Day 9 & 10 In A Flash

Starting location: Clarkston, Mich.
Notable stops: Comerica Park, terrible Detroit construction; Great Lakes Brewing Co., Cleveland, Ohio; Jacobs/Progressive Field
Ending location: Rocky River, Ohio

Miles driven: 215 miles
Time spent in vehicle: 6 hours

States driven through: 2 (Michigan, Ohio)
CDs listened to: 3
Game results: Indians beat Tigers, 8-2; Indians beat Twins, 1-0

History Watch: We might have seen the shortest baseball game of our lives Tuesday night. C.C. Sabathia's complete-game, five-hit shutout of the Twins took approximately 2 hours, 6 minutes. Like a bad summer blockbuster, this one was over quick and didn't contain much drama. The Indians scored one in the first inning, and that ended that.

Amazing Americana Moment of the Day: We walked outside our hotel to head to Detroit's Comerica Park, when I spotted this beautiful piece of auto trash talk.


I was surprised this guy didn't have a giant 'Ohio State Buckeyes' bumper sticker on his car. My guess is he works at Michigan despite his true Ohio allegiances, or just really, really hates the Wolverines. Either way, it's genius.

The Details: Tonight we're staying near Cleveland with my dad's cousin, Ellen, and her husband, Rick. Their son is a brewmaster at the Great Lakes Brewing Co. in Cleveland, a fantastic brewery and restaurant that we ate at tonight. Look around for it in stores or restaurants if you live in the Midwest -- this place distributes all over. Especially pick up some 'Rye of the Tiger' if you see it -- it's an original brew by my second cousin, and its quite unique and quite delicious.

We're heading to Pittsburgh for a night game Wednesday, then driving overnight in time to catch a matinée at Wrigley Field to conclude our trip. If we don't get up a post about our time in Detroit and Cleveland by tomorrow morning, keep checking back over the next week or so for updated posts. We'll have a full rundown of the final third of our journey, as well as quite a few posts with our final reflections and evaluations of the cities and parks we saw along the way.

Thanks for reading!

Playing ball the Fen-Way

It's only appropriate that we followed up our Yankee Stadium trip with a trip to their arch-rivals in Boston. There's a big debate over which stadium places second behind Wrigley Field in terms of the best place to watch a game. What struck us first about Fenway was how small it looks in person.
They can only fit well under 40,000 people in there for a game which is why tickets are so hard to come by. The other surprise was that the Green Monster was not quite the monster we expected. It was also smaller than we anticipated.
It's also possible that our expectations were too high. The name "Green Monster" congers up thoughts of an evil outfield wall that knocks potential home runs out of the sky with long, green arms. That's clearly not the case since Manny Rameriz knocked a ball well over the Monster in the 3rd inning.

Even though the Monster didn't meet our expectations, we were still happy to see a game here before the place falls down.I don't use the term falling down lightly. While our seats gave us a pretty good view of the park, Josh's seat was right underneath this leaking pipe.


But before the Red Sox fix the leaking pipes, they need to do a major upgrade on their seats.


But maybe the Red Sox know what they are doing. Why waste money on seats and pipes when people are going to fill the seats anyway? The Red Sox apparently are much smarter with their money than the rival Yankees since they have turned their multi-million dollar payroll into a first place team. We saw the team at their best as they clobbered the lowly Mariners 11 - 3.
But while it's easy to criticize this creaky, old park, it's still pretty impressive. Even though the Red Sox don't have as much positive history as they would like, there's no doubt it's an historic ballpark and a must see for any baseball fan.

It's hard to see in this picture, but the date above the name plate is 1912. That's when William Howard Taft was still president. He once got stuck in a bathtub, but the Red Sox got stuck with the curse of the Bambino. I don't know how long it took to get Taft out of the tub, but it took the Red Sox 88 years to shake their curse. I think Taft got the better deal.

New York, New York 2

I did a little more thinking today about what made Yankee Stadium such an amazing experience. A big part of it has to be the great players that call New York home, and there are a lot of them.Here's a shot of Mr. Derek Jeter. He's real good. Not much else needs to be said about him. The Yanks also have Alex Rodriguez, another decent player. The problem is all these great players has only gotten New York a 32-32 record, good for last place in the American League East. You would think that a payroll at more than $200 million would get you a little better than last place. Maybe the Yankees could learn something from the Tampa Bay Rays. Their payroll sits at only $43 million, but they are only one game out of first in the same division. Too bad the Yanks don't have this guy to give them a boost.

