New York Baseball and New Stadium Rankings

Way back in May, I went to a Dodgers-Mets game that I never blogged about.  It was the last of a three-game series.  The Dodgers had won the first two and were going for the sweep.  Clayton Kershaw was not pitching in the series, so I purposely picked the game I went to so that I could see Zack Greinke.  I had never seen him in person and he was clearly the second best pitcher on the Dodgers.  Bad decision.  The Mets had a 3-1 lead after five.  Justin Turner hit a home run to tie it in the seventh, but the Mets scored two more to win 5-3.  Going into that game, Turner was hitting .218.  He's hit just a little bit better since then.  He would lead the NL in batting average if he had enough at bats to qualify.  I love that guy.  He's been huge for the Dodgers as a pinch hitter and as a starter with the injuries to Juan Uribe.

Our view at Citi Field

The only other notable thing about that game for the Dodgers was what was going on in the field.  It was Matt Kemp's last start in center field and there was a reason it was his last start in center field.  He made an error and if I remember correctly, there were a few balls he didn't get to.  Future center fielder Yasiel Puig made this catch.  The Dodgers had been horrendous in the field up to that point.  They've been solid since then.  Definitely not great, but solid.

I came away from that game disappointed with Citi Field.  My dad and I sat up high between home plate and the first base dugout.  Our view was fine.  We were in the wheelchair row of the 400 level, which is a great seat for a lot of reasons.  It's not too expensive, you can get in and out very easily, and it's elevated from the row below it so you never have people in front of you blocking your view when they get up.  But I was really disappointed with the Citi Field food selection, especially on the upper level.  I got a Sam Adams Summer Ale so the beer selection was fine, but the food selection, not so much.  I got a Pat LaFrieda hamburger.  I don't remember seeing Pat LaFrieda at Citi Field before this year, but that was all over Citi Field this year.  It was a totally bland hamburger.  Nothing special about it.  And the concession stand where I got it used to be the Keith Hernandez hamburger stand.  Keith's burgers were better and they were served with a Tootsie Pop (just like the real Keith Hernandez likes, this seemed like something out of a Seinfeld episode).  Pat LaFrieda's hamburger was like a McDonald's quarter pounder with cheese.  Lame.

Last week, I made it to Yankee Stadium with my friend Adam.  I definitely wanted to get there to say goodbye to Derek Jeter.  The Yankees were taking on the Astros.  Michael Pineda pitched well for six innings and didn't get caught with any pine tar, but the Yankees bullpen couldn't hold a 2-1 lead.  The Astros scored four in the seventh and won 5-2.  But Jeter was good.  He DHed and went 2-4 with a walk.  It was nice to see him play well one last time.  I have Mariano Rivera ranked as the greatest player I've ever seen.  Ken Griffey, Jr. would be next on my list, but I don't know if I ever saw him in person.  Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, and Pedro Martinez would all be high on the list, but I don't think I ever saw any of them in person.  Derek Jeter might be the second greatest player I ever saw in person.  I'll miss him.

Our view at Yankee Stadium

Derek Jeter gets a single.

Yankee Stadium had a better food selection than Citi Field, but the beer selection was seriously lacking.  Apparently they have no craft beer except for Yuengling.  They have no beer brewed in New York.  The Bronx has a brewery.  It's three miles away from Yankee Stadium.  I think I've only had it once at Madison Square Garden, so I can't really say how good it is, but it has to be better than a lot of the bad beer they have at Yankee Stadium.  Brooklyn has a brewery that makes some good beers.  Come on Yankees, that's weak.  I decided not to pay a ridiculous amount for a beer that probably wasn't going to be too good.  I had a Summer Ale on tap at Penn Station on the way home (probably my last one on tap for the year), so it worked out fine for me.

So both stadiums are falling in my rankings.  The fact that it's Yankee Stadium and the fact that Yankee Stadium gets better crowds than Citi Field (42,102 at Yankee Stadium and 23,416 at Citi Field for these two games) will keep Yankee Stadium ahead of Citi Field.  But Yankee Stadium really needs better beer.  I can't stress that enough.

Anyway, here are my updated stadium rankings.  I've visited some stadiums for the first time this year and some that I had been to already have moved up or down.  If I've been to a game at these stadiums since the start of the 2012 season, I've blogged about it, so I've included links.  Let's go in reverse order:

26.  SkyDome.  Toronto was fun.  Its baseball stadium needs work.
25.  US Cellular Field.  I was there in 2006.  I'm in no rush to get back.
24.  Marlins Park.  It's much better than playing in a football stadium, but I'm not much of a fan.
23.  Minute Maid Park.  There's nothing special about it.
22.  Turner Field.  It's crazy that the Braves are getting a new stadium so soon, but hopefully it will be better than Turner Field.  By the way, click on that link if you want to see how I had the stadiums ranked before this year.
21.  Progressive Field.  It's like Oriole Park, only not as good.
20.  Chase Field.  I don't like indoor baseball, but you need it in the desert.
19.  Miller Park.  Again, the roof.  But it helps when you go to a game in Milwaukee in early April.
18.  Coors Field.  It's a nice stadium, but baseball shouldn't be played at that altitude.
17.  Shea Stadium.  Totally overrated, I know, but I probably saw 50 games there.
16.  Comerica Park.  I mean considering it's in Detroit, this is a pretty good ranking.
15.  Oriole Park at Camden Yards.  It's nice, but I think it's overrated by most people.
14.  Citi Field.  You just read about Citi Field.
13.  New Yankee Stadium.  You just read about that too, but I included a link because it's a great story.
12.  Safeco Field.  They only use the roof as an umbrella.  I like that.
11.  Citizens Bank Park.  It's good.  Really close between this one and number 10.
10.  Nationals Park.  I had this one underrated before.
9.  Busch Stadium.  St. Louis is a great baseball town.  It's a good stadium, but it left me wanting more.
8.  AT&T Park.  San Francisco is full of hippies and I hate the Giants, but it is a very good baseball stadium.
7.  Kauffman Stadium.  I had high hopes for this one and I was really impressed.  It's a beautiful stadium.
6.  Wrigley Field.  I've moved it down from where I had it before because the Cubs have been so bad that it hurts the atmosphere.  The only time I was there was five years ago.  It was early in the season and the ivy hadn't grown in yet.  I would love to get back there later in the season and blog about it.
5.  Petco Park.  I really liked Petco Park, but I had to move it down a spot because of the Bud Selig Hall of Fame Plaza.  It makes no sense.  If it was in Milwaukee, fine, but Selig has no connection to San Diego.
4.  PNC Park.  Pittsburgh is an underrated city, but people do seem to realize how good their baseball stadium is.  The team has been better the last couple of years which makes the atmosphere better than a place like Wrigley Field or Petco Park.
3.  Old Yankee Stadium.  If you wanted a stadium with a great atmosphere and history, it was the old Yankee Stadium.
2.  Dodger Stadium.  I'm biased, but I love Dodger Stadium.
1.  Fenway Park.  Fenway Park is the gold standard.  I would love to get back to Fenway to see a game played when the weather is warmer than 25 degrees.  I haven't been to Fenway for a baseball game since 2010.  It would be great to get back for a baseball game and blog about it.  Maybe in 2015 (and if not for baseball in 2015, hopefully the Notre Dame-Boston College football game).

