NFL Draft Diary

Last year I wrote my first NBA Draft Diary, so I'm bringing back the running diary for the first round of the NFL Draft.  My favorite football squadron, the Ny Jets, pick at 18 and we have three Notre Dame players who could possibly go in the first round.  It should be interesting.  I wore my Jets tie to work today.  This is probably the most excited about the Jets that I'll be all season.  They won't lose a game for a long time.  As soon as that happens, I'll be reminded of how much I despise Rex Ryan.  Unlike last year's NBA Draft, this probably won't be emotionally draining (the draft is usually more emotionally draining for the Jets with the benefit of hindsight).  Anyway, here we go:

8:03- ESPN has Chris Berman, Ray Lewis, Jon Gruden, and Mel Kiper on their coverage.  Berman just wished Mel Kiper a Merry Christmas.  Come on, we all know the NFL Draft is it's own holiday that celebrates the birth of Mel Kiper.  You have to respect a guy whose entire career is based on the NFL Draft.

8:04- Roger Goodell takes the stage.  I have to say, I prefer the days when the draft was just two days, Saturday and Sunday.  It's nice to watch the beginning of the draft and not have to go to work the next day.

8:05- We get a Houston Texans number 1 pick draft montage.  It consists of David Carr and Mario Williams.

8:06- The NFL Network is already in a commercial?  What up with that?  Terrible job out of them in that scenario.

8:07- Mel Kiper is opposed to the Texans taking Johnny Manziel because you can't get the tenth best player with the first pick.  I'm not a Johnny Manziel fan, but if he's the best quarterback in the draft and a franchise quarterback, he's worth the first pick.  A franchise quarterback is worth more than any other player.  But it doesn't matter because they're going to take Clowney.

8:10- NFL Network has Rich Eisen, Marshall Faulk, Steve Mariucci, Michael Irvin, and Mike Mayock.  Come on NFL Network, all you had to do was not have Michael Irvin on there and I'd go with your coverage.  I'll go with Mel Kiper and put up with Ray Lewis rather than no Mel Kiper and having to put up with Michael Irvin.

8:13- Mel says you can find quarterbacks later such as Russell Wilson.  Yes, but if you did that draft over again, Wilson would go second or third (Luck and maybe Griffin would go ahead of him).

8:15- Jadeveon Clowney goes number one.  Can they just show the hit on the Michigan running back (fumble and helmet loss) over and over again?  That was fun.  I have no idea if this pick is right or wrong, but if there's a franchise quarterback in this draft, you'd rather have him than Clowney.  But after a quarterback, a pass rusher is the next most important thing to have in today's NFL.  I'll take a great pass rusher any day over a great corner back.  There's one quarterback to sack and five receivers to cover.  There's nothing an offense can do if they can't block a pass rusher.  If a team has a great corner, you throw to any of the four eligible receivers not being covered by that corner (like Peyton Manning did against the Jets in the AFC Championship Game a few years back).

8:19- Jon Gruden likes the pick.  When will the first pick that he doesn't like be?  My guess is Saturday.

8:25- The Rams take Greg Robinson.  After the quarterback, the left tackle is the next most important position on offense.  The Rams already have a great quarterback a quarterback who makes a lot of money.

8:26- The murderer is talking about playing with Jonathan Ogden.  My friend Pete is not a fan of the murderer either.  Pete was part of a question I just gave on a test.  The question was whether or not he could be president (I gave them Pete's background story).  Most of my kids said no because he lives in England.  The correct answer was no because he's not old enough.

8:28- Adam Schefter makes his first appearance.  ESPN News should just have Frank Caliendo doing the draft as Berman, Gruden, Schefter, and Kiper.  Does he do Kiper?  I know he does all those other guys?

8:31- The Jaguars take Blake Bortles.  Now, I've watched maybe 30 seconds of his college career, but doesn't this just sound like a guy who is destined to be the next Blaine Gabbert?  Jon Gruden likes the pick.  By the way, can't we just move the Jaguars to Los Angeles already?

8:34- We have our first trade.  The Browns trade the pick to the Bills.  The Bills went to the first four Super Bowls that I can remember.  Since then, they lost the Music City Miracle game and that's about it.

8:37- The Bills take Sammy Watkins.  He had better be really good to give up a first round pick next year.  The Bills' pick could very well be in the top ten again next year.

8:41- Gruden thinks the Raiders should take Manziel.  That would rekindle my hatred of the Raiders.  The Raiders signing Justin Tuck has put a damper on that (so has their general crappiness over the last ten years).

8:42- The Raiders tack Khalil Mack.  This is a guy I hadn't heard of until a month ago.

8:45- Jon Gruden actually doesn't seem too excited about this pick.

8:49- The Heat are up by three against Pierce, Garnett, and a bunch of other guys that I don't care about.  Unfortunately, I'd be shocked if anybody other than the Heat won the East.

8:50- Um, sure, Berman, when Arthur Blank speaks, I listen.

8:51- The Falcons take Jake Matthews.  I don't have any thoughts about this pick.

8:59- Tampa Bay takes Mike Evans.  I like this dude.  Whenever I watched Texas A&M, he just caught everything.

9:02- The Browns give up a fifth round pick to move up one spot.  The Vikings get an extra fifth round pick.  I like this move for the Vikings.  I assume they'll get the player they would have taken at eight with the ninth pick and they get an extra pick out of it.  This is kind of like a trade I would have made in Madden back in the day.  I was all about accumulating draft picks.

9:04- The Browns take Justin Gilbert.  The crowd is surprised.  Mel Kiper doesn't like the pick.  Were the Browns really worried about somebody else jumping ahead of them by one pick to take this guy?  Weird move.

9:08- Pierce, Garnett, and a bunch of other guys are down by just two in the fourth quarter.

9:11- The Vikings take Anthony Barr.  I was impressed with him whenever I saw him.

9:13- Barry Sanders will announce the next pick for the Lions.  Barry Sanders was on Madden 25 last year.  He says that fans will vote for the cover of Madden 15 for this coming season.  Um, EA Sports has an interesting numbering system.