"A great ballplayer." Now there's an understatement.

Our Yankee Stadium experience was also helped by Jason Giambi winning the game on a walk-off 3-run home run. Any game that ends with that kind of excitement makes for a good baseball experience.To be honest, Yankee Stadium was really the top motivation for this trip. 2008 is the final year for this historic park. Next year they open a new park across the street.


It looks like a nice place, but it will be tough to beat a view like this one.


All in all, a great game and a great day. We left happy.

Oh Canada, My Home and Native Land (I Wish)

I have found heaven on earth, and it's called Toronto, Ontario.

Of all the stops on our trip, I might have been most excited for our journey north -- my first time traveling beyond the U.S. border. I had my passport all ready to go (unlike another member of our traveling party -- we'll get to that later) and I couldn't wait to see Canada's wonders.

We left Buffalo early Sunday morning and drove to the border crossing near Niagara Falls. Now, the Niagara on the United States side is about as depressing as towns get. It's not in very good shape, and has clearly seen better days. But once you get sight of Maple Leaf Land, you think Canadians are the ones having all the fun. Seriously, their side of the border looks like one constant party.

Then, you get to Toronto. It's a joyous place of magic and wonder, with sweet buildings like this.


The place looks like the future. Almost like the city planners were super Star Wars freaks exiled from Michigan and New York.

It's also a super clean city, with pretty amazing architecture all around. The Rogers Centre (the stadium formerly known as SkyDome) gets ragged on a lot, but even it looks pretty sweet from the outside.


I mean, how many American buildings could get away with gargoyles like THIS on the wall?


Like I said, Toronto is the city of the future. Don't sights like this make you want to live there? I know I do.


So, I'm already ecstatically in love with Toronto after seeing a few blocks of downtown. Then, we got inside the Centre of Awesomeness. It was Photo Day, a fantastic promotions event where fans are let down on the field to take pictures of players either walking around the stadium are sitting behind super protective rope barriers.


I'd gone to one of these events before, just after knee surgery. I was in a wheelchair, so I got to go to a special area of Busch Stadium, and got all the 2005 Cardinals' autographs. Time of my life.

This time almost ended up not so sweet. Miles had already walked in the gate when the women taking our tickets asked us if we wanted to go down to the field for Photo Day. We did, but she told us we had to go in a different gate to get to the field, but that Miles couldn't leave and re-enter.

Oh well, we said, we'll go in anyway and take pictures of the field from the seats.


So we're standing in the seats around club level, when not one, but TWO separate ushers come up to us and say, 'You know, you can go down on the field, if you want.'

Ghwahhh?!?! What ballpark staff comes up and, in a friendly manner, encourages college kids to go down on the field?!?!? I love Canada even more.

We walked down the concourse and behind a gate onto the beautiful bounty of fake grass on the SkyDomeCentre floor. Here, we got to take pictures of our favorite Blue Jays, or in this case, my favorite ex-Cardinals.


Canada's a truly magical place, a mystic land where the metric system still exists.


As we walked off the field, the heavens opened and shone down upon us. Oh wait, that's just the RogersDomeSkyCentre's retractable roof.


We also met a lovely blond girl walking around with a silly-looking BlackBerry cell phone. We stopped and chatted with her and asked her all about Canada's free health care. Then I touched the BlackBerry's buttons. It giggled.


I don't understand why, but no one comes to Blue Jays games. This stadium was surprisingly fantastic. Especially when an usher left his post and we upgraded our $9 upper deck seats to the $65 club seats.


I don't know what this needle thing is, but it's awesome. It almost looked like a painting. And it made me feel like I was watching baseball in the year 2082.


What makes awesome seats better? Seeing Roy Halladay pitch from those seats.


Another reason to love Canada: really sweet looking money. This $5 bill has a hologram seal on the left side, that kind of looks like the thing they put on authentic Major League Baseball merchandise.

