The Autumn of Jim

I never use the word autumn, but I couldn't call this "The Fall of Jim" for obvious reasons.  Today was like waking up on Christmas morning.  I'll get to that, but first, a recap of the summer.

This was my first summer not working since I was 15.  On the first day of camp, Bobby and I got breakfast at Tim's Shipwreck Diner in Northport, one of Brother Robert's favorites.  That was symbolic.  The first three weeks of summer were especially busy for me.  I saw baseball games in Houston, Seattle, and Atlanta.  Seattle easily took the crown for best retractable roof stadium in baseball.  The only one I haven't been to yet is SkyDome, and I'm pretty confident it won't beat Safeco Field.  My trip to Atlanta was a lot of fun.  The only other time I was there was in 2006 when Notre Dame opened the season against Georgia Tech.  It was good to see Dennis and we did a lot of fun stuff.

Without a doubt, the highlight of the summer was my week in England.  I had wanted to go for a long time and Pete's wedding was a great reason to go.  London was amazing.  The only thing I didn't like about London was the lack of American sports.  I enjoyed the history associated with London and Canterbury Cathedral.  Wimbledon was the first professional tennis that I had ever been to in person.  That was a lot of fun.  I thought about going to the US Open this year, but that didn't happen.  Maybe next year.  The only thing I didn't like about the trip was being out of the United States for the Fourth of July.  Hopefully that won't happen again.

After the first three weeks, I got a little bored.  I did have two more fun trips, Valley Forge-Philadelphia and the Halls of Fame.  But it was weird not having anything to do most of the time.  I slept late for a lot of the summer, which was nice.  I did more preparation for school than I've ever done before.  And I did a lot of exercise.  So I didn't waste my time, but it was weird.

It was really weird not being at camp this year.  My best friends from camp all left before I did, but I found myself missing a lot of people that were still there.  I went to two wing nights and it was good to see a lot people there.  But there were still some people that I didn't get to see (the under 21 crowd).  The day before I went to Philadelphia was the last day of camp.  I was leaving early in the morning so that I could get there early for Valley Forge.  My plan was to watch the Dodger game and then go to sleep early.  Then I got a text from Connor at 9:30 inviting me to a camp party.  I hadn't seen him in almost a full year, so I had to go.  I was much too old to be there, but it was good to see Connor, Rob, Mike, Tom, James, Miller, Rudy, etc. (sorry if I left anybody out).  So I got to see most of the people that I wanted to see.  I actually ran into a couple of my favorite campers the last couple of days.  One of my favorite campers of all time is working there now.  She sent me a message on facebook telling me that she was annoyed at me for not coming to visit.  I laughed because it reminded me of many conversations I had with her when I worked there.

I missed this kid.  He didn't post this picture on facebook because of the red eye, so I hope he doesn't mind.

Speaking of the Dodgers, they went into summer playing some bad baseball.  On my last day of work, they lost to put their record at 30-42.  Their record over the next 50 games was 42-8.  If they win at least one of the next two with the Padres, they will have lost only one series during my entire summer vacation.  It was looking like it would be a miserable season and then they turned into must watch nightly TV for me.

So that was my summer.  When I was younger, I hated fall.  Summer has always been my favorite season and I never wanted to go back to school.  Over the years, going back to school got easier and I realized just how good sports are in the fall.  You have September and October baseball and the start of football.  There's nothing not to like about that.  Right now the Dodgers have a 10.5 game lead in the NL West.  I can't stay up late all the time like I did over the summer, so hopefully they'll wrap up the division quickly.  My plan is to watch every Kershaw start for the rest of the season, even if it's a Monday game at 10:10.  But other than that, I'll watch on weekends and when they play early games.  Once the playoff start, I won't miss a game unless I'm traveling for football.  You never know what can happen in the playoffs, but I think this is the best Dodger team I've seen.  Their pitching with Kershaw, Greinke, Ryu, and even Nolasco gives them a chance against anybody.  And I really like they way their lineup is constructed.  There are no easy outs (even their pitchers are the best hitting pitchers in the league).  They've got a chance this year.