9:14- The Lions take Eric Ebron.  He's one of these tight ends that's really a wide receiver.

9:16- Jon Gruden explains that a tight end plays tight on the end of the line.  It sounds silly, but he's right.

9:18- Pierce, Garnett, and the other guys are down by ten now.  Nuts.

9:22- The Titans take Taylor Lewan.  BOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

9:23- The Giants are on the clock.  There's been some talk about them taking Zack Martin.  I'd love to see them take a Notre Dame guy after they lost my favorite player in the NFL (Justin Tuck).

9:28- Jon Gruden likes Zack Martin.  So do I.  The pick is in for the Giants.

9:29- The Giants take Odell Beckham.  Nuts.  We're starting to get lots of shots of Johnny Manziel as his slide continues.  Please let him go to the Cowboys.  That would be fun.

9:38- The Rams take Aaron Donald.  I heard a lot about this guy, but he wasn't very impressive against Notre Dame last year.  Now let us never speak of that game again.

9:44- The Bears take Kyle Fuller.  He's Jon Gruden's favorite corner in the draft.

9:47- The Steelers take Ryan Shazier.  The Dallas Cowboys are on the clock.

9:51- Jon Gruden says Jerry Jones likes filling that big stadium.  It's the NFL and they're the Cowboys.  All they have to do is show up and they'll fill the stadium.  The pick is in and Manziel is not on the phone.  Maybe it's not him.

9:53- Nuts, Zack Martin goes to the Cowboys.  I had the easy "What could possibly go wrong?" joke ready for the Cowboys taking Manziel.  I don't like the Cowboys and now they've taken Notre Dame's best offensive lineman in a long time.  But for Martin, I'm sure this is almost as exciting as when he was named the MVP of the Pinstripe Bowl.

9:57- We get the quarterbacks slipping in the draft montage, which really could have been longer.  They only showed Aaron Rodgers and Geno Smith.  Look at the 2005 Draft.  Twenty-three guys went before Rodgers.  One of the things I'm happiest about as a Jet fan is that the Jets weren't one of the teams that drafted somebody else over Rodgers (pretty sad that's one of the things I'm happiest about as a Jet fan).  Their first pick was Mike Nugent in the second round, a reaction to Herman Edwards putting Doug Brien in a bad position in the playoffs in Pittsburgh a few months before the draft.  There were some good players taken before Rodgers, but lots of teams wish they could have a do over in that draft.  He should have been the number one pick.  Anyway, the point is that if Manziel is really a franchise quarterback, a lot of teams have made bad decisions tonight.

10:04- The Ravens took C.J. Mosley.  The Jets are on the clock.  I want them to take a wide receiver.  They signed Eric Decker, but they need more.  Decker is a nice player, but how many yards will he lose by going from Peyton Manning to Michael Vick/Geno Smith?  I'm going to say 250-400.  He had 612 the year before Manning got to Denver and then 1,064 and 1,288 with Manning.  I'm sure Decker got better, but Peyton Manning had a lot to do with the increase in yards.

10:05- No bad Jets draft pick montage?  We also haven't had the thing where ESPN knows who the pick is and Berman just happens to predict it correctly right before it's announced yet.

10:09- The Jets take Calvin Pryor.  I don't know much about this guy.  Their safeties have been pretty crappy for a while, so let's hope he can play.  You're not going to believe this, but Jon Gruden likes the pick.  I'm just happy they didn't take Marqise Lee.  I finally got rid of Mark Sanchez, I didn't want another USC guy.  But that might have been different.  The quarterback is the face of the franchise.  And Marqise Lee might actually be a good player.  It wouldn't have been as painful to root for him.

10:12- After one quarter, the Spurs lead the Blazers by three.  The Heat won earlier.  That series is over.

10:18- The Dolphins take Ja'Wuan James.  "Juwan" was not a good enough spelling for his parents.

10:23- In an obscure sport known as "baseball," the Dodgers and Giants are scoreless in the bottom of the first.  I mean, I love football, but ESPN sometimes acts like the other sports don't exist.

10:25- The Saints traded up and they take Brandin Cooks.  He's a wide receiver from Oregon State who wore number 7.  Number 8 on Oregon State is also a wide receiver and he is very tastefully named.

10:30- On the MLB Extra Innings package, the Dodger broadcast is on the same channel as the Orioles-Rays game, which hasn't ended yet.  So I'm stuck with the Giant broadcast on another channel until the Orioles-Rays game ends.  Lame.

10:34- The Packers take Ha'Sean Clinton-Dix.  I refuse to call him by his nickname.

10:39- The Spurs just got an easy basket on a broken play.  Of course they did.  They lead by 18.

10:40- The Browns are back on the clock after trading with the Eagles.  

10:41- "I think they take Johnny.  I do."  The murderer is bringing a lot to the broadcast tonight.

10:42- The Browns take Johnny Manziel.  If he's a franchise quarterback, the Browns have had a great night.  If not, they have a bunch of picks in the rest of this draft and next year also, so missing on a late first round draft pick isn't the end of the world.  My friend Jon and his family are the only Browns fans I know.  Jon's reaction:  "I don't mind it at 22.  He could be awesome."

10:49- Finally, the Orioles-Rays game is over and I can enjoy Vin Scully's call of the Dodgers against the team from Hippie Town.  I might miss some draft picks watching baseball now.

10:52- The Chiefs take Dee Ford.  I have no thoughts.  Josh Beckett is through three without giving up any runs.  He's been much better than I expected so far this season, but he doesn't have a win yet.  Hopefully tonight is the first of many to come.

10:58- The Bengals take Darqueze Dennard.  I remember this guy against Notre Dame.  We couldn't throw against Michigan State, but we got some pass interference calls.  We were the only team good enough to beat Michigan State last year.

11:02- The Draft, Spurs-Blazers, and Dodgers-Giants are all in commercials.  It's the dreaded triple-Urkin.

