DURHAM -- At Durham Bulls Athletic Park on Monday, 7-year-old Luke Kissling missed the biggest play of the game up to that point, and his 3-year-old sister, Hannah, painted her tongue blue during the national anthem. The culprit on both counts: cotton candy.
"They've definitely got their priorities," said their father, Lars Kissling. "I don't think the wins and losses matter that much to us."
Kissling grew up watching Major League baseball at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. He became a Red Sox fan while living in suburban Boston from 1999 to 2003. Throughout that time, he and his wife, Connie, tried to have a baby; they got infertility treatments then applied to an adoption agency.
In January 2003, they moved to Raleigh, waiting helplessly as two birth mothers chose them as adoptive parents only to decide after the births to keep their babies. In March, it happened a third time.
On June 24 of that year, they sat in the left field stands at Durham Bulls Athletic Park, and Lars Kissling wondered whether he'd ever be able to watch a baseball game with a son.
"I have great memories of my dad taking me to baseball games," he said. "We sat there and talked about life while we watched the ballgame."
With a decision looming on whether to extend the adoption process another year, he and his wife stayed up until 1 a.m., praying.
The next morning, they got a call from their Boston-based adoption agency saying that birth parents had signed the adoption papers and that the Kisslings would have a son. Seven weeks later, Luke went to his first baseball game at Five County Stadium in Zebulon as his parents, two uncles and their families went to watch the Carolina Mudcats.
While Luke dug through his cotton candy in the second inning Monday, Bulls second-baseman Omar Luna blooped a single over first base, then stretched it into a double when the Norfolk Tides right fielder tried to catch the lead runner, Joe Dillon, at third.
The roar of the crowd got Luke's attention. Catcher Kyle Holloway ripped a line drive deep into left field, and Dillon tagged up, sliding into home for the Bulls' first run.
Luke raised his left hand in a fist, smiling, eyes alight to watch the replay on the screen in the Blue Monster, a 32-foot left-field wall that mimics his dad's beloved Fenway Park.
He made the same move in the next inning, when Dillon launched a home run over the Blue Monster. But this time he raised his right hand. He was holding a snow cone in his left.
