Changed time zones again, now I'm in mountain time.

Made it to Denver. Gonna try the Mexican restaurant next door. Then sleep.

Pictures!

There are some gaps in here, I'm guessing the other photos are in my Sony.

Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers





The Tigers ended up beating the Mariners in a fairly exciting game.

After Detroit, made my way back to Chicago for the White Sox.

They ended up beating the Devil Rays the day before Mark Buerhle pitched his perfect game.
The next day I caught a game at Wrigley field. Unfortunately, I was only able to get a standing room only ticket, but hey, I still got to go!



The following day took me to Milwaukee, where I saw the Miller brewery.





After I saw the brewery, I took in a Brewers game at Miller Park







After Milwaukee it was on to St. Louis. I toured the Anheuser-Busch brewer and caught the Cardinals v Dodgers yesterday. Unfortunately, the Dodgers lost. Those photos are stuck on the Sony. Another day perhaps. Today, I toured The City Museum before heading out of town and towards KC.










Lots of really neat stuff to see. If you find yourself in St. Louis, I highly recommend it.

Still alive

I'm in St. Louis right now, and headed to KC tomorrow. Haven't been in my room much, but I've got a bunch of photos to post up. After the game at Wrigley I drove straight up to Milwaukee. Spent a couple of nights there and caught a Brewers game. They shut out the Braves in a pretty good game. Unfortunately I got stuck with standing room only tix for the second game in a row.

Following Wisconsin I drove down to St. Louis yesterday. After I crashed and slept in this morning I took a tour of the Anheuser-Busch brewery and took in a Cardinals game. I was excited for the game today because the Dodgers are in town, and I was looking forward to rooting for them. Unfortunately, they came out pretty flat and got steamrolled by the Cards. Thankfully the guy I was sitting next to was pretty laid back and didn't give me a bad time about rooting for the road team.

Ugh, I'm half asleep as it is. Gonna hit the sack. Early morning tomorrow. I'm hoping to hit the City Museum before I leave town tomorrow morning.

Wrigley field

Stupid giveaway at wrigley. No way the Reds are the cause of the sellout. Standing room only for me.

Whoops, misspelled Buehrle. I'm probably not the only one.

My mistake. This was the 18th perfect game in MLB history.

Oh Yeah...

Congrats to Burhle, that was damn impressive.

Sent from my iPhone.

What a difference day makes

So yesterday I caught a White Sox game at US Cellular field. Pretty good game, the Sox were down by 3 at one point, but came from behind to win 4-3. A lot of excitement in the crowd, especially at the end. I'd post photos, but the net connection at this hotel buh-lows. So no photos today, maybe tomorrow.

Today however, woo, wish I had gone to today's game. Today the Sox had Mark Burhle pitching. For those who aren't familiar, Burhle is one of Chicago's better pitchers. Heck, Ill go so far as to say he'll probably get into the hall of fame, provided that he pitches for awhile longer. So the Sox had Burhle on the mound, and what did he do? Not much really.

JUST PITCH A PERFECT FREAKING GAME!!!

What does that mean exactly? Just that 27 Rays came to bat, and 27 Rays went back to take a seat. Not a single player got on base, by hit, by walk, or by error. Not a small feat, especially given the offensive potency of Tampa's lineup. I can hear the question already though, so I'll address it now.

"How rare is a perfect game?" "That's gotta happen a couple of times a year, right?"

Nope. *whimpers* Not quite. *tears up a little* It's only happened...*cries like a baby*

SIXTEEN TIMES, including this one. Since 1900.

ONE DAY. If I had waited ONE DAY and gone to the game today instead of yesterday, I could have witnessed baseball history. sigh, maybe something neat will happen at the cubs game.

They have gambling at the game. 50/50 raffle. Curious.

Chicago

Made it to Chicago, again, after my day in Detroit. This time I'm
actually going to stick around the city for a few days. I'm not sure
that I'm going to be able to update photos right away. My network
connection was acting up in the hotel room, I'll try to troubleshoot
tomorrow, we'll see.

First impressions of US Cellular. Hmm. I wish that I could say that
something jumps out at me, but that's not the case. The view is
uninspiring, maybe they could relocate downtown Chicago to help things
out. Seats are expensive. They only dip into single digit range on
"discount Mondays", otherwise the cheapest ones were $12 I think.

Why the bleachers in left field? Why not matching bleachers in right?
Is it just for the sake fore having bleachers? I can't imagine they
are squeezing in that many more seats by using bleachers. It sure as
he'll isn't for comfort. I think that I've sworn off bleachers for the
rest of the trip after sitting in them for the Indians game. I think
think that I was sore by the 4th inning.

The music they're playing during batting practice is pretty focused
into late 70s/early 80s rock/pop. The last two songs were Queens
"Radio Gaga" and "Kodachrome" by Paul Simon. Not what I'm used to at
the ballpark. Some other random stuff that I don't recognize as well,
but it's pretty distinctively early 80s pop. Maybe it will be a theme
night tonight?

I think I'm going to get a dog and a beer. Still have to decide if I'm
going to root for the Sox or for the Rays.

Watching the Mariners again reminds me that Itchiro made an amazing grab of what would have been a home run to right field to end the game against the Indians.

