Opening Day of IBL a HIT!

The 4,000 baseball fans that packed Yarkon Sports Complex yesterday made opening night of the newly formed Israel Baseball League a success. The standing room only crowd were witness to history as the Modi'in Miracle put a whooping to the Petach Tikvah Pioneers 9-1. I would say that Israeli immigrants from America, or New York Mets fans as we like to call them, made up about 75% of the crowd, however there were some signs that this whole "baseball in Israel" thing could possibly catch on.
The night started with a ceremony marking the significant event. There was not one, but two, ceremonial first pitches, an introduction of all the teams, a dynamite Hatikvah singer who would have blown both Rosanne and that poor little girl from Portland who forgot the word's to our anthem out of the water, and an announcer being as professional as the local drama troupe would be performing on Broadway. Nevertheless, the game went off without a hitch, disproving the notion that Jewish Standard Time even exists. I digress...
As a player on one of the teams not actually playing in the game, it was my duty to mingle with fans and spread baseball cheer throughout the stadium. Well naturally that included signing autographs, many autographs. On baseballs, on hats, on gloves, on the back of shirts, on the front of shirts, and even on some poor teenage girl's arm. I figured it just wasn't my place to tell her it would take two weeks to get all of those Sharpie signatures washed off. And who was I to tell all of them that back in the United States I was about as important as the guy selling them the Jerusalem Post every morning. But hey, these were kids, and kids like, love their autographs. Some kid even said walking away that he was going to sell my ball on ebay. I told him to try and get a Barry Bonds ball in return. We'll see if that comes to fruition. I'd be lying if I told you it was anything but awesome. I think I could get used to this.
In addition, I met two different families from Ra'anana, my home city, who took down my contact info and said they would love to have some guys from the team over for a BBQ. How cool is that? You think Russell Martin or Jeff Kent have ever gone to a Dodger fan's house? I gonna go with a capital NO on that one.
Our first game is tonight, and with any luck we will be up by 12 runs in the second inning so I can get some playing time. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, our other catcher is one of those Dominican players. Maybe if I knew that going into this I wouldn't have come...yeah freaking right.