Opening Night at Dehler Park Billings MT

I lined up at 4pm along with a lot of other people to get some SRO tickets because that was all that was left. The weather was threatening but baseball people are always optimists. The game is not over 'til after the 9th inning. There are some philosophical arguments that derive from this very different game and they are mused upon by Bart Giamatti in his beautiful small book published posthumously, Take Time for Paradise.


Fairly nice scoreboard. This is what it looked like in the bottom of the 7th when visiting nephew Bryan with two kids, Mitch & Matt, and I took off to dry off. It later turned out that the Great Falls Voyagers scored twice in the 8th and 4 times in the 9th before finally being retired with the final score of 9-7 with a sigh of relief.


We all got a little wet, and some of us got a lot wet if we happened to be sitting on the edge of one of those sail-like umbrellas. Only the really hardy stayed for the whole thing.


Statue of Dave McNally, outside the entrance to the park. Dave lived just down the street from us before he cashed in his chips way too early. In the background there are a large number of plaques for those who donated to the building and upkeep of the park. Note the Mueller plaque, not quite in the same league as Mr Dehler who put in a cool one million dollars! I will get a better picture of these statues. Just be patient.


A statue of Ed Bayne, long-time coach for the American Legion teams. The two kneeling boys apparently sponsored the statue, just like in the cathedrals of Europe where the sponsors had their faces painted or sculpted in with the main subject. Is that classy or what? It is really nice to remember your heroes in some way.