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.

Madden, Montana, and Martin, Oh My!

Last month I went to the Pro Football Hall of Fame as part of my trip to Ohio (which was supposed to include Cincinnati and an Indians game with really good seats).  I held off on this post until the Hall of Fame festivities this weekend (half procrastination, half planned).  Back in May, I made it to the Hockey Hall of Fame.  Last summer I got to the Baseball and Basketball Halls of Fame.  So now I have the four major sports covered.

After going to an early mass in Akron, my dad, my brother, my uncle, and I headed to the Hall of Fame in Canton.  It was about a 30 or 40 minute drive from where my uncle lives.  The first thing we saw was an exhibit on the history of the NFL by decade.  Right in the middle of all that was a statue of Jim Thorpe.  The NFL was founded in Canton in 1920.  I knew there were a lot of defunct NFL teams, but I didn't realize how many.  Many of them played in small Midwestern cities (Canton, Kenosha, Muncie, Racine, etc.).  The Providence Steam Roller won the last NFL championship won by a defunct team in 1928.  Of course, my favorite defunct team was the Brooklyn Dodgers.  They lasted from 1930-1944 (they were the Tigers in 1944) and played their home games at Ebbets Field.  They were not very good, with only four seasons about .500.  The New York Yankees only lasted for three years (only two in the NFL).  The 1934 Cincinnati Reds might have been the worst NFL team of all time.  They went 0-8 and scored only one touchdown and one field goal.  Another thing I learned was the two oldest franchises in the NFL are the Bears (I would have guessed that one) and the Cardinals (I would not have guessed that one).  The Bears started in Decatur and the Cardinals started in Chicago.  The Packers came into the NFL a year later.

Jim Thorpe

Most of the stuff to see is on the second floor.  There are displays on the Super Bowl, other professional football leagues, the NFL today, and the busts.  There was some good stuff on the Super Bowl, but that's one exhibit where I would have liked more.  They highlighted the first few Super Bowls and then a few other ones.  They had Eli Manning and David Tyree's helmets from Super Bowl XLII.  It would be nice if they had a display for each Super Bowl (maybe with bigger ones for Super Bowls like III, XXIII, XXV, XXXIV, XLII, etc.).  They do have the Lombardi Trophy that will be awarded to the winner of Super Bowl XLIX.  That was pretty cool, but of course, it's behind glass.  The exhibit on the other leagues was cool.  There was good stuff about the AFL (and Joe Namath's Jets in particular).

Super Bowl XLII was awesome.  Too bad it's not Justin Tuck's jersey.

Shea Stadium must have been so bad for football.

This Lombardi Trophy will be given to the team that wins Super Bowl XLIX.  Hopefully that won't be the Patriots, Seahawks, Raiders, Dolphins, Cowboys, or 49ers.  You can see my reflection in several places in this picture.

We saved the busts for the end.  As John Madden said in his induction speech, "At night, when the fans and visitors all leave, then the workers start to leave, then just one person turns out the light, locks the door, and I believe the busts talk to each other. And I can't wait for that conversation."  The busts look really cool.  They're easily more visually impressive than what the Hockey and Basketball Halls of Fame have.  The Baseball Hall of Fame has really nice plaques, which probably aren't as impressive as the busts, but they have a lot more information.  That's my one complaint with this part of the Hall of Fame.  You get the busts and below them are the name, position, team(s), and years in pro football.  You can go over to these touchscreens and search for a player and get a lot more information, but I wish there was more information right there with the busts.  It was very cool looking through everybody there.  The three that I wanted to see most were John Madden, Joe Montana, and Curtis Martin.  I grew up with Madden and Summerall calling big NFC games and the Madden video games.  Joe Montana was the quarterback on the 1977 National Championship team at Notre Dame and he became the greatest quarterback in the history of the NFL.  Curtis Martin was the greatest Jet I ever saw.  He was probably the greatest player ever to play for the Jets.  Sure, everybody thinks of Joe Namath.  I would argue that Namath is the most important player in Jets history, but Curtis Martin was a better football player than Namath was.  Namath's best years were early in his career.  After winning the Super Bowl, he wasn't really the same.  He put up some big numbers in 1969 and 1972, but other than that, he dealt with injuries and/or his numbers really didn't compare to what he did early in his career.  Curtis Martin was incredibly consistent.  His only bad year was the last year of his career (before his last year, he only missed one game in seven seasons with the Jets, that's amazing).

Boom!  Here's a guy that's in the Hall of Fame.

Joe Montana was the best.

The greatest Jet I've ever seen and one of my favorite players of all time.

So besides Madden, Montana, and Martin, there were other players I wanted to see.  Joe Namath, Don Maynard, and Weeb Eubank from the Super Bowl III champions, of course.  Heisman Trophy winner/fellow former St. Edward's Hall resident Paul Hornung, Alan Page, and other Notre Dame alums.  By the way, USC has the most Hall of Famers with 11 and Notre Dame is second with 10.  But one of USC's Hall of Famers is a murderer, so let's call it even.  Then there's the most underrated quarterback in NFL history/my birthday buddy Bart Starr.  Then there's Vince Lombardi, who once practiced at Camp Alvernia.  My former roommate's father is a Hall of Famer (Dwight Stephenson).  Bill Parcells, the coach who turned the Jets around.

Joe Namath led the Jets to victory in the most important Super Bowl ever.

Vince Lombardi, the greatest professional football coach of all time.  Of course, Knute Rockne is the greatest football coach of all.

Murderer/USC alum O.J. Simpson

After the Hall of Fame, my uncle directed us past LeBron James's house and high school back near Akron.  I was driving, so I didn't get pictures.  The house was big, but not gigantic.  It did look like security was very tight.  We ended the day with dinner at Rockne's Pub.  I don't know where it got the name, but I like to think it's named after Knute Rockne.

Now that I've been to the Halls of Fame for the four major professional sports, it's time for my Hall of Fame Power Rankings:

4.  Basketball.  I love basketball, but it's clearly the worst of the four.
3.  Football.  Basketball is way behind the other four.  I have football third, but it's really close to the top two.  As I said, the busts are great, but I'm giving hockey and baseball the slight edge overall.  It is a little difficult to take it seriously without Vinny Testaverde, though.  Just kidding (but not really).
2.  Hockey.  On the one hand, it's not in the United States.  On the other hand, it's the only one located in a big city.  If you're going to go to Canada, Toronto is probably a place you would go.  I can't think of a reason to go to Cooperstown, Canton, or Springfield other than for the Halls of Fame (maybe Cooperstown for other baseball related activities since it's such a baseball town, but it's such a baseball town because the Hall of Fame is there).  It's close between hockey and football.  The fact that you can touch the Stanley Cup is what puts it ahead of football.
1.  Baseball.  The original.  The museum is outstanding.  The Hall of Fame Gallery with all the plaques is the best of any display of Hall of Famers.  As I said, the Football Hall of Fame comes pretty close with the busts, but I'm giving Baseball the edge.  I think I've covered it before, but the first class is five of the greatest players of all time.  The Football Hall of Fame's first class has some really big names to be sure, but it also has some guys I've never heard of.  I guess the biggest difference is that it's easier to learn something at the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Maybe that appeals to me as a teacher.  If you have kids, imagine taking your kids there.  Let's take the year I was born.  If I had a son and he saw Mike McCormack's bust from the Football Hall of Fame's class of 1984 and asked who that was, I would have no idea.  If he saw Rick Ferrell's plaque from the Baseball Hall of Fame's class of 1984, again, I have no idea, but I could just read the plaque.  And Cooperstown is great.  It's just baseball everywhere.  You can't beat that.