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.