Jackie, Dodger Dogs, and Fireworks

My last stop on my Easter vacation trip was Los Angeles.  I had a flight at 5:00 in the morning central time to Phoenix and then I flew from Phoenix to Los Angeles.  I did not sleep well the night before.  I had barely gotten any sleep and the guy at the front desk set my wake up call for an hour before I wanted it.  Usually I just use my phone as an alarm, but when I’m at a hotel and I have to get up that early for a flight or something, I’ll go with the wake up call also.  I’m reminded of this:

After the early wake up call, I wasn’t getting back to sleep.  So I got to Los Angeles early in the day, but I was ridiculously tired.  Sean picked me up from the airport.  Between how tired I was and Catherine not feeling well, Thursday was a quiet day.  I watched the end of the Dodger game on TV (after losing two games in Chicago, they avoided the sweep), took a nap, and then Sean and I watched the NFL Draft.  After that, we got some late night In-N-Out.  So I did one California thing on my first day there.

We had a lot more planned for Friday.  First up was a tour of the Rose Bowl.  The Rose Bowl is the one bowl game that I’ll always be interested in regardless of whether or not it’s a playoff game.  The stadium has so much history.  The Rose Bowl game has been played there every year since 1923, with the exception of 1942 (when it was played at Duke because of the start of World War II).  There were five Super Bowls played there.  John Madden won Super Bowl XI there with the Raiders.  The Rams lost to the Steelers in the only Super Bowl that a team got to play at home (sort of, the Rose Bowl was not the Rams’ home stadium).  Notre Dame alum Joe Theismann led the Redskins to victory in Super Bowl XVII.  Phil Simms had a record-setting performance and Bill Parcells won his first Super Bowl in Super Bowl XXI.  The only Rose Bowl Super Bowl that I remember is Super Bowl XXVII when the Cowboys blew out the Bills.  They’ll probably never play another Super Bowl at the Rose Bowl, but I’d much rather see one played there again rather than the new stadium being built for the Rams and Chargers (the Chargers should move back to San Diego and the Raiders should move to Los Angeles instead of Las Vegas, but that’s a whole other story).  I did some quick research and as far as I can tell, Notre Dame is 2-0 in games played at the Rose Bowl.  Knute Rockne finished the 1924 undefeated National Championship season with a 27-10 win over Stanford in the Rose Bowl on January 1, 1925.  And we beat UCLA 20-6 in the disastrous 2007 season.  I think that’s the only Notre Dame football game that wasn’t shown on TV in New York since I graduated.  That season was a complete disaster, but I still listened to the radio broadcast on the internet.  It was the same night that Stanford beat USC when they were 41-point underdogs (that was a Stanford team that we later beat that season, amazingly we were 2-1 against the Pac 10 that year).  And after going to the only current Major League Baseball stadium where Jackie Robinson played, I wondered if he played at the Rose Bowl for UCLA.  The answer is no.  UCLA didn’t play their home games at the Rose Bowl until 1982.  UCLA made the 1943 Rose Bowl, but that was after Jackie Robinson’s time (he was on the team in 1939 and 1940).  But Jackie Robinson did play football at the Rose Bowl before he went to UCLA, when he was a student at Pasadena Junior College.  So yes, I visited two stadiums that still stand where Jackie Robinson once played.

Me and Sean outside the Rose Bowl

Knute Rockne and the Four Horsemen led Notre Dame to victory and a National Championship in the 1925 Rose Bowl.

As for the tour, we were there at the wrong time.  I was definitely getting to Los Angeles at some point this year for a Dodger game, but the only question was when.  I’ve wanted to do a Rose Bowl tour for a while.  I figure I’m most likely never going to see a game there (if Notre Dame makes it to the Rose Bowl when it’s a playoff game after the 2020 season, that would be pretty cool because it would be a Friday so I could go to the game and come back home without missing work).  They only offer public tours of the Rose Bowl on the last Friday of the month, when seems a little weird.  I guess it’s not like a baseball stadium.  It doesn’t have games 81 times a year.  It’s a little out of the way.  Even if the Cubs are away, a Wrigley Field tour is something you might do if you’re in Chicago.  If you’re in Los Angeles, going to Pasadena for a Rose Bowl tour is not going to be something that a lot of people are going to do.  So the reason Los Angeles was included on my Easter vacation trip was that it let me get out there on the last Friday of April.  The only other month where the Dodgers are home for the last Friday of the month is May.  Actually, I guess I could have used Ascension Thursday and taken that Friday off and gone out that weekend, but that thought never crossed my mind.  I might have done the summer if that would have worked with a Rose Bowl tour.  Anyway, on this particular Friday, they were getting ready for some concert at the Rose Bowl.  So we couldn’t go on the field and they didn’t even want us to take pictures of the field as they were setting up.  The field was covered because of the concert, unfortunately.  The tour guide said that they keep it painted for UCLA football throughout the year (I guess except for when they’re getting it ready for the Rose Bowl game), possibly for recruiting purposes.  It would have been cool to see that.  They took us up into the broadcast booth, which is at the 50 yard line and way up there.  There were windows that were closed, but apparently they’re open for games and the broadcasters are required to be tethered into the booth because it would be a very long fall from the booth if they fell out.  We also saw the press box where reporters would be during games.  And then we went down to the original 1923 locker room, which was very small.  Now they have all sorts of Rose Bowl history stuff on display there and they show you a video about the Rose Bowl in there as well.  So I’m glad I got to see the Rose Bowl, but it would have been cool to go on the field, or at least see the grass.  They also never took us into the seating area.  I noticed a statue maybe 100 yards away from the gate that we had entered.  It was obviously a football player so I was curious if it was Jackie Robinson.  It could have just been a random football player, but it was in fact Jackie Robinson.  Of course, everybody knows him as number 42 (which is apparently retired across UCLA sports), but his football number at UCLA was 28.  The statue has him wearing 55, which I guess was his number at Pasadena Junior College.

Jackie Robinson never played for the Los Angeles Dodgers, but he played multiple sports at UCLA.

