I wanted to get this post up sooner, but I've been too busy with work, baseball, and playoffs for basketball and hockey. After crossing off Utah and New Mexico from my list of states to get to, I made my third trip to Texas. I was there in 2013 for an Astros game and the Shamrock Series game in Dallas. I had three things I wanted to do in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area: a Rangers game, the Bush Library, and Whataburger. It was a successful trip.
I got in early on Friday and Wilhelm picked me up and dropped me off at the Bush Library (he had to work). So I went through the Bush Library by myself. This was my third presidential library. I went to the Carter Library in Atlanta with Dennis two years ago and I went to the Truman Library in Independence by myself last year. I had wanted to go to the Bush Library the last time I was in Dallas, but it was closed because of the government shutdown. I'm hoping to get to the Reagan Library whenever I go to an Angels game (hopefully this summer) and I would like to go to the Kennedy Library in Boston (hopefully I'll be there in November for the Shamrock Series game at Fenway Park). The presidential libraries only go back to Hoover. So the only other ones that I'd be particularly interested in going to are the Roosevelt Library (it's about two and a half hours away from me) and the Nixon Library (perhaps on a future trip out to California). If I happened to be in Abilene, Kansas, then sure, I'd go to the Eisenhower Library, but that's probably not happening.
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| 43 and 41 |
The Bush Library seemed smaller than the other two I've been to, but I enjoyed it more. I guess it was more interesting to me since I lived through his presidency. The September 11 stuff is amazing. I took a lot of time to take that all in. They have steel from the Twin Towers and a wall with the names of all the victims. They have videos that take you through each day from September 11 to Bush's speech in Congress on September 20. That includes one of the two best moments from his presidency, the Bullhorn Speech on September 14 (I'll get to the other one). There were lots of cool artifacts there as well, like bullhorn from the speech, the badge of Port Authority police officer George Howard that his mother gave to Bush (mentioned in the September 20 speech) and the gun Saddam Hussein had with him when he was captured. Another thing that made the Bush Library better than the other two was that you could actually walk around the recreation of the Oval Office. You can sit at the desk (which is a recreation of a desk that's still in the White House). The other thing I found interesting was everything they had on the 2000 election. It's crazy how the media messed up their coverage that night. If I recall correctly, they called Florida for Gore and then later uncalled Florida. I stayed up pretty late that night, but that was the situation when I went to sleep. While I was sleeping, they called Florida (and hence the election) for Bush and then uncalled Florida again. By the way, during my trip I read the Al Michaels book that Sean gave me for Christmas. He told the story of how he was once staying at the hotel where Gore was on Election Night. He snuck into the room where Gore had stayed and stole the phone that might have possibly been used by Gore to concede and/or unconcede. That whole thing was crazy. I'll be teaching my 8th graders about that soon.
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| Steel from the World Trade Center. The names of the victims are on the wall in the background. |
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| Me on the phone in the Oval Office. I was not dressed appropriately. |
When I went to the Carter Library, they had a temporary exhibit on presidential photography. That was really good. The temporary exhibit at the Bush Library was on presidents and baseball. I had no idea it was there until a few weeks before my trip. It's going to be there until October. I loved everything about that exhibit. Of course, they had a lot on the greatest first pitch in American history (the other best moment from his presidency, which was also covered in the regular exhibits). But they went all the way back to George Washington, which I wasn't expecting. They had these giant baseball cards for many of the presidents. On the front was a picture,name, political party, and home state. The back had the president's political career and a paragraph explaining the president's connection to baseball. For Washington, it said that he never played baseball, but he would have been familiar with similar games such as cricket or rounders. It also said that he liked to play catch at Valley Forge. For Lincoln, it said that he had a baseball field constructed behind the White House (where the Ellipse is). There was a lot that you could learn about other presidents. Taft was the first to throw out a first pitch. Nixon was offered jobs as the commissioner of baseball and head of the players' union (read this article from 1992). Reagan was the first president to throw out a first pitch from the mound (before him, they threw it out from the stands, like the queen in The Naked Gun, I'm pretty sure that's my favorite movie ever).
