Maybe the Dingo Ate Your Baby

I took my fourth trip outside of the United States.  I went to Ireland in 2012, England in 2013, Canada in 2014, stayed in the US for all of 2015, and I just got back from Australia.  What do all of those countries have in common?  They all speak English and they are all either England or a country that was once ruled by the British (keep that in mind for later).  But I had wanted to go to Australia for a long time.  Let's review my experience with Australians:

My gym teacher from 1st-8th grade was from Australia.  I'm sure he must have talked a little bit about Australia in class, but I don't remember too much about it.

At Notre Dame, my favorite professor was Father Bill Miscamble, an Australian priest.  I had him for two classes.  The first one I took was US Foreign Policy from World War II to the Present and the second one was Australian History.  I remember that US Foreign Policy was in the spring of 2006 because I remember having Father Miscamble while the Winter Olympics were going on and during George Mason's run to the Final Four and I remember coming back from watching a Bookstore Basketball game and having to finish writing a paper on Reagan and the Cold War.  I took Australian History during the fall of 2006 (my last semester) when I was shooting for straight A-minuses.  I got an A- in Australian History (I'm pretty sure I got an A in Father Bill's other class), but I came up one B+ short of straight A-minuses (the only semester where I didn't get at least one A).  Anyway, Father Bill was awesome.  He would fall behind in class and then he would have us over at the seminary on weekends or at night to get us caught up and we didn't care because he was so awesome and also he provided food and "age-appropriate beverages," as he put it.  That was the last class I went to as a Notre Dame student.  Father Bill ended by saying to us, "My friends, get the hell out of here."  He's also a strong supporter of Notre Dame's Catholic identity.  I wish he was the president of the University.  Anyway, the first book he had us read for Australian History was Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country.  Much of the book was about all the things in Australia that can kill you, but it still made me want to go to Australia.  I reread it this summer before this trip.

And my last connection to Australia is Leigh Ellis.  He's definitely the best member of the Starters on NBATV.

So why did I go this summer?  Why not?  I'm young and I had no reason not to go.  That's what it came down to.  As I get older, it's more likely that I'd have reasons not to go.  I've taken lots of trips the last four summers going to baseball stadiums around the country, but the only two I had left by this year were Oakland and Tampa (they're the two worst and I don't really care if I get to them or not).  I was also trying to get to all 50 states.  By this summer, I only had three left to go.  And I was able to get to Hawaii on the way to Australia.  So now I'm down to two states to go.  I purposely planned the trip for right after the Olympics.  That was good because if I had planned it for earlier, I might not have been able to go.

Before going, I rewatched Bart vs. Australia, which I didn't include in my top 26 Simpsons episodes.  It might not be top 26, but I feel pretty comfortable saying that it's a top 52 episode.  I was reminded that disparaging the Boot is a bootable offense.  And I practiced playing Knifey Spoony just in case.

So anyway, it was a long trip so I won't go over all the details of what I did in Australia, but I'll go over some things.  When the Dodgers played in Australia in 2014 (which I wanted to go to, but my work schedule wouldn't allow that), I was frustrated about not being able to find Australian beer (Fosters is from England).  So the first thing I did after getting to my hotel in Sydney was go to the Redoak Boutique Beer Cafe.  I tried ordering a couple of beers, but they were out of my first two choices.  I don't remember what I ended up getting, but it was really good.  I posted a picture of the beer on Facebook saying that I tried to order coffee and this is what I got.  It was a popular picture.  If you didn't get the reference, you should have known that was not true because I think coffee is stupid (here's another unpopular opinion, wine is stupid too, but unlike coffee I'll drink it if I have to).  The last beer I had in Australia was in Brisbane at the Brisbane Brewing Company.  Again, I don't remember what I had, but the bartender asked what kinds of beers I usually drink and after hearing my answer she had me try something that was really good.  I had other beers in Australia that weren't as good as those two, but they were generally good.

My first full day in Australia featured lots of walking.  I think my phone said I walked 17.67 miles at the end of the day.  I hadn't exactly planned that.  I got up early because I wasn't totally adjusted to the time change and because I wanted to go to the famous Bondi Beach.  I had read about doing a coastal walk starting at Bondi Beach.  When I left my hotel, my phone said it was 48 degrees (the Australian winter is harsh).  And it felt fantastic.  It felt like football weather.  I took Uber to Bondi Beach.  It cost A$21.96 to get to Bondi Beach from my hotel (about $16.50 US).  The beach was gorgeous.  And there were fantastic views during the walk from Bondi to Bronte Beach.  I was able to watch the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean, which you can't do in North America.  There were a good number of people out surfing.  I planned to take Uber back to my hotel, but by the time I was ready to go back, it was rush hour and the Uber prices went way up.  The estimates I was getting were about A$50-70.  So I just decided to walk about five miles back to my hotel after having walked a couple of miles along the beaches.  That night I went was part of history/pub walking tour of the Rocks (where the British first settled with convicts in the late 1700s).  History and pubs?  I was in.  The only thing missing was sports.  It was cool, but I would have preferred a little more emphasis on the pubs.  I did have some rum, which I normally wouldn't do, but apparently it was used as currency in the early days of the convict colony in Sydney.

Pictures don't really do justice to how gorgeous the beaches were.

Like my other trips out of the country, sports were a part of this trip.  I would have loved to see some cricket (one of my goals is to figure out how cricket works), but I think they play cricket in the summer.  Australian rules football was going on so I considering trying to get to a game for that (there was a couple on the history/pub walking tour that was in Sydney for an Aussie rules game), but that's another game that I don't understand and I have less interest in trying to understand that than cricket.  But Hawaii and Cal were playing in Sydney to start the college football season.  It was my third different continent for football, but only the first one that Notre Dame wasn't playing in (by my count, I had been to college 40 games before this one).  The game was at ANZ Stadium which was built for the Sydney Olympics in 2000.  The design of the stadium reminded me a little bit of Aviva Stadium in Dublin, but it's much bigger than Aviva Stadium (capacity is 83,500 whereas it's only 49,000 at Aviva Stadium).  I was surprised by how full it was.  Attendance was listed at 61,247.  I don't know if it was really that many, but it was a good crowd.  If you lived near Sydney and you liked American football, you were going to this game.  There were all sorts of football jerseys worn by the fans and most of them were NFL jerseys.  I was rooting for Hawaii since I had just been in Hawaii and Cal is full of dirty smelly hippies.  Anyway, I was supposed to be sitting behind one of the end zones.  I got to the seat and the sun was right in my face.  I had sunglasses, but I was a little worried about getting burned.  The seats go up high on the sides so I looked up and one side was mostly full and the other was mostly empty.  So I went to the empty side and sat on the fifty yard line.  I ended up sitting much farther from the field than I could have, but I think that's a better view.  I'd rather be up high at midfield than down low behind the end zone (especially in this case since the seats are kind of far away from the field since it wasn't built for American football).  The game started with Hawaii failing to recover an onside kick.  It was pretty competitive early, but Hawaii fell apart before halftime.  Cal kicked a field goal to make it 20-14 with 4:00 left in the first half, but Hawaii fumbled the kickoff and Cal scored two touchdowns before halftime to make it 34-14.  The final score was 51-31.  Davis Webb (a guy with no first names and two last names) threw for 441 yards and four touchdowns.  Chad Hansen had 14 catches for 160 yards and two touchdowns.