Of the stadiums I've been to, I consider the top eight on my list as the elite category.  Since I don't care about getting to Oakland or Tampa, I have four stadiums to go.  All the ones I still have to get to have some appeal to me.  My friend Wilhelm lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, so hopefully I'd see him when I make the trip to Texas to see the Rangers (who I think are the only team that I haven't seen play in person in the last ten years or so).  I was supposed to get to Cincinnati this year, but that didn't happen.  Apparently Great American Park has the best beer selection in baseball.  A trip to Minnesota to see the Twins would mean crossing at least one more state off my list (I'd try to get to a few more than just Minnesota, the Field of Dreams in Iowa would be within driving distance).  And a trip to Anaheim would mean more time in southern California, which is always a good thing.  Hopefully I'd be able to catch a Dodger game also and maybe go to Disneyland or something.

Notre Dame football starts tomorrow.  College football means that my baseball travels are done for 2014, but I have plenty of baseball left to watch on TV.  Hopefully that will include the Dodgers winning the World Series.  Go Irish!  Go Dodgers!

No Clam Chowder

My friend Darryl and I had talked about the possibility of going to Gettysburg for a while, but we could never put it together.  He was eager to see Gettysburg.  I wanted to see it, but I probably wasn't quite as eager.  I was kind of hoping to do it and combine it with some other stuff.  I had thought of road trip possibilities that would have included Gettysburg with stops at Cooperstown or Ohio baseball stadiums.  Well, I crossed those off without getting to Gettysburg (or at least I tried to in the case of Cincinnati).  So I came up with a new idea, an entire Civil War road trip.  Gettysburg, Antietam, and Harpers Ferry are all fairly close to each other.  Also, I had been trying to figure out an excuse to go to West Virginia.  I thought about minor league baseball in West Virginia.  They have three minor league teams, but they're all in the southern or western parts of the state, making them really long drives from Long Island.  But Harpers Ferry was close enough to cross West Virginia off my list.  So we got our friend Bobby in on the trip and we took a three day trip to some historical sites.

While we were planning the trip, I was talking about my goal to get to all fifty states.  Bobby and Darryl asked what I considered being in a state.  I have a pretty low threshold.  If you're in a state for any reason other than an airport layover, I count it.  I do like to do more than drive through a state, which is why I found something to do in Kansas for just a few minutes instead of just driving through it.  I explained how my only trip to New Hampshire was the day of my friend John's wedding.  The wedding was in northeast Massachusetts, not too far from the New Hampshire border.  So I did some research on Yelp to find a place in New Hampshire near the border to get some good clam chowder.  I spent about 30 minutes to an hour in New Hampshire.  Just some driving and eating clam chowder.  It's been crossed off the list.  My mistake was that I should have just kept going to Maine.  Maybe I'll get to Portland, Maine for some minor league baseball eventually.  But anyway, the joke became that my standard for being in a state was having clam chowder.

So we set out early on a Wednesday morning two weeks ago on our way to Gettysburg.  There was a ridiculous rain storm the night before.  There were flooded roads and I was worried about getting off Long Island.  It turned out to not be too bad.  We had fantastic weather when we got to Gettysburg.  Our first stop was the museum.  It's a very good museum.  You really could spend several hours there.  The first thing we saw was a film about the battle and the Gettysburg Address.  You're not going to believe this, but it was narrated by Morgan Freeman.  Then we walked around the museum for a little bit.  I enjoyed the stuff on the Gettysburg Address.  I knew that Lincoln was not the keynote speaker and that he thought his speech wasn't very good.  (Edward Everett was the keynote speaker.  He spoke for two hours, but he was very impressed with Lincoln's speech.)  I didn't realize the varied reactions at the time.  Apparently the audience was pretty impressed, but the reaction from newspapers was very mixed.  But there was lots more to see.  On our way out of the museum, we saw a statue of Abraham Lincoln.  We all took our turns taking our pictures with Lincoln and then we were off for the battlefield tour.

I wore my Notre Dame stars and stripes shirt in honor of Father Corby.  I'll get to him.

They have buses that give tours or you can do your own tour.  We bought a CD that we listened to as we drove the battlefield.  Our CD tour guide was Wayne Motts, who was really really enthusiastic about the Battle of Gettysburg.  The other highlight of the CD was that at several points they give you warnings like, "Make sure you don't hit any pedestrians as you head to the next stop," or "Make sure any children with you don't run and jump wildly on the rock formation or they slip and seriously injure themselves."  Maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but there were many places on the battlefield that could be dangerous.  Two in particular come to mind.  Little Round Top overlooks the battlefield.  It's pretty high up and there's no railing or anything to keep you from falling off.  The other one is Devil's Den.  Actually, I don't think the CD had a warning for Devil's Den.  It's a rock formation that isn't all that high, but there's definitely the potential for injury.  You can climb up and some of the rocks have spaces between them.  Falling in between could be very problematic.