11:03- We're back to the Draft.  The Chargers take Jason Verrett.  There's been talk of the Chargers as a potential spot for Louis Nix.  If that happened, they'd probably be my second favorite team in the NFL.

11:09- The Eagles take Marcus Smith.  Apparently he was the American Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year.  How did he last this long after winning a prestigious award like that?

11:12- Beckett is through four without allowing a run.  The Dodgers need to score.

11:16- The Cardinals take Deone Bucannon.  I've never heard of this guy.  They need a quarterback considering the guy they have now hasn't been good since 2006.  Yes, I'm biased, but it's true.

11:17- I think Vin Scully just said the Dodgers haven't led the league in stolen bases since 1970.  Dee Gordon might have something to say about that this year.

11:18- The Panthers take Kelvin Benjamin.  The Patriots are next.  Please don't take Louis Nix or Stephon Tuitt.

11:26- The Patriots take Dominique Easley.  Hopefully this won't work out well.  I'm really looking forward to the end of the run for the Patriots.  But this is a good time to remind everybody that the Patriots haven't won a Super Bowl since Charlie Weis left.

11:29- Ryan Vogelsong just doubled to lead off the fifth for the Giants.  I was not saying boo-urns.

11:32- The 49ers take Jimmie Ward.  I'll let you guess Jon Gruden's thoughts on the pick.  I don't like the spelling of his name.

11:37- After giving up a lead off double to the pitcher, Beckett got three ground outs to get out of the fifth unscathed.  Matt Kemp leads off the bottom of the fifth with a single.

11:38- The Broncos take Bradley Roby.  I would love to see the Broncos get back to the Super Bowl and have a very different result this time.  I've become a big Peyton Manning fan (after not being a fan at all for the first half of his career).  Watching the Broncos lose to that scumbag Pete Carroll last year was not fun.

11:40- Speaking of that scumbag, the Seahawks are on the clock.  Just to review, Pete Carroll won a college championship with a professional player on his team and he won an NFL championship with a defense full of guys who used steroids.  Let's not forget this.

11:42- The Seahawks traded the pick to the Vikings.  So for now I don't have to worry about the Seahawks taking Nix or Tuitt (thankfully Golden Tate is finally out of there).

11:43- The Dodgers scored the first run of the game on a sacrifice fly by Drew Butera.

11:45- The Vikings take Teddy Bridgewater.  The Vikings have a lot of Notre Dame guys so I hope Bridgewater helps them win some games.

11:54- The Spurs are up by nine with just over four minutes to play.  I think that's it for me tonight.

Tomorrow would be a good night for another running diary.  We have rounds two and three.  The Rangers are fighting for their lives in Pittsburgh (I'm not optimistic).  The two more competitive series in the NBA will be back in action.  And the Dodgers will be taking on the Giants again.  But it's been a long week.  I'm just going to relax, drink some Sam Adams, and watch everything on TV.  I have to be up in about five and a half hours for work tomorrow.  I'm going to fall asleep while listening to the sweet sound of Vin Scully's voice.  As he would say, GoooOOOOooooOOOOd night everybody!

Hippies. They're Everywhere.

As the wise American philosopher Eric Cartman once said, "Hippies.  They're everywhere.  They wanna save the Earth, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad."  I thought a lot about the wise words of Cartman as I traveled from Los Angeles to San Francisco.  Before last week, the only time I had ever been in San Francisco was for a layover on my long trip home from Los Angeles in 2011.  Hurricane Irene forced me to stay in Los Angeles two days later.  Even then, the best I could do to get home was to fly from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Las Vegas to New York.  But finally, my quest to get to every Major League Baseball stadium brought me to my least favorite city in the United States (feel free to watch this South Park episode and come back).

I probably should have dressed like this for my day in San Francisco.

Anyway, I purposely got an early flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco so that I would have some time to explore the city.  I thought about getting tickets for one of those double decker bus tours.  You can pay for the day and hop on and off as you want.  That's probably what I would have done if not for the crappy weather forecast.  When I got there, it was just cloudy.  So I just started walking around the city.  It was 2.3 miles from my hotel to Fisherman's Wharf.  I figured that wasn't too bad.  What I didn't realize was how hilly San Francisco is.  Some of the hills have steps because they are so steep.  But I made it.  I went to Ghirardelli Square and had a delicious hot fudge sundae.  I took a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge that didn't come out too well because of the weather.  By then, the rain had started.  Considering the weather and having to go up those hills again, I thought about taking a cable car back.  I might have done that, but there was a huge line for the cable cars.  I decided to just walk it.  Early on during the walk back, I checked the route on my phone and realized I was near Lombard Street, the most crooked street in the world.  So I took a little detour to check that out.  The rest of the walk back was rough.  It was a relief to finally get to the top of the hill and realize the rest would be downhill.  But the hills are so steep that even going downhill isn't the easiest.  You use energy fighting momentum and staying upright.  And some of the sidewalks were slippery from the rain.  I almost slipped and fell at one point.  The area around my hotel was actually pretty flat.  So when I made it back to flat ground, I was relieved.  At one point my legs started to tremble after the workout I had just put them through.  I was expecting to be really sore the next day.  I was not as sore as I expected, but the soreness lasted longer than I expected (it took maybe three days for it to go away).  Anyway, simple math says I walked at least 4.6 miles, but that would have been if I walked directly to Fisherman's Wharf and back to my hotel.  I'm thinking I probably did about six miles to and from my hotel in the afternoon and then it was a mile to and from the stadium at night.  Usually I walk three to four miles per day, so I probably did about double that in San Francisco and the amount of marijuana I smelled in San Francisco was infinitely more than what I normally smell in a day.

This was pretty awesome.

This is as close as I got to the Golden Gate Bridge.  Unfortunately, the weather made this picture pretty bad.

Seriously, who thought this was a good idea?

The game was at 7:15.  I got to the park around 6:30.  I walked around the stadium on the outside and then I walked around the lower level before heading up to my seat.  I have to admit, it is an impressive stadium (more on that later).  Like the night before at Dodger Stadium, it was a bobble head night.  But this was for one of the Giants' broadcasters who hit is only home run when he played for the Indians.  I politely declined the bobble head when it was offered to me as I walked in.

