Hard to resist

In what I believe to be one of the best deals in all of professional sports, we took advantage of another of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays' Family Fun Day yesterday at Tropicana Field.

For $15 a ticket, we got to witness a disappointing 3-2 loss to crosstate rivals, the Florida Marlins, as well as each get a hot dog, soft drink and a bag of Cracker Jacks.

For Colin, however, the day was even better. The promotional giveaway yesterday was a Nokona TN1050 baseball glove (shown above). Though he's happy with his T-ball glove for now, I know this will be put to good use. A little research shows a suggested retail price of $40. That's a pretty sweet deal, if you ask me.

Granted, the team is racing headfirst toward yet another 100-loss season. But, with the team offering ticket packages like that, as well as pretty cool giveaways, I'm sure we'll get used to the team's less-than-victorious ways.

As an added bonus, we bumped into some of our hockey friends, Kathy and Kris, at the game. We would see them often before and at Lightning games, but I never had a chance to thank them for their generosity toward Colin this past season.

As for hounding, we took a pass for the Marlins. Other than pitcher Dontrelle Willis and, perhaps, Miguel Cabrera, there's very few players -- past or present -- that I'd want on a baseball. And we didn't hound the Rays either.

Now that Colin's on summer vacation, though, we will likely start ramping up our baseball hounding efforts. In fact, we might take a trip to the visiting team hotel later today. Seattle, and Ichiro, are in town. The Tigers, the defending American League champions, come to town next Monday.