A view from Little Round Top

Devil's Den

We finished Wednesday by going to dinner at a place recommended by the girl who sold us tickets for the museum.  On the way, we stopped to see the statue of Father Corby.  Father Corby gave general absolution to the Irish Brigade of the Union Army on July 2, 1863.  Besides that being awesome, I'm a fan of Father Corby because he was the president of Notre Dame from 1866-1872 and 1877-1881.  There's a replica of the Father Corby statue at Notre Dame.  The plaque by that statue at Notre Dame says that the only statues in Gettysburg that are of people other than generals are Abraham Lincoln, Father Corby, and a civilian.  There are so many statues and monuments and memorials at Gettysburg that I'm not entirely sure that's true, but quickly browsing through this website does seem to support that claim.

Father Corby

By the way, another statue we saw was of Abner Doubleday.  He was a Major General in the Union Army.  The plaque on his statue mentions his connection to baseball, but explains that there is no evidence to support the claim that he invented the game.

There's a field in Cooperstown named after him, but he didn't invent baseball.

On Thursday, we finished our battlefield tour.  I really can adequately describe the battlefield.  It's huge.  And you think about all the people that died there to save our country and I can't put it into words.  If you like America, going to Gettysburg is something I strongly recommend doing.

After that, we went to the cemetery.  There's a monument to Lincoln there.  Nearby is the Soldiers National Monument, which is approximately where he gave the Gettysburg Address (he was on a stage that no longer exists).  By the way, if you haven't seen this version of the Gettysburg Address, it's pretty awesome.

The Lincoln Address Memorial

The Soldiers National Monument stands approximately where the stage for the Gettysburg Address was.

The last thing we saw before heading to Antietam was the David Wills house.  That's the house where Lincoln stayed and finished his speech the night before delivering the speech.  It's pretty amazing to be in the place where our greatest president once was.

Abraham Lincoln slept in that bed.

From there, we headed to Antietam.  We got there right as the visitors' center closed.  Fortunately, a park ranger gave us a map of the battlefield tour.  Unfortunately, we didn't have Wayne Motts.  The map also included descriptions of all the stops, so we knew what we were looking at, but we didn't have Wayne.  The battlefield isn't nearly as big as Gettysburg (the tour was about eight miles, Gettysburg's tour was about 24).  I can't adequately describe the battlefield, but you should know that the Battle of Antietam in September 1862 was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history.  There's not nearly as much to see as there is in Gettysburg, but it's close enough that you should make the trip if you go to Gettysburg.

On Friday, we got up early to go to mass.  It was the Solemnity of the Assumption, a holy day of obligation.  So we went to an early mass at St. Joseph's in Hagerstown, Maryland.  After that, we were on our way to Harpers Ferry.  Now, I know Harpers Ferry for John Brown's raid in 1859.  What I didn't know was that it was also the site of a Civil War battle.  The Confederates won the battle that ended just two days before the Battle of Antietam.  We took a little tour that was led by a park ranger.  There isn't a whole lot that you see.  You hike through the woods and then come to this big field surrounding a farmhouse.  They had different tours, but the one we got was really good.  The title was Civil War to Civil Rights.  So we walked around and made several stops.  At each stop, the park ranger talked about the history of Harpers Ferry.  This guy knew his stuff.  People asked him questions and as long as they weren't asking about the berries on one of the trees (that happened), he knew the answer.  He gave lots of really good answers.  One of the answers that stood out was when he explained why they built a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry.  Bobby, Darryl, and I all said later that if we had to guess, we would have said the rivers (the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers come together there), but that wouldn't have been right at all.  Actually, one of the reasons is the opposite.  The rivers aren't navigable there.  In the early history of our nation, we didn't want the British or French to be able to get there easily and destroy our weapons if we ever fought with them.  Also, there was a certain type of tree that grew there that supplied wood for the guns and the mountains contained iron ore (or some kind of ore) for the guns.  And the last reason is that Charles Washington lived nearby.  President Washington wanted to increase his brother's property values by building a federal arsenal in the area.  Washington didn't tell Congress that last reason.

A view of one of the rivers in Harpers Ferry

So that was our trip.  Unfortunately, there was no clam chowder, so maybe I can't count West Virginia.  Our drive home wasn't fun, but we finally did it.  I used to have the fun fact that I had been to every state that borders West Virginia, but not West Virginia.  Now I have a couple other fun facts.  With my trip to Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, you could now go from coast to coast by going through states that I've been to.  But there's a catch.  You'd have to go to the Four Corners region and step from Colorado to Arizona since I haven't been to New Mexico or Utah yet.  Also, every state that I've been to borders at least one other state that I've been to with the exception of Washington, but that's been true for a while.  Here's the updated map of states that I've been to.  I still have 18 states that account for 98 electoral votes to get to.  What's next?  Hopefully I'll get to Minnesota next year for baseball (and that could definitely become like my Missouri baseball trip where I cross some other states off the list).  Maine and Vermont are the closest states I haven't been to.  I have to find reasons to cross them off the list soon.  And South Carolina is the only other east coast state I haven't been to.  Notre Dame plays at Clemson in basketball this season.  If it's a Saturday and I could get cheap flights, I'd consider making a trip for that.  I'm hoping to finish off the Major League Baseball stadiums next year (excluding the dumps that the A's and Rays play in), but the 18 states I have left are going to take some time.