The weekend I was out there, MLB FoodFest was going on in Los Angeles.  They had food from all 30 stadiums in the Majors, plus Tokyo, Monterrey, and London (which have hosted or will host Major League games this year).  I kind of wanted to go, but with my schedule, Friday was the only day where it was a possibility.  We would have had to go shortly before the Dodger game (I think it was starting around 3:00 or 4:00).  The cheapest tickets were $45, which allowed you to pick eight different items.  That would have meant you’d really have to eat a good amount to get your money’s worth.  The problem was that I was going to the Dodger game that night and I would have had to eat a lot of food shortly before the game.  Of course, I had to enjoy some Dodger Dogs at the stadium.  So as much as I was interested in MLB FoodFest, I passed.  They’re doing it again in New York and London later in the season.  I might go to the one in New York if it’s at a convenient time (they haven’t announced the dates yet).

Later in the day, we went to Philippe’s before heading to Dodger Stadium.  We met Pete and Lorenzo there.  It was my third time at Philippe’s.  I had the lamb double dip.  I’ve been there twice before and I’ve had the beef both times so I wanted to try something different.  The lamb was good, but it was more expensive than the beef and I don’t think it was better than the beef.  So if I ever go there again, I’d go with beef or one of the other options.

Then we were off to Dodger Stadium.  We were in the third row of the reserve level, one section over from being directly behind home plate.  For $33 per ticket on Stubhub, that was a great value.  The bad thing about being on the reserve level was a lack of beer options.  This is my biggest criticism of Dodger Stadium (which I love).  They need better beer options (especially local beer options).  On the loge level (the one below us, which I don’t think we were allowed to go to with a ticket on the reserve level), there were bars at each end that had a decent beer selection (it could still be better).  The only thing that we could find that was sort of local was and 805 from the Firestone Walker Brewing Company in Paso Robles, which is kind of like halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.  Of the four beers I drank at the four games I went to on my Easter vacation trip, this one was the blandest.  Also it was served in a 24 ounce can for $17.50.  So Dodger Stadium needs a wider variety of beer and they need more options in terms of sizes.  If I’m only going to get to one Dodger game a year, I’ll drink a 24 ounce beer for $17.50.  But if I lived out there and I went to several games a year, I’m not going to have a beer at every single game.  If you gave me the option of getting a 12 ounce beer for $10 and I went to five games a year, I’d probably get a beer at each game.  I’m just trying to help the Dodgers make money.  Sell good beer for in a 12 ounce size for $10 (you might even be able to charge a little more than that for good beer) and you’re going to make more money.  I had two Dodger Dogs.  They were quite good, as always.

For the game, it was Hyun-Jin Ryu against Christ Archer.  The Pirates took the lead in the first with a double play that scored a run.  Cody Bellinger hit a home run in the bottom of the first to make it 2-1 because of course he did.  That gave the Dodgers home runs in 33 consecutive home games, which is a Major League record (which was snapped the next day).  But that’s over the course of two seasons and it’s just regular season games.  They didn’t hit any home runs in three home games in the NLCS against the Brewers.  So they didn’t really hit home runs in 33 consecutive home games.  Anyway, Austin Barnes hit a home run in the second to make it 3-1.  The Pirates scored a run in the top of the fourth, but the Dodgers answered with three in the bottom of the fourth and that was all the scoring.  Justin Turner had three hits, Barnes drove in three, and Ryu went seven innings and only gave up two runs and struck out ten.  Attendance was 50,748, which is more than five times the attendance at the Rays game I went to.  Another reason to want to go to a Dodger game on a Friday night was Friday Night Fireworks.  Sean, Lorenzo, and I made it down to the field after the game.  I’ve been on the field at many different stadiums for tours, but they always just let you on the warning track and that’s it.  For Friday Night Fireworks at Dodger Stadium, they let you onto the outfield grass.  I did this two years ago with Pete and Katie and it was cool to be on the field again.  The win broke a five-game losing streak for the Dodgers with me in attendance (two in Philadelphia, one in Los Angeles, and two in Chicago).  During my Easter vacation, they went 7-3, but 1-2 with me in attendance.  I guess if I had to pick a game for them to win of the three that I went to, it would have been the one in Los Angeles.

Our view for the game

Sean and me on the field after the game

I was supposed to be headed home on Saturday, but that didn’t happen.  On our way to the Dodger game on Friday, I got an email saying that a winter storm in Chicago might affect my trip (I had a layover in Chicago) and that I might be able to change my flights without a fee.  So I tried to change on the American Airlines website on my phone, but that wasn’t working.  So when we got back to Sean and Catherine’s house, I tried to do it over the phone.  I was told there was no way they could get me back to LaGuardia on Saturday or Sunday on other flights because there were no open seats on flights to New York (I was flying to LaGuardia because that was cheaper, my preference is always Kennedy).  I had checked on their website and it looked like you could book a route to LaGuardia going through Dulles.  So I asked about that, but apparently the Dulles to LaGuardia flight was like American Eagle operated by American Airlines or something so technically it wasn’t the same airline so I couldn’t do that.  So I asked about going to Kennedy and they said it had to be to the same airport.  Anyway, my flights were still supposed to be in time so it looked like I would just have to take my chances.  As I was about to get ready to go to the airport on Saturday morning, I got an email saying that my flight had been cancelled and they had put me on a flight on Sunday to Kennedy (the bad news was I had to go to San Francisco first and I wouldn’t get to Kennedy until around midnight).