Right now, we're just a few hours away from the start of Brian Kelly's fourth season at Notre Dame.  Baseball is my favorite sport, but the Notre Dame football team is the team I care about more than anybody else.  I mean, I lived with Notre Dame football legend Kyle Charters.  As much as I love Clayton Kershaw, I never lived with him.  Anyway, I got up early this morning and played basketball.  Now I have my Tommy Rees jersey on over the ND shirt that one of my favorite students gave me my first year teaching so I'm ready to go.  I doubt Kelly will be able to duplicate what he did last year, but I still think this should be a good season, probably the second best of his four at Notre Dame.

I'm going to four games this year.  At least that's the plan right now.  I'm going to Oklahoma, Arizona State, USC, and Navy.  I never expected to win the lottery for Oklahoma, but I did.  Arizona State in Jerry World should be fun.  I've never been to Dallas before and I get to hang out with Wilhelm.  I have to see us beat USC in person, just like I had to see us beat Michigan in person last year.  So I was going to that game even if I didn't win the lottery (it actually turned out to be not very hard to get a ticket anyway).  And I applied for Navy thinking that I'd lose in the lottery for Oklahoma and USC.  I have a place to stay with Jon in his last year of law school, so there's no reason not to go.  Of course, last year I never thought I'd end up going to the National Championship Game.  I don't expect to get back there this year, but if we do, I'll do whatever I can to get to Pasadena.

And that should be my fall.  I'm looking forward to teaching this year more than I've looked forward to any other year before.  I guess that's what smaller classes, teaching social studies two periods a day, and a good amount of preparation over the summer will do for me.  My travel plans aren't as exotic as they were over the summer, but I'm really looking forward to seeing Notre Dame football and some old college friends.  Hopefully I'll see some basketball and maybe hockey games over the winter and then I'll get back to crossing baseball stadiums off the list in the spring.

Go Dodgers!  Go Irish!

We found something to thank Canada for

Dr. James Naismith, the inventor of basketball.

The day after my trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame, my dad and I headed to the Basketball Hall of Fame.  We spent the night in Albany, which is about halfway from the Baseball Hall of Fame to the Basketball Hall of Fame.  As we were on our way on Sunday morning, I thought of the Bill Simmons Hall of Fame Pyramid (the link is his original version, Basketball-Reference.com has his updated version, but it doesn't show how the levels are divided).  What I didn't remember is that he originally had the idea for the Baseball Hall of Fame.  I'm going to disagree with Simmons.  The Baseball Hall of Fame is fine.  And he had Koufax on Level 4 and not Level 5, which is ridiculous.  But for the Basketball Hall of Fame, it's probably a good idea.

We got to the Basketball Hall of Fame around noon.  It's a very different experience from the Baseball Hall of Fame.  The entire town of Cooperstown is dedicated to baseball.  The Basketball Hall of Fame is in a little shopping center right off the interstate.  Like the Baseball Hall of Fame, you start at the top and work your way down.  Unlike the Baseball Hall of Fame, you start with the members of the Hall of Fame and then see other stuff.  The Building is shaped like a big basketball.  On the second and third floor, you can walk around and see stuff and then down below on the first floor is a basketball court.  When we arrived, there were a couple of games going on.  It was pretty cool to have the sport being played down below.  You could look over the railing and watch the games if you wanted.

The Hall of Fame is appropriately named for Dr. Naismith (possibly my favorite Canadian of all time).

I love the Bird-Magic rivalry, but they should be replaced by Russell and Chamberlain in this picture.  Or just Bill Russell.  Actually that would be better.  Wilt Chamberlain doesn't belong with the two greatest basketball players of all time.

So anyway, we started at the top with the Hall of Famers.  You work your way clockwise around the circle.  They have a display that goes around with a paragraph on each Hall of Famer and some artifacts and there are pictures of the Hall of Famers on the ceiling above.  It's really not as impressive as the plaque gallery in the Baseball Hall of Fame.  I mentioned that the Baseball Hall of Fame's first class was five of the all time greats of baseball.  I barely recognize the Baskeball Hall of Fame's first class.  Check out the inductees.  There were seventeen inductees in the first class (two of which were entire teams, including the Original Celtics who played in Madison Square Garden).  Of the seventeen, the only ones I had heard of were Phog Allen, James Naismith, George Mikan, and Amos Alonzo Stagg.  The only ones that I really knew well were Naismith and Mikan.  So anyway, I actually read a lot of the paragraphs, especially the Celtics and some other guys like Celtic rivals (especially the owner of the Dodgers), Adrian Dantley, Michael Jordan, and Corey Robinson's father.  The coolest artifact was one of Red Auerbach's victory cigars.  The biggest omission was that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's paragraph didn't mention his outstanding performance as Roger Murdock in Airplane!

