baseball, ray.

When I was little, the rule was that once you arrived in Stone Harbor, you did your absolute best to stay on Seven Mile Island for as long as possible, uninterrupted. Trips to the ACME in Cape May Court House were allowed, but only because food was wildly overpriced at the grocery stores on the island; beyond that, leaving the island for any reason, even to go for lobster at Carmen's in Sea Isle City, was to be done only with great reluctance or, ideally, not at all. In recent years, starting around the time when my brothers and I could drive, and increasing dramatically once I started taking the bus to and from New York, we've begun to explore the area more, from going for high tea at the Carriage House in Cape May to visiting Lucy the Elephant in Margate, but before that we kept to Seven Mile Island, and the southern three miles of it only, at that.

But there's always been one exception to the park-your-car-in-Stone-Harbor-and-do-not-move-it rule: the yearly pilgrimage to Philadelphia for a Phillies game. In spite of spending all my summers an hour and fifteen minutes from Philadelphia, I've been to Center City on exactly two occasions; but I've been just over the Walt Whitman Bridge to Citizens Bank Park and, before it, Veterans Stadium most every summer for as long as I can remember. We'd leave the beach early and drive to Philly for an early dinner, first at Medora's and now, in recent years, at Chickie's & Pete's, a sports bar/restaurant chain whose crab fries (crinkle-cut, spiced with Old Bay, and served with molten cheese for dipping) are so good that, when an acquaintance and I discussed them at Frankfurt's Christmas market last year, we nearly cried for the fact that we couldn't have them right that moment.

And then there's the game itself. I'd long looked forward to the first time I'd be over 21 at a Phillies game (and had not been at a Phillies game since I was 20) but the night was too hot to drink anything but water. No matter: we shared lemon water ice and bottled water and, stuck to the plastic of our seats, watched the Phillies royally stink against the Atlanta Braves all the way into extra innings.