So I had an extra day in Los Angeles.  Sean had an all day event and was out of the house from about 8:00 in the morning to about 7:45 in the evening.  So I just took it easy.  I guess MLB FoodFest would have been an option, but I didn’t think of it at the time.  I thought about going to the Dodger game that night.  Clayton Kershaw was pitching so of course I wanted to go.  I looked into it.  The problem was that my flight from Los Angeles on Sunday was early enough that I couldn’t get to mass before going to the airport (and of course, I’d be getting back way too late to go to mass in New York).  My other option was a vigil mass.  That might have worked if the game was at 7:10, but most Saturday home games for the Dodgers start at 6:10.  There were a couple of churches within a few miles of Dodger Stadium with 5:00 vigil masses, but with Los Angeles traffic, I might not get into the stadium until like 6:45 or something if I was going to a vigil mass that got out around 6:00.  So I decided just to watch on TV at Sean and Catherine’s house after going to the vigil mass at their church at 5:00.  Clayton Kershaw pitched seven and gave up one run on four hits and had eight strikeouts.  The Dodgers scored three in the bottom of the seventh to put him in position for the win.  Caleb Ferguson loaded the bases without recording an out in the eighth, but Pedro Baez came in and got out of the inning without allowing a run and the Dodgers held on to win 3-1.  It would have been a cool game to go to, but oh well.  It reminded me of my first trip to Los Angeles.  I ended up spending two extra days there because of Hurricane Irene back east.  I had gone to two Dodger wins with Sean and Tom.  They had to stay one extra day because of the hurricane.  On the day that I was by myself, I could have gone to see Clayton Kershaw against the Padres.  I didn’t have a car and I definitely didn’t know about Uber back then (it was before I had a smart phone anyway).  The Dodgers won 4-1 and Kershaw pitched a complete game.  So I’ve still only seen Clayton Kershaw pitch at Dodger Stadium once, but I have seen him at Nationals Park (before the blog), Citizens Bank Park, Yankee Stadium, and Citi Field in 2009 (before the blog), 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2018.

I always love being in Los Angeles.  My first trip there was in 2011 and this was now seven times in Los Angeles in nine years.  In those seven trips, I’ve been to ten Dodger games and they’ve gone 6-4.  It was good to see Pete and Lorenzo.  And thanks to Sean and Catherine for having me.  There’s a good chance I’ll be back in 2020.

Street Corners and Tastee Freeze

The second stop of my Easter vacation trip was Chicago.  Obviously I’ve been there several times (for Cubs games in 2009 and 2016), but the Dodgers were playing there during my Easter vacation so I wanted to get back.  I was able to go to two games and do a Wrigley Field tour before heading out to the last stop on my Easter vacation trip.

I arrived at my hotel around 3:30 on Tuesday.  I had been to two Adam Richman Man vs. Food spots in Chicago (Gino’s East and Lucky’s Sandwich Company) and they’ve since done a Casey Webb Man vs. Food Chicago episode.  Of the three spots Casey Webb went to, one has closed.  I was interested in the other two.  If it was earlier in the day, I might have gone to Timothy O’Toole’s, where he had his challenge, which was the Big Timmy Burger.  Obviously, I wouldn’t be up for the challenge, but I could have done another burger.  But I decided that I wasn’t too excited about a burger (you can get a good burger lots of places and it was on the show not because the burgers are so great, but because they had a challenge).  It was a little out of the way also so I decided to just order from Lucky’s since it was much closer to where I was staying.  Lucky’s is like Primanti Brothers in Pittsburgh.  They put coleslaw and fries on the sandwich.  Three years ago, I had the two bagger (corned beef and pastrami).  This time I had the Fredo (ham, salami, and capicola).  It was quite tasty.

I went to the game on Tuesday night.  I was feeling full from the sandwich and didn’t eat at the game.  I wanted some Illinois craft beer.  It took some searching, but I found a Half Acre Daisy Cutter.  They had plenty of stuff from 3 Floyds in Indiana and Bell’s in Michigan, but Half Acre is a Chicago brewery (there was also plenty of Goose Island, but that’s Anheuser-Busch InBev).  It was pretty good.  The game was not good. It was Jose Quintana for the Cubs against Kenta Maeda for the Dodgers.  Maeda gave up six runs in the first two innings.  Anthony Rizzo and Javier Baez hit home runs.  The Dodgers had some chances to score more runs, but they ended up losing 7-2.  Let’s move on.

My view on Tuesday night

I started my day Wednesday with a tour of Wrigley Field.  The tour was very good.  It’s amazing that before 2016 the last Cubs championship came before Wrigley Field was built.  In fact, the Cubs were not the original tenants of Wrigley Field.  The Chicago Federals of the Federal League played there.  They were renamed the Whales and won the only baseball championship won at Wrigley Field (they won the Federal League there in 1915, the Cubs won the World Series in 2016 in Cleveland).  They are still the reigning Federal League Champions as 1915 was the last year for the Federal League.  I think the tour guide said that the Whales won the only championship ever at Wrigley Field, but it appears that’s not the case.  Five NFL Championship Games were played at Wrigley Field before the Super Bowl Era began (I think the Bears playing in Wrigley Field was mentioned on the tour, but they didn't mention that Wrigley Field hosted the most NFL games out of any stadium until it was passed by Giants Stadium).  The last one was in 1963 when the Bears beat the Giants 14-10.  The first night game at Wrigley Field was in 1988, but it could have been decades earlier (the two games I went to were the first night games I've been to at Wrigley Field).  The Cubs were going to put in lights in the 1940s, but they donated steel that was going to be used in the construction of lights for the war effort.  The tour guide said that the Cubs lost home field advantage in the 1984 NLCS because they couldn’t have night games and that’s what spurred them to put in lights by the end of the decade, but my quick internet research indicates that story is a myth.  We got to sit in the bleachers.  The tour guide suggested bringing a baseball (or any white sphere close to the size of a baseball) if you’re sitting in the bleachers so that if you get a home run ball hit by the visiting team you can keep the home run ball and throw back the fake one.  The basket at the top of the wall was not put in for catching home runs, it was put in to catch bleacher bums.  Apparently they used to run along the top of the wall and several fell onto the field and hurt themselves (they also changed the wall so that it comes to a point at the top, which makes running along it much more difficult).  The last interesting thing makes perfect sense, but I never thought about it before.  Wrigley Field is the only Major League Ballpark that still exists today where Jackie Robinson played.  Of course, Fenway Park was around also, but Jackie Robinson never played there.

