This weekend I took my kid to see Baltimore’s indoor football team play. Apparently, we were two of only like 30 people who even know Baltimore has an indoor football team. I’m kidding, sort of, but the Baltimore Mariners are definitely no competition for the Ravens when it comes to the hearts of local football fans. You know where the Mariners are competition for the Ravens? At the concession stand. Goddamn the prices are every bit as ass-raping at Mariners games as they are at Ravens games.
Anyway, the AIFA features what I’d call semi-pro athletes. They’re good for what they are, but they’re not playing in the NFL, or the CFL, or the AFL, or even af2 for a reason. Baltimore is an expansion team, so it makes sense that they’d not be very good this year, and Saturday night they weren’t. They were playing one of the better teams in the AIFA in the Mississippi Mudcats, and they scored 40-some points off that team, but they gave up 60-some.
Still, it was nice being able to go out to watch live football with my football loving son for what essentially amounted to costing us the equivalent of a movie and popcorn in a theater. We were able to sit pretty much wherever we wanted (we wound up two rows behind the Mudcats bench), the action on the field is pretty much non-stop and the team does a nice job of showing the crowd a good time by having fan contests during breaks, tossing freebies out to the crowd in the form of footballs and t-shirts, and allowing fans on the field after the game to meet the players and get autographs.
Even better, my kid really got into the action and found it easy to cheer on the hometown team. He is a fan now, and I’d be willing to take him to another game, although I wasn’t crazy about the “praise Jesus”-heavy invocation before the game (you love Jesus; we get it). Nor did I need a christian rock band playing on stage after the game while milling about on the field. And I’d sit on the other side of the field. And I’d make the Lady Mariner dance squad a little smaller and get rid of some of the, uh, not-smaller girls. But overall it’s a decent night to hang out and goof off in a football atmosphere.
Thumbs up.