely made up for it.