I had been worried about the game possibly being rained out, but it only drizzled a little bit during the game.  The MLB At the Ballpark app on my phone says it was 52 degrees for the game.  The app also says that it was 52 degrees last year when I saw the Dodgers beat the Mets at Citi Field.  It says the doubleheader I saw four years ago at Citi Field had temperatures of 51 and 53 degrees.  The app also says the doubleheader was the windiest and this game was the next windiest of the games I just mentioned.  Remembering those games, I was very bundled up.  Perhaps because I was better prepared, the temperature really didn't bother me at all.  The doubleheader four years ago and the game last year at Citi Field definitely felt colder than this game (the doubleheader was by far the worst).  I didn't really notice the wind.  Maybe it was blocked where I was sitting.

As for the game, I was rooting for the Indians, but I was not optimistic with the pitching match up of Carlos Carrasco against Tim Hudson.  The Giants scored two in the bottom of the first.  The Indians got a run in the top of the first on an RBI single by Nick Swisher (our old friend Flynn's favorite player).  But the Giants scored on a Hunter Pence single in the bottom of the third and on a long Michael Morse home run in the bottom of the fourth and they were never really in trouble.  It was a comfortable 5-1 win for the Giants.  So far I've been to two games this year and neither went the way I wanted.  I just hope the Dodgers make the playoffs and 11 games go the way I want them to in October.

My view for the game

I didn't really want to like the stadium, but it's hard no to.  It is a great setting.  I guess it's most comparable to PNC Park in Pittsburgh.  I'm giving PNC Park the edge.  One of the great things about PNC Park is that you pretty much have a really cool view wherever you're sitting.  If you're down low, you can't see the river, but you have the city in the background.  At AT&T Park, you could argue that the best seats are higher up.  Where I was sitting, I had a great view of the bay, but if you're down low, you don't really have a view of anything in the background.

Previously, I had PNC Park as my cutoff for the elite stadiums.  I'm slotting AT&T Park at number seven on my rankings and that's the new cutoff.  I know a lot of people would have it even higher than that (and some would probably rank it as the best in baseball).  So I need some reasons for ranking it that low.  I have Fenway Park, Dodger Stadium, and Old Yankee Stadium as my top three stadiums.  Park of the reason for that is the history.  Fenway Park is where Ted Williams played.  Dodger Stadium is where Sandy Koufax played.  Old Yankee Stadium is where Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter played (Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle didn't play in the version of Yankee Stadium that existed when I was going to games there).  On the other hand, Barroid played in AT&T Park.  So yeah, there's history, but I'm counting it as a negative.  Next, concessions are an issue.  There were some good options, but the lines move way too slowly.  I left my seat to get food after the top of the second.  I didn't get back to my seat until the bottom of the fourth.  Part of that was me walking around and deciding what I wanted (about half of an inning).  But part of it was just lines moving way too slowly.  I had to wait on one line to get a bread bowl of clam chowder (which was good) and then on another line to get a Widmer Brothers Hefeweizen.  I mentioned in my last post how they have little stands in Philadelphia with just good beer.  San Francisco had some good beer options, but at least on the upper level, they were all at concessions stands where people were on line for food and whatever else they were getting.  Another drawback was that while I was on the concourse for two innings getting food and beer, I couldn't see the field.  Sure there were TVs around the concession stands, but I like to be able to see the field from the concourse (you can on the lower level, but not up high).  And then I have a couple of issues with the field.  First of all, there's no pattern cut into the grass.  Come on, I used to cut patterns when I cut the grass on the baseball field at Camp Alvernia in 2004.  The Giants not doing it is just laziness.  I can't think of another stadium that doesn't cut any sort of pattern into the grass.  Also, they have their bullpens on the field.  I think that's really, really stupid.  They easily could have taken out a few seats from the outfield (and probably just put those seats somewhere else if they wanted to) and had the bullpens out of play (that was one of my issues with another elite stadium, Petco Park, but the Padres fixed that before last season).  And finally, AT&T Park is the home of the Giants and full of hippies.  Two big negatives right there.

I know only a few people will get this joke, but I wish this had been outside White Castle after our bar crawl in 2005.

As George Steinbrenner once said, "From 1973 to 1982 I ate the exact same lunch every day: turkey chili in a bowl made out of bread. Bread bowl, George. You'd eat the chili, then you'd eat the bowl. Nothing more satisfying than looking down after lunch and seeing just a table."

Recently, my friend John wrote about his experiences at Fenway Park as a Yankee fan.  If I lived in San Francisco, I couldn't do what John does.  The biggest difference is that John's love of Boston is clear.  I certainly don't like San Francisco and I would never live there (also John is married to a Red Sox fan, there's no way I could marry a fan of the Giants, Lakers, USC, or Michigan, any of those would be three strikes right away).  So let me finish off with my Least Favorite City Power Rankings (I've already done my favorite cities).  I'm limiting this to American cities.  I'm willing to spend a small amount of time in each of these cities.  Believe me, there are plenty of cities that I'd never even consider going to (particularly in the Middle East because I'd worry that I'd be killed by terrorists).  But here we go, starting with my third least favorite city:

3. Detroit.  I haven't been there yet, but I will be this summer for a Tigers game.  I'm spending as little time there as possible.  This ranking is only based on what I've heard about Detroit.  I'm pretty sure I've never heard a good thing about Detroit.

2.  Las Vegas.  I hate everything this city stands for.  It's a city built on taking advantage of people's stupidity (I was going to say it was built on stealing people's money, but people willingly forfeit their money to casinos).  I was there two years ago and I'd be just fine never going back.

1.  San Francisco.  I'll give the final word to Eric Cartman:  "You don't know San Francisco, Butters.  It was the breeding ground for the hippie movement in the 60s.  There's hard-core liberals, lesbian activists, and die hard modern hippies young and old.  I swore I would never set foot in San Francisco.  God help me.  All right, Butters, I'll be tethered to you through this cord. It's my only lifeline, so make sure it stays taut. If you stop hearing my voice, for the love of Christ, start reeling me in with all your strength."

