Those of you who know me or have read a few of my previous blog entries know that I'm not a natural-born sports fan. It's not that I don't like sports – I do… it's just that I didn't have many sports-related influences growing up and I lean more towards bicycling, computers or a good drama-action movie rather than footballs these days.

I love watching the Super Bowl (more for the commercials than the game at times), but I rarely watch the games during the season... especially not if a rerun of The Matrix or Lord of The Rings is on cable. In fact, I can probably count on one hand the number of official ball games I've been to in my entire life.

That being said, I want the situation to be different for my kids. For me that's meant making some intentional choices to be more involved in my kid's sports events. I've coached soccer for a couple of years for my daughter's teams, and was very involved this year in helping with my son's T-Ball team.

So for Father's Day this year I chose to take the family out to a baseball game. The Portland Beavers were playing a home game in PGE Park against the Salt Lake Bees, and Comcast was sponsoring the event with free Beaver's hats for the first 1,000 dads who showed up.

The hats were gone by the time we arrived, but we still had a lot of fun. The Beavers made some good plays and led most of the way through the 6th inning. I say through the 6th inning because that was about the point where my two youngest kids were bored out of their minds, and we decided to call it quits. They had a lot of fun through the first two innings, but after that it was "Dad, how much longer is the game going to take?" every three minutes, and I didn't want them to be miserable on Father's Day.

Two innings were plenty though to explain a few things about the game to my kids sitting next to me (when the VERY loud guy behind me stopped hollering for a minute here and there), and to see several good plays by both teams. They watched the pitching speed monitor like a hawk, and saw a few foul balls fly up over our heads. We had a great time together!

We had in-field reserved seats right behind home plate on the right side of the field, in row R, which gave us a great view of a home run from the Beavers out into left field, and several line drives right up the third base line.

Next time we go I'll reserve tickets online ahead of time though at WebTicketStore.com or a similar service – it would have been great to be a few rows closer to the action and also sitting on the aisle side. Bathroom breaks are inevitable with kids, and then there's the beer run for mom and dad, and licorice and popcorn for the kids. With six people to crawl over each time, and... well, you get the idea. Aisle seating would have been a big plus.

I'll bring my mitt next time too, and hopefully will be lucky enough to catch a foul ball.

I hope you had a great Father's Day yesterday too!