Ordo?ez just hit a grand slam! Pretty solid, especially for a has-been.

59 new citizens from 29 countries were just sworn in before the Tigers game in Detroit. Pretty cool.

Westward D'oh

First, more photos from DC


The Smithsonian - American Indian Museum
Smithsonian - Air and Space Museum

Nationals Park - Home of the Washington Nationals


The game was fun, although not surprisingly the Nationals were killed by the cubs. It was one loss in a four-game sweep by the Cubs. Utter domination. Harden didn't even pitch spectacularly for the Cubs and the Nationals still barely appeared to be in the game. As you can see above, the sunset was spectacular. Just beautiful colors in the sky.

Before I finish up with DC, I just want to thank Caitlin for putting me up for the week and taking me around town in the evenings after work. It's always nice staying in a city where someone knows the layout and can show me around. On top of that, I had fantastic food all week. Turkish on Monday, Greek on Tuesday, home cooking Wednesday, Cuban on Thursday after the game, and Himalayan on Friday. I'm going t0 miss DC, no question.

After DC I headed to Pittsburg for all of 4 hours. Thankfully, that's just enough time to park, enjoy a ballgame and fireworks, and head out of town. Because it was cloudy and dark, I didn't get a great view of Pittsburgh, but the ballpark was fantastic. Easily one of my favorites on this trip. PNC park, home of the Pirates, is built right along the river, so that homers hit to right field can fall into the river if hit hard enough. On top of that, the view of the downtown skyline at night was a perfect backdrop to the latter innings of the game. The night was then made complete by Matt Capps closing out a 2-0 victory over the SF Giants. Woo-hoo. I've got photos of PNC locked up in another camera (along with other assorted shots). Hopefully I can download from that camera soon and post them up.

After the Pirates game, I headed straight for cleveland. Not the original plan, but the Pittsburgh La Quinta was booked up and Cleveland was only 2 hours away. It worked out because the Indians game the following day was a day game anyways.



Proogressive field, home of the Indians was dissapointing. On a Sunday afternoon, attendance was barely more than a third of capacity, and in a bland stadium to boot. This place didn't seem to have a lot of character, just a billion luxury boxes squeezed in. At least there was a guy beating a large drum in the outfield, and a couple of people sporting Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn jerseys. One even had the matching glasses.

I didn't see much else in Cleveland before packing up this morning and heading west, to Chicago. Great news right? Making progress, about to go catch a Cubs game on Tuesday. I was in great spirits, until I realized that I had misread my manic scribbles that I call my schedule. Instead of heading to Chicago, I should have been on my way to Detroit. The cubs won't be in town until Friday. I had been planning to go to a Tigers game, but in my haste, went straight to the windy city.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do. I still might turn around and head to Detroit. I'm going to see if I can modify my reservations here in Chicago (made them with points). If not, I'll probably just stay longer here and sightsee.

And hey, maybe it'll give me a reason to stay in that super fancy downtown La Quinta. Looks pretty slick, and it's almost next door to the Sears tower.

I'm in Cleveland, OH. PNC was really fun. It's a shame the Pirates suck so bad.

Wow, capacity at PNC park is only 37,000.

As promised, more photos

Beginning with New York. After spending the night in my posh LQ hotel in Baltimore, I made my way to New York. I'm just glad is was a Saturday and not a weekday, because traffic sucked. Not only that, but I wouldn't be surprised if my alignment is off now. The roads in New York and CT are awful. But I made it, and that's all that counts.

Proof, that I'm actually on vacation and not just posting some random strangers photos from my couch at home. I attended the Mets game with my buddy Jacob, who was good enough to meet me at the stadium.

He met me so early in fact, that we were two of the very few people already in attendance for batting practice. In this photo, you can see the batting cage at home plate, as well as the tarps they lay out to protect the field from all the foot traffic during practice.

We did have one visitor share BP with us though. A native New Yorker I'm sure.

The game was fun, it was a matchup of Santana pitching for the Mets an Cueto going up for the Reds. Both excellent pitchers, but Santana was in top form, going 7 innings while allowing no runs. The Mets scored 4 and Frankie Rodriguez closed out the game in the 9th, even though it was a non-save situation. All in all a fun outing. We even ended up with tin lunch pails that had Mets logos on them. That will go well with my Diamondbacks nightlight that I pickup up in Phoenix.

From NY it was on to Boston. Parking in Boston was a bit of an adventure, and I eventually settled on a lot that was at least a mile from the stadium, but only charged $15. I was expecting to miss the entirety of the first inning given my parking problems, but I only missed the first two outs of the game. Unfortunately, the view from my seat was unspectacular. The Red Sox website had warned of an "obstructed view" and they weren't kidding. My seat was parked directly behind a giant I-beam, forcing me to lean to the side to watch the field. I believe I posted a photo a few entries down showing my viewpoint. Thankfully, the seatholders next to me had scooted down to the row in front and allowed me use of their seats until they were kicked out. Thankfully that never happened, so we both enjoyed improved views throughout the game. I can't seem to upload images from my phone to this computer right now, but I snapped a couple with it while I was there.

Since then, MLB games have gone on hold for their All-Star break, so I've been hanging out in DC. I went sightseeing yesterday. So much that I was too tired to get out and do anything today.