Improving Dodger Stadium

I took my first trip of baseball season last week during my Easter vacation.  The original plan was go to to San Francisco.  But then I thought about my first trip last year, which started with Opening Day in Los Angeles and finished with a game in Milwaukee.  I left Dodger Stadium last year not knowing when I'd be back again.  But I decided that if I was going to fly across the country, I might as well get to more than one baseball stadium during the trip.  When I realized that going from New York to Los Angeles to San Francisco and back to New York for only about $40 more than a round trip to San Francisco, it was an easy decision to make.

For my first game of the season, I got to Dodger Stadium last week for Dodgers-Phillies, which happens to be the same match up as my last game of the 2013 season.  Unlike last time, the result was not good.  There were some good things.  It was Clayton Kershaw bobble head night, which brought in a crowd of 51,699 on a Thursday night.  Juan Uribe and Adrian Gonzalez hit home runs for the Dodgers.  Dan Haren pitched well for the Dodgers.  But the fielding continues to be poor (Gonzalez made a costly error and he's usually one of their better fielders) and I'm beginning to suspect that Brian Wilson is the mole.  The Dodgers lost the series against the Phillies 3-1.  If they had been up in the series 2-1 going into the game I went to, they would have had a shot at the franchise's 10,000th win, but it turned out they were stuck on 9,998.  Actually there's debate about the count since apparently they won 13 games with an illegal player in 1899.  But if all those wins with Barry Bonds count for the Giants, then I'm cool with counting those 13 wins for the Dodgers.  Anyway, it's not worth blogging in much detail about my game experience at Dodger Stadium when I've done that before (here and here).  Hopefully I'll get back to Dodger Stadium when I go back to California for an Angels game (most likely next year).  I'm going to spend the rest of this post focusing on how Dodger Stadium has improved since Mark Walter, Stan Kasten, and Magic Johnson liberated the franchise from Frank McCourt.

This is definitely the coolest thing I've ever gotten for free at a baseball game.

My view from the loge last week at Dodger Stadium.

I love Dodger Stadium.  I've now gone to five games there (two in 2011, two in 2013, and one in 2014) and two stadium tours (2011 and 2013).  I sat in the loge for this game, which means I've now sat on every level of Dodger Stadium except for the Dugout Club (the seats in front that didn't exist until somewhat recently in Dodger Stadium's history).  I also haven't sat in the Pavilion seats in the outfield, but I've been in the top deck twice (2011 and 2013) and once each on the field level (2011), reserve level (2013), and the the loge (2014).  So I have plenty of experience with Dodger Stadium.  I have it ranked as the second best stadium in baseball (a detailed explanation here and an updated ranking here).  Much has changed since my first visit in 2011.  I loved it when I first got there three years ago and the new ownership group has made it even better.  First, let's go over some of those improvements:

1.  Atmosphere.  The atmosphere is so much better.  Before the new owners took over, the team had stopped trying to contend because Frank McCourt had no money.  Fans stopped coming to games because they hated McCourt so much.  Average attendance dropped by 7,743 fans from 2010 to 2011.  They finished 11th in attendance.  The Dodgers should never be out of the top five in attendance and if they're good, they'll probably be number one since they have the biggest baseball stadium in the world in the second biggest city in the country.  Within two years, the Dodgers were back to number one in attendance and increased their average attendance by 9,980 fans.  Dodger Stadium was dead when I was there in 2011 (entirely McCourt's fault).  Dodger fans have a bad reputation, but I don't think it is deserved.  I've never seen/heard a crowd like the one on Opening Day last year when Kershaw beat the Giants (pretty much by himself).

This is from my second game at Dodger Stadium in 2011.  The official attendance was 35,537.  The actual attendance was nowhere close to that.

2.  Honoring the history of the team.  They added the retired numbers outside the top deck, which was nice.  They added big Cy Young baseballs last year.  This year, they put big World Series rings in right field.

Jackie Robinson's number outside the top deck.  They have all the retired numbers out there.  On the side of the number is a little paragraph about the player or manager.

Clayton Kershaw 2011 Cy Young baseball

This is a nice addition to Dodger Stadium.  They need to add another one of these soon.  Like after this season.

This painting is on the top deck.  I kind of want to have this framed and put in my house.

3.  Scoreboards.  They put in new scoreboards last year.  My brother Sean heard on a tour before last season that Dodger Stadium used to have the world's largest standard definition TV.  Not anymore.  Dodger Stadium doesn't have the biggest scoreboards, but they are now HD and they honor the team's history with their unique hexagonal shape.  Also, I was impressed with the amount of information they had considering they aren't the biggest.

4.  Merchandise availability.  I remember wanting to get a Clayton Kershaw jersey shirt back in 2011.  For some reason, they weren't available on the website (I think they only had Ethier).  I figured I could get one at Dodger Stadium.  When I went there, the entire stadium was sold out of Kershaw shirts.  My next choice was a Matt Kemp shirt.  They had those, but not in my size.  This is what went on when Frank McCourt owned the team.  The team stores throughout the stadium are well stocked now.

5.  More food options.  I'm not going to turn down a Dodger Dog.  They're great and I've only been to Dodger Stadium for five games in my entire life.  But if I was able to go to several games per year, I'd want more options and now they have them.  This season, they added a barbecue restaurant in left field and Tommy Lasorda's Trattoria with Italian food in right field.

I love Dodger Dogs (they do taste different from any other ballpark hot dogs that I've had).  And this beer was fine, but they need more good beer options (hold on, we'll get there).

If I had gone to more than one game this year, I would have gotten something to eat here.

6.  360 degree field level access and outfield improvements.  Dodger Stadium used to have one similarity with Shea Stadium.  If you were in left field and you wanted to get to right field, you had to walk all the way around home plate to the other side of the field.  There wasn't much in the outfield anyway.  Now, you have a lot of stuff out in left and right field as I mentioned and you can just walk around the outfield on the lower level like you can at most of the newer stadiums in baseball.