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| Game 3 of the 2001 World Series. It's the greatest first pitch in American history. |
The rest of Friday was pretty low key. Wilhelm and I drank some beers (John had told me to have some Shiner Bock while I was in Texas, good stuff) and went to a really good Tex-Mex place for dinner. The next day, we went to Fort Worth and walked around some festival that was going on for a little bit. There's a statue of Kennedy in Fort Worth because that's where he made his last public speech. Wilhelm took me to the stock yards in Forth Worth and we got there just in time for a cattle drive. I texted Dennis that never had a fish been more out of water. He said that I was more out of place at the Stone Mountain laser/fireworks show. It was a good point, but I did enjoy that other than the part that was a salute to the Confederacy (although Stone Mountain is itself a salute to the confederacy). After that, we stopped by Wilhelm's parents' house and they took us to Whataburger. It was good and I'm glad I went, but I don't think it beats Five Guys or In-N-Out. We went back to Wilhelm's apartment for a little bit and then later we went to the vigil mass at a church near the stadium. Unless Catholic churches in North Texas are like houses in Levittown, it was the same church that Sean and I went to on Sunday morning after the Shamrock Series game.
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| John F. Kennedy in Fort Worth |
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| Yep, this happened. |
After mass, we were off to the stadium. Jerry World is right by the baseball stadium and they're both surrounded by parking lots. We went in and took a lap around the lower level. You couldn't see the field from most of the lower concourse, but you could in the outfield. The outfield setup was pretty cool. There's a statue of Nolan Ryan in center behind the batter's eye. Then we went up to our seats. We got a beer before the game started. There was a good selection of beer. They had a stand with a bunch of Texas beers. Wilhelm told me where they were all from. I think the one I had was a Dallas beer. It was pretty good. The food selection seemed pretty good too, but we tried to get food early in the game and the lines were way too long (get some more concession stands in there and/or more people working them). So we ended up not eating anything at the game. We just stopped at Sonic on the way back to Wilhelm's apartment.
The game was not particularly competitive. It was Yovani Gallardo against the pitcher formerly known as Fausto Carmona (Roberto Hernandez). Adrian Beltre tripled and scored on an error in the bottom of the first. It reminded me of when Paul O'Neill did that when Kramer needed him to hit a second home run to get George Steinbrenner's birthday card back. Actually, I think Beltre's play should have been scored a double and two errors, but whatever. The Rangers scored another run in the second. Marwin Gonzalez hit the only home run of the game for the Astros in the third to make it 2-1, but the Rangers scored three in the fifth and the final score ended up being 6-2.
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| Our view for the game |
Despite its' terrible name, I liked Globe Life Park. It opened in 1994, which was the same year as Progressive Field in Cleveland and two years after Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Those were the two stadiums that it reminded me of the most. I liked it better than Progressive Field, but not as much as Oriole Park. You can check out my most recent stadium rankings. I'm sliding Globe Life Park in at number 16 on my list. It is supposed to have several features that remind you of classic stadiums: the roofed home run porch in right field (Tiger Stadium), the frieze around the upper deck (Yankee Stadium), nooks and crannies in the outfield fence (Ebbets Field), and arched windows (Comiskey Park). I liked all of that, but they took out the hand-operated scoreboard on the left field wall which was a nod to Fenway Park. That was a mistake. Now they have an electronic scoreboard that was confusing. It had five panels. The middle one was for the game being played at the stadium. The other four were out of town scoreboards. It didn't make sense that the scoreboard for the Rangers' game was in the middle of the out of town scoreboards. Even if it wasn't confusing, they should have kept the hand-operated scoreboard. I did like the offices out in center field, though. It would be pretty cool to work in one of those.
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| Me and Wilhelm at the game. No flash, but you can see that I purposely wore my New York Rangers shirt for the Texas Rangers game. |
So that's it for my first baseball trip of the season and my third trip to Texas. One thing that amazed me was how much open space there is. I know Texas is huge, but I was in fairly heavily populated parts of the state. I do really like Texas, but I probably won't be back any time soon. Notre Dame does play two games there in 2016. Going to Austin to see us play Texas would be fun, but I assume tickets will be very difficult to get. I assume I could get tickets for the Shamrock Series in San Antonio against Army, but I'm only interested in seeing us play Army if it's at Yankee Stadium or West Point. But we do play at Texas A&M in 2024, so that's a possibility (and Houston would be on my list of places for a Shamrock Series game, playing in Texas can only be good for recruiting).
Speaking of Notre Dame football, I have to apply for the lottery for this season soon. Right now I'm leaning toward only applying for the Shamrock Series game at Fenway Park and the game at Clemson. I would be interested in the Texas game, but I don't feel like paying $125 for a ticket, plus flights, plus a place to stay (the total cost would end up being more than the Fenway game even though tickets for that one are even more expensive). So this might be the first year that I don't get back to campus. I can live with it. But if any of my Notre Dame friends have any thoughts, let me know.
I know I have at least one more baseball trip coming up this season. Hopefully there will be a few more so that I can finish off the stadiums that aren't dumps. My next trip will not involve baseball. I'll be in Key West next weekend. I just hope I survive.
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