Red's victory cigar

Bill Russell, the greatest basketball player of all time.

I loved Larry Bird growing up.  I didn't have much other than that as a Celtics fan growing up until Paul Pierce came around.

One of the owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers

Corey Robinson's father

After that, we went down to the second floor.  There were a lot of good exhibits there, but it didn't really compare to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  The best artifact down there was the ball from when Notre Dame ended UCLA's 88 game winning streak (we were also the last team to beat them before the streak started, the same thing happened with Oklahoma's 47 game winning streak in football, but Oklahoma tied Pittsburgh the week after they lost to us before starting that winning streak).  There were displays on some of the legendary teams on the college and NBA level.  There was stuff on UCLA, North Carolina, etc. for college.  For the NBA, the displays on the Celtics and Lakers were the biggest, but there were also displays for the Knicks, Bulls, Spurs, Pistons, and 76ers (I think that was it).  It didn't really go chronologically.  The Celtics display was their entire franchise history.  I would have liked a display on Russell vs. Wilt, another one on Bird vs. Magic, another one on Jordan, and another one on Duncan vs. Shaq.  The Baseball Hall of Fame pretty much had everything I would have wanted.  The Basketball Hall of Fame had some good stuff, but it left me wanting more.

One of my favorite basketballs in the world.

The greatest franchise in basketball history

I liked this for obvious reasons.  It was like the Babe Ruth and Ted Williams statues at the Baseball Hall of Fame.  They should have had one for Magic Johnson also.

Not quite the wingspan of Kevin Durant

A future Hall of Famer and my favorite basketball player ever.

We finished on the first floor with the basketball court.  By then, there were no games going on so anybody could shoot around.  I drained a few threes.  What was cool was that on the side they had old baskets and backboards.  So you could make a shot in a peach basket (with the bottom cut out so the ball would come down).

When the hat goes backwards, I get serious.  Just like knockout at camp back in the day.  Great camerawork by my dad.  My form looks pretty good.

I made a shot in the peach basket.  It was weird shooting on a basket with no backboard.

The easiest way to describe the difference between the two Halls of Fame is by saying that going to Cooperstown is at least a full-day event.  I was pretty satisfied that we saw everything that we needed to see, but I could have spent another day there.  We were at the Basketball Hall of Fame for about three hours.  It's something that's worth doing on your way to or from Boston, but you really don't need to make an entire day out of it.  It had been 21 years since I was at the Basketball Hall of Fame (the only thing I remember from that time is seeing Bob Lanier's shoe, which is still there by the way) so I'm glad I went, but it definitely wasn't as much fun as the Baseball Hall of Fame.  They should probably give Simmons's pyramid idea a try.

Bob Lanier's shoe

20 Years Later

I went to Cooperstown with my dad and my brothers in 1993.  I don't remember much of it.  I remember that the plaques of the Hall of Famers were in a temporary location because they were doing renovations or something.  I remember the town having shops with lots of baseball stuff.  And I remember going to Doubleday Field.  But it had been a long time and Cooperstown isn't that far away, so I wanted to get there again.  My dad and I took the trip this past Saturday.

We parked and took a trolley to the Hall of Fame.  Before going in, we got lunch at the Doubleday Cafe.  There was a lot of baseball stuff on the walls.  I had a chicken sandwich and an Old Slugger Ale (brewed by the Cooperstown Brewing Company).  I had to have the local beer.  It was fine, but nothing special.

Then we went to the Hall of Fame.  The building looked much smaller than I expected on the outside.  But it definitely did not disappoint on the inside.  You start by going to the third floor where they show you a 13 minute video in this theater that is designed to look like a baseball stadium (really well done).  From there, you work you way from the top of the museum down to the bottom.

It looks small on the outside, but it's awesome on the inside.

There was so much at the Hall of Fame and it was all great.  I can't describe it all, but I'll get to my favorite things.  There was a great exhibit on Babe Ruth.  There were lots of great pictures of Ruth and other stuff like his bat from the called shot in the 1932 World Series and his contract with the Red Sox.  They also had his locker from the original Yankee Stadium.  (Speaking of Yankee Stadium lockers, they also had DiMaggio's locker and Mantle's locker.  Mantle's locker was exactly the same as Ruth's, no upgrades at Yankee Stadium from Ruth to Mantle.)  

