What wonders awaited. 

Here's a quick story about long, post-9/11 baseball lines. 

My wife and I and a friend stayed over in southern Washington for an engagement party Saturday night. Since no one wanted the long slog up I-5 on a traffic-congested Sunday afternoon, and since I had tix to the Sunday afternoon Mariners/Dodgers game, with Clayton Kershaw on the mound, I suggested leaving early. We did. And despite a brief jam in Tacoma—the land of the perpetual freeway construction project—it took us just three hours. We were back in Seattle at 10:30 AM—plenty of time for the 1:10 start.

But were the Mariners ready for us?

It didn't seem like it. The lines outside the gates were worse than around Tacoma. It was a mob scene. Recently I‘ve begun to use the Mariners Team Store entrance on 1st Avenue, and yes, that line was shorter—100, 150 people maybe—so we got in it. And waited. And waited. We arrived around 12:40 and didn’t get through the security checkpoint and into the building until after the game had started. Meaning it took us more time moving those 100 feet than it did driving from Tacoma to Seattle.

Thankfully, after all that hassle, we were able to buy $12.50 beers, and, surrounded by Dodgers fans, watch as the M's fell behind 5-0 in the 1st, on their way to losing 12-1, all beneath hazy, wildfire-ravaged skies and air quality unhealthier than Beijing. 

Maybe that's why they kept us from trying to enter. Maybe they thought they were doing us a favor.