Sunday, August 21, 2005

THE LEAGUE GOES TO SEE THE PHOENIX MERCURY

The League loves him some professional basketball. And tonight, The League and Mrs. League headed into town to see the Phoenix Mercury, our local WNBA team, take on the Minnesota Lynx.

The tickets, in comparison to an NBA game, were pretty inexpensive. Plus, I bought them on a special where I could also get a free hotdog and soda with each ticket with the "dinner and game" package. We were supposed to sit in the 11th row of section 104, but couldn't quite figure out the whole seating arrangement with the corner we were sitting in, and some nice folks, apparently regulars told us to just sit down. Apparently it doesn't really matter at the free-wheeling Mercury games what the seat assignment is on your ticket, what matters is that you just sit down.

The Mercury's record isn't very good. I think they're .500 for the season, but they've been playing much better since the European League (no relation) broke up for the summer and they got Kamila Vodichkova back.

Long story short, the Mercury wiped the floor with the Lynx this evening. Which was fun, but at the same time, it was such a blowout, it wasn't really a nail biter.

The audience is fairly small. They don't sell tickets for the upper tier of the arena as the audience isn't terribly large for live WNBA games, but it's a tight-knit group of fans. Who is the audience for the WNBA? Well, there are a lot of families at the games, a lot more than at Suns games, and especially a lot of families with girls. Also, ladies out for a night on the town. And the only two random dudes (a large portion of the Suns' audience) sitting next to us were cheering for The Lynx. Cheering very quietly as they were, literally, the only Lynx fans in the stadium.

There was also some crazy woman who, apparently, knew ahead of time about the Disneyland Vacation Giveaway, as she was standing center court at half-time dressed in mouse ears, black nose, red pants and big, white Mickey gloves. In a way, it was kind of creepy. Luckily, she won the trip or I would have felt really, really bad for her.

Anyway, we don't get out a whole lot, but for once we did. And on a Sunday, no less.

Play-offs start soon, and I THINK the Mercury are in the play-offs. We'll see.

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