Babe Ruth's locker

They had lots of great pictures of Babe Ruth, but they didn't have my favorite one, Babe Ruth in a Notre Dame jersey.

The Hall of Fame does a great job just telling the history of baseball.  They have displays on all the great teams and players over the years.  There's stuff on Stan Musial, the Brooklyn Dodgers, Ted Williams, etc. from the old days and then there's stuff on the Reds and A's in the 1970s and Mike Schmidt and George Brett (and his pine tar bat) in the 1980s.  Speaking of Ted Williams, one of my favorite things was the Ted Williams strike zone.  The Ted Williams strike zone was created by Williams and had balls that were different colors showing what he believed his batting average was by pitch location.  Belt high and down the middle was .400 (perhaps an underestimate) and out of the strike zone down and away was .230.

The Ted Williams strike zone

Of course, I took an interest in the Dodgers stuff.  One exhibit had lots of stuff about old stadiums.  I liked the Ebbets Field display of course.  If I could go back in time, I'd definitely see a game at Ebbets Field.  It's kind of hard for me to imagine what that was like because almost all the video and pictures that I've seen are in black and white and not the best quality, but they had a nice big color picture of Ebbets field that I liked.  The display mentioned that the official scorer's decision on hits and errors was showed to the crowd by lighting up either the H or the E in the Schaefer beer advertisement in right field.  My dad remembered that.  They also had a cornerstone from Ebbets Field.  There was a display on Jackie Robinson and the integration of Major League Baseball.  They also had Sandy Koufax's glove and one of his Cy Young Awards.

It's not often that I've seen a see a picture of Ebbets Field like this.  The yellow home plate is from one of the bullpens.

As I teach my students, Jackie Robinson wasn't the best baseball player ever, but he was the most important baseball player ever.

One of Koufax's Cy Youngs.

The Sandy Koufax Cy Young was in an exhibit on baseball records.  The picture above shows Koufax's record of 382 strikeouts in a season, which Nolan Ryan beat by one in 1973.  Within that exhibit was a big display on Hank Aaron, the true all time home run king.  It was also cool to see what some of the records were before they were broken.  I already knew this, but one of my favorite facts about Babe Ruth is that the all time home run record before he broke it was 138 by Roger Connor.  So Babe Ruth set the record when he hit his 139th home run.  He was a long way from being done.

The uniform Hank Aaron was wearing when he became baseball's home run king, which he still is today.

There was a great World Series exhibit with lots of artifacts and pictures from the World Series.  They have pictures of Yogi Berra jumping into Don Larson's arms after the perfect game, the Willie Mays catch, and the Sandy Amoros catch.  They have the ball that Orel Hershiser struck out Tony Phillips with to end the 1988 World Series and Mariano Rivera's hat from the 2009 World Series and lots of other stuff.  They also have all the World Series rings.

World Series rings and buttons and stuff

We saw a couple of other things before seeing the best part, the plaque gallery.  When you walk into the plaque gallery, right away you see the Class of 1936, the first class.  The inductees go around the room in chronological order, except the first class is in the back right in the middle.  That class is an awesome first class.  It's kind of nice that the Baseball Hall of Fame didn't exist in 1915 so that the first class could be five of the greatest players of all time:  Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, and Ty Cobb.  (By the way, Ty Cobb go the most votes with 222, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner both had 215.  Who were the morons who didn't vote for Babe Ruth?)  There are statues that are carved out of wood of Babe Ruth and Ted Williams.  They are both really cool and Ted Williams is one of my favorite players and one of the five greatest hitters of all time, but I wish it was a Walter Johnson statue instead.  It would be nice to have the greatest hitter of all time and the greatest pitcher of all time (I'll settle for Sandy Koufax, that would be really cool actually).  I read a lot of the plaques there, especially the Dodgers in the Hall of Fame.  One thing I noticed was that Jackie Robinson's plaque was not the original.  Jackie Robinson was inducted in 1962.  His plaque said copyright 2008 at the bottom.  It also had a lot more writing on it than all the other players from the early 1960s, so I suppose they added some stuff to his.  One thing that I really liked about Jackie Robinson and several other players was that if they served in the military, there was a little medallion below their plaque indicating what war and branch of the military they served in.  Morgan Bulkeley was the only one who served in the Civil War.  I didn't know who that was, but he was the first National League president and he served in the United States Army in the Civil War.

