Last Thursday, Paul texted me and asked if I was up for one more Isotopes game. This week was the last week of the regular season. Yes. Baseball is always a good getaway. Good deal. We’ll touch base next week.

Tonight, the Isotopes played the Reno Aces, farm team for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

I don’t actually know much about either team, but baseball is baseball.

Paul had to pick up some plans for work from a client over at the Green Jeans Farmery, so we just met there before the game for dinner. The hospitality complex was interesting. It’s a fiesta plaza surrounded by shipping containers converted to a slew of restaurants and a brewery front. It was my first time there, and the burger joint Paul suggested was closed, so we went over to the taco joint. Good grub. We sat eating at a table in the yellow sunlight, walled in to the south and the north by dark approaching rain clouds.

We headed over to Isotopes Park a little before game time, and when we got their, the sky slashed with light to the north, where an ominous bank of black sky shrouded the horizon. The sky rumbled.

The game start was delayed for an hour and a half.

We went in the park. We stood in the concessions area and talked and watched people. A tarp covered the infield. It sprinkled. A tarp came off the infield. The Cubs went up 2-0 on the Pirates.

After walking the park perimeter, the game started and we took our seats next to the home plate side of the visitors dugout on the first base side. And the game started.

It was an enjoyable game. Two lefty starters- good command, lower velocity guys. One of them made it to the big leagues on my team a few years back. I remembered him, because his last name- inappropriately- sounded a lot like “jock itch.” Eric Jokisch pitched a number of games for the Cubs in 2014. And he was good tonight.

Paul and I talked about the difference between minro league and major league salaries. We were surprised to learn a minor leaguer made somewhere between two and three thousand dollars a month (6 months in the season) plus a $25 per diem to play Triple-A ball. That’s roughly $17,000. The minimum salary for a major leaguer is $500,000 a season. If you play in the minro leagues and get called up at the end of the year to be on a major league 40 man roster, you bank $41,000.

We also talked about a few of the guys on the two teams who had had major league experience like Jokisch. Reno’s Negron and Arcia had spent good time on National League teams. Zach Rosscup, a recent Rockies acquisition, was one of the Cubs’ favorite guys to shuttle from the minro leagues and back in the last year, though he never played much. Paul also recognized that the Aces’ third base coach Mike Lansing was a former player for the Expos and the Rockies.

And then in the bottom of the eighth, a pinch hitter stepped out of the dugout and into the batters box for the Isotopes. Here was the Grand Poobah of Major League Baseball Alumni to be in Isotopes Park.

The former NL Rookie of the Year, three-time All Star, 2006 National League Most Valuable Player, and $180 million dollar ballplayer Ryan Howard.

That was cool.

But he quietly struck out.

And half an inning later, Isotopes pitcher Carlos Estavez, dealing 96-98 miles per hour fastballs, shut down Reno for an Isotopes win.

It was an enjoyable long evening at the ballpark.

Ohhh. And here was a song played overhead with its video on the scoreboard between two innings. Paul and I had no idea who it was when we thought about it. We had never heard it- despite the fact it was from 1980. Enjoy.