Jason Lane sighted, as is a Ron Paul supporter

The baseball fans among you rednecks may have heard of Jason Lane, one-time rightfielder of the Houston Astros who's now toiling for the Round Rock Express, Houston's minor league team.

We spotted Jason on Saturday in Oklahoma City, where the Round Rock boys played Oklahoma's minor league team, the Redhawks, who are affiliated with the Texas Rangers, the other Major League team in Texas which, like the Astros, is experiencing a sad sack season.

In the above picture, which we snapped from the general admission seats of AT&T Brickyard Park, Jason is seen trotting around the basepaths after a homerun. Unfortunately, he didn't hit the homer. Tim Raines Jr. did.

Jason did have on RBI hit, however, at another point in the game. And he didn't make any errors or otherwise embarrass himself.

Minor League baseball games are full of between-inning antics (come cornball, some amusing), which are a welcome relief from the ear-splitting commercial advertisements that seem to dominate Major League venues. The admission prices are reasonable, there is ample available seating and the teams are composed of young men chasing a dream (or, in the case of guys like Jason Lane, not-quite-so-young men trying to recapture the dream).

Overall, minor league baseball is something every baseball fan should support and we urge you to visit the nearest minor league ballpark to support the national pasttime.

For more photos from Oklahoma City, see Banjo Pics

We had hoped to bring you a photo of an unexpected sight outside the ballpark. There was a fellow in a Ron Paul for President t-shirt handing out small leaflets on which a laudatory quote by President Reagan regarding the congressman was printed.

We asked the Ron Paul leafleter if we could take his picture and he demurred.

Why?

"I'm in the military," the young man said, almost in a whisper.

"Oh, ya'll have to stay neutral?" we asked.

Well, not really, but there's kind of a gray area there, he said.

So we didn't take his photo, but we took others.