Five of the greatest players of all time

The greatest player of all time.

Sorry Ted, I want to replace you with Walter Johnson.

The most important player of all time.

I definitely thought of players who don't belong in the Hall of Fame.  Bert Blyleven doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame.  I'm sorry, he just doesn't.  If we're playing the old Mike and the Mad Dog game where you go through his seasons and pick which ones were Hall of Fame years, I'm giving him three (1973, 1984, and 1989).  To be sure, he had some other really good seasons and he had a very good career, but the Hall of Fame should be for the all time greats, and he's not one of them.  I also thought about how steroids have hurt the game.  I've mentioned how if Fred McGriff was clean and he wasn't being compared to guys who were cheating, you'd think of him as a Hall of Famer.  He hit the same number of home runs as Lou Gehrig, but he doesn't stand out because he played at the same time as Barroid, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire.  Between people like Bert Blyleven getting in and steroids, the Hall of Fame has not had the most impressive players inducted in the last 10 years (sort it by year to see it easily).  There have been a lot of Negro League players inducted recently and that's good.  But of players that the average baseball fan knows, I'm going to say that only Wade Boggs, Cal Ripken, Tony Gwynn, and Rickey Henderson stand out as no doubt Hall of Famers (I think Cal Ripken is overrated, but 3,184 hits and 431 home runs for a guy who played shortstop for most of his career is a no doubt Hall of Famer).

After that, we went to Doubleday Field and saw the end of a game there.  Too bad the team that my friends Chris and David played on wasn't there, because they definitely would have beaten both teams I saw playing.  After Doubleday Field, we went to mass (4:30 mass on Saturday for Sunday) at St. Mary's, which was just a couple blocks away.

Me at Doubleday Field

I thought we had seen everything at the Hall of Fame, but I wanted to go back just to make sure.  Before we got there, I realized, we didn't see Vin Scully.  After doing some research on my phone, I found out that broadcasters are not officially Hall of Famers.  Winners of the Ford C. Frick Award are put on a plaque in the library in the Hall of Fame and make a speech at the induction ceremony, but they are not officially Hall of Famers.  But I had to see the Ford C. Frick Award plaque.  Right in that area was a cool exhibit on baseball in the movies.  And I looked out the window and saw two statues on the side of the building.  One was a pitcher and the other was a catcher.  I was able to read one of the plaques and find out that they were Johnny Podres and Roy Campanella.  I got really excited.  That was the last thing we saw before taking the trolley back to the parking lot.

Vin Scully won the Ford C. Frick Award in 1982.

Johnny Podres pitches to Roy Campanella, just like Game 7 of the 1955 World Series.

I'm really glad I got back to Cooperstown 20 years later.  I had high expectations and the Hall of Fame exceeded those expectations.  I mentioned the lack of great Hall of Famers in recent years.  Next year Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Frank Thomas are all eligible for the first time.  I have no doubt Maddux and Glavine will get in.  As long as Frank Thomas is clean, he's another no doubt Hall of Famer.  Greg Maddux is the best starting pitcher I've ever seen.  I'd probably take Pedro Martinez or Randy Johnson at their best, but Maddux had a better career than any starter I've ever seen.  In the years to come, Martinez, Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., Mariano Rivera (0.70 ERA in 141 innings in the postseason, that's ridiculous), and Derek Jeter will all get in the Hall of Fame.  There's no doubt about any of those guys.  Hopefully it won't take another 20 years for me to get back to the Hall of Fame and see those guys.

Valley Forge

Well, the summer is coming to an end.  I did most of my traveling during the first three weeks of summer (Houston, England, Seattle, Atlanta).  I haven't done a lot since then, but I wanted to finish strong.  I was able to take some small trips to enjoy my last two weekends without football.  I'll get to the trip I just got back from a little later, but first I'll finish the trip I took last weekend.

I already blogged about seeing Clayton Kershaw in Philadelphia, but I didn't talk about the first part of my day.  My brother picked me up when I got to Philadelphia and we went to Valley Forge.  When I was in London, I was struck by the history of the city.  It was the place where Winston Churchill had to stay underground as the British fought for their lives.  If they hadn't succeeded, perhaps nobody would have stopped Hitler.  The Battle of Saratoga (fall 1777) is widely considered the turning point of the Revolution.  But the Revolution could have easily died at Valley Forge (winter 1777-78).  George Washington kept his army together through a terrible winter (although it was not their worst winter encampment).  There were some politicians and other military leaders that wanted Washington out at the time.  Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben trained the army and made them into a legitimate fighting force that could go head to head with the British.  If not for that, maybe we don't win the Revolution.