Looking in from the bleachers

Me on the field at Wrigley Field

After the tour, I ordered a personal deep dish pizza from Pequod’s.  Casey Webb had a pizza with pepperoni and sausage on Man vs. Food so that’s what I did.  I have to say, it was pretty underwhelming.  The crust on the bottom of the pizza was too thick.  It was like having pizza ingredients on a big piece of bread (it’s not like the crust was particularly tasty).  I ended up cutting off a lot of the crust from the bottom.  On the outside of the pizza, rather than using dough, they used burnt cheese.  They made a big deal about the burnt cheese on the show.  It was nothing special.  It was a long time ago that I had Gino’s East, but I remember that being a lot better.  Three years ago I had a personal Giordano’s pizza at Wrigley Field and that was better.  It’s not like it was terrible.  You take cheese, tomato sauce, pepperoni, and sausage and put them together and it can’t be too bad, but I wouldn’t be having it again the next time I’m in Chicago.  And of course, I’m reminded of Jon Stewart’s words of wisdom about pizza:

I already knew that it wasn't really pizza, but I was still expecting better.

I was back at Wrigley Field on Wednesday night for the second game of the series.  I had a Bell’s Oberon to drink.  I’m like 99.5% sure that I had a Bell’s Oberon one time either before or after a Notre Dame football game at Jon’s recommendation, but if not, I thought I might not have ever had a Michigan beer (although on my beer state list I listed Bell’s Oberon and Bell’s Amber for Michigan so apparently I did have a Bell’s Amber at some point) so I went with that over a 3 Floyds beer or another Half Acre Daisy Cutter.  It was a solid baseball beer.  I just had a hot dog to eat.  It was listed as a Chicago Dog so I was a little worried that they’d have all those extraneous ingredients (Chicago is right about not using ketchup on hot dogs, but all that other stuff doesn’t belong on there).  The hot dog was good, but the bad thing was that they only had yellow mustard.  Cosmo Kramer knows that’s not acceptable:

It was Cole Hamels against Walker Buehler.  The Dodgers got off to a good start.  The Dodgers had runners on first and second in the fourth and an infield single (with no error) resulted in a run scored and runners on second and third.  Unfortunately they couldn’t get those runs in from second and third.  Cody Bellinger hit a two-run homer in the top of the sixth to put the Dodgers up 3-0.  But then the bottom of the sixth happened.  The first three batters went strikeout, single, fly out.  But Buehler couldn’t get the third out.  Anthony Rizzo walked and then Javier Baez hit a home run on an 0-2 count.  Scott Alexander came in.  He had been good so far this year, but not this night.  He gave up a double to David Bote and then they intentionally walked Wilson Contreras to set up the lefty-lefty matchup with Jason Heyward, but Heyward hit a home run.  So they had a runner on first with two outs and ended up getting six runs.  Anthony Rizzo drove in another run in the seventh off of Joe Kelly (who has been terrible) to put the Cubs up 7-3.  Alex Verdugo hit a three-run home run in the 8th to make it 7-6.  Max Muncy’s walked to lead off the ninth, but a strikeout and a double play ended the game.

My view on Wednesday night.  You can see part of the pole that obstructed my view of left field on the edge of the picture.

I like Dave Roberts, but I'm going to complain for a minute.  He had Cody Bellinger hitting sixth in both games.  The Cubs had two lefties pitching.  I understand moving Bellinger down a little bit against a lefty, but he had Corey Seager hitting fourth.  Seager is another lefty and he hasn't been anywhere near as good as Bellinger so far this year.  So far this year, Bellinger has hit second twice, third four times, fourth 15 times, fifth thrice, sixth five times, and seventh once.  It makes sense that Bellinger was hitting lower in the lineup earlier in the season, but by now, he needs to be hitting much higher.  Nobody can get him out right now.  I would have him hitting third probably (you could definitely talk me into second).  You need to make sure he's hitting in the first inning.  I don't think he's hit any lower than fourth for the last few games and hopefully he won't be hitting lower than that any time soon.

So it was two disappointing games in Chicago, but the beauty of baseball is that you have 162.  I can have a pretty good time at a game during the regular season even if the Dodgers lose.  If I go to a Notre Dame football game and they lose, I’m miserable.  Attendance at the two games was 35,536 and 35,743 (about four times the attendance as the game I went to at Tropicana Field).  Wrigley Field was good.  Unfortunately the ivy wasn’t green.  But other than that, everything at Wrigley was good.  Since the Cubs have been consistent contenders, the atmosphere is very good.  I had a pretty good view for both games.  On Wednesday, I was closer, but a pole was more of an issue.  Fortunately, the infield wasn’t obstructed at all, but I couldn’t see most of left field.  There were four home runs in the game and three of them were to left field.  When Bellinger homered, I was able to move down my row a bit to look around the pole and see it land.  I had two big criticisms of Wrigley Field the last time I went.  One was the beer selection.  It could still be better, but there was a definite improvement.  The other was how difficult it was to move around when I got food on the upper level because there was only one area up there to get food/beer.  Thankfully the renovations added a bunch of areas up high where you can get food and beer.  I didn’t actually buy food at the game where I was sitting up high, but it would have been easy to quickly get something to eat and I was able to quickly get my beer.  Thanks to these improvements, I’m moving Wrigley Field up at least two spots on my rankings.  That puts it at fifth ahead of Kauffman Stadium and Petco Park.  I have PNC Park at number four.  I was only there once seven years ago.  I’m going back at the end of May for two games.  So let’s see if it can hold off the improved Wrigley Field for the fourth spot.  The one thing I didn't like about the renovations was that they moved the bullpens.  You can check out one of my favorite websites to get an overview of how it has changed.  They moved the bullpens off the field.  Ordinarily I don't like having the bullpens on the field, but I don't like how they've moved them to a secret lair underneath the bleachers.  They'll show you who's warming up on the scoreboard, but I'd prefer it if the fans nearby could actually watch the relievers warm up (and say all sorts of stuff to them).  But the improvements outweigh that negative change.

I'll end by pointing out that the last team I saw lose a game at Wrigley Field won the World Series.

