Kansas City

Our seats at Kauffman Stadium were AWESOME! There really isn't that much more I can say about them. You know when you're watching a game on television, and you see those random people behind home plate that are always in the picture? Well, that was us! Except we were off to the side a little bit - behind the on-deck batter, not the plate. Let's just say we were close enough to tell Sammy Sosa that he needed to tuck in the elephant ear he had hanging out his back pocket. And let's not forget the complimentary buffet of assorted gourmet foods in the Crown Club lounge before the game started. So even though neither the Royals nor the Rangers are really spectacular teams, we did get the chance to experience a baseball game in a new and exciting way.

Earlier today we took a quick trip to downtown Kansas City to eat at the world famous Arthur Bryant's Barbeque and visit the Negro League Baseball Museum. Bryant's is, in the words of my uncle, a 'must' if you are ever in KC - unless, of course, you are either a vegetarian or against seeing or eating large amounts of cooked meat in one place. We both feel that it was a quality and homey spot to stop on our tour of America.



The Negro League Museum, which should not be referred to as the Negro League Hall of Fame at the request of Chairman Buck O'Neil, is also a must see if you are a baseball fan in KC. Overall it is a very, very well put together showcase of the some 40 years of Negro League baseball. It shows just about everything from it's creation in 1920 under the direction of Andrew "Rube" Foster until its fortunate demise about a decade after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. Plus, the movie they played was narrated by James Earl Jones, which was a special touch that Dan enjoyed thoroughly.

Overall Kansas City was a great stop on our tour and the penultimate of the summer. It's been 54 days, 9800 miles and 17 major league stadiums so far, and we have one final haul across Kansas to Boulder, Colorado, where we will meet up with my grandparents tomorrow and my parents and sister on Wednesday. The Rockies are out of town right now, but we may get to catch a minor league game in Colorado Springs on Tuesday.

Busch Stadium in St. Louis

I won't comment too much about the game we saw in St. Louis because, well, it wasn't all that interesting. Two rain delays, and 10 runs scored by the Brewers in the first 5 innings took about 4 hours, so we struggled to make it until the seventh inning stretch. Despite the lackluster game as well as the lackluster season the Cardinals are having, Busch Stadium proved to be great field in a great baseball city. The crowd was into the game for the first few innings at least as they stayed through the rain delays and successfully started the wave. We got to see the skyline in the background, which was very visible from out standing room tickets, which quickly changed into Upper Deck seats on the first baseline.



After a brief stop at Denny's for a grand slam breakfast, our plan now is to drive the 225 miles to Kansas City to catch a night game at Kauffman Stadium, where we supposedly have some great seats waiting for us. And if anything is to go wrong with that, we can always just go home and watch Barry Bonds' pursuit of Hank Aaron's home run record on ESPN.

Cooperstown

We just got our computer fixed, so here is the lost entry about our visit to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown:

If you are a baseball enthusiast, you need to make a trip to Cooperstown. Yes, it is in the middle of nowhere and yes, Yankees fans run most of the shops, but, if you haven’t gone yet, you should plan a trip soon. It is your birthright. I, myself, plan on becoming a member – that’s as a person, not a ballplayer as you may have imagined – and returning the year Barry Bonds is voted in.

I won’t touch on this subject very much, because I know that Dan gets irritated whenever I whine about Bonds not getting the respect he deserves, but nonetheless I was a little surprised to see a few “756*” t-shirts in Cooperstown. Through all of our travels I have come to realize, yet not necessarily accept, the fact that Barry Bonds is a god in San Francisco and the devil everywhere else in the nation. But I didn’t expect to see anti-Barry feelings in Cooperstown, the home of baseball, where it is common to see parents teaching their sons and daughters the glorious history of the game. In the Hall of Fame Museum, we saw pictures and plaques of Pete Rose breaking Ty Cobb’s all-time hits record, not about his gambling scandals that keep him out of the Hall.

But back to the important parts of our stop. Cooperstown had a great atmosphere around town. Every store was full of different baseball memorabilia. There were shops with old baseball cards and throwback equipment. There were tons of jerseys with old players like Ted Williams, Mike Schmidt, Roberto Clemente and so on. And there was a big tournament going on at Dreams Field, so the town was packed with young players who probably don’t even realize how lucky they be playing baseball in the Cooperstown. And everyone was wearing fan gear for his or her favorite team; that may have been my favorite part. Everyone was a baseball fan.

Another great part about our trip to Cooperstown is that after we were sick of walking around – again, sick of walking not baseball, that won’t happen - we went back to our hotel where we met up with yet another MCSer, Claudia Randrup. You may recall that we stayed at Claudia’s house in Baltimore, but she happened to be in Europe at the time. She needed a place to stay as she is now headed to Chewonki. We had a grand ol’ time, be it quite brief. Last night’s highlight was staying up until midnight in order to celebrate my 18th birthday, by, well falling asleep shortly thereafter.