What I didn't really expect was how huge Valley Forge is.  I guess there were thousands of soldiers that needed a place to stay.  They picked Valley Forge for its elevation in case the British attacked and they also wanted to stay somewhere that they could keep an eye on the British in Philadelphia.  The first thing we saw was the Visitor Center, which is a small museum.  That was our first stop.  There were some cool artifacts in there.  Right by the Visitor Center you can watch a short film about the winter at Valley Forge.  From there, we walked and saw some recreations of the huts the soldiers built when they arrived in December 1777.  None of the originals exist anymore, but the recreations give you an idea of how terrible the conditions must have been.

It was a beautiful summer day.  You have to imagine these huts in the dead of winter.

God Bless our military.  This is what it was like at Valley Forge and I'm sure things are pretty crappy in Afghanistan.

After that, we got back in the car and drove to General Washington's Headquarters.  Before you get to Washington's Headquarters, you walk through a former train station that now serves as another little museum.  I learned something there.  I was wondering why von Steuben was not an honorary American citizen like the Marquis de Lafayette (my favorite Frenchman of all time, he was with Washington at Valley Forge).  The reason is that von Steuben later became an actual American citizen.  Washington's Headquarters were a house that already stood at Valley Forge.  The house still stands today.  It has changed over the years, but they've tried to restore it to what it was probably like when Washington was there.

General Washington's Headquarters

Washington's bedroom

Apparently this statue is one of the most accurate representations of what Washington looked like.

We got back into the car and went to our last stop, the statue of von Steuben.  It was right by where he drilled the army.  The former Prussian army officer arrived at Valley Forge in February 1778 and Washington made him the Acting Inspector General.  He spoke little English at first.  He wrote a training manual in French, which was then translated into English.  Despite the obstacles, he succeeded and the army was ready to defeat the British when the winter was over.  It took a few years, but surviving the winter at Valley Forge helped the Americans defeat the British.

Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben.  Easily my favorite German of all time.

I've already said that I believe George Washington is the greatest American ever.  It was really cool to be somewhere that Washington was during one of the most challenging times of his life.  George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben are American heroes.  And they all spent a winter at Valley Forge.  It's definitely worth visiting if you love history and America.  God Bless America!

The Clayton Kershaw Experience

My love for Clayton Kershaw is well known (see also this and this).  This year he's become the unquestioned best pitcher in baseball.  After his performance last night, his ERA is 1.80.  Matt Harvey is having a great year, but he's 0.45 behind Kershaw in ERA.  Harvey has the second best ERA in the league, but that's a big difference.  To give you some perspective on how big of a difference that is, there are seven guys in the Majors that are closer to Harvey in ERA than Harvey is to Kershaw.  There are three starting pitchers with a WHIP less than 1.  Kershaw is at 0.85.  To be fair, the other two pitchers below 1 also have ridiculous WHIPs (Harvey at 0.89 and Scherzer at 0.9), but they're not as good as Kershaw.

Anyway, I was thinking about going to see the Dodgers in Philadelphia.  This was the last weekend of the year that I could go to a baseball game.  I'm busy next weekend (more on that in a week or so) and football starts the weekend after that.  I was waiting to see if Kershaw would pitch against the Phillies.  Once I saw that he was pitching on Saturday, I had to get there to see him one more time before the season ended.

Clayton Kershaw is a no hitter waiting to happen.  I've already written about getting excited about the possibility of a no hitter.  I say you get excited after five innings.  With Clayton Kershaw, I get excited after three innings.  If he gets through the lineup once with no problems, the no hitter watch is on.  So maybe there is a 0.6% chance of Kershaw pitching a no hitter in any given start (Sandy Koufax pitched no hitters in 1.27% of his starts, I'm giving Kershaw slightly less than half of Koufax's probability, probably just a little conservative considering Homer Bailey currently has pitched no hitters in 1.48% of his starts).  There's nothing that I want to see in person at a baseball game more than a no hitter, and I wasn't going to take the chance that I'd regret not taking a short trip to Philadelphia on a Saturday in the summer because Kershaw pitched his first no hitter.