My view for the game.  I didn't like the "sydney.com" end zones.

Probably my favorite part of Sydney was the cruise of the Harbor (I refuse to use their silly British spelling with unnecessary letters) that I did.  It was a hop on/hop off cruise.  So I had 24 hours where I could use it to get around the city and come and go as I pleased, but I just did the complete loop once to see the harbor.  It took almost two hours.  The harbor is beautiful and you get some commentary on what you're seeing.  The weather was great and the wind was blowing in my hair.  Good times.  For a little bit of the cruise, you get out to where the harbor meets the ocean and it gets a little more wavy.  That was fun.

I was in the Southern Hemisphere so everything was upside down.

You can see the Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge in the background.  When it was completed, it was 25 inches short of being the longest bridge in the world (to the Bayonne Bridge).

Dublin reminded me a lot of Boston.  It's much smaller than a huge city like New York or London, but it has plenty of history of anti-British feeling.  London reminded me of New York and Washington rolled into one for pretty obvious reasons.  So what would I compare Sydney to?  Sydney was kind of a combination of New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Boston.  It's obviously Australia's version of New York, but it also has some pretty cool history like Philadelphia and Boston.  And it has weather and beaches that are kind of like Los Angeles.  You could even throw Toronto into the mix because it was very clean.

If I was going to go all the way to Australia, I wanted to get to more than one city.  My first choice was Cairns, which is a tropical city in the north.  My next choice was Melboure, which is the second biggest city.  I ended up with a compromise choice, Brisbane.  Brisbane is the third biggest city and it's farther north than Sydney.  So it was definitely warmer, but it wasn't tropical.  Really the reason I went there was because of cost and convenience.  I'm pretty sure that Sydney and Brisbane are the only two Australian cities with direct flights to Honolulu on Hawaiian Airlines.  What's interesting is that Sydney is the 3rd biggest city I've ever been to (behind New York and London in whichever order they are) and Brisbane is seventh (the three I mentioned, Los Angeles and Chicago and Toronto in whichever order they should be).  It's a country of 23 million people (only Ireland is smaller of the countries that I've been to) that is almost entirely empty, but it has two of the seven biggest cities that I've been to.

I checked out some museums in both Sydney and Brisbane.  Sydney's museums were better, but Brisbane's were free (the Museum of Brisbane did have a pretty cool World War I thing).  I went to cathedrals in both cities.  I went to the Saturday vigil mass at St. Mary's Cathedral in Sydney (it was pretty cool to have fulfilled my Sunday mass obligation by 5:00 in the morning on Saturday on my time) and a Tuesday morning mass at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Brisbane.  St. Mary's had some uncomfortable pews, but you'll find that in lots of old churches.  But St. Stephen's had the most uncomfortable kneelers I've ever had at a church.  It was just an elevated slab of wood.

This is from the Hyde Park Barracks Museum.  Some of the over 150,000 convicts sent by the British to Australia lived in accommodations like this.  This room is a recreation as the building was used for other things later on, such as a depot for female immigrants from Ireland.

A statue of St. John Paul the Great outside St. Mary's Cathedral in Sydney

The Brisbane River is definitely not as nice as Sydney Harbor.  The tides flowing in and out churn up soil and just make it dirty.  And if you look at the Brisbane River on the map, it looks like a little kid had an assignment at school to imagine a city and draw a map of it.  The river just zigzags all over the place.  Anyway, I did a river cruise to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary (it was the Twin Pines Koala Sanctuary until I went back in time and changed history).  It's a little zoo with lots of koalas.  It's nowhere near as big as the Bronx Zoo, but it does have lots of Australian animals.  There's an area that you can enter and there are just kangaroos and emus walking around freely.  You can go right up to them and they're really chill.  By my last day in Brisbane, I was ready to go home, but my flight was late so I checked out a planetarium.  Part of the show was about the night sky in the Southern Hemisphere, so that was pretty cool.  They showed the Southern Cross constellation (keep that in mind also).

Australia's geographic isolation led to the evolution of some weird species.

At least one other Harborfields High School graduate has been to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.

So I finally got to Australia.  I would definitely go back.  I might not, but if I do, I would go back to Sydney, but not Brisbane.  Brisbane was fine, but I felt like I did everything there was to do there.  In Sydney, I did everything I wanted to do, but I'm pretty confident that I could have found lots more to do pretty easily.  I was searching for things to do in Brisbane.  With Sydney, I already had in mind what I wanted to do.  So I would want to go to Sydney and maybe Melbourne, Cairns, and/or Perth.  Perth has some appeal to me.  There is no other populated part of the world that is farther away from New York.  It would be pretty cool to be as far away as possible without being out in the middle of the ocean or in space.  And there's also Uluru.  That would be cool to see.  But if I never get back, I can live with that.  I'm left thinking of the end of Bill Bryson's book:

Anyway, let me rank the flags of the countries I've been to, which will lead me into a rant:

5.  Australia- You might already know, but I'll explain in a little bit.

4.  Ireland- Why does the Irish flag rank so low?  The orange third.  The orange stands for the Protestant British supporters of William of Orange, who want Ireland to be part of the United Kingdom.

3.  Canada-  Australia, you can learn a lot from Canada when it comes to flags.  You see that maple leaf and you think of Canada.

