Take me out to the ballpark. . . : Catching up. . .

At the 9/11 Memorial, the second name on this list, Sandi, was the daughter of a pilot Randy knows, who was killed on Flight 93 on 9/11.

We have been moving so much and changing hotels and whatnot that I have had a lot of trouble finding time to write about all that we’ve been doing! From Atlanta (where the Nats won in a 9^th inning comeback) to Boston (Red Sox lost to the Evil Empire aka Yankees) and then down to Washington (where the Nats again had a comeback win), we then went back to New York to see the Yankees play the Orioles (the Evil Empire won again) and down to Philadelphia to see the Phillies lose to the Mets. Whew! I am ALMOST tired of seeing baseball games. No, not yet! Tomorrow we see Game 11/30 at Baltimore’s Camden Yards.

The Yankees was (were?) a fun game to watch and Yankee Stadium, even if it isn’t the ORIGINAL Yankee Stadium was beautiful. And New York, of course, is fabulous. IF, however, you discount the traffic! I’ll talk about that in a moment.

Cubby at Yankee Stadium

Inside Yankee Stadium


Pam & Cubby

The view from our seats.

Yankee Stadium is in the Bronx, one of the five boroughs of New York. Randy, being a native New Yawka (that’s how the denizens of the area say it and it’s how Randy says it when he has been exposed to a few New Yawk accents), said we HAD to take the subway—Brief Aside: It’s subway in New Yawk, “T” in Boston, Metro in Washington, SEPTA in Baltimore (I have NO idea what that stands for) and who knows what in the various other cities that have such an animal. Tucson, of course, has only recently moved into the 20^th century by getting an electric (as opposed to horse drawn, for those of you who haven’t been to Tucson lately) trolley. Tucson is eons away from either a freeway through town or a “subway” that actually is USED. OK, enough snide asides.

The subway in New Yawk is an experience and if you come to NY, you HAVE to take the subway. That isn’t a command, it is a necessity. We drove from New Joy-cee (New Jersey, snicker snicker) and got to Manhattan by going through the Holland Tunnel (it was begun in 1920 and completed in 1927 and named after Clifford Milburn Holland [1883–1924], Chief Engineer on the project, who died before it was completed) and then down to the World Trade Center area where our hotel is. Take it from me, DO NOT DRIVE IN MANHATTAN. It took us approximately an hour to go about 1/3^rd of a mile. And it then cost us $55 to park. You WILL take the subway when you come to NY!

We went to the game with about 10,000 of our closest friends. At least they were our closest friends when we got there! And we shared a subway car on the way home with people whom I became very close to. Not necessarily because I wanted to be close to them but because we were crammed in so tightly that none of us could move in any direction. I am convinced that there were people who couldn’t get off the subway at their preferred stop because they couldn’t get to the door before it closed!

For the game we have a routine: First we look for the place in the stadium where we can get our Baseball Pass-Port stamped. Then we do a circuit of the stadium to see what food is offered and where the best beers are before we make our final choice of what to eat and drink. Aside—never, never, NEVER drink Bud, Bud Lite, Coors, Coors, lite, Michelob, Michelob Lite. There is more to life than that kind of drink that is laughably called “beer.” We search out the local beers, and there are many, and occasionally get to try them before buying. We will have already read the “Bible” (The Ultimate Baseball Road Trip) about what foods to try. And then all the planning goes to hell when we see something that sounds great! One thing is a constant: we never go hungry. We have to get all this done before the game starts because we Keep Score. Each of us has a score sheet for each team and mark every pitch. This leaves us NO time to go get either sustenance or beverage!

ARod is the designated hitter (DH) for the Yankees (I won’t go into the politics of why he is a DH and not a player). The game before the Boston/Yankees game in Boston that we watched he tied Willy Mays’ record of 660 home runs. We were hoping to see him move up on the all-time home run list at the game we went to in Boston. NOT because we have any love at all for ARod, just because it would have been fun to see a record change. Well, he didn’t do it in Boston, but he did do it in NY. So Willy Mays’ now slips to 5^th (small sobs, please pass the hanky). Kind of cool, even though we really, REALLY like Mays, to hear the crowd—who, by the way, couldn’t stand ARod a few short months ago—roar when he hit a fly ball in the 1^st inning that the right fielder had to leap to catch over the wall (the right fielder, Delmon Young ROBBED ARod. What a play! Now you know why we like to keep score, I looked at our score sheets to see what happened ‘cause my memory isn’t that great). Not that time for the 661^st home run. But he did it at his next up: 3^rd inning, bases empty, two outs, he hit it a ton, straight away center field home run. And so Mays moves to 5^th.

On to Philadelphia and a tour of the Philadelphia Zoo from Bert deVries, a friend from the Association of Zoo and Aquarium Docents and Volunteer (AZADV). What a beautiful zoo! We got to ride on their (tethered) balloon and see a lot of the exhibits including the Big Cat Crossing.

The Philadelphia game was unfortunately a bit of a letdown after the Yankees/ARod excitement but it was great to see a beautiful stadium. The traffic, however, was awful. AWFUL! Especially after the game. It took us over 30 minutes to get out of the parking lot. It’s a shame that the traffic overshadowed everything about the game including the fantastic seats we had.

We also had a beautiful day to visit Valley Forge National Historic Park. We had been here years and years ago. So long ago that I didn’t remember any of it! Met a wonderful ranger (made me want to be a volunteer ranger at our National Park, Saguaro National Park) working at the exhibit of Washington’s home during the winter of 1777. We toured the home and wandered a bit and then headed back to our hotel and a quiet evening.