We timed our trip perfectly, when the U.S. dollar is worth less than the Canadian one. So, when our ballpark food cost $10, we gave them $10 of American money, which is really only $9.90 of American money. Great success!

So basically, Canada is the greatest place ever. We figure America is running a giant propaganda scheme to prevent us U.S.A.-ers from finding out how amazing this country is. The people are friendly, the buildings are awesome, the food is delicious, there's a less visible divide between social and economic classes, it looks like Star Wars and you get free health care!

Now, if only the baseball was a little better.


Later on, Miles had a couple of problems on the way back to America. Like spilling soda all over his pants. Thank goodness I had my camera there to document the event.


Miles also re-entered the country illegally. He was supposed to have a passport or a driver's license and a birth certificate. He only had a driver's license. The nice border guard let him into the country, but he didn't have to. So, Colin and I now claim that Miles is here against U.S. law. He's lucky we didn't turn him over to the border patrol right there.

Singing the Team America theme song, we returned to our glorious land, with the knowledge that our neighbors to the north are slightly more glorious.


I have no idea how this picture turned out so cool. The real things looks nothing like this at all. Probably more of that American propaganda, keeping us Yankees out of heaven.

New York, New York

I think it's time we change the title of our trip to "Economic Stimulus 2008." Every time I see a newspaper on this trip it has some bad news about the economy. But the three of us are certainly doing our part to fight off a recession, spending money everywhere we go. If all of America would just stop work and go on a two week baseball trip, all the problems would be solved. Maybe this why I didn't major in economics ...

It's been a busy few days for, coming back from Canada, fighting power outages in Detroit and of course, seeing lots of baseball. We are just about to head out for Cleveland, but here's a few pictures from the last couple days.


I never thought I'd say this, but Yankee Stadium is awesome. All my life I have cheered against the Yankess, but seeing a game in the Bronx was the highlight of the trip for me. I am not ashamed to say that I cheered hard for the evil empire.

Maybe it's because of all the history there, but there is a real magical feeling to the park. We waited in line for a while before the game, but getting to see legends field where they enshrine all the greats was fantastic.

They've had a lot of really good players.

I guess I have less time for an update than I thought because we have to skedaddle out of this motel before check-out time. There's more to come though later today.

Day 8 Fast Facts

Starting location: Somewhere near Buffalo, N.Y.
Notable stops: Buffalo IHOP; Rogers Centre, Toronto, Ontario; two border crossings
Ending location: Clarkston, Mich.

Miles driven: 347
Time spent in vehicle: 6.5 hours

States driven through: 2 (New York, Michigan)
Countries driven through: 2

CDs listened to: 7
Game result: Blue Jays beat Orioles, 5-4

History Watch: I left the country for the first time today. I've seen a lot of the glorious U-S-and-A, bet never managed to escape this country's borders. Man, have I been missing out. I'll put a full update of our glorious visit to our neighbors to the north on Tuesday.

Day 7 Breakdown

Starting location: New Bedford, Mass.
Notable stops: Fenway Park, lots of New England countryside
Ending location: A rest stop somewhere near Buffalo, N.Y.

Miles driven: 511
Time spent in vehicle: 9 hours
Time spent on subway: 1 hour

States driven through: 2 (Massachusetts, New York)
CDs listened to: 5
Game result: Red Sox beat Mariners, 11-3

History Watch: Today marked probably the first times any of us had spent a majority of the night in a rest area. Knowing we had to go from a twilight game in Boston to an afternoon game in Toronto made things difficult. It wasn't worth the money to get a hotel room anywhere, so we drove through the night and hit the outside of Buffalo, N.Y., by about 3:30 a.m. We caught a few hours of shut-eye jammed into the car before making the final jaunt to Maple Leaf Land.

Food Myth Dispelled: We were anxious to visit Fenway Park for a number of reasons, but one of them was to taste these famous 'Fenway Franks' we had heard so much about. Apparently, everyone loves Boston's hot dogs.

They're crazy. The franks were the worst ball park hot dogs any of us ever had. I've cooked off-brand hot dogs in my microwave that tasted better than these. Stadium dogs have a distinctive taste and texture to them, but the Fenway Franks lacked all of it. Terrible.