There are no tickets for these seats above the bullpen, which were just added this year.  You can just sit in them if they're open.  It's not a particularly good look at the field, but it would be cool to stop there before the game and watch the starter warm up.

So they've made some great improvements in a short time.  However, they can still make it better (and I believe they will).  Here are my recommendations:

1.  Honor the history of the team more.  As I mentioned, they have done a better job with this, but they can still do more.  If you take the tour, you can see a lot about the history of the team on the press box/suite level.  I don't think that's accessible to most fans during games.  You also have the World Series trophies (or bats from the old days) and Cy Young Awards and stuff down by the Dugout Club.  I think fans sitting in the Dugout Club are the only ones that can see this stuff during games.  My brother Tom loves the Yankee museum at Yankee Stadium.  The Dodgers could have something like that.  Also, I would build two statues.  Two Dodgers deserve to be honored above all others, Robinson and Koufax.  They have all the retired numbers, but they're all the same (except the blue and white are reversed on Robinson's compared to the other retired numbers).  Next year I would put a statue of Jackie Robinson in left field and I'd put a statue of Sandy Koufax in right field the following year.  Jackie Robinson was the most important player in the history of baseball.  Sandy Koufax was the greatest left-handed pitcher ever and the greatest Dodger ever.  That would also honor the two eras of Dodger history.  Robinson played his whole career in Brooklyn.  Koufax started in Brooklyn, but he wasn't particularly good (9-10 with a 4.00 ERA in three seasons) and all of his great seasons were in Los Angeles.

I showed this picture to my kids this week since John Paul II was canonized on Sunday.  The largest crowd in the history of Dodger Stadium came to see him.  This is on the press box/luxury suite level.

The World Series trophies are near the Dugout Club, which I think you only have access to if on the stadium tour or if you have tickets for the ridiculously expensive Dugout Club seats.

One of Sandy Koufax's Cy Young Awards.  Also near the Dugout Club.

2.  More merchandise for the former players.  This is related to the first one.  I wanted to buy either a Jackie Robinson or Sandy Koufax jersey shirt during my visit last week.  I checked a few of the team stores and couldn't find anything down low in the stadium.  The best team store is on the top deck.  I finally got up there and they did have Mike Piazza, Tommy Lasorda, and Jackie Robinson shirts.  So I got what I was looking for (but I didn't see Koufax), but there should be more of that and it shouldn't be so hard to find.

3.  Beer.  Dodger Stadium needs better beer.  I had a Point the Way IPA (which is apparently a Los Angeles beer) and it was pretty good, but it was hard to find.  I saw it on the top deck and nowhere else.  Maybe I missed it somewhere, but I did look around lots of places and couldn't find much other than the usual stuff (crappy mass-produced American beer and Blue Moon and stuff like that).  Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia gets beer right.  They have the usual stuff at most of the concession stands, but then they have several small stands around the stadium that only have craft beers.  That means good beer is easy to find and you don't have to wait on a long line to get it.

They added these bars in the outfield.  There should be lots of good beers available on tap here.

4.  Dodger Stadium traffic.  It needs to get better.  I can dream.  Traffic after Opening Day last year was horrendous.  We spent more than an hour in the parking lot trying to leave the game.  There's not much that you can do about traffic when you have a weekday afternoon game that's sold out and very exciting (meaning everybody stays for the whole game).  Actually, ownership has done some things to improve traffic.  They've done stuff to encourage carpooling and they added a drop off/pick up spot for the Dodger Stadium Express bus from Union Station.  I actually stayed close enough to the stadium to walk this time, so I really couldn't tell you if it's gotten any better.  The main reason for this problem is that Los Angeles traffic is horrendous all the time.  But like I said, ownership has tried to do things to make this better, but I don't know if there's really any solution.  And it's not their fault, so I won't hold this one against them.

Dodger Stadium is fantastic.  I just want it to keep getting better.  If the Dodgers want to hire me, I'm willing to help.  Actually, I just gave them all of my ideas for free.  But they should still hire me to work for them.

A Yankee Fan in Red Sox Nation

I just completed my first baseball trip of the year.  I went to games at Dodger Stadium and AT&T Park.  I didn't really know how to feel about going to a Giants game.  I've always heard good things about the stadium, but they're my least favorite team in baseball.  I thought about my good friend John.  He's one of the biggest Yankee fans I know and he's been living in the Boston area for several years now.  Besides living there, he's been working at Fenway Park for the last few years.  John gave me the idea to start this blog two years ago and I asked him to write the first ever guest blog post here.  I wanted his perspective about what it's like spending time in the ballpark of his favorite team's biggest rival.  I'll let John take it away:

Opening Day 2014

When I told my mom that I got a part time job at the Red Sox she was not thrilled.  She actually carried on a bit like I joined up with the Taliban, I might as well have in her eyes.  I come from a family that has been rooting for the Yankees for four generations now and we have a strong connection to the team from the Bronx where my grandfather grew up.  So when I got the job as a Ticket Taker at Fenway in 2011, my mom got offended.

So why would a guy who cried in 2004 and who wanted to name his son Joseph DiMaggio Mullady work for the Sox? I like baseball. I know its a cheesy answer but its the truth.  I have an opportunity to work for a baseball team who wouldn't take it? I'm grateful to be able to sit down for a half hour and watch batting practice on a summer afternoon and be getting paid to be there. 

Don't get me wrong there are plenty of times when it is awkward for me or even straight up uncomfortable. When a fan comes up  to me and says, "Go Sox" and expects me to give a similar response instead they will get a blank stare. I hate hearing "Sweet Caroline" and at times I will tell the fans of other teams that I am from NY and rooting against the Sox.  When people hear that they sometimes laugh, Yankee fans will often give me a high five or a "you gotta be kidding me" look.  I hate the Sox.  But I do love working at Fenway and I try not to take the experience for granted. I've met people who have traveled from all over the U.S. and the world to watch a game at Fenway Park.  A lot of first timers will have a nervous/excited look on their face when they approach the gate. That enthusiasm is contagious.

