There were 6,022 people in attendance at Perdue Stadium tonight to watch the Shorebirds do battle with their SAL North foes, the Lake County Captains. Generally Saturday night fireworks draw a large crowd, but tonight there were about 200 of those people mostly wearing something in common and sitting in one section.
And the show of support was appreciated by the campaign as Governor Ehrlich made it down to Salisbury. Here he’s shown with District 38B Delegate candidate Michael James, son Drew (hidden in the picture) and representatives from our service branches.
Since Michael James was using this appearance as a fundraiser and has already shown his support of the Shorebirds with a large political advertisement on the outfield wall, he was allowed to throw out one of the first pitches, along with the five service branch representatives.
I’d have liked to get the photo of the service reps throwing out five simultaneous first pitches, but I missed the moment. Ever the politically savvy person, Governor Ehrlich deferred his first pitch duties to son Drew. I think he’s had practice at this:
And after the game started, the governor does what politicians are seemingly born to do, work the crowd. But a few innings into the contest, he stopped over to join his supporters.
Now, the Governor is a busy guy and obviously a lot of people who were amongst his supporters needed to bend his ear. I did spy District 38A Delegate Page Elmore in his normal public bright red shirt speaking to the Governor briefly, along with a host of other well-wishers. But Governor Ehrlich was nice enough to pose for pictures with a large number of folks, sign a few autographs, and generally make himself a little bit available to us folks at the game. By the way, I took advantage of the opportunity to have a pic taken with Governor Ehrlich but it’s not resizeable to my blog’s format. This may be the one and only time I’m to the left of the governor!
So it was a really fun night – baseball, fireworks, and politics all converging on a lovely warm summer evening. The only downer was that the Shorebirds, after scoring in the bottom of the ninth to tie it at 1 run apiece, broke down in the 10th and lost the game 3-1. Three errors did us in, one allowed the first Lake County run to score as catcher Zach Dillon dropped a relay throw. Had the play been made, Delmarva stood to win a 1-0 thriller.
Of course, if I find out about an O’Malley night I’ll have to secure the tickets to that (from my workplace, I’m not giving money to his campaign!) That would be an interesting study in comparison. But I doubt Martin O’Malley is really planning on spending much time on the Eastern Shore because we’re pretty solid Ehrlich country here. We really appreciate the governor spending some time tonight securing his base though.