My Top 26 Simpsons Episodes

The Simpsons marathon is going strong on FXX.  Actually, it's in season 10, so it's not going as strong anymore.  A few years back, I made a list of my top 25 Simpsons episodes.  So I'm going to break that out for a blog post.  For comparison, here are the rankings of Simpsons episodes based on IMDB user ratings.

Before I get to my list, a couple of thoughts.  I wish the marathon didn't go exactly in order.  It would have been great if they ran seasons 1-12 when people were awake (maybe from 10 in the morning through midnight or something) and season 13 and on when people were sleeping.  I've watched a lot of the marathon, but I've missed some really good ones while I've been sleeping.  And I won't be watching anymore after tomorrow.  But I guess it makes the most sense to run them consecutively.  With that in mind, my top 25 are all from the first 10 seasons.  Seasons 6-8 are the best in my mind.  Season 9 still had some really great episodes, but it also gave us a sure sign that the show's best days were over.

This is not an easy list to make and I'm sure I left some good ones out.  So if you think I left anything out or you disagree with any of these rankings, feel free to comment.

I was looking at the list I made a few years ago and made some adjustments.  I had emailed my list to my brothers when I originally made my list and they had some thoughts.  I left out one episode that my brother Tom pointed out.  And I found another episode that I left out that nobody mentioned.  I bumped one episode into the honorable mentions category, but I didn't feel comfortable bumping a second one, so here are my top 26 Simpsons episodes:

Honorable Mentions- Mr. Plow, Bart Star, Dumbbell Indemnity, Homer to the Max, and You Only Move Twice.  Just one note about those: I thought You Only Move Twice was ranked higher on IMDB.  The average rating isn't ridiculously high, but the only episode with more ratings on IMDB is the first episode, which indicates some strong feeling both ways for that episode (17.7% give it 1 out of 10, but the median is 10 out of 10).

26.  Homer at the Bat (Season 3)- Mr. Burns hires ringers to win in softball.

25.  The Canine Mutiny (Season 8)- Santos L. Halper gets a credit card.

24.  The Trouble with Trillions (Season 9)- The IRS tries to get Homer to retrieve the trillion dollar bill that was stolen by Mr. Burns.

23.  The Last Temptation of Krust (Season 9)- Homer says one of my favorite lines in the history of the series because he wants Krusty to tell the audience to burn their pants:  "Don't you hate pants?"

22.  Homer Loves Flanders (Season 5)- Flanders takes Homer to a football game.

21.  Hurricane Neddy (Season 8)- Flanders goes insane after his house is destroyed by a hurricane.

20.  Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment (Season 8)- Homer as the Beer Baron.

19.  Marge vs. the Monorail (Season 4)- Mono means one and rail means rail.

18.  Two Dozen and One Greyhounds (Season 6)- Mr. Burns sings "See My Vest."

17.  Bart on the Road (Season 7)- Bart, Milhouse, Martin, and Nelson take a road trip to Knoxville, Tennessee.

16.  Homer the Smithers (Season 7)- This is the highest ranked episode on IMDB.  Smithers goes on vacation and Homer takes his place.  Homer calls Mr. Burns pretending to be his mother is probably my favorite moment of this episode.

15.  Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily (Season 7)- Bart, Lisa, and Maggie are taken in as foster children by the Flanderses.

14.  Bart Sells His Soul (Season 7)- Bart sells his soul to Milhouse and Moe's Tavern is turned into Uncle Moe's Family Feedbag.

13.  Cape Feare (Season 5)- The Simpsons become the Thompsons to hide from Sideshow Bob.

12.  Grade School Confidential (Season 8)- Skinner and Krabappel get fired because of their relationship.  One of the great all time Chief Wiggum lines:  "The baby looked at you?"

11.  Girly Edition (Season 9)- Kidz Newz and Mojo the helper monkey.

10.  The Cartidge Family (Season 9)- I left this off my original list and Tom pointed it out.  Mexico vs. Portugal, the soccer riot, Homer gets a gun.  It's a classic.

9.  Lisa Gets an "A" (Season 10)- Pinchy the Lobster and Lisa gets an A+++.

8.  Summer of 4 Ft. 2 (Season 7)- The Simpsons stay in the Flanderses' summer house.  I watch this episode every year to start my summer vacation.

7.  Bart of Darkness (Season 6)- The Simpsons get a pool and Bart breaks his leg.

6.  Mountain of Madness (Season 8)- This is the episode that I left off my list a few years back that I just realized now.  Homer and Mr. Burns in the cabin is just outstanding.

5.  In Marge We Trust (Season 8)- Mr. Sparkle, Marge as the Listen Lady, and Donny's Discount Gas.

4.  Lemon of Troy (Season 6)- Shelbyville steals Springfield's lemon tree.

3.  The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show (Season 8)- Homer as the voice of Poochie.

2.  Lisa the Vegetarian (Season 7)- "You don't win friends with salad" in song and "Go back to Russia!"

1.  Homer's Enemy (Season 8)- Frank Grimes and Bart buys a factory. It's the second highest rated episode on IMDB.  In my senior yearbook in high school, I said that my future plans were to be as successful as Homer Simpson.  This episode pretty much summarizes why I said that.

If I was rating these episodes on IMDB, I think 1-6 on my list would get 10, 7-17 would get 9, and 18-26 (and probably the honorable mentions too) would get 8.

It was once a great show.  It's too bad they didn't know when to call it quits.

Harry Truman's Neighborhood

I finished my trip a couple weeks ago in the Kansas City area.  On Friday night, I went to Kauffman Stadium for Giants-Royals.  It was my least favorite team in baseball against a team that wears the same colors as the Dodgers.  There was no question  I was rooting for the Royals.

Unlike Busch Stadium, the outside of the stadium is not impressive.  It's surrounded by a big parking lot.  It's right near Arrowhead Stadium.  The outside of the building is not particularly attractive.  I walked around the stadium and there wasn't much to see.  The one benefit of being surrounded by parking lots is that there seemed to be a decent tailgating atmosphere there, which is something that you don't get at a lot of baseball stadiums.