2.  Great Britain-  The Union Jack has great history and symbolic meaning.  I once gave John and Darryl a Union Jack as a gag gift.

1.  United States- You're not surprised.

I have no problem with 75% of Australia's flag (whereas I have no problem with about 67% of Ireland's flag).  So why is Australia last?  They have another country's flag in their flag!  Come on, Aussies.  Be your own country.  And I knew Australia's flag was similar to New Zealand's, but I didn't realize how similar they were until I looked at them closely.  They both have the Southern Cross constellation on them.  The stars look different (Australia's are white and all but one have seven points whereas New Zealand's are red with five points) and Australia has two extra stars, but come on.  It reminds me of some girls I used to teach who would dress exactly the same and do their hair exactly the same.  They had no individuality.  And this is not about me being anti-British.  I am anti-British royalty, but I'm not anti-British.  Speaking of British royalty, the queen is all over Australian money.  Why?  British royalty is so stupid.  The royal babies?  What have they ever done that John and Liz's kids Jack and Teddy haven't done?  And I like John and Liz much better than the royal babies' parents.  And I'm sure there are plenty of Australian babies that are no less special than the royal babies.  So Australia, get rid of the Governor General (The queen's representative in Australia who could pretty much be a dictator if he wanted to be, one of them dissolved the Australian government in 1975), get rid of the Union Jack on your flag.  Get rid of British spelling. I'd be thrilled if they decided to not use American spelling either.  They can spell color  K-U-L-E-R for all I care.  Be your own country.  New Zealand at least had a referendum on changing their flag.  If you're going to have a really silly flag, at least let the people decide (as we've seen in the United States, democracy doesn't always work, look at our horrible presidential candidates, but at least people had a choice).  You don't have to change everything.  I can live with silly place names like Queensland and Victoria (you can't change history and even the United States has Virginia, New York, the Carolinas, etc.).  Just be less British and more Australian.

You can do better than this, Australia.

Australia had been on my list of places to get to for a long time.  Before I had been to Dodger Stadium, I said the two places I needed to get to before I died were Dodger Stadium and Australia.  So where do I go next?  I'm not in a rush to leave the country again.  I think New Zealand is the only First World country that speaks English as their primary language that I haven't been to.  I actually did think about making New Zealand part of this trip, but opted against it.  I can't see making a point of getting to New Zealand.  Maybe if I ever went back to Australia, I'd get to New Zealand too.  The only other countries that I'm really interested in getting to are Italy and the Vatican City.  There are definitely other European countries that I could see visiting.  I'm sure there would be some cool St. John Paul the Great stuff to see in Poland.  I imagine there's some cool historical stuff to see in Berlin.  But I can't say that I'm in a rush to go to Europe with ISIS running around.  Israel would also be great to get to if not for the very legitimate fear of being killed by a terrorist.  I have no desire to go anywhere else in Asia mostly because I wouldn't even be able to read the writing.  And I don't have any desire to go to Latin America or Africa either.  I'd certainly be willing to go back to Ireland and England someday.  I had a good time in Toronto, but I can't see making a point of going back to Canada unless they got another baseball team (there has been some talk of baseball going back to Montreal, which seems really really silly to me).  So I might not be leaving the country again for a while.

One last thought.  My first Uber driver in Australia was asking me about the election.  He said that Australians love Americans, but get frustrated when we do stupid things.  He compared us to an embarrassing drunk cousin at a wedding.  And when Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are going to finish first and second in some order in our next presidential election, it's hard to disagree.  He also said that despite that, Australians are always willing to stand up for the United States.  He didn't mention this, but you could cite the Vietnam War as an example.  The Aussies were with us when the British were not (actually, all our allies in Vietnam were from Asia or the South Pacific, perhaps the Brits and other countries would have been with us if the threat of communist expansion had been close to home like it was for our allies in Vietnam).  May that friendship between the United States and Australia endure.

Our 50th State, My 48th

Yep, I made it to my 48th state, Hawaii.  It was just a quick stop on Oahu.  For a long time I had been thinking about combining Hawaii with a trip to Australia.  There are only a handful of US cities that have flights to Australia.  I'm pretty sure that most Americans who go to Australia go from Los Angeles.  Los Angeles to Sydney is a 15 hour flight.  Anywhere else on the mainland is going to be longer (unless there are flights from San Diego).  Honolulu to Sydney is 10 hours and 45 minutes.  A long flight to be sure, but not as bad as 15+ hours.

So I was only in Hawaii for one full day and parts of two others.  Of the 47 states I had been to already, most of my trips had something to do with sports.  Even if I didn't go to a game, I made it to a few states as part of a trip to a game somewhere else (like when I got to Maine last summer after going to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park).  But Hawaii is not the place to go for professional sports.  Only Hawaii, Alaska, and Wyoming have no professional baseball teams (and I made it to Wyoming when I went to Denver to cross Coors Field off the list).  It would be kind of cool to go to a Hawaii football game and see the stadium where Jimmy Clausen and Golden Tate ended the bowl losing streak, but I was too early for that.  Still, I found plenty to do in my short time in Honolulu.

On my first day, I didn't have much planned.  I got to my hotel around 4:00, which was 10:00 my time.  I was pretty tired, but I did want to adjust to the time at least a little. I also wanted to go to Hawaii before Australia because it would help adjust to the time difference in Australia.  Sydney is 20 hours ahead of Hawaii, which is the same as being 4 hours behind, not too bad (as opposed to being 14 hours ahead of New York, which is the same as being 10 hours behind).  So anyway, the first thing I did after checking into my hotel was take a walk to the beach.  It was a short walk from my hotel.  I had a view of Diamond Head from the beach.  I walked around the beach for a little bit and then just went in up to my knees.  After the beach, I took a walk to the Waikiki Brewing Company.  I might have had Hawaiian beer before, but I definitely hadn't had a Hawaiian beer at an outdoor bar in Hawaii.  I had a burger for dinner and to drink I had their amber ale and their seasonal.  I liked the amber ale better.  By the way, how does a Hawaiian brewery do seasonals?  They don't have seasons in Hawaii.

It was hot when I was in Hawaii, but there was pretty much always a pleasant breeze.

I liked the other beer I had better, but the lighter beer made for a better picture.

