This is my second summer teaching at the Nebraska High School Press Association’s summer journalism workshop; I have a group of 13 awesome students from publications programs in Nebraska, and we’re learning about journalistic writing. On Tuesday, I had a chance to have them do what I love to do:

Go to a ballgame and find fun stories.

When my friend Matt Rasgorshek (we all just call him Raz) texted me a few weeks ago to suggest this idea, I immediately said “yes.” I mean, literally. That was my response. Turns out it was a great idea.

The Saltdogs play in the ballpark also occupied by the University of Nebraska baseball team. It’s a beautiful park and it was a lovely, somewhat warm, July evening. The game was relatively sparsely attended, by which I mean our group made up a decent amount of the crowd. But that turned out to be a blessing, as our students could interview and wander at will.

Before the game started (like, 10 minutes before), the players were all signing autographs for little league teams, and they were gracious enough to do some interviews with our students; it was a cool level of access for them. We also saw an amazing rendition of the National Anthem, and got to see one of the world’s cutest dogs go out for ground rules with the Redhawks manager. It was a little ironic, considering most of us assumed that an actual dog on the field would be a member of the team with ‘dogs’ in their name. But apparently the Redhawks have a pup as a member of their traveling party.

I also caught a ball for the first time in a LONG time (definitely the first time since I’ve started this blog). OK, when I say ‘caught,’ it was more like “I heard a ball as I was walking to the upper deck and by the time I got up there, I was able to grab it because I was the only person up there.” But still, it was fun to leave with a souvenir.

Part way through the game I noticed a couple of folks down behind the Saltdogs dugout, dancing around and wearing fake beards. They seemed like the type of people I should meet, so I did. Turns out they were wearing the beards in support of one of the Saltdogs players has a giant beard. I think it was pitcher Josh Roeder, but I never really figured out if they even knew him, or just traveled around the world with fake beards supporting baseball players with real beards.

At any rate, the two with the beards were Susan from New Zealand and Steve from Baltimore. They were in town to celebrate the 70th birthday of Susan’s sister Nancy, who is local; a whole bunch of other family members were there as well, and they were clearly having a grand ol’ time at the game. I am fairly confident that I met the only person from New Zealand who is currently in the state of Nebraska, which is pretty awesome but also unverifiable. They were a lovely crew.

The students wandered around looking for cool stories, and I think they found a bunch. As I write this, they’re putting their own story packages together, so we shall see!