Happy Fans Cheer for Los Santos Baseball Team (Picture courtesy of La Prensa)

Last night was the final game of the Panama baseball season and Los Santos brought home the bacon!  How did I find out?  Horns honking through the streets of Pedasi around 10PM.

I had gone to the game on Tuesday night, which I thought was going to be the final game. However, Los Santos loaded the bases in the 7^th inning and Panama Metro took full advantage scoring 8 runs in the last three innings. The game had been virtually tied up to this point.

This was my first time to the Los Santos stadium in Las Tablas and to my surprise, I was impressed. The stadium wasn’t as snazzy or technologically advanced as that of Panama City’s, but it was still a blast nonetheless.

Below is my list of reasons why you should see a baseball game in Panama. These reasons are mostly my thoughts on what is comically awesome and different from seeing a game in the U.S.

1. Cheap entrance- tickets to the play off game only cost 5 bucks!
2. Cheap eats- street food is sold inside the stadium. A meat stick costs a quarter, a beer costs a dollar. Can’t beat that with a hammer.
3. Live music- the Panama fans brought their own instruments (or band?) and played music throughout the entire game. I’m talking horns, drums and cowbells. The music was very reminiscent of that during Carnaval.
4. Angry at a call? Let it out!- Not that I condone this, but angry fans did throw their full beer cans at the unfortunate umpire who called a Panama Metro ball inside the line, when he had just called a similar play OUT while Los Santos was at bat. The ump calmly collected the cans and threw them off the field as one final throw whizzed by his shoulder.
5. The Los Santos Enano- His name is Leo. He is both a team player in uniform as well as a crowd pumper upper. If you’re not sure what an enano is, look it up. No team in the US could get away with this for its “political correctness.” But it sure was funny seeing him salsa dance, run around, hand bats to the players and the crowd LOVES him.

Things to remember for next time:

1. Bring my own seat! This is for games watched in Las Tablas. There is minimal seating and fortunately I was handed a tiny camping chair to sit on.
2. Bring my own water! Inside the stadium they ran out of water. I could have gone outside, but I hate fighting crowds. Fortunately, they didn’t run out of beer.
3. Contemplate sitting in the cemetery. A large tree in the neighboring cemetery looks right out to the stadium and perhaps has better views than any other seat in town. The tree was filled with folks watching from the branches.
4. Cops like Snow Cones. I just had to add this in here. There was a full squad of heavily geared up cops standing at the back of the field. I kept watching them throughout the game and the funniest thing happened, when the snow cone cart came by, two of them walked right over, paid the man and gobbled their treats up!
5. Support your team! I didn’t have my own team attire, but there was a flood of orange all over the stadium. Next time wear a Los Santos jersey.

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Filed under: News, Sports on May 15th, 2009