The second day was my only full day there and it was the highlight of my time in Hawaii.  I went to Pearl Harbor.  You can reserve tickets online in advance, but they were sold out by the time I tried to do that.  They do have a limited number of tickets each morning.  I asked at my hotel how early I should get there.  They told me 6:30 (it doesn't open until 7:00).  That was fine with me, especially since I wasn't totally adjusted to the time difference.  So I got there a little before 6:30 and there were some people on line already, but not too many.  There's a ton to see at Pearl Harbor.  I spent about eight hours there.

What everybody wants to see is the USS Arizona Memorial.  And that's what sells out (or runs out, tickets are free to see that).  There's other stuff to see that you can pretty much go to whatever you want, but you have to go to the Arizona Memorial by boat and those spots fill up.  I was able to get on the first boat.  First you see a 20 minute movie about the attack.  Then you get on the boat to go to the Arizona.  I learned a whole lot during my time at Pearl Harbor.  First of all, the US was not ready for the attack.  The military leaders at Pearl Harbor were more worried about sabotage from the Japanese population in Hawaii so they took steps to prepare for that.  Our planes were lined up wingtip to wingtip and that just made them easy targets.  And we missed some warning signs of the attack.  The Japanese sent submarines as part of the attack and we actually sunk one of them before the planes came, but apparently we didn't think too much of it.  Radar picked up the Japanese planes, but the military was expecting US planes to arrive from the mainland that morning so that's what they thought was showing up on the radar.  I didn't really know much about the USS Arizona.  Over 2,000 Americans died on December 7, 1941 and almost half of them were on the USS Arizona.  The ship sunk and approximately 900 members of the Navy are still entombed on the ship today.  And the memorial is built right above the ship.  A few parts of the ship still stick out above the water.  And 75 years later, oil is still leaking out of the ship into Pearl Harbor.  It's about two quarts of oil per day.  You can see it and smell it when you're on the memorial.  The legend is that it will stop when the last surviving member of the Arizona dies, but I heard that there's still way to much oil in there for that to be true (I think there are six surviving members).  So it really is amazing to be on that memorial.  I said a prayer for peace while I was there and held back some tears.

Part of the USS Arizona that's above water

Yep, that's the oil still leaking into Pearl Harbor 75 years later.

A few other things I learned:  The attack was not just on Pearl Harbor.  It was really an attack on the whole island of Oahu.  There were several American airfields throughout the island that were attacked (of course, most of the damage was done at Pearl Harbor).  World War II showed that battleships were pretty much obsolete.  The aircraft carrier was the wave of the future (of course, that's where the Japanese planes came from).  The US was fortunate that three aircraft carriers were out at sea delivering planes places rather than at Pearl Harbor on December 7.  And I think it was 21 ships that were sunk or damaged by the Japanese and all but three were recovered and put back into use.  I'll be spending a lot more time on Pearl Harbor with my eighth graders this year.

There are two museums that you can go into for free right by where you see the movie.  They're not too big, but there's good information on the road to war and the attack in them.  I probably spent about a half hour in each.  Then there's the USS Bowfin submarine and museum.  I'm fairly confident that it was the first time I was on a submarine.  The museum had a thing about how the submarines were named for fish and they had these cartoonish logos.  It reminded me of Abraham Simpson and the Flying Hellfish (they weren't on a submarine, but the logo looked like these submarine logos).

The last thing I did at Pearl Harbor was take a bus to nearby Ford Island. The battleships were all lined up along Ford Island.  And there are two museums to see there.  One is the USS Missouri, which is where the Japanese formally surrendered to the Allies on September 2, 1945.  That was in Tokyo Bay, but today the site of the end of the war is at the site of the beginning of US involvement.  So you can take a tour of the ship.  It reminded me of the USS Midway, which I saw in San Diego four years ago.  The Missouri is a little older.  And I'm going to go ahead and disagree with Harry Truman on something (and I do respect Truman more than most 20th century presidents).  Truman wanted the surrender signed on the Missouri since he was from Missouri.  Other people wanted it to be on a ship that was at Pearl Harbor, which would have been more appropriate.  The Missouri was being built in Brooklyn at the beginning of the war so it was not at Pearl Harbor.  And the other thing to see on Ford Island was the Pacific Aviation Museum.  It's a museum in two hangars that have been around for a long time.  In one of them you can still see bullet holes from the Japanese attack.  They have some old planes that you can check out in there.  So that was Pearl Harbor.  It's probably right behind Gettysburg in terms of American war sites to see, just because there's even more to see at Gettysburg

That's the USS Missouri on the left and the USS Arizona Memorial on the right, where the war officially ended and where US involvement started.

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This is a view of the Arizona Memorial from the Mississippi.

After that, I went to Helena's Hawaiian Food, which was on Man vs. Food.  I had the same things Adam had, laulau and pipikuala ribs.  The laulau was unlike anything I've ever had.  It's butterfish and pork wrapped in some kind of Hawaiian leaves.  It was good, but I liked the pipikuala ribs better.  Of course I've had ribs before, but there was definitely something different about them.  Very good stuff.  I went back to my hotel to charge my phone for a bit and then I had planned on going to the Brewseum.  The Brewseum sounds right up my alley, a brewery combined with a museum (all that's missing is sports).  But at that point I was tired and all museumed out, I highly doubt that the museum was going to be better than the ones I had already seen, and it was over a mile from my hotel.  So I decided to just have a beer at the hotel and relax.

This was good and surprisingly cheap.

On my last morning in Hawaii, I still had a couple of things to do.  First I wanted to get to another Man vs. Food spot, Mac 24/7.  It's open 24 hours and it's really popular.  I got there around 6:00 in the morning and there wasn't much of a crowd.  I had a short stack of their blueberry pancakes (Adam was there for the challenge and had a gigantic version of what I had).  There should be a short stack of the short stack.  I ate a little more than half and couldn't do any more than that.  They were very good, but I felt bad wasting that much food.  I can't be the only one that can't get all the way through their pancakes.  Why not have three options:  a real short stack, what I got (call that the regular version), and the crazy gigantic challenge option?  After that, I went to mass at Sts. Peter and Paul.  It was a Wednesday morning so I didn't have to go to church, but there was nothing else that I would want to do that I would have time for and it's another place where I can say I went to mass (by the time you're reading this, I will have been to mass in five different countries and many states).  My Uber driver to the church was somebody who came to the United States at a young age from Thailand (I hope I'm remembering that correctly).  He said he grew up as a Buddhist, but went to Catholic school when he came to the United States.  Despite that, he still had no interest in believing in God.  His wife is Catholic and he converted because of her.  He said that when he first converted, he was just doing it to keep his wife happy, but since then he's had experiences that made him a devout believer.  He was a really interesting guy and it was pretty cool that he happened to be my Uber driver when I was going to mass.