When I walked into the stadium, one of the first things I saw was the Royals Hall of Fame so I checked that out.  They have a display for George Brett's 3,154 hits.  There's a bat in the middle of it.  It's unclear what the significance of the bat was.  It might have been the one the he got his 3,000th hit with or maybe his last hit.  I don't know.  But I do know that it wasn't the bat from the pine tar game.  I asked if they had that there and I was told that they've had it before, but they didn't have it now.  I was also told that the bat in the display had more pine tar on it than the bat from the pine tar game.  They also had the Royals' 1985 World Series trophy.

3,154 baseballs for 3,154 hits

After the Hall of Fame, I took a lap around the lower concourse.  The stadium was renovated before the 2009 season.  I always liked the way it looked on TV (and playing there in video games) with the waterfalls in the outfield, but they did a great job with the renovation.  The outfield concourse is outstanding.  They have statues of the Kauffmans, Dick Howser, Frank White Jr., and George Brett.  You can stand above the waterfalls and look out on the field.  Before the game and between innings, they have fountains that shoot up water.  It's cool to look through that toward the field.

George Brett with the fountains in the background

From there, I headed up to my seat.  My plan was to watch an inning and a half and then go find some food.  I wanted to get the burnt end cheesesteak.  Apparently burnt ends are a Kansas City barbecue thing and I wanted to try them.  I think they only had them at a concession stand on the lower level out in the outfield, so I headed down there.  When I got there, they were out of burnt ends.  So I got a Kansas City hot dog instead.  It had Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and mustard on it.  It was fine, but I would have greatly preferred to try the burnt ends.  I also got a beer from the Boulevard Brewery, which is a Kansas City brewery.  I think I had the Unfiltered Wheat Beer.  It was very good.  I watched an inning standing above the right field waterfall and then headed back to my seat.

My view for most of the game

Good weather, great beer, and a beautiful ballpark.  I love baseball.

As for the game, it was Madison Bumgarner against Jason Vargas.  Billy Butler gave the Royals a 2-0 lead with a home run in the first inning.  The Giants tied it in the third, but Butler and Alex Gordon drove in runs in the sixth to give the Royals a 4-2 lead.  The Royals' bullpen pitched four scoreless innings and they won 4-2.  Bumgarner got the rare complete game loss (only eight innings since there was no bottom of the ninth).  They had fireworks after the game.  I was tired so I wanted to get back to my hotel.  I pretty much saw the whole show as I walked back to my car.

I left the stadium to beat traffic, but I still got to see the fireworks.

I was really impressed with Kauffman Stadium (other than running out of burnt ends).  The outside is nothing special, but the inside is excellent.  It reminded me a little bit of two stadiums that I have on opposite ends of my stadium rankings, Dodger Stadium and SkyDome.  Those two and Kauffman Stadium are three of the four remaining symmetrical ballparks (whatever the stadium in Oakland is called is the other).  Dodger Stadium is surrounded by parking lots also.  Dodger Stadium is 11 years older, but both have been renovated recently.  Like Dodger Stadium, it's beautiful inside.  Besides the symmetry, the seating set up reminded me of SkyDome.  The upper deck is big and very steep.  If they renovated SkyDome, there's a chance they could turn it into a good stadium like Kauffman Stadium.  Another nice feature of Kauffman Stadium was the scoreboard.  It was excellent.  They fit a lot of information on one scoreboard in center field (it is huge).  Much better than the scoreboards at Busch Stadium.  One thing that I wouldn't have changed in the renovation is the batter's eye.  Below the scoreboard they used to have a nice patch of grass, but now it's just some green walls.  It's a minor complaint.

I was headed home the following day.  I purposely scheduled a late flight for two reasons.  First of all, I had to drive across the state to St. Louis.  But more importantly, I was staying in Independence and I wanted to see Harry Truman's house and Presidential Library.  My hotel was actually just diagonally across the street from his house.  The library was about a mile away.  I got a tour of the house, which had been in his wife's family since the 1800s.  We weren't allowed to take pictures inside and we only saw the first floor, but it was still cool.  Our tour guide said the house was very out of date by the time the Trumans died (Harry in 1972 and his wife in 1982).  He said the most modern room was the kitchen, which looked like it was from the 1950s.  There was wallpaper on the ceiling.  I had never seen that before.  Everything else looked older.  They had a TV, but apparently Harry Truman didn't like it.  The furniture was not pointed at the TV.

Harry S Truman's house

After his house, I headed to the library.  Last summer I went to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library.  I'm hoping to get the Reagan and Bush libraries at some point to balance things out.  Like the Carter Library, there was a replica of the Oval Office.  There was a lot of stuff on Truman's foreign policy, but not so much on domestic policy.  Truman was president at a time that I'm very interested in (end of World War II, beginning of the Cold War) so I enjoyed it.  Besides the museum, you can through a courtyard where Truman, his wife, and his daughter are buried.  On the other side of the courtyard is the office where he worked after his presidency.  They have glass on the outside so that you can look in.

Harry Truman's Oval Office

Nope.

The 33rd President of the United States

That was it for my trip to Missouri.  On my drive back to St. Louis, I was getting off the highway to get some food and I saw a sign for the National Churchill Museum.  It's at the college where he gave his Iron Curtain speech.  I knew that was in Missouri, but I didn't realize there was a museum there.  Churchill is one of my favorite people in the history of the world, so I got pretty excited.  I checked out how far away it was on my phone and it was just far enough out of the way that I decided not to go.  I might have been able to get there and check it out, but I would have been pretty rushed.  I saw the Churchill War Rooms in London last summer.  I imagine that beats the National Churchill Museum.  If I had known, I would have tried to get on the road earlier so that I would have had time.  Oh well.

So that was my last big baseball trip of the summer.  I don't have much planned for the fall.  Probably three Notre Dame football games.  One at Notre Dame, one at MetLife Stadium, and one at FedEx Field.  Next year, hopefully I will be able to get to baseball games in Cincinnati, Minnesota, Texas, and Anaheim.  And hopefully I'll cross a few more states off the list.  I did get to one more baseball game and cross one more state off the list since my Missouri trip.  More on that later.

Why I Love Baseball, Part 12

It's been over a year since I wrote a Why I Love Baseball post.  This post was inspired by two things.  First, about three and a half weeks ago, the Effectively Wild podcast had their 500th episode.  For that episode, Ben and Sam had Grant Brisbee and Jeff Sullivan have a draft with them of things they like about baseball.  The draft went three rounds.  The draft order was Sam, Grant, Jeff, and Ben (not a snake draft).  Here's how the draft went:

Sam:  Babe Ruth (Sam made a reference to a great Simpsons episode, it's worth listening to, but I'll explain in a comment why I don't think it holds up), radio commercials during baseball games, and GMs making predictions
Grant:  the other Ryan Braun (not the cheater, this lead to a pretty good conversation), baseball players getting mentioned in rap/hip hop lyrics, and searching for players with dirty words on Baseball-Reference
Jeff:  Petco Park rotating heads (I'm telling you, this episode is worth listening to), Paul O'Neill's anguished reaction to the Mariners eliminating the Yankees in Game 5 of the 1995 ALDS, and the John Olerud tree story
Ben:  PITCHf/x, different field dimensions in each stadium, and platoons

Ben had the last pick in each round and he easily had the best draft.  I did a post on different field dimensions.  That would have been very high on my draft board.  PITCHf/x and platoons are also very solid picks.  Sam made a great first pick with Babe Ruth, but the rest of his draft wasn't as good.  But they left out a lot of things that I would have drafted.  If you want to read about them, go back through the blog and look for other Why I Love Baseball posts.

The other thing that inspired this post is that today is the 25th anniversary of the first baseball game I attended.  That was the subject of my first Why I Love Baseball post.

So in honor of the Effectively Wild draft and the anniversary of my first baseball game, here's something that I love about baseball that definitely would have been on my draft board:  hitting streaks.  Three years ago, I went to the 30th and final game of Andre Ethier's hitting streak.  He was one game away from tying the Dodgers' franchise record, held by Willie Davis.  I would love to see somebody make a run at Joe DiMaggio's record of 56.  There have been six hitting streaks of at least 40 games in baseball history, but only two since 1922.  The longest hitting streak of my lifetime is Paul Molitor's 39 game streak in 1987.

There are a couple of things about hitting streaks that make them interesting to me.  First is that it's possible to have a long hitting streak without hitting particularly well.  It's unlikely, but if you're going 1-4 or 1-5 almost every game, you could have a long hitting streak while hitting well under .300 (DiMaggio hit .408 during his streak).  The second thing is that chasing DiMaggio's record is unlike chasing most other records.  Let's say Clayton Kershaw was making a run at Nolan Ryan's modern single season strikeout record.  It's not likely to happen because he'd have to average almost 12 strikeouts per game if he made 33 starts (his career high).  But if he did make a run at the record and had a game with 7 strikeouts, it wouldn't help him, but it wouldn't be the end of the world either.  He strikes out 29 in the next two games (not easy to do, but not out of the question) and he's right back on track.  But if Yasiel Puig made a run at Joe DiMaggio's record, it's all or nothing.  If he gets to 50 games in a row and then goes 0-4 the next game, it's over.  Once that run ends, the record is once again out of reach.  It's just like consecutive scoreless innings record (which Kershaw actually did make a little run at earlier this season).

I know other sports have things like this, but they're not the same as the hitting streak.  Drew Brees recently set the record for consecutive games with a touchdown pass.  What's amazing is that Johnny Unitas held that record for 52 years.  With passing becoming so much easier in football these days, it's not surprising that somebody broke the record.  Kevin Durant had a long streak of games with at least 30 points.  Wilt Chamberlain holds the record at 65, but the game was different back then.  Durant also had a long streak with at least 25 points.  Chamberlain's record for that is 126.  But those streaks seem a little contrived.  You could come up with most consecutive games with at least 10 or 15 or 20 or whatever.  The hitting streak in baseball is so simple.  All you have to do is get at least one hit every game, but it's so hard to do that only 47 players have ever gotten to 30 games.

Baseball is a simple game.  I love the simplicity of the game.  And hitting streaks are about as simple as it gets.

Three States Closer to 50

When I originally thought of taking this trip, I only had St. Louis and Kansas City in mind.  Then I realized it was a good opportunity to get to some states I hadn't been to before.  Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa were all possibilities.  Nebraska and Iowa could possibly be combined with a trip to Minnesota for a Twins game, so I decided to go south and west of Missouri.  I thought about making it a four-night baseball adventure.  I could have started in St. Louis and then gone to minor league games in Little Rock and Tulsa before heading to Kansas City.  That would have meant an extra night staying in a hotel and an extra day of renting a car and more driving.  So I decided to go to a game in Springdale, Arkansas, which is in the northwest part of the state (home of the Northwest Arkansas Naturals, a Double-A affiliate of the Royals).  From there, it's not that long of a trip to Oklahoma.  I could just cross into the state like when I went to Wyoming from Denver.  By the way, check out the map of minor league teams.  This could come in handy at some point in the future.  It only includes the minor leagues affiliated with Major League Baseball.  Here's the list of all professional baseball teams by state.  The only states without any professional baseball teams are Wyoming, Alaska, and Hawaii.  I've already crossed Wyoming off the list.  I definitely want to go to Hawaii at some point.  Alaska is going to be the tough one, but I hope to get there as well.

Anyway, it was a long drive from St. Louis to Springdale, over 300 miles.  Most of the drive was heading southwest across Missouri.  I was less than ten miles from the Arkansas border when I got pulled over for speeding, my first ticket ever.  I definitely wasn't going to get another ticket on this trip, so I kept to the speed limit the rest of the time.  Compared to other cars on the road, that didn't seem slow in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, but in Missouri, I was going slow and getting passed by lots of people.  And that's where I got my speeding ticket.  Lame.