Terrible Tropicana Field

Going into the season, I had been to 28 of the current 30 Major League Baseball Stadiums.  I had 28 out of 30 after getting to Anaheim four years ago and then I was back to 28 out of 30 after getting the new Braves stadium last year.  I’ve had plenty of time, but I didn’t have much of a desire to get to the last two.  Tampa Bay and Oakland have the two worst stadiums in baseball and I just wasn’t motivated to go.  I always said that I’d go when they got new stadiums.  They need new stadiums, but I don’t know when that’s going to happen so I figured I’d make it happen this year. But I wasn’t just going to go to Tropicana Field.  I needed to combine it with other stuff.  So Tropicana Field was the first stop of three on my Easter vacation trip.  I’ll get to the other two stops later.

I left the day after Easter for Tampa.  I had been dealing with a cold for a few days and then my stomach was a little unsettled on the way to the airport.  So I was a little concerned as I was on my way.  When I got to Florida, I just took it easy.  I ordered some alligator tacos and they were pretty good.  Lent is over, but I learned this year that alligator is allowed on Fridays in Lent.  Obviously I knew that fish was allowed (which I took advantage of twice this year when I went out to dinner with friends on Fridays), but reptiles and amphibians are allowed also.  If I was making the rules, I’d say no vertebrates, but if we’re making sacrifices it seems that lobster and shrimp shouldn’t be allowed either.

Anyway, after relaxing for a bit, I headed to the stadium.  I waited until the day before to buy a ticket.  I like sitting near home plate, but tickets seemed overly expensive on Stubhub (which was still cheaper than the Rays’ website).  The issue was that in order for a robust secondary market to exist, the team needs to sell a good number of tickets and the Rays don’t (especially for Rays-Royals on a Monday).  I had my eye on a ticket on Stubhub and I was able to wait it out until it came down $5.  In reality, I probably could have just bought the cheapest ticket way out in the outfield and then sat wherever I wanted, but whatever.  I had a pulled pork sandwich and a Coppertail Independent Pilsner (I wanted something local).  Both were fine, but later on I saw a stand selling Cuban sandwiches and regretted not getting that.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a Cuban sandwich, but I was in Florida so that would have been something to try.

My view for most of the game

After five and a half innings, the Royals had a 3-1 lead, but the Rays came back.  I watched from my seat until the seventh inning stretch and then walked around.  The Rays took the lead on a home run by Mike Zunino in the bottom of the seventh.  If you go to the 3:26 mark in the video below, you can see me as his home run goes out.  The home run goes to center.  A little bit to the left there’s a section of chain link fence and I’m standing all the way to the left wearing my yellow St. Edward’s Hall shirt.  I ended up walking around and taking a seat pretty close to the field for the end of the game.  The Rays won 6-3.

I had very low expectations for Tropicana Field and those expectations were met.  Let’s go through what I didn’t like.  It’s the only stadium with a non-retractable roof.  Baseball should be played outdoors unless it’s raining or it’s 109 degrees in Phoenix or whatever.  It’s one of three stadiums with artificial turf (Chase Field in Phoenix was just added to that list, so if I do an official reranking after I get to the Oakland Coliseum, it's definitely moving down in my rankings).  Baseball should be played on grass.  When I was looking through the chain link fence, it appeared that the warning track was the exact same surface as the fake grass, only it was brown instead of green.  Does that help the outfielders at all?  Aren’t they going by feel?  It’s not like they’re looking at the ground when they’re tracking a long fly ball.  The food and beverage selections were decent, but they definitely could be better.  But I guess it doesn’t make much sense to have a huge variety when you don’t have many fans.  Attendance was 9,914 and it was quiet.  I’m not sure if I’ve ever been to a minor league game with more fans, but it’s not out of the question.  I’ve definitely been to minor league games with a better atmosphere.  It’s more fun going to a game with 6,000 fans when the stadium holds 6,000-8,000 or whatever than going to one with 9,914 when the stadium holds 42,735 (although the capacity for this season is 25,000 because they’ve covered up the seats on the upper level).

Seats that they don't sell because they can't sell them

My view at the end of the game

So not surprisingly, I have Tropicana Field ranked last on the list of stadiums I’ve been to.  Here’s an idea that I love, but it definitely won’t happen:  if the Rays make the playoffs, they have to pick the stadium of an AL team that didn’t make the playoffs for their home games.  I mean, yes, they can probably sell more playoff tickets playing in St. Petersburg than they could in another AL city, but I don’t want to watch games on TV played in that stadium.  To make this slightly less unrealistic, for logistical reasons let’s assume that they have to play every round in the same city and they have to pick right at the start of the playoffs.  As of today, the Rays have the best record in the AL, the Yankees would be the first wild card and and the Mariners would be the second wild card.  Where would the Rays play if my very unrealistic idea was adopted?  Like if they thought they were going to play the Yankees (or it least that was a strong possibility), would they pick Boston and hope that Red Sox fans show up to root against the Yankees?  But then they’d be running the risk of having lots of Yankee fans show up also since it’s a fairly short trip.

They have some rays swimming around in right center.  That's kind of cool, I guess.

So I’ve been to 32 stadiums all time (29 out of the current 30).  Tropicana Field ranks 32nd.  I’m expecting it to get bumped down to 33rd when I get to the Oakland Coliseum (which I’m expecting to be 32nd), but we’ll see.

Two Weekends in the City

This weekend is all about watching college basketball on TV.  But I spent good portions of the last two weekends in New York City.  Two weeks ago, Jon was in town for work.  I went into the city on Friday evening to get dinner with Jon and Kyle.  I didn’t really plan on blogging about this, but Saturday was certainly worth a blog post.  Friday night, we met at the Perfect Pint.  It was a Friday in Lent, so fish and chips it was.  By the way, I still don’t understand why fish is allowed on Fridays in Lent, but I don’t make the rules.  Fish and chips are fine, but it’s not too exciting.  There were a couple other seafood options that sounded more interesting, but I didn’t feel like they would have kept in the penitential spirit of Fridays in Lent.  By the way, amphibians and reptiles are also allowed on Fridays in Lent.  I don’t know if I’ve ever eaten an amphibian, but I have had alligator in Florida.  I don’t know if I was going to find any reptiles on any menus in Manhattan though.  To drink I had the Perfect Pint Irish Red.  Although it’s a house beer, it’s brewed somewhere upstate so I still haven’t had a beer brewed in Manhattan (to the best of my knowledge, I haven’t had one brewed in Queens either, I’ll have to try to take care of that at a Mets game this year).  Manhattan doesn’t really seem to have breweries, probably because rent is too expensive, but there seems to be one place that makes their own beer pretty close to Penn Station, Death Avenue.  I don’t know when I’ll be in Manhattan again, but I’ll have to check it out the next time I’m there.