They were showing a replay of the Dodger game from the night before while I ate this.  The Dodgers beat the Giants 9-5.  Good times.

So that was my trip to Hawaii.  I definitely wouldn't be opposed to going back someday.  I only saw a very small part of the state.  Some parts that I saw were beautiful and some not so much (like by the airport).  I'm sure the other islands are very different since they don't have cities like Honolulu.  So maybe I'll be back and see more of the state someday, but for now it's crossed off the list.  Only two states to go.

Vin Scully's Pearl Harbor Story

I've been quiet on the blog lately.  I had planned on doing a minor league baseball trip with Sean, but life got in the way.  I might have a pretty big trip coming up, but I guess I'm still unsure at this point.  But I had wanted to do some kind of post in honor of Vin Scully and his last season.  Well, yesterday was probably Vin's last weekday afternoon game, unless the Dodgers playing in the afternoon during the playoffs (I'm guessing an afternoon start wouldn't be too likely for them).  Also, we have the Olympics going on (apparently I didn't blog about the Olympics in 2012, but I did in 2014).  I decided I had to keep a running diary.  Here's what transpired:

3:00- It's time for Dodger baseball!  Vin says that today is the first time the Dodgers have had a share of first place since May 14.  It's amazing how they've played without Clayton Kershaw.  Kershaw made one start during my summer vacation.  It was only his second loss of the season and he got hurt.  Not a good night.  And somehow, the Dodgers have the best record in baseball since then.

3:04- The Marlins could do the Dodgers a solid by beating the Giants.  They're down 1-0 in the top of the ninth.  The Giants have two runners on with two outs.

3:06- We have Olympic volleyball on.  Some of my favorite students are big volleyball players so they might be watching this.  The US and Serbia are tied, with the US leading the third set 14-13.

3:08- The US women are leading Serbia 49-31 in basketball in the second quarter.  Basketball is definitely my favorite Summer Olympic sport (until 2020 when baseball comes back), but it's not really all that interesting since we're so much better than everybody else.

3:10- Vin guessed that the temperature was around 80 degrees.  My phone says that it's 77 in Los Angeles.  I would love to be at this game.  Day baseball with great weather at Dodger Stadium.  And yes, I have Los Angeles in my weather app.  It comes after Notre Dame (90 degrees), Dublin (61), and Sydney (57).  The Phillies single on the first pitch of the game by Scott Kazmir.

3:12- Vin just mentioned getting a visit from Juan Samuel.  I remember him being on the Dodgers when I was little.  And Scott Kazmir gets his first out with a strikeout.

3:13- 6-4-3 double play to end the inning.  What's your favorite double play?  I probably like the 5-4-3 the most of the fairly common double plays.  I like seeing the ball go all around the infield.  The 1-2-3 is my favorite of the less common double plays.

3:15- The Giants won 1-0.  Nuts.  It's an interesting lineup for the Dodgers today.  Their first six batters will hit left-handed (one switch hitter in there).  Corey Seager is hitting third.  He's hit second for most of the season.

3:17- Vin gives us the full name of the Phillies' starter, Jeremy Robert Hellickson.  He's from Des Moines, Iowa.

3:18- After Chase Utley strikes out, Josh Reddick is up.  He has two hits since the Dodgers traded for him.  The other guy they got in the trade can't pitch because of a blister.  This trade isn't looking good.

3:19- Reddick hit a very hard single.  If he hadn't hit it so hard, it would have been a double.  It came off of the wall too fast.  That's the kind of luck he's had since the Dodgers got him.  And now Corey Seager is up.  This kid is the real deal.  He should be Rookie of the Year.  And he has all the makings of a superstar.

3:20- Vin tells us that Jeremy Hellickson named his dog after Derek Jeter.

3:21- Corey Seager hits a hard single the other way.  First and second for Adrian Gonzalez.

3:22- Gonzalez is hitting .364 in his last 36 games.  That's pretty good.

3:23- Gonzalez hits a double off the first base umpire.  I'm kind of surprised that you don't see something like that happen more often.  Reddick scores and Seager goes to third.

3:25- Yasmani Grandal (not my favorite Dodger, even though he's been hitting well lately) strikes out for the second out.

3:28- Joc Peterson walks to load the bases for Howie Kendrick, the first right-handed batter for the Dodgers.  Vin says that Barroid got kicked out in Miami today.  He should just be kicked out of every game.  That guy does not belong in baseball.  He gets hired and Dee Gordon gets suspended for using steroids.  I'm not surprised.

3:32- We're one ball away from one of my favorite baseball scenarios:  bases loaded with two outs and a full count.  You get to start the merry-go-round on the pitch.  Unfortunately Howie Kendrick swings and misses on a pitch down and out of the zone.

3:33- The US won the third set and now we're up 17-13 in the fourth set.  What's the deal with that one volleyball player that wears a different color?

3:34- It's the US vs. Belgium in tennis on Bravo.  Why does Bravo only give us the countries and not the player's names in their score box?  It's Venus Williams for the US.  I have no idea who she's playing.  USA has equestrian on.  I have no idea why this is an Olympic sport and beer pong isn't.

3:38- I just googled "sports that should be in the Olympics."  Here's what I want:  beer pong, tug of war, and cricket.  I'm open to other ideas.  The other thing that needs to happen is America's Team Olympics (go to about the 6:30 mark of this podcast, it is just a brilliant idea).

3:42- Scott Kazmir allowed a walk, but nothing else in the second inning.

3:44- I'm enjoying a Sam Adams Summer Ale.  Day baseball with Vin Scully, the Olympics, Summer Ale.  Not a bad day.  I wanted to cap it off by watching outside on my iPad, but the weather is questionable.

3:45- Vin starts talking about Pearl Harbor.  He mentions listening to a New York Giants football game on December 7 that was interrupted for the news about Pearl Harbor.  Vin thought it was in China because Japan and China had been fighting.  He says that it was the only time he ever heard his father swear.  I was hoping for a great Vin story for this blog post and I got it.  This is what we're not going to have anymore.  He's the best.