This morning we celebrated again by getting the tail light of our car fixed after a police officer so kindly pointed out to us. The bad news is that it was the first ticket of the roadtrip, but the good news is that all we had to do was fix the light and the ticket would be erased. Karma? Maybe.

Now we are headed back to New York City to watch the Mets game with an old highschool buddy of ours, Nate Sulat. Cincinnati’s Bronson Arroyo will face New York’s Orlando “El Duké” Hernandez.

And thanks to all those that signed the guestbook.

Quick Recap

Sorry for the lack of posting recently, but we have been without a computer since Chicago. But here's a quick recap of the past few days for us.

We traveled up to Madison, Wisconsin to stay with Uncle Ron and catch a few Brewers games in Milwaukee. But before our tour hit Miller Park, we stopped to watch a Madison Mallards game at "The Duck Pond." The Mallards are a Single-A summer league team made basically for college players who need to stay sharp while they are away from school. The Mallards game was a spectacle to say the least. Their motto is "Baseball the way it ought to be," which is true if you think that the stands should be filled with young kids and tipsy college students.

Miller Park once again proved that the Wisconsin specialties are beer and bratwurst. The tailgate parties were especially extravagant, but the ratio of people to porta-potty was about 20:1, which Dan and I both found funny. As for baseball, we saw my Giants win twice (!!) on two great outings by Noah Lowry and rookie phenom Tim Lincecum, who has garnered the nickname "The Franchise," just to give you some perspective on the young pitcher. Oh, and Bonds went 0-6. More importantly, our personal streak of 8 games in 8 days came to an end on Sunday.

Now we are in Cincinnati, where we caught a Reds game and took a day trip to the Louisville Slugger Museum and Muhammad Ali Center yesterday. But the highlight of the day came at the baseball game when Dan May caught a foul ball hit by Brewer's rookie Ryan Braun. Dan then proceeded to boast about his "cat-like" reflexes for the remainder of the evening. In all honesty, it was a pretty impressive play considering that the ball played plinko in the stands before it jumped into our seats.

We'll be in Cincinnati until Friday morning, when we set off on the homestretch of our summer. It's 350 miles to St. Louis, then another 250 to Kansas City, and the grand finale of 600 miles to Denver.

The Truth about Cubs fans

Remember how we were so impressed with the Chicago faithful and their ability to start cheers and sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame"? Well, we have to take some of that back after Tuesday night's game. But first I should give you some background. We walked over to the field around 2pm, which is 5 hours before the first pitch, and snagged a couple tickets for the bleachers. The unique thing about bleacher seats at Wrigley is that they are all General Admission, which means that it's all first come, first serve. So we waited in line for a few hours until the gates opened at 5 o'clock. And then, it was literally a mad dash up the ramps to get the best seats possible. Next time you see a clip of Wrigley on Sportscenter, find the door amongst the ivy in right-center field, and that's where we were sitting. And we had the front row. Pretty sweet. We were even lucky enough to get a ball tossed to us from Giants' rookie pitcher, Patrick Misch. I guess there is a plus side to wearing Giants' attire in a stadium full of Cubby blue.

The game was great for me, because the Giants' finally won by taking a two run lead in the 8th on an RBI walk and RBI swinging bunt. Now, the Wrigley faithful have every right to be angry. Their bullpen just blew the game on two non-hits, and they lost to the lowly Giants. But even the worst teams win 50-60 games every year. These fans were pissin' and moanin' and whining all throughout the streets. They yelled at me "Go Home," and "Giants Suck!!" I kindly replied, "Yes, I know," and kept walking but I was surprised to discover that Cubs' fans are just your classic sore losers.

Dan retaliated by wearing Giants' colors on Wednesday, which was probably he discovered to be a bad idea around the 5th inning, when the score was 9-0 in Chicago's favor. The Giants did scored a run in the ninth inning to cut the deficit to 11 runs, but we only know that because we turned the television on when we got back to our home stay just in time to see Pedro Feliz cross the plate.

We will be driving up to Madison, Wisconsin today to stay with Uncle Ron, who we've already seen in Boston, actually. After Brewers' games on Friday and Saturday we will drive to Cincinnati on Sunday to visit Maya, Dan and Manny (their dog). Our original plan was to catch the White Sox game on the way down, but that plan flopped when we discovered that the Sox were out of town that day. We could stay until Monday night to see a game at US Cellular Field, but we decided that getting to Cincinnati was more important.