Last night Kershaw cruised through the first four innings.  In the top of the fifth, he had an RBI double to make the score 2-0.  At that point, the Phillies fan sitting next to me said, "The only point of staying is to see if this guy can pitch a perfect game."  There are plenty of great pitchers that never pitched a perfect game so I won't predict that for Kershaw, but I believe the no hitter is coming one day.  Maybe not his next start, maybe not the start after that, but maybe the start after that (I stole that from this SNL skit).  Last night wasn't the night though.  Kershaw gave up a hit to the first batter in the fifth.  The only trouble he got in was in the eighth, but he managed to get out of a jam.  After eight scoreless by Kershaw, Juan Uribe put the game away in the top of the ninth with a three run homer and the Dodgers won 5-0.

It was definitely worth seeing Kershaw in person even though he didn't pitch his first no hitter.  It's cool to see how he just demoralizes the other team's fans when he's on.  The only bad part of being there and not watching it on TV is that you don't fully appreciate how great his pitches are.  Unless you're sitting really close, you're not going to see the downward movement on his curveball.  I could tell when he threw the curveball because it's much slower than his other pitches and the batters usually take their worst swings against his curve, but I couldn't see how it was moving from where I was sitting.  That's the only drawback.  I wish I could see him pitch at home more often.  The atmosphere at Dodger Stadium on Opening Day was amazing as he was dominating the Giants (which happens quite frequently by the way, he owns them).

My view of the best pitcher in baseball on the mound.

I've now seen Kershaw pitch in person five times in his career.  In those games, he's 3-0 (the Dodgers are 5-0) with a 1.06 ERA, 0.88 WHIP, and 33 strikeouts in 34 innings pitched.  In the three games that I've seen him pitch this year, he's driven in as many runs as he's given up (2).  The dude is awesome.

My only other trip to Citizens Bank Park was in June 2011, so I've said very little about it on the blog in the past.  This time I had better seats (up high behind home plate instead of up high down the right field line) thanks to the Phillies not being nearly as good now as they were then.  They have a lot of good Phillies stuff out in center field behind the batter's eye.  It's the Phillies version of what Citi Field should have been for the Mets.  There's also a really good beer selection, which is very spread out at various stands around the lower concourse so my brother and I were able to get beers at two different stands without waiting in line at either stand.  I got what might have been my last Summer Ale of the year on tap (I have plenty in reserve in cans and bottles for the fall).

Sam Adams Summer Ale at a baseball game.  I think that's what heaven is going to be like.

Mike Schmidt, John Kruk, Curt, Schilling, and Harry Kalas among others.

The Phillies do a good job of celebrating their history, even if they've lost more games than any other franchise in the history of baseball.

There are a couple of things that I would change if I could.  First, I would make the stadium a little bigger.  The capacity is fine (although it could probably be a little bigger too), but the field is too small (just a matter of personal taste as I prefer pitchers' parks to hitters' parks) and although the concourse in center is a nice little area, it's a little too narrow.  And it's not like they had to fit the stadium into a small area.  It's in the Philadelphia stadium district (like the Hammock Hut, Hammocks-R-Us, Put-Your-Butt-There, and Swing Low Sweet Chariot were all in Cypress Creek's Hammock district).  You have Citizens Bank Park, the Wells Fargo Center, and Lincoln Financial Field in the same area surrounded by parking lots.  There was room to make the stadium a little bigger, but it's not a big deal.  The other thing is I would have made either the left field or right field fence lower (probably left field because they use the right field fence as an out of town scoreboard).  The only part of the park where an outfielder can take away a home run is in center field.  Why limit the most exciting play in baseball to a very small part of the outfield (which also happens to be the part of the field farthest away from home plate)?  The Mets fixed that at Citi Field.  The Phillies should follow the Mets' lead there.

I might go to another game at Citi Field or Yankee Stadium before the season is over, but if not, this was my ninth and final game of the season.  Those nine games were at eight different stadiums (two at Dodger Stadium), including four stadiums that I hadn't been to before.  My season started and ended with Clayton Kershaw dominating (17 innings, 0 runs allowed as a pitcher and 1 home run, a double, and 2 RBIs as a batter in those two games).  Hopefully that's how the season will end for the Dodgers in October.

