Well, your mom and I are back in the desert. Just think, we could have been enjoying the cooler July climate in Prague instead of the 115-degree daytime heat in Phoenix and Mesa, but Aunt Mary still isn’t feeling up to par, so we knew it would be smarter to fly west to Arizona instead of east to the Czech Republic.

Prague can wait for another day.

Even though we’ve been spending most of our time with Aunt Mary and Uncle Doug on our fourth trip to Arizona since January, we’re occasionally getting outside their home in Mesa.

One of the fun things I did was make my first trip ever to Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix for an Arizona Diamondbacks game, and it was quite a show.

Danny from Cedar Rapids—also in the desert to visit Aunt Mary—went to the game, too. So did Jeff from Mesa and his son, Tyler. We visited with Curtis from Chandler, AZ, and his son, Nicholas, during batting practice before the game, but they had more expensive seats than the rest of us, so we didn’t watch the game with them.

Actually, it turned into sort of a mini-family reunion at the ballpark in downtown Phoenix. I even asked Mary Jane from Cedar Rapids, who is Danny’s sister, if she wanted to go to the game, too.

"What, you expect me to sit in a ballpark when the temperature is 106 at night?" she asked.

"Don’t worry," I said. "The park is air conditioned. You’ll be comfortable."

"An air conditioned baseball park!" Mary Jane said. "What won’t they think of next? But forget about me going to the game. I’d rather spend the time visiting with Aunt Mary."

To prove how hot it was, a message was periodically put on the scoreboard during the game that said, "Temperature outside 106, inside 82."

Speaking of seats, I’d heard that the Diamondbacks have some $1 tickets available for their home games. So I called the ticket office early in the day to check it out.

"Yes, we do have 350 tickets that are priced at $1 and can be purchased at Gate K two hours before each game," a woman in the office told me.

"Hey, what a deal!" I said. "That beats the heck out of the high prices at the Iowa Cubs’ games at Sec Taylor Stadium in Des Moines. Everybody gets gouged there."

So it was great to find out that people could see a very good big league team like the Diamondbacks for less money than it costs to see a lousy team like the I-Cubs. Danny from Cedar Rapids and the guys from Arizona, who’ve never been held up at an I-Cubs game, couldn’t believe it.

The D-Backs were playing San Francisco the night we were at the ballpark. It was part of a big series as the first half of the National League season wound down. The Giants were, and still are, in first place in the Western Division, and the D-Backs are in second place.

The Giants won the unusual game, 10-7, thanks in part to a 432-foot home run hit by Barry Bonds, who was booed by a majority of the crowd of 44,105 every time he came to the plate. It was the fourth consecutive game in which Bonds homered.

"Why is everyone booing Bonds?" asked Danny from Cedar Rapids.

"Because they think he’s a jerk," I said.

"What do you think?" asked Danny from Cedar Rapids.

"He’s a jerk," I said.

I wrote earlier in this column that the game was unusual. That’s because of what happened late in the game. It was an incident involving one of at least two residents of West Des Moines who were in Bank One Ballpark.

One was me. The other was Tim McClelland, the home plate umpire.

McClelland ejected D-Backs manager Bob Brenly and third base coach Eddie Rodriguez from the game in the seventh inning.

Brenly got the heave-ho, I guess, for protesting balls and strikes. When he realized he’d been kicked out, Brenly threw a baseball into the stands from the pitchers’ mound.

Except for watching him eject the Cubs’ Sammy Sosa on TV in the famous corked-bat incident earlier this summer, I hadn’t seen McClelland since visiting with him at church in West Des Moines during the off-season.

Hey, guys, this beats anything your mom and I could have seen in Prague. See you soon.

Lots of love,

Dad and Mom

"To Rob Borsellino, D.M. Register

"It must be hard for a columnist at the paper Iowa once depended on to understand why the leader of our state does not use e-mail. It’s also hard for me to understand why that columnist doesn’t get his hair cut now and then.

"George Wine,

"Solon, IA"

[Wine, the retired University of Iowa athletic department spokesman who now is a published author, said he e-mailed Borsellino "as a gag. He e-mailed me back with a response of, ‘Actually, I just got it cut in October.’ Funny."]

Then there’s the sharp-eyed newspaper reader—a retired newsroom stalwart at the local paper--who sent this e-mail:

Priscilla, not her real name, from Pisgah, not her real hometown, worries that people aren’t giving new Iowa State basketball coach Wayne Morgan a fair chance.

Alive in Clive, not his real name, wrote in an e-mail that he’d like to be able to enjoy just one of those 115-degree days in Phoenix.