I stayed with Jon on Friday night.  We were in lower Manhattan and he mentioned going to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum on Saturday morning.  I hadn’t been there before so I was definitely in for that.  It’s hard to describe.  In the museum, you’re pretty much working your way underground.  If you live anywhere near the city, you should definitely go.  One thing I learned was that when the buildings were built, there was concern about how close they were to the water.  They were worried about water leaking in underground so they built this huge wall underground to keep the water out.  Then there was concern that the wall wouldn’t hold up after the attacks, which would make the cleanup much more difficult, but it held.  I also learned that they took all the stuff that they dug out to build the buildings and used it to expand the island of Manhattan.  There were all sorts of artifacts to see there.  It was pretty emotional.  The last thing we saw in the museum was a temporary exhibit on sports after September 11.  That was pretty cool.  I recently watched the entire Ken Burns Baseball documentary.  The first nine innings came out in 1994.  The tenth inning was released in 2010.  It was great, but I did have some issues with the tenth inning.  There was lots of coverage of September 11, but no mention of the Mike Piazza home run to give the Mets the lead in the first professional sporting event in New York after September 11.  There was also no mention of George Bush’s first pitch in Game 3 of the World Series in Yankee Stadium.  What’s up with that?

This was the last piece pulled out of Ground Zero.

Mike Piazza's jersey from the first game in New York after the attacks

This was the greatest first pitch in baseball history.

After the museum, we went back to the hotel to pick up our stuff.  Jon was staying another night in the city with another friend.  After parting ways, I stopped at the graveyard at Trinity Church before heading to the subway.  Alexander Hamilton is buried in the cemetery at Trinity Church.  Besides Hamilton, the other people buried there that I knew of were Robert Fulton, Albert Gallatin, Horatio Gates, and John Peter Zenger.  Then I headed back to the 9/11 Memorial.  Jon and I had walked around it, but I checked their website and figured out how to find specific names, so I found my friend Bobby’s father’s name before heading home.

Alexander Hamilton's grave.  Notice all the coins that people leave there.

Freedom Tower

I was back on Thursday night for my favorite most likely completely meaningless sporting event of the year, the Big East Tournament.  Somebody other than Villanova, Marquette, Seton Hall, or St. John’s would have had to win it for it to have any meaning.  I met Adam for St. John’s-Marquette.  It was nice to see St. John’s, but it would have been nicer to see a more competitive game.  Five minutes into the second half, St. John’s cut Marquette’s lead to six.  Then Marquette destroyed them.  They won 86-54 and Markus Howard had 30 points and 7 rebounds.  Adam left shortly before the start of the second game, which was Georgetown-Seton Hall.  Seton Hall was up 53-28 at halftime.  I did not stay for the second half.  Georgetown did not make it interesting.  Myles Powell had 31 points.

Our view on Thursday night.  I was supposed to be over to the right a few sections for Friday night.

I was supposed to come back Friday night, but life got in the way.  I missed two good games.  Villanova had a nice late comeback and beat Xavier in overtime.  Seton Hall beat Marquette by two.  With the two semifinal games, Seton Hall-Villanova was the championship game I wanted.  Those two teams will bring lots of fans to Madison Square Garden.  Xavier-Marquette would have not been as exciting.  Since the new Big East was created, five different teams have made it to the championship game.  The five old teams (St. John’s, Villanova, Georgetown, Seton Hall, and Providence) are much closer to New York and are always going to have more fans at Madison Square Garden.  Fortunately the championship game has always featured at least one of those teams.  The five teams that haven’t made the championship game since the new Big East was created are St. John’s, Georgetown, Marquette, DePaul, and Butler.  St. John’s hasn’t made the championship game since 2000 (which they won).

I went back to the city on Saturday afternoon.  I went to the 5:15 vigil mass at St. Francis.  It’s a very short walk to Madison Square Garden, but I was a little concerned about getting in on time for a 6:30 game because of lines to get through security at the Garden, but it was a very efficient mass.  I was out of St. Francis at 6:01.  I was meeting Vin in the Garden.  We’ve been to many Big East Tournament games together, but this was the first time we were doing the championship game together.  It was a good game.  Villanova led by two at halftime.  It was back and forth for most of the second half.  Kevin Willard got a technical foul about halfway through the half, which allowed Villanova to tie it.  With three minutes left, Villanova went up nine, which I think was the biggest lead of the game for either team, but Seton Hall was not done.  Myles Powell made a layup to cut the lead to one with 16 seconds left.  Eric Paschall made one out of two free throws to give Villanova a 74-72 lead with 14 seconds left.  Myles Powell missed a three that would have given Seton Hall the lead with four seconds left and then that was the game.  Paschall had 17 to lead the way for Villanova.  Phil Booth had 16 and was named tournament MVP.

Four Big East Championships in five years for Villanova.  They now have five all time, which is tied with Syracuse and only behind Georgetown and Connecticut with seven.

Villanova is on quite an impressive run.  They’ve made it to five straight Big East Championship Games and won four of them (including the last three).  Their only Big East Championship before this run was in 1995.  Villanova has been a good team for a while.  Jay Wright has gotten them to the NCAA Tournament 14 out of 15 years, but what they’ve done for the last five years is pretty amazing.  I’ll always be grateful to Villanova for defeating the forces of evil to win National Championships in 2016 and 2018.  Because of that, they’re my second favorite college basketball team.  But they’re a distant second.  I would like to see St. John’s, Seton Hall, Georgetown, and Providence give them some more competition in the Big East.  I don’t dislike the other Big East teams, but I always root for the old Big East teams before the new ones.

