Today is my third and, alas, final day in eastern Maryland, celebrating Spring Break in not exactly the most traditional way.

Right on brand for me though.

Last night my son and I took in an Aberdeen Ironbirds game at Ripken Stadium, getting the full “Ripken Experience” as they call it ’round these parts. (The complex really is like Disney World–if Disney were Cal Ripken Jr.)

It was actually the second game of the day we saw. The first was a collegiate contest between Notre Dame of Maryland University (yup, that’s a thing) and Hood College. (Hood I’d heard of–it’s just up Route 15 from me.) Hood was up 10-2 when we picked it up (at the field 100 yards from our hotel room), blew its entire lead, then won 11-10 in 10 innings.

Amazingly, four hours later we witnessed a nearly identical crushing defeat for the home team at another field 100 yards in the opposite direction from our hotel room. The aforementioned Aberdeen Ironbirds (single-A affiliates of the Baltimore Orioles) came nearly all the way back from an 8-1 deficit to lose 8-7 to the Brooklyn Cyclones. The ‘birds scored three runs in the bottom of the ninth inning but left the tying run on third base.

But damn that crab dip pretzel was great. #maryland