It was an extraordinarily last-minute kind of thing – I knew that the game was coming up at the St. Pete Times Forum, but didn’t actually make the decision to go until today, and it easily made my week. Plus, my Dad will be leaving to go back home on Monday, so a little extra time with him was certainly nice, too. I actually walked over to the box office to buy tickets at lunchtime and didn’t really know what to expect because I haven’t been there more than once or twice. The tickets ended up being for Row BB, which could’ve either been 28 rows back, or damn near on the court! Well, guess what? While it meant a lot of extra walking for my Dad, we were literally less than ten feet from the basket…
So close, in fact, that I actually got sprayed by one of the Globetrotters during one of their “bits” that involved chasing each other with a large bucket of water, but it was all good. You can’t really stay mad at a guy who just picked up a guy from the other team and carried him off the court while he was trying to do free throws! Man, talk about a cut-up act – if more sporting events were this great, I might actually get interested in some of them. At one point, Michael “Wild Thing” Wilson was high-fiving the kids ahead of me and the next thing we knew, he was walking off with their Mom’s purse! He ended up making her come out and dance with him center court to get it back, and even got a kiss or three out of it to boot – I should be taking notes from this guy!
All in all, it was just a really fun game. The kids obviously had a blast – especially the ones who got pulled out on the court to play around with the guys, and I’ve got a feeling that those kids will be boasting about how their Mom kissed one of the Harlem Globetrotters for months to come! I consider this to be pretty high in my books – right up there with the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus – as an absolutely must see show if it happens to come to your area. This is currently their 80th season and it doesn’t look like they’re showing any signs of slowing down soon – talk about a show that I look forward to taking my kids to some day. Honestly, I would’ve been completely content after just watching their warm-up as they goofed around to Sweet Georgia Brown, but the actual game had some fine moments, too!
I did take a handful of pictures, but they’re going to have to go up later because an awful lot of them came through too blury to use. For the record, it’s tough to photograph a guy mid-slamdunk! But I still think there are some goodies in there, so hopefully I’ll get around to them this weekend, along with my new Everglades stuff from last. In the meantime, though, here’s at least one that I thought came out fairly crisp…
Wild Thing and Christensen ‘argue’ over something or other, shortly before stealing a handful of that dude’s cotton candy…