This is where Notre Dame beat Army in 2010

Yesterday I met my brother Tom for a tour of Yankee Stadium.  But first we got lunch at John's in Times Square around 11:45.  John's has the best pizza I've had in the city.  I hadn't been there in four years and then I went twice in four days.  Before going with my brother, I met my former roommate/Notre Dame football legend Kyle for dinner on Saturday night.  It's right up there with Little Vincent's for the best pizza I've had.

Tom's hippie vegan slices are on the right.

After John's, we killed a little time by walking around Times Square.  As we were walking, we came across Sardi's, which I only know from Seinfeld.

KRAMER: So listen, I'm going to grab a bite to eat at Sardi's. You wanna go?
JERRY: Are you taking the Tony to Sardi's?
KRAMER: The Tony is taking me to Sardi's.

Then we took the subway to the Bronx for our 1:40 tour.  I've done five stadium tours at four different stadiums now (Dodger Stadium twice) and this was the best tour because it was the first time I did the stadium tour with the team on the road.  The tour begins in the Great Hall, which has some banners of Yankee legends, but not much else going on.  Tom said it was like "the Yankees' basement."

The Great Hall

From the Great Hall, you go to the Yankees Museum, which I had never been to before.  It's not that big, but it's pretty cool.  In the middle were statues of Don Larson and Yogi Berra with lots of signed baseballs in between them.  There was also a case with every Yankees World Series ring.  Around the outside of the room were displays on Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and George Steinbrenner.  They had Thurman Munson's locker stall and a replica of the current clubhouse locker stalls.  They also have the original model of the new stadium and the World Series trophies.  There are only five trophies because as I learned on the Dodger Stadium tour, they used to give the team that won the World Series a bat (the Dodgers have two trophies and four bats for their championships).  The Mantle display was the biggest, but I think they change things up in there from time to time.

The greatest player of all time and possibly the most underrated player of all time.

You can see that the World Series trophy changed in 2000.

Next on the tour was Monument Park.  Monument Park is really cool, but it's also one of my biggest issues with the stadium.  It's placed in a terrible spot.  It's like a cave down there.  At the old stadium, it was in left center and you could see it on TV or at the stadium when you were watching the game.  Now it's in center field below the restaurant or whatever it is they have out there and you can only really see it when you're in there.  They should have just put it in the same spot as the old stadium.  It would have pushed the left field bleachers back a little, but that's the way it was at the old stadium and it was fine.  Anyway, in Monument Park, you have the five monuments for Lou Gehrig, Miller Huggins, Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle.  You also have all the retired numbers and lots of plaques for the players and some other people such as Bob Sheppard (the voice of God).  The worst part of Monument Park is the George Steinbrenner plaque.  Big Stein definitely deserves a plaque in Monument Park, but there's no way it should be bigger than Babe Ruth's monument.  It's right by the five monuments and it just stands out so much.  Steinbrenner just isn't as important as Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, and Huggins.

This gives you a good look at three of the monuments with Steinbrenner's ginormous plaque in the backround.

The greatest player ever.

Steinbrenner's ridiculous plaque.

He beat the Yankees in the 1955 World Series.

The manager of the Dodgers.

They also had plaques for masses said by Paul VI and Benedict XVI.

September 11 memorial.

After Monument Park we went to the Yankee dugout.  The dugout has been standard on the stadium tours I've done and that's usually the highlight of the tour, but not this time.  Because the Yankees were on the road, we got to go into the Yankee clubhouse.  Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures.  We also didn't get to see where Alex Rodriguez keeps his steroids.  Derek Jeter had an extra locker stall for all his fan mail.  As we were leaving the clubhouse, Tom noticed the traveling secretary's office right next to the clubhouse.  Unfortunately we didn't see the assistant to the traveling secretary's office (there might not actually be an assistant to the traveling secretary), but somebody did mention George Costanza.  Our tour guide said he used to get more questions about George Costanza.  He said that the traveling secretary wanted to change his title because of Seinfeld.  Fortunately, the Yankees said no.

Me and Tom in the dugout.  I had to wear my Brooklyn Dodgers hat.

While it's not the old stadium, there's still something about Yankee Stadium.  The tour guide did less talking than the tour guides I've had on other tours.  You can let the Yankee Museum, Monument Park, and the Yankee clubhouse speak for themselves.  It's a shame Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter won't be playing there much longer.