3:49- Chase Utley strikes out to end the inning.  1-0 Dodgers.

3:50- Not a great selection of Olympics on TV.  I assume we won in volleyball since it appears to be over and it would have taken a fifth set for us to lose.  I want some rugby.

3:52- Vin says everybody wants to know what his father said.  Vin says, "I'll spell it:  G-D."

3:55- Jeremy Hellickson gets a hit, but Joc Pederson makes a good play to hold him to a single.

4:03- Vin mentions that school is just around the corner with some shots of kids in the stands.  I'll tell you, I'm ready to go back to school.  I guess what I really want is for it to be football season, which would entail being back in school.

4:04- Josh Reddick hits it hard, but right at the right fielder.  Of course he did.

4:06- Yes, Fiji against New Zealand in rugby sevens.  This sport is crazy.  The whistle blows and it doesn't seem to mean anything.  The players just keep beating the hell out of each other.  New Zealand is up 7-5.  I think I understand how the scoring in this game works.  One of the reason that I want cricket in the Olympics is because I want to understand it.  I've tried to figure it out, but it still makes no sense to me.

4:11- I just googled rugby sevens rules.  I was right about the scoring.  I just discovered that they play two seven-minute halves.  That's it?  14 minutes?  That's like a video game version of a sport.

4:12- Fiji just went up 12-7.  I might as well watch the end of this game.  They just went to halftime and now there are only four minutes left in the game.

4:14- What does the referee do in this game?  It seems like the players are allowed to do whatever they want.

4:15- Offsides against New Zealand.  I have no idea what that means.

4:16- Fiji apparently has never finished better than 8th in anything at the Olympics.  They're a minute away from being in the Final Four for rugby sevens (which might be over in about an hour considering how short this game is).

4:19- Fiji kicks the ball out of bounds and that ends the game.  I get the scoring, but I don't get anything else about this game.

4:20- Vin is telling a story about Mike Schmidt taking batting practice left-handed.

4:21- The Dodgers have the best record in the league in day games.

4:25- It just came across my TV that there's a tornado warning for Suffolk County until 4:51.  That's an oddly specific time.

4:28- I just checked Vin's Pearl Harbor story.  It checks out.  The Giants were playing that day.  Their opponent?  The Brooklyn Dodgers.  The Dodgers won 21-7.  They had five yards passing on four attempts.

4:30- More rugby sevens.  It's France against Japan.  And there's kayaking on NBC.  It reminds me of all the kayaking I did in my camp days.  I remember once getting chased down by Alex because I went all the way to Centerport beach.

4:32- It's still 1-0 Dodgers in the fifth.  I'm getting ready for Vin Scully Story Time at the beginning of the sixth.

4:37- The US is beating Japan 3-0 in field hockey.

4:38- For story time, Vin tells about how the Dodgers made the playoffs in 1981 because they were in first place before the strike.  It was August 10, 1981 that play resumed after the strike.  Of course, the Dodgers went on to win the World Series that year.  It would be so great if they went on to win the World Series this year in four of five games so that Vin's last game would be at Dodger Stadium calling the Dodgers winning the World Series.

4:43- Kazmir is through six without allowing a run.  This is highly irregular for a Dodgers starter to pitch this well.

4:45- Jeremy Hellickson is done with an injury after five.  He pitched really well after the first inning.  Elvis Araujo replaces him.  Hopefully he'll give up a few runs.

4:46- Reddick leads off with a single.  He has two hits in the game.  This is also highly irregular.

4:48- Corey Seager just got hit.  He looks like he's hurting.  Not good.

4:49- Seager is staying in.  I hope he's okay.  He got hit right near the right wrist.

4:54- Well, I survived that tornado warning.  The Dodgers have runners on the corners with two outs for Joc Pederson.

4:56- Corey Seager ran and was going to be out by a mile so Reddick took off from third and was eventually tagged out after a run down.  You can score that one 2-6-2-5-6

4:58- Apparently today's Giants-Marlins game was the first matchup of Notre Dame alumni as starting pitchers in 102 years.  Both Jeff Samardzija and David Phelps pitched well.  But it was one game where I could root against Jeff Samardzija without feeling any guilt and the Giants won.  Nuts.

5:03- Single and a walk for the Phillies to start the seventh.  This isn't good.  Scott Kazmir is coming out for Grant Dayton.

5:07- Why does NBC have the news on instead of the Olympics?  If I want to watch the news, there are plenty of other channels I could watch.  So instead of competition that happens once every four years, they have some moron climbing some other moron's tower.

5:11- Freddy Galvis just hit a three-run home run.  Lame.

5:14- Grant Dayton had pitched five innings without allowing a hit.  That first one was costly.

5:18- If you pick a player up and his hips are above his shoulders and you let him go, apparently that's a penalty in rugby sevens.  I think the only other penalty is murder.  Argentina is a man down after a penalty against Great Britain.  They're scoreless late in the game (which is also early in the game since it lasts for 14 minutes).

5:20- Argentina just missed a field goal (I don't think that's what it's really called), that would have won it 3-0 at the end of regulation.  They're going to overtime.

5:22- Howie Kendrick doubled with one out in the bottom of the seventh.  The Dodgers have the tying run at the plate.

5:24- Vin is talking about the 20-80 scouting scale, which only uses multiples of 5.  Why not just 1-13?  Or 0-60?  20-80 makes no sense.

5:25- Rob Segedin singles home Howie Kendrick.  3-2.  By the way, I did once look into why it's 20-80 and there is some reason for it.  But adjusting it to 1-13 or 0-60 would make a lot more sense.

5:27- Justin Turner is pinch hitting for Grant Dayton.  He's tied for the team lead with 21 home runs.

5:28- Great Britain just scored in overtime to win.  And Justin Turner just struck out.

5:30- The US just beat Japan 6-1 in field hockey.

5:33- Chase Utley pulled a ball just foul.

5:34- Utley flies out to center.  Nuts.

5:45- Corey Seager doubles to deep center with one out in the eighth.

5:52- With runners on first and second, Freddy Galvis makes a nice play on a ground ball to end the inning.

5:55- Kenley Jansen is in for the Dodgers.  He hasn't pitched in a few days and the Dodgers are off tomorrow, so this makes sense.

