Stