Bocas Beats Chiriqui

Today I find myself in Changuinola having some meetings regarding my aquaduct and altrine projects. My first meeting was at 9am and with the unreliable transportation in and out of my site I was teter-totering back and forth of whether to risk being late or to go the night before and stay at the Regional Leaders house for the night.
After futbol(soccer), baseball is the next biggest sport in Panama. Mariano Revera is from Panama and therefore 3/4 of the country loves the Yankees. This is easily seen in the amount of NY hats that can be found on the streets. Well after a short talk to my regional leader I found out that there was a baseball game between Bocas and Chiriqui tonight. Chiriqui took us out of the playoffs last year so it was a little bit of a payback game. So my decision became easy for me and I was lucky enough to catch a cab out opf town to get to the game during the second inning. The first batter I got to see got hit by a pitch and threatened to charge the mound. No fireworks though as he just walked to first nursing a sore back. That started the game off well as Bocas roled on to a 6 nothing win and the pitcher threw a one hitter.
The game was only part of the experience. For one thing Jim and I were the only two white people to be found in a stadium that probably held 2 thousand people at standing room only. We paid two dollars to get in and it was well worth it. There was music and noise the entire game. The highlight had to be these two men that were hammered and had megaphones. They would both spend half the time yelling things at the other team and the other half of the time yelling over all of the other noise at each other. Every time something went right for Bocas the two of them would turn their sirens on and just blast it for 5 minutes until the game got going again. Too funny.
As for a cultural experience it was definitely different from a Dodgers game. Although Dodger stadium has a majority of mexicans there was a higher percentage of latinos at the game last night. Also I forgot how accostomed I am to having the Jumbo screen to tell me everything that is going on. I couldn´t hear the announcer and therefore knew none of the players names. I actually had to pay attention to the strikes and balls to keep track of each batter.
Needless to say I had fun and arrived at my meeting on time.