I got to my hotel in Springdale around 5:30.  It was about two miles from Arvest Ballpark, home of the Naturals.  I figured there wasn't too much to see at the stadium and it was a short trip, so I had some time to rest.  Besides cutting a day off of the trip by going to a game in Springdale instead of going to games in Little Rock and Tulsa, another reason for going to Springdale was that Arvest Ballpark was named baseballparks.com's 2008 Ballpark of the Year.  I got to the stadium around 6:45 and checked it out.  It is very nice.  The seats don't extend all the way down the left and right field lines, but there is a 360 degree concourse.  So if you want to walk out to the outfield and watch the game from there, you can.  There is a bullpen cafe in left field, but that wasn't open for this game.  There wasn't much of a food selection, but there's no reason for there to be when the capacity is only 6,500.  It seemed like they put some food items on sale so I bought a bag of peanuts for $1 to go with my hot dog.  They did have a craft beer corner down the right field line.  I had a Sam Adams Boston Lager on tap.  There were only a couple of beers on tap, but there did seem to be a pretty good selection of bottles available.  So Arvest Ballpark had a better beer selection than some Major League stadiums.

The Naturals were playing the Corpus Christi Hooks, an Astros affiliate.  Corpus Christi took a 2-0 lead in the third.  By the end of six, it was 5-0.  Delino DeShields, Jr. hit a home run in the seventh to make it 7-0.  Hopefully the Dodgers don't trade a future Hall of Famer for him.  Corpus Christi held on to win 7-2.  The box score lists the attendance as 2,854.  I was there and there weren't 2,853 other fans there.  I'm going to say there were less than 2,000, perhaps a good deal less than that.  My ticket was for a seat between home plate and the first base dugout about 11 rows up from the field, but I pretty much could have sat wherever I wanted.  Nobody was checking tickets and there were so few fans there.  If I sat in somebody's seat and they showed up, I just could have moved over a few seats to an empty one.  But I did really like the stadium.  If I lived in the area, I would definitely go to a decent number of games.  I've never lived in a minor league area.  I wonder what that would be like.  Some people were wearing Royals stuff and there were some wearing Naturals stuff.  Like I said, I would go to some games, but I can't imagine really caring much about the result.  Is any fan going to be really angry about the Naturals blowing a 4-2 lead late in the game?  I doubt it, but if the Dodgers blow a 4-2 lead late in a game, it probably ruins my night.  The one thing that stood out to me was that everything at the game was sponsored.  Everything.  The PA guy would read an advertisement after foul balls because foul balls were sponsored.  Strikeouts and other things were sponsored also.  I hadn't had much to eat during the day so I was a little hungry so I went to a Sonic right by my hotel and got a shake after the game.  Now that I've actually been to a Sonic, I think I can move it up to number 8 on my fast food power rankings.

My view for the game.  Arvest Ballpark was very nice.

The next day, I was going to the Royals game at night.  I had plenty of time to get there.  So my plan was to at least get to Oklahoma and Kansas.  I drove about 90 minutes to Mickey Mantle's boyhood home in Commerce, Oklahoma.  It was a very old looking house in a small town.  There was a plaque on the door and it looked like you might be able to go in, but I just took a look from the outside.

Mickey Mantle's boyhood home in Commerce, Oklahoma

After that, I was on my way to Kansas.  My original plan was to go to the Knute Rockne crash site.  To go there, you have to make arrangements with John or Sue Ann Brown.  I spoke to both of them and they seemed like very nice people.  I ended up not going for a variety of reasons.  First of all, it was out of the way.  I had already driven an hour and a half to Mickey Mantle's house.  From there, it would have been about four hours to the crash site and then it would have been at least two hours to where I was staying for the night.  Also, it's not easy to get to.  Apparently there's some driving on dirt roads involved.  I was told by John Brown that the site was inaccessible if it rained and the forecast was a little questionable.  And I didn't really feel like driving a rental car on dirt roads in the middle of nowhere in Kansas.  It would have been great to get there, but I can live with not making it.  I've been where Knute Rockne received his first Communion after converting to Catholicism (I lived in that building).  That's good enough for me.  I did read a good post on NDNation about somebody who did make the trip.  There's a good chance that I'll never be in Kansas again, but if I ever drove across the country or something, I'd try again to get to the crash site. 

I thought about driving all the way to Nebraska, but I really didn't feel like driving that for so I just drove north from Mickey Mantle's house into Kansas on my way to hotel.  I wanted to do something besides just drive through Kansas so I did some googling.  I found out that there's a restaurant in Galena, Kansas that has the truck that inspired the movie Cars outside of it.  I've never seen the movie, but it was pretty much on my way so I stopped there before finishing my trip to the Kansas City area.  I'll cover that in my next post.

This picture will make more sense to me if I ever see Cars.

Gateway to Good Baseball

I embarked on my last baseball trip of the season last Wednesday.  I'll get to at least one more game this year in New York, but no more big trips for baseball.  I was in Missouri for games in St. Louis and Kansas City and some other stuff too.  For now, I'll just cover my trip to St. Louis.

I've written about the Cardinals before.  They really have a great franchise.  Eleven championships, 19 World Series appearances.  In the last ten years, they have seven playoff appearances, 6 NLCS appearances (the 2009 Dodgers were the only team to beat them in the first round), 4 World Series appearances, and 2 championships.  If we go back to 2000, they've made the playoffs 10 out of 14 seasons.  That's the kind of success I want the Dodgers to have.  I have to respect them, but I'm kind of tired of their success (especially since they kept the Dodgers out of the World Series last year).  They also have great fans.  They all show up wearing red and they pretty much sell out every game with an average attendance this season of 43,503 (second only to the Dodgers, 98.9% of their capacity).  So I was eager to see a game in St. Louis.