As always, I love the Big East Tournament.  Every session was sold out with the exception of Thursday afternoon (which was just a few hundred tickets away from being sold out).  I wish Notre Dame was still in the Big East.  I despise Duke, North Carolina, Syracuse, and Rick Pitino (who used to coach an ACC team).  I would love to just go back to the Big East and be the 11th team.  But I came up with my ideal scenario for Notre Dame men’s basketball.  I’ve had lots of ideas on this blog and this is probably the most unrealistic one.  The idea is that for men’s basketball only, the Big East is a national conference of Catholic schools.  We go with sixteen teams in four divisions.  You play the other three teams in your division twice and the other teams once for a total of 18 conference games.  Here are the divisions:

Northeast
St. John’s
Seton Hall
Providence
Holy Cross

East
Villanova
Georgetown
Xavier
Dayton

Midwest
Notre Dame
DePaul
Marquette
Creighton

West
Gonzaga
St. Mary’s
San Francisco
Loyola Marymount

Butler would be welcome to stay if they converted to Catholicism (in that scenario, I guess I’d kick out San Francisco or Loyola Marymount and move Creighton to the West), but if not, those are my teams.  Of course, the conference is still called the Big East and the tournament is still in Madison Square Garden.  If you win your division, you get a top four seed and a double bye.  The rest of the seeding would just be done by record.  Besides having a national conference of Catholic schools, I helped the Big East out by adding some diversity of colors.  Currently, nine of the ten teams use blue in their color scheme.  And except for St. John’s and possibly Marquette (yellow), blue is the primary color for those teams.  I’m adding some green (San Francisco), red (Dayton and Loyola Marymount), and purple (Holy Cross).

I told you this was pretty unrealistic.  But I could have made it even more unrealistic.  For example, I could have gone with Boston College over Holy Cross, but I stayed with non-FBS schools (Notre Dame is the exception, but I’d go back to being totally independent in football).  I also could have just had Gonzaga and St. Mary’s from the west coast and added in two of St. Joe’s, St. Louis, St. Bonaventure, Duquesne, Iona, Fordham, and LaSalle, but I wanted four west coast teams to make the travel a little easier on Gonzaga and St. Mary’s (also I figured Villanova wouldn’t want to share a conference with St. Joe’s or LaSalle and St. John’s wouldn’t want to share a conference with Fordham or Iona).

Sadly, my dream conference is not to be.  I’ll just have to continue to enjoy Notre Dame basketball (hopefully, I didn’t enjoy this year) and Big East basketball separately.  Of the teams still alive in the NCAA Tournament, I’m rooting for Villanova, Gonzaga, and Iona.

Outdoor Hockey and Other Thoughts

This post is long overdue, but the NHL has another outdoor game tonight so that got me to finally finish it.  Last month I made it to my second outdoor hockey game.

I was watching some of the Winter Classic New Year’s Day and the idea of going out to Notre Dame for the Notre Dame-Michigan hockey game in the stadium reoccurred to me (the Winter Classic would have been cool, but it wasn’t really a possibility because I had to work the next day).  I had thought about it before.  But I was worried about the weather.  The cold wasn’t so much what I was worried about.  It was the possibility of getting stuck out there because of snow.  I’d have to come back on a Sunday and go to work on Monday so if there was a big snow storm in the Midwest or Northeast, I could get stuck out there.  So I checked the weather on New Year’s Day and it looked good.  The next things I checked were flights and hotels.  I got a room for $56.  Flights to South Bend were not too bad either.  So I ended up deciding on  Wednesday fly to South Bend on Saturday for the game.

When I first considered going out for the game, I thought about getting in on Friday night.  There were two issues with that.  First, getting a flight that would leave late enough for me to work on Friday was an issue.  I think there might have been some options, but they were either cutting it pretty close or they would have been more expensive.  The other thing with going out on Friday night would have been that would have meant another night in a hotel.  If I had gone on Friday night, I could have gone to the basketball game at noon on Saturday.  But as it turned out, that would not have been much fun.  This has been a rough year for Notre Dame basketball.  Our freshman class is supposed to be good, but it’s good for a freshman class that’s actually going to go to class and be legitimate students (you know, unlike the freshmen at Kentucky and Duke).  So hopefully next year will be much better.

Anyway, I really wanted to go because how many times are we going to play hockey in Notre Dame Stadium?  This probably won’t happen again for a long time.  So I’ve now seen Notre Dame play hockey in a hockey arena (Compton Family Ice Arena), a baseball stadium (Fenway Park), a basketball arena (Barclays Center), a football stadium, and a fencing arena (we played in the north dome of the Joyce Center when I was a student, it wasn’t nice for hockey and now it’s the home of Notre Dame Fencing).  As far as outdoor hockey games go, the shape of a football stadium is definitely better than a baseball stadium and Fenway Park’s layout is probably about as bad as a baseball stadium could be for hockey (but still, it’s Fenway Park, so I was totally cool with hockey there).

It was still Christmas vacation for the students so you had nobody on campus and most stuff on campus (other than the bookstore) was closed.  It was pretty weird being on campus with nobody around except for the fans for the hockey game.  I definitely would have preferred if they switched the dates of the outdoor NHL games so that Notre Dame would host a game later and then they could have a Notre Dame hockey game with the students on campus, but oh well.

The game was not fun.  It was delayed an hour because of sun glare (it's unusual to see the sun in South Bend between November and March, but fortunately the delay was announced in advance).  Michigan scored three goals in the first ten minutes.  We scored in the second and then late in the third to give ourselves a chance, but Michigan put it away with an empty net goal.  If it had been a football game, I would have been miserable.  But it was cool to see hockey in Notre Dame Stadium.

I had a pretty good view for the game.  This is the opening face off.

It was probably a better picture once the sun went down.

It was my first event in the stadium since the renovations have been completed.  It’s been a while since I’ve been there for a football game.  I did see the stadium when I did the tour over the summer, but I hadn’t been there for a game.  The crowd was 23,422, which was the biggest crowd ever for a home hockey game for Notre Dame.  One thing I noticed was that they should have done a much better job with the jumbotron.  They never showed any highlights of Michigan’s last two visits to Notre Dame stadium or Notre Dame beating Michigan on a buzzer beater in the Frozen Four last year.  Don’t worry, I’ve included them for you below.  Apparently when we played Michigan a few weeks later in the Compton Family Ice Arena, they had Brian Kelly on the big screen making fun of Michigan for not scoring.  They definitely should have made better use of the jumbotron for this game.

