Party Animals in St Paul
Katie 
I kicked off August with my last 2 Party Animals games of the season. Friday night we opted to show up a bit later as the air quality was terrible because of the smoke from the Canadian wild fires. We got in, went to the KClub entrance and hung out in the shade until it was just about time for gates to open. When I decided to start making my way closer to the main concourse, the whole team walked by giving us all high fives as they went. Despite having VIP tickets for the following night, we had pretty awesome tickets for this game – front row behind home plate! Andy Cosgrove made an awesome catch over the dug out on the first batter of the game and Noah Fisher fouled out to a fan in the first inning as well. Tailgaters were out to an early lead, but in the end the Party Animals won, 2-1.
Saturday we got there just as the plaza party was starting and made our way in to the team store to look for book stamps (they were not there, we had to go to fan services) and then checked in for VIP. We had some time to kill before we needed to head down the field so one friend who wasn’t with us Friday hit up the merch line and then it was time to be escorted to the elevator. We waited for the go ahead in a tunnel, which a lot of the players went through on their way to the field so we got some early high fives and hellos and we also got farted on by Pharty. (His farts DO smell like cupcakes!) We finally made our way out to the field and had figured out who we wanted to prioritize and then made our way to as many of the other tables as we could. I think we ended up only not having time for 1 table.
Our seats for the next game were between home and third and a few rows up, which actually ended up being a bit better of a view overall as there weren’t as many cameras blocking us when there were celebration dances happening. Cole Kitchen for the Tailgaters pitched 3 really solid innings, Reece Hampton ended up fouling out to a fan in the 8th inning (who are you rooting for fans, Party Animals or Tailgaters? lol) There were no homeruns and the Tailgaters took the early lead again – but Party Animals still ended up getting the win.
Of note: when we got up to Baber at VIP he was saying he didn’t want to be crawling on the ground and he would do it once during the game. We laughed that we popped in at that part of the conversation – but once the 5-2-2 (I think it was the 5th) happened to “Disco Snails” and we saw what he had to do – we realized why he didn’t want to do it anymore than he had to and would be able to do it during the game without practicing it.
After the game we ended up hanging around the party plaza and getting some photos with more of the players as a group and also asking them the very important question – *NSYNC or Backstreet Boys? In the end it was split, 3-3. And Vava informed us that he had tried to talk about Hanson in the clubhouse, but everyone is so young they had no idea who he was even talking about. Considering I tell their ages by saying ‘I have Hanson CDs older than him’, he’s not wrong.
I do still have some bananas games coming up, but I definitely will miss my Party Animals!! Here’s hoping I can get back to Savannah before the end of the year to see them, but if not, there’s always the cruise!