6:01- The US and Australia just tipped off in basketball.  The US has Nike uniforms and Australia has Adidas uniforms.  This is good news because we have different uniforms.  The US has the same uniforms as China (and all the other Nike countries), just with different colors.  Australia has the same uniforms as France with different colors.  Why are Nike and Adidas so uncreative?  They doe this for college basketball too.  I was infuriated when Notre Dame was an Adidas school and we had the exact same uniforms as Michigan (just with gold instead of ugly yellow).

6:04- We're almost two and a half minutes in and Australia has the lead.  What?  Let's get it together.

6:05- Aron Baynes has some ridiculous hair.  He might have a great accent, but his hair is ridiculous.

6:06- The bases are loaded for Ryan Howard with one out.  We have a chance for a 1-2-3 double play.

6:09- Howard clears the bases with a double down the right field line.  Nuts.  And why are we still losing to Australia?

6:11- I just did some googling to find out why Australia wears green and gold.  It's a good color combination, but neither color is in their flag.  The explanation is that they come from Australia's national floral emblem, the golden wattle.

6:13- Andrew Bogut just had a big block, but it was a Dwight Howard block.  He blocked it out of bounds, which gives it right back to us.

6:14- And Klay Thompson hits a three off the inbound pass.  Australia still leads by five.

6:15- It's coming down outside. So watching sitting outside for this would be no good right now.  And we're going to the bottom of the ninth with the Phillies leading 6-2.

6:21- Carmelo Anthony now has the most points ever for the US in Olympic basketball.  He's never going to win an NBA Championship, but he's got that going for him.  He's probably my least favorite player now that Kobe Bryant is gone.  And the US finally has the lead.

6:27- Josh Reddick grounds out to end the game.  The Dodgers fall back to a game behind the Giants.  That's not good, but an afternoon spent with Vin Scully is never all bad.  This has gone on long enough so as Vin just said, wishing you all a very pleasant good afternoon everybody.

Griffey vs. Bonds

Ken Griffey Jr. goes into the Hall of Fame today.  I had him number 4 on my list of favorite post-Cold War players (by the way, Kershaw has definitely jumped to number 1 since I wrote that in 2012).  He's also starting in center on the All-Jim Team.  So yeah, I'm a fan of Ken Griffey Jr.  I am not a fan of Barry Bonds.  Griffey got the highest percentage of Hall of Fame votes ever at 99.3%.  I would say that it's deserved, but really it isn't.  Why didn't Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Walter Johnson, Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, or Hank Aaron get 100%?  (And I realize you could possibly make the argument for Sandy Koufax not getting 100% because of his short career, but he's the greatest left-handed pitcher of all time and the second greatest pitcher ever so he deserved 100%.)  This year Barry Bonds got 44.3% of Hall of Fame votes.  That's 44.3% more than he should have gotten.

Anyway, this post was inspired by ESPN ranking the greatest 100 players of all time.  They had Barry Bonds number 5 and Ken Griffey Jr. number 14.  As much as I like Griffey, I think that might be a little high.  I'd have really dig into the numbers, but I wouldn't immediately put him ahead of Joe DiMaggio, Sandy Koufax (DiMaggio and Koufax are 15 and 16 on their list, I probably would have had them in the top 10), Cy Young, Randy Johnson, Rogers Hornsby, Christy Mathewson, and Johnny Bench.  But the idea of Barry Bonds being number 5 is completely absurd, especially because Ken Griffey Jr. was better than he was (and so was Mickey Mantle, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Stan Musial and lots of other players).

I know Barry Bonds has better numbers than Griffey.  Of course he does.  He has better numbers because he was the biggest cheater in the history of baseball.  Bonds would have been a Hall of Famer without steroids, but the cheating disqualifies him.

But just for fun, let's consider Bonds without steroids.  I grew up in the 1990s.  Ken Griffey Jr. was the best position player in baseball and there was no debate about that.  Bonds started taking steroids after the 1998 season because he was jealous of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.  Barry Bonds was 33 in 1998.  So let's compare them through their age 33 seasons (it's worth nothing that Griffey's decline started at age 30, which sounds about right for a guy that wasn't cheating):

Bonds:  .290/.411/.556, 411 home runs, 403 doubles, 63 triples, 3679 total bases, 1216 RBIs, 445 stolen bases

Griffey:  .294/.379/.562, 481 home runs, 382 doubles, 36 triples, 3977 total bases, 1256 RBIs, 177 stolen bases

Now Griffey played in 16 more games and had 69 more plate appearances.  Not much of a difference, and certainly not enough to account for and extra 70 home runs.  But it is fairly close.  Bonds has him beat in on base percentage, doubles, triples (by a pretty good amount), and stolen bases (by a lot).  But 70 more home runs for Griffey is pretty important.  Griffey has a pretty good lead in total bases also.  If you want to give Bonds credit for stolen bases and add his stolen bases minus caught stealing to total bases, you end up with Griffey leading 4088-3994.  So it's close in terms of hitting, but Griffey was better.  And Griffey was a great center fielder.  Bonds was a mediocre left fielder.  Griffey was definitely better up to age 33.

If we look at age 23-29, you know, about the seven years when a baseball player should be at his best, it's not close:

Bonds:  .296/.410/.557, 218 home runs, 216 doubles, 29 triples, 1979 total bases, 653 RBIs, 241 stolen bases

Griffey:  .297/.387/.613, 311 home runs, 188 doubles, 18 triples, 2247 total bases, 808 RBIs, 107 stolen bases

Bonds still has him beat in some categories, but Griffey has a big lead in sluggling percentage, home runs, total bases, and RBIs.  Any argument for Bonds being better than Griffey depends entirely on what he did after age 33, you know, when he went crazy cheating.  Before turning 34, he had one season with more than 42 home runs.  Then he hit at least 45 home runs every year from age 35-39 (for comparison, Griffey hit more than 30 once after turning 34, 35 when he was 35, and he was nowhere close to what he once was by age 38).  Bonds does not deserve credit for that.  That was the steroids.  And before you tell me that pitchers were using steroids too, I know that.  And it helped them, but it clearly helped hitters more.  Pitchers didn't suddenly striking out 400 batters in a season.  But you did have hitters suddenly hitting 60+ homeruns (something that's been done twice all time by guys who weren't cheating).