I did not work Opening Day last year.  I felt funny taking a personal day from work and sometimes it's more work to make sub plans than its worth.  I was really shocked when my Assistant Principal encouraged me to take the day and to work the game.  With my son in day care and the encouragement from my AP I kind of felt that the decision was made for me.

Friday morning I dropped Jack off at daycare and headed into Boston for the game. I drove past the ballpark at 8:30 and there was already a line  of 15 people to get into Game On, one of the bars near Fenway.  The sign on the door indicated that they would be waiting until 11:00 before they could get in.

It was pretty clear that the Sox were going to pull at all the stops for this year's Opening Day.  One of the ticket takers said she saw rehearsal and that the 2004, 2007, and 2013 World Series Banners would be all placed over the Green Monster at some point. I saw members of the Boston Pops getting ready as I went into the locker room and I wondered what else would be in store.

At 10:00 one of the Red Sox executives for Event Operations helped pin a rose to my jacket.  All the Ushers, Ticket Takers, Security Guards were wearing a rose on their uniforms. As I was getting pinned I asked the exec if her two kids were going to the game.  She never allowed her kids to miss school for baseball games until today.  Her son was six and had been begging for weeks to be at Opening Day and letting him go was a surprise for him.

I was working Gate A on Yawkey Way, one of the busiest gates at Fenway. The line was already back up to Brookline Ave.  There is a new security measures at Fenway that required that every fan go through Security with a metal detector wand. When the gates opened up it quickly became clear that the new method would be frustrating and time consuming and not that efficient.  

Fans came in for the most part smiling and unfazed by the long security process.  Some came in dressed like they were skipping work early they looked like fans who would come in to watch a game from a different time with their suits and ties.  Some fans came as if they were coming from a costume party. I gave out Red Sox bracelets and baseball cards until I ran out.  You would never think that a J.D. Drew card could make a person so happy but the looks on some of their faces was so amazing.  I can't wait for Jack to be old enough to go to a baseball game and get excited for it. 

When it started to slow down a woman approached me and asked where the will call at Gate D was.  I told her that I would walk her down there myself and let her through my turnstile.  She told me that she needed to go to the Player's Will Call.  I asked her who she was here to see and she told me that Logan Schafer was her son.  He was an outfielder for the Brewers and that she hated Ryan Braun.  I told her I did too and she hugged me. I ended up seeing her the next day as well and we chatted for a few mins.  I showed her a picture of Jack and she said that Logan was not really pushed into baseball but he just always enjoyed it.  She encouraged me to support whatever Jack ends up enjoying and not to force him into sports.  I'll take the parenting advice from a MLB mom anytime. 

There is a Ticket Taker named Ian that I have gotten pretty close with over the past few years.  During the playoffs we snuck up to the Green Monster and had some beers. On Game 6 we ended up sneaking into a luxery suite that was occupied by Dennis Leary.  Ian was headed to the bathroom when I bumped into him in the Main Concourse.  It did not take him much convincing to sneak down and try and get a good look at the festivities.  

I was not especially interested in seeing the players get their rings, there are guys on the roster that I openly root against when I am down there.  When some of the victims from the Boston Marathon bombings came out from behind the 2013 banner to give the players their rings while the Pops preformed classical music I will admit I got chills.  It was almost like something out of a Spielberg movie the way it was done.  After the bombings Red Sox players were visiting victims at the hospitals for weeks and the team did some great things behind the scenes.  Working the first game after the Marathon I felt like I was part of something big, part of the healing process. 

A few days before Opening Day there was a fire in the Back Bay that killed two fire fighters.  The men left behind wives and children and the funerals had brought firemen from all over the U.S. to the city.  To honor their sacrifice the Red Sox had their families and the members of the fire house come in and lower the American flag to half mast.  Each member of the Red Sox players lined up and shook the hands or embraced the firemen and the families before they left. 

The whole scene was surreal to me and moving and I feel really fortunate to have been there.

Finishing Up

We're coming up on my second blogiversary.  I'm overdue for a post since I haven't posted since baseball season began in the United States, but first I have a two-part rant about last night's Dodger game:

1.  I watched nine and a half innings of last night's twelve-inning game, which apparently ended after 3:00 in the morning east coast time.  I'm normally not one to complain about umpires (I don't like replay, I think we should live with some crappy calls like we did for well over 100 years), but I thought Mike Winters was terrible behind the plate last night.  It seemed like all of the borderline balls and strikes calls were going in favor of the Giants.  However, that's not the reason Kenley Jansen blew the save.  There were plenty of calls I didn't like, but I can't think of any in the bottom of the ninth.  Jansen didn't get the job done.

2.  Juan Uribe has gone from being easily my least favorite player on the Dodgers (perhaps second only to Andruw Jones as my least favorite player ever) to being probably one of my five favorite Dodgers currently on the team (Kershaw, Ethier, Kemp, and Ellis might be the only players I'd put ahead of him).  He was the best player on the field for the Dodgers last night (a triple short of the cycle, the only two runs of the game for the Dodgers, and excellent in the field).  So it totally wasn't his fault that the Dodgers lost, but his performance made me think of an issue I have with the stat head community.  They like to say that RBIs don't matter.  That's just silly.  You win games by scoring more runs than the other team.  As I said, Uribe played a very good game, but I would trade the home run and double he had for a double in another at bat.  Let's take out extra innings and go through his at bats.  During the first nine innings, Uribe hit a solo home run in the second, struck out with the bases loaded in the fourth, doubled and later scored in the seventh, and grounded out in the eighth.  If Uribe goes 1-4 and doubles with the bases loaded, all three runners probably score and if everything else stays the same, the Dodgers win the game.  Baseball is a situational game (probably more so than other sports).  The stat heads ignore context when they say RBIs don't matter.  Ordinarily, you'd take a home run and a double over just a double.  But if Uribe had just doubled with the bases loaded and not had the two hits that he actually had, that's probably the difference between a win and a loss.  Again, my complaint is with the stat heads and not with Uribe.

