It's gotten to the point now I'm doing many of these events for a second time. A year ago, I did my first Star Wars Night with the Oakland A's and I just did the event again.
The first time I did the event I was nervous and excited and arrived much earlier than necessary. I was concerned about traffic and built in extra time. The second time, I arrived with five minutes to spare.
The first time, I was stuck greeting fans coming in from the BART station and never made it down to the field. I still had fun, but of course, I was curious what it would be like to actually see the field.
This year, I ended up on the group of characters chosen to go out on the field. Whoa. I was giddy with excitement. I've done so many troops this year, (almost 40), that it takes a lot these days to overwhelm me. But, I have to admit I had a fan girl moment when we first stepped out onto the field. It was an extraordinary feeling. The field was larger than I thought it would be, (bigger than it looks from the stands.) I was in my Imperial officer costume, so I could easily see everything. The sights, sounds and smells seemed unusually vivid. I was trying to look everywhere at once and keep an eye on everyone else. As a soft costumed character, I had a responsibility to keep an eye on anyone wearing a helmet. (They "can't see a thing" with those buckets on.)
We'd barely set foot on the field before there were balls underfoot. I gently kicked them to the side with my boot to get them out of the way and make sure none of the troopers went down slipping on an errant ball. They wouldn't be able to see these hazards with their field of vision. We were asked to walk around the perimeter of the field, greeting fans in the stands. The fans were so pumped up, and they just wanted to touch us and give us high fives. Always a strange sensation to see how people react to you in costume. You get this sort of "rock star" reaction sometimes, but it is not you. It is the costume.
We ended up posing for a number of photos for the press, and then acting as an honor escort for the "first pitch" and the second "first pitch." The second one was more memorable because it was thrown by a little kid in a Chewbacca costume. The ball went about three feet and then hit the dirt. The crowds thought it was adorable, and went crazy.
A small subset of the group was then picked to stalk the referees. I was in this group, so we hung back and waited until they came out and then basically stood around staring at them as they did their pre-game meeting and making them very nervous. (This was simply a fun prank with the employees there messing with each other. It was funny.)
We were then done for the day, and asked if we wanted to take a short cut back to our changing area. It involved taking stairs. Of course, I could've done a marathon since I was in a soft costume, but I had a Vader and two stormtroopers with me. They were all confident they could do it. And, impressively, all three of them made it up the stairs with little difficulty. Well done.
Our handler tried to take us on the least crowded route back to the green room, but the corridors were still thronged with people and we couldn't get there without going through some public areas. Everywhere we went, people had that same sort of "rock star" reaction. The site of Vader and his troopers has a powerful effect on people. I was in handler mode, trying to keep the moving, and politely telling people we couldn't stop for photos. We'd never make it back if we stopped for photos every two or three feet.
There were some duties for the other teams throughout the game related to contests and giveaways, but my team was done. I changed out and headed home after a few innings to get ahead of the traffic. We could have changed back into costume for the fireworks, but very few of us were willing to brave the traffic of staying to the end of the game.
It was a good night. A very good night.
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