I got to my hotel around 3:30 or so.  After charging my phone and relaxing for a little bit, I was off to the game.  At least that was the plan.  I didn't plan on going to the Gateway Arch, but it really is impressive.  I was drawn to it as I walked to the stadium.  I walked over and went inside to see if I could go to the top.  The wait was going to be too long since I wanted to get to the stadium fairly early, but there's also the Museum of Westward Expansion inside.  That was free and it wasn't too big so I checked that out.  There was some cool stuff in there about Thomas Jefferson, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

This picture definitely doesn't do justice to how impressive the Gateway Arch is.

From there, I walked to the stadium.  I was hoping to check out the Cardinals Hall of Fame.  I think I read somewhere that it's the biggest baseball museum in the United States outside of Cooperstown.  It's across the street from the stadium.  I went in, but there was this big sports bar inside and it wasn't really clear where the museum was inside the building.  I also didn't really feel like putting up with the huge crowd, so I just gave up on that.  The area outside the stadium is great, though.  There are bars and restaurants and tons of people.  It reminded me a little bit of the area outside of Fenway Park.  There are also seats on top of one or two of the buildings across the street, which is very Wrigley-like.  Near the team store were small statues of several Cardinals.  Rogers Hornsby, Bob Gibson, Stan Musial, Ozzie Smith, and others.  I knew there was a statue of Stan Musial so I saw his and I was a little surprised.  I was expecting something bigger.  Then I kept walking around the stadium and I saw the big Stan Musial statue.  That was cool.  Stan Musial is one of the greatest players of all time and I think he's underrated.  After the steroid era, 475 home runs doesn't sound like a huge number, but when he retired it was 6th all time.  He's still fourth all time in hits.  From 1943-1963, he made the All Star Game every year except 1945.  Why didn't he make it in 1945?  He was serving in the United States Navy.  He's one of the greatest hitters ever and he made my list of favorite Cold War era players.

Stan the Man

The game was a World Series rematch.  I think it was the first time I've ever been to a rematch of the World Series from the year before.  This year is a little different.  According to mlb.com, the Cardinals currently have a 62.7% chance of making the playoffs (34.3% to win the division), but the Red Sox have a 0.0% chance of making the playoffs.  I'd rather not run into the Cardinals in the playoffs, so I was rooting for the Red Sox, but I wore my Coca-Cola shirt to blend in with the Cardinals fans.

As we approached game time, nothing was happening on the field.  The game didn't start on time.  They were waiting for bad weather.  It was a little annoying, but they made the right call.  It started coming down shortly after the scheduled first pitch time of 7:15.  Fortunately, I was pretty much covered by an overhang on the upper level.  The wind blew some of the rain onto my legs, but I was able to just wait out the rain delay in my seat.  The rain delay lasted for an hour and then it didn't rain for the rest of the game.

It was nice to see the tarp coming off the field.

It was Shelby Miller for the Cardinals against Joe Kelly for the Red Sox.  The Cardinals had just traded Joe Kelly and Allen Craig to the Red Sox at the trade deadline.  Allen Craig brought out the lineup card for the Red Sox.  Both Kelly and Craig got big ovations from the crowd of 42,733.  They also have a pretty good round of applause to Dustin Pedroia when he made a nice play in the field for the Red Sox.  You wouldn't get that at most stadiums in the majors.  I thought the Cardinals fans lived up to their reputation of being great fans.

Both starters went seven and gave up one run.  Matt Adams drove in Matt Carpenter (I've seen enough of Carpenter as a Dodgers fan) in the first to give the Cardinals the lead.  Xander Bogaerts doubled in Daniel Nava to tie the game in the fourth.  That's the way it stayed until the top of the ninth.  Bogaerts gave the Red Sox the lead with a sacrifice fly off of Trevor Rosenthal and the Red Sox held on to win 2-1.  Recently on the Effectively Wild podcast, Ben and Sam talked about their favorite score for a baseball game.  Ben said 5-4 and Sam seemed to be confused.  I bring this up because I think my favorite score is generally probably 2-1.  If we're talking about the Dodgers, my favorite score would be them winning 3-0 or 4-0.  I like close games (if the Dodgers aren't involved) and good pitching.  And I was rooting for the Red Sox, so I was happy that night.

My view for the game.  You can't see it in this picture, but I had a view of the arch off in the distance.

As for Busch Stadium, I had high expectations.  The area outside the stadium exceeded my expectations.  Inside the stadium, it probably didn't live up to my expectations.  I had a great view with the arch in the background and the field looks nice (I like the arch cut into the outfield grass).  But other than that, it wasn't too impressive.  The lower concourse wasn't particularly nice.  As you walk around, you can't see the field in most places other than the outfield.  The upper concourse is nicer with views of the field from pretty much anywhere.  The food selection was unimpressive.  I just ended up getting a regular hot dog.  The beer selection wasn't great.  Of course, you can easily find lots of bad beer (Budweiser and Bud Light).  It's St. Louis, after all.  But there wasn't a great selection of good beer.  I had a Schlafly Pale Ale.  Schlafly is a St. Louis brewery.  The beer was fine, but nothing special.  Also, the scoreboard was one of the worst I've seen.  There are two big ones, both out in right center.  The one on the right was used mainly as the out of town scoreboard.  That one was pretty nice actually.  But the other one was used for the lineups and the score for the game and it was terrible.  It had very minimal information and a bad display.  At one point, Will Middlebrooks pinch hit for the Red Sox and they couldn't fit his name on the scoreboard.  It said "Will Middlebrook."  That's something I would have expected from Shea Stadium back in the day.  The atmosphere is great around the stadium and even inside the stadium because of great fans, but the inside of the stadium is underwhelming.  With a good inside, it would easily be one of the top five stadiums in baseball.  I'll update my rankings soon.  Busch Stadium is definitely in the upper half of Major League stadiums, but it's not quite as high as I had expected.