Anyway, it's just one game and you can't overreact to an April game in a 162-game season.  But I do hate losing to the Giants.  Which brings me to what I really wanted to blog about, continuing my quests to get to every Major League Baseball stadium and all 50 states.  A week from Friday, I'll be in San Francisco.  San Francisco is full of dirty, smelly hippies that like Barry Bonds.  I really don't know how to feel about this.  AT&T Park is one of the most well-liked stadiums in Major League Baseball.  And my least favorite team plays there.  Hopefully I'll get to see the Giants lose.  What I'm probably more excited about is going to Los Angeles again.  I was thinking about going to San Francisco and realized that it wouldn't cost that much more to add a stop to Los Angeles on the trip.  So I'm starting in Los Angeles on Thursday.  This is kind of like last year when I combined Opening Day in Los Angeles and Milwaukee into one trip.

It's going to be a productive spring and summer.  I don't have to worry about missing the Celtics in the playoffs, but I still would like to watch as much NBA Playoffs as possible and I'll get into the NHL Playoffs if the Rangers make a run.  In May, I'll get to Canada and SkyDome for the first time.  And I'll be pretty busy in the summer.

I'm confident that I'll be able to finish the Major League Baseball stadiums in 2015.  Actually, I'll have two left.  I'm not going to Oakland or Tampa until those teams have new stadiums (they both play in dumps).  And in a few years the Braves will have a new stadium.  If Dennis is still living in Atlanta whenever that stadium opens, maybe I'll make another trip down there.  But I'd like to finish with a bang.  If I could get a bunch of people involved in my last trip, that would be pretty cool.  I'll have three stadiums left and I could make each one into a big trip:

1.  Target Field.  It's the second newest stadium in the league.  I definitely won't be going to Minnesota for outdoor baseball during my Easter vacation next year so I'm thinking this will be during the summer.  I have an ambitious plan for this trip.  Fly to and from Minneapolis.  Rent a car and cross off a few states.  The Field of Dreams in Iowa is something I'd definitely want to see.  And I could also go to Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota.  Omaha and Fargo both have minor league baseball teams (if I can't think of any other things to do in Nebraska and North Dakota).  Going to Mt. Rushmore would be awesome, but it's in western South Dakota, which wouldn't really be feasible on this trip.  South Dakota might just have to be a drive through state.

2.  Globe Life Park.  I know, you have no idea what Globe Life Park is, but that's the new name of the stadium where the Rangers play.  If Jon and Kyle want to make up for not going to the Shamrock Series at Jerry World and hanging out with Wilhelm in his native habitat, they're welcome to come.  I'll just have to hope that our government is running so that this time I can get to the George W. Bush Presidential Library (although the museum at Dealey Plaza was really good, I'm glad I got there).  I'm sure there are other cool things to do in Dallas as well.

3.  Angel Stadium.  It's now the fourth oldest stadium in baseball (Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Dodger Stadium, tied with whatever that horrendous stadium in Oakland is called).  I love southern California.  I wish I had friends that lived there.  There are so many things I'd want to do there to mark the conclusion of my quest to get to all these stadiums.  Obviously, if I'm in Anaheim, I'd want to schedule it so that I could get to a Dodger game as well.  Disneyland would be a thing I'd want to do also (I've been to Disney World a handful of times, but never Disneyland).  It would be fun to take a trip down to San Diego and get to Petco Park again (one of my favorites).  And I'd really like to get to the Reagan Presidential Library (with that and the Bush library, I'd balance the political parties of the presidential libraries I would have been to).  The Reagan Library is 74.3 miles northwest of Angel Stadium, so that's doable.

So if you like the United States, baseball, and Jim (or at least two of those three things), you're welcome to join on any of those trips.  I'm fairly confident that they will happen in 2015.

So I'm going to finish the baseball stadiums.  How will I finish the states?  Here's the map of states I've been to.  I really need to get to the three closest states I haven't been to:  Vermont, Maine, and West Virginia (I've been to all five states that border West Virginia, but not West Virginia).  Vermont has Little Fenway and Little Wrigley.  It would be really really cool to play wiffle ball at either of those places.  Portland, Maine has a minor league stadium with the Maine Monster (they're affiliated with the Red Sox).  That would be cool to see, and it's not that far from my friend John in Massachusetts.  I've got nothing for West Virginia.  I still want to get to Gettysburg.  That's not too far from West Virginia.

But how about the other states I haven't been to?  I'll just go through some of the ones I have a hard time picturing myself going to in the not too distant future.  Ideally, Notre Dame will make it to the Sugar Bowl for a playoff game on January 1, 2015.  If I was ever in New Orleans, I'd have to take a drive through Mississippi and into Alabama and knock off those two in addition to Louisiana (New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama are like two hours apart).

Hawaii and Alaska would both be really cool to go to.  I like to think that Hawaii will happen someday, but I have a hard time picturing myself actually booking a trip to Alaska.

Five states out west will be tough.  If Notre Dame does indeed play BYU in Provo, that could easily be my trip to Utah.  If I did that, I might just have to take a drive to Idaho (although I my former roommate Nick lives in Boise and has offered to host me if I ever go there).  Montana is named after Joe Montana so that's cool (relax, I'm not being serious, but I would name a place after Joe Montana).  If I ever got to Mt. Rushmore, I might have to take a drive to Montana.  Oregon has a college football team that wears horrendous uniforms.  If Major League Baseball ever takes my expansion plan, maybe there will be a stadium for me to visit there.  If not, I guess I could just go to see a Trail Blazers game or something.  And New Mexico?  I've got nothing.  It might win the award for state I have the most trouble envisioning myself going to.  Congratulations, New Mexico.

So I definitely won't be finishing off all 50 states any time soon, but I'll try to keep making progress.  Notre Dame could really help me out by making the Sugar Bowl this season.  Go Irish!