Before I finish, I have a quick tangent.  I've heard people say that Mike Trout is the greatest hitter of the last 50 years.  If you compare Trout to the rest of the league, what he's doing is pretty impressive.  Obviously it's more impressive than what Griffey did compared to the rest of the league because the rest of the league was using steroids when Griffey was playing.  But in fairness, Trout's numbers are better than Griffey's through their age 23 seasons (Trout is 24 right now, I used 23 since he hasn't finished his age 24 season yet).  I'll just say let's see if Trout can keep playing at this level.  He definitely has a chance to be better than Griffey, but he's got a lot of work to do (he has 158 home runs in his career, which is a great start, but again, he has a lot of work to do).

So congratulations to Ken Griffey Jr.  He was the greatest hitter that I ever saw.  Barry Bonds was just a cheating scumbag.

No Cubs No

Last Wednesday, I made it to Wrigley Field for the second time (the first time was in April 2009).  I wanted to get back later in the season when the ivy had grown in (and it does look a lot nicer in the summer).  So I went last Wednesday.  It was raining in the morning so I just stayed in my room and watched Wimbledon.  Then I headed for the game for my first (and possibly only) afternoon game of the season.  I took a lap around Wrigley before going in.  They have some statues outside the stadium.  I would probably prefer a statue of Will Ferrell as Harry Caray to a statue of Harry Caray, but that's just me.

It's a simple question:  Would you eat the moon if it were made of ribs?

I went in the stadium and got a free 1916 Cubs jersey.  Both the Cubs and Reds were wearing throwback uniforms for the game.  I'll probably give the jersey I got to one of my students in the fall.  On that lower concourse, it is really packed and tough to move around.  I did manage to get out to the seats and take some pictures from right behind home plate.

It is a nice looking ballpark.

Then I headed up to my seat.  I was on the first base side and there was a pole that prevented me from seeing first base.  I can't kill Wrigley Field for that because you can have the same thing at Fenway Park.  I don't think we had food there when we went last time because I had no memory of the fact that there's only one place to get food and drinks on the upper level.  It's behind home plate.  Think of the top of the Citi Field rotunda, only much much smaller.  There are some beer stands along the ramps that go up to the upper level, but your options are very limited.  So the lines were really long, but I was able to get a personal deep dish pizza before the game.  The pizza comes from Giordano's, which is supposed to be a good Chicago pizza place.  And it did taste good, but to call it pizza is a stretch.  My friends from college will remember that I'm a pizza snob and I won't eat pizza outside of the Pizza Belt (which I think that article defines a little too liberally).  But if I were to get pizza outside the Pizza Belt, it's likely that whatever place I went to would be trying to imitate New York pizza (and doing so poorly) because that's what pizza is.  It's not this deep dish Chicago silliness.  But I was in Chicago so I had Chicago "pizza."  Again, it was pretty good, but it wasn't really pizza.

It might be made of dough, cheese, sauce, and pepperoni, but it's not pizza.

One drawback of Wrigley Field is the beer selection.  I had a Goose Island Urban Wheat.  It's a Chicago beer, but it's crafty Anheuser-Busch InBev.  Get some real local craft beer in there.  I mean seriously, this is a high payroll team in a major market and they don't have a good beer selection.  Lame.  The same is true for Yankee Stadium.

As for the game, Zack Cozart led off the game with a home run for the Reds, but it was looking good for the Cubs early.  They were up 3-1 after six.  And then it all fell apart.  Trevor Cahill came in to pitch for the Cubs in the sixth and worked a scoreless inning, but he gave up three in the seventh.  The Reds tacked on a run in the eighth and won 5-3.  So I didn't get to hear that stupid Go Cubs Go song (hence the title of this post).  Attendance was 41,262.

My view for the game

What I noticed after the game was that people just hung around inside the stadium.  They didn't want to leave.  I'm sure you had a lot of tourists there and the fact that it was a day game probably contributed to that, but you don't get that anywhere else except for maybe Fenway.  I don't really remember Fenway because when I went last year, we left after eight.  I went to day games in 2009 and 2010 with John and people probably stayed also and took pictures near the field (we did), but I don't remember it being as many people as you had hanging around at Wrigley.

The last time I did my stadium rankings, I was kind of unsure as to where to rank Wrigley Field.  It's hard to compare Wrigley to anything other than Fenway Park.  And Fenway wins that comparison.  It has a better beer selection, it's easier to move around, and I love Fenway's weird dimensions.  Also, Fenway kind of has the 360 degree concourse (I don't think the Green Monster is accessible unless you have a ticket there, or if you friend worked there in my case).  I don't think you can access the bleachers at all at Wrigley unless you have a ticket there.  I feel like there should be some way for them to connect the bleachers to the rest of the seats in their renovation.  And maybe I'm wrong because I didn't feel like trying to get out to the bleachers because it was so cramped and hard to move around on the lower level.

So anyway, I had Wrigley Field 6th in my rankings.  One of my other complaints in the past was the atmosphere.  Well, with the Cubs being one of the favorites to win the National League, that has improved.  And it really is beautiful on a bright summer afternoon with the ivy grown in.  My rankings are very subjective and I don't have a formula that I use or anything.  But here's how I would explain my rankings:  if Major League Baseball was just starting now, but the stadiums were already built, where would I want my team to play?  Now, the obvious answer to that would be Citi Field so that I could go see them whenever I wanted, but let's take distance from home out of the equation.  Then pretty obviously, Fenway Park is number one and Tropicana Field is last.  Using that as my way of ranking stadiums, I'm bumping Wrigley Field down one spot.  I'd rather have my team play at Kauffman Stadium than Wrigley Field.  That's probably not going to be a popular opinion, but Kauffman is absolutely beautiful, it's easy to move around, they have really good local craft beer, it's excellent.  I might even move Kauffman ahead of Petco Park also.  The location isn't great (it's surrounded by parking lots) and it doesn't look too impressive from the outside, but it is a fantastic stadium.

So there it is.  There are two cities with two Major League Baseball teams (Los Angeles has one, never forget that the Dodgers are the only Los Angeles team).  In New York, you have two stadiums that are kind of middle of the pack (I could see the argument for either one being better).  And in Chicago, you have one of the worst (US Cellular Field) and one of the best.  Yes, Wrigley Field is one of the best, but I don't like it as much as Kauffman Stadium.