I was thinking about where I’d want to see outdoor hockey games played.  I’m limiting this to US venues.  Outdoor hockey in Canada is totally cool with me (it is hockey, after all), but I’m just not very familiar with which outdoor venues in Canada would be possible for hockey.  For American venues, football stadiums are better for viewing the game in person, but I'm cool with playing games in baseball stadiums as long as they're good stadiums.  There's no reason to play in whatever the White Sox stadium is called these days, but Wrigley Field is cool.  So here’s what I came up with (places that have already hosted NHL games are in bold):

Bruins- Fenway Park (definitely not Gillette Stadium or at Boston College)
Rangers- Yankee Stadium, Michie Stadium at West Point, Central Park (Major League Baseball built a temporary stadium at Fort Bragg, so I figure the NHL could do something like that).
Sabres- Ralph Wilson Stadium
Flyers- Citizens Bank Park, Lincoln Financial Field
Penguins- PNC Park, Heinz Field
Capitals- Nationals Park, National Mall, Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium
Hurricanes- Clemson Memorial Stadium
Blue Jackets- Ohio Stadium (I guess, I’d rather not have games played at colleges that I despise), FirstEnergy Stadium in Cleveland, Paul Brown Stadium
Blackhawks- Notre Dame Stadium, Wrigley Field, Soldier Field, Lambeau Field
Blues- Busch Stadium, Kauffman Stadium, TD Ameritrade Stadium
Predators- Neyland Stadium
Wild- Target Field, TCF Bank Stadium, Lambeau Field
Stars- Cotton Bowl (next year's Winter Classic site), Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium
Avalanche- Coors Field, Broncos Stadium, Falcon Stadium (Air Force, this is happening next year), Albertsons Stadium (Boise State), LaVell Edwards Stadium (BYU)
Sharks- AT&T Park
Kings/Ducks- Dodger Stadium, Rose Bowl

Let’s shift to baseball because it’s coming soon.  Tom Verducci also had an idea for baseball to do something similar to the NHL Winter Classic.  And baseball has kind of started to do it.  They had the Fort Bragg Game, the Williamsport games with the Little League World Series, and this season they’re going to play at TD Ameritrade (in Omaha where the College World Series is played).  There are a few problems with doing it in baseball though.  The first is that a baseball field is much bigger than a hockey rink so there aren’t as many places that seem like obvious options.  The second is that for some teams, you’re not going to beat where they regularly play their games.  Are you going to have the Red Sox play somewhere other than Fenway Park?  Wait, don’t answer that, they’re having the Red Sox play two home games in London this season.  At least when the Dodgers played in Sydney, they were the road team.  I’m okay with playing outdoor baseball in other countries in soccer or cricket stadiums.  But if we’re limiting this idea to the United States, here are some places where I’d like to see baseball games:

Actual Baseball Stadiums that Work:
TD Ameritrade Stadium
BB&T Ballpark at Historic Bowman Field (Williamsport)

Baseball Fields that have Issues to Resolve:
Doubleday Field (center field is a little short, the rest of the outfield dimensions are definitely a problem)
Field of Dreams (field dimensions are a big problem)

Temporary Stadiums Would Have to be Built:
National Mall
The foothills near Mount Rushmore
Central Park (have the Mets play there, don’t make the Yankees play a home game outside of Yankee Stadium)
Any military bases

Football Stadiums:
Rose Bowl
Any number of SEC football stadiums or Clemson Memorial Stadium for a Braves game
Lambeau Field

Major League Baseball has already shown that they can build a temporary stadium.  We know Williamsport and Omaha work.  Could they make some football stadiums work for baseball (I mean the Dodgers used to play at the Los Angeles Coliseum, so I’d think so).  What about Doubleday Field or the Field of Dreams?  The dimensions are an issue for sure.  Maybe you put up big screens to make hitting home runs more difficult (they might have to be the whole field rather than just left field like the Los Angeles Coliseum used to have).  You'll notice I didn't include Notre Dame Stadium.  I love Notre Dame, but I'm not putting baseball in a stadium with fake grass (I wish we'd go back to real grass for football)

I also think the Blue Jays should take one homestand each season to a different place in Canada and just embrace being Canada's team.  Like I said, I don't know about the outdoor venues available in Canada, but Canadian football fields are bigger than American football fields so I'd have to think they could make some CFL stadiums work.

I’ve been off this week and I’ve spent the week watching Ken Burns’s Baseball documentary.  It’s really good.  I’m almost done.  I love the sport so much.  If I could go back in time, my first stop would have to be Brooklyn in the 1950s, right?  There are some changes to baseball I’d like to see made.  Why could games be played so much faster decades ago?  One of the biggest reasons for that is the way pitchers are used.  I wish there was a way to change that other than the rule that there’s been talk about that would require pitchers to face at least three batters.  My answer was to limit the number of pitchers on a roster and having two relief pitchers inactive for each game.  I also really don’t want to see the DH in the NL.  I hate that idea so very much.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the season.  Hopefully this year is finally next year the way 1955 was.  I think I’ll be seeing baseball games in at least five different Major League stadiums this year, including Tropicana Field.  I’ve resisted going there, but it’s going to happen during my Easter vacation.  That would leave just the Oakland Coliseum (until the Rangers get their new stadium).  I’m going to try to make that happen over the summer, but I don’t have anything planned for sure on that one yet.  I’m also hoping to make it to Alaska for some of the Alaska Baseball League (a summer league for college players).  Alaska is the only state I have left to get to.  And I have a few minor league stadiums I’d like to get to over the summer as well.

Winter is almost over.  College basketball is about to get good.  And I love college basketball, but it’s baseball that I’m really looking forward to.  I’ll leave you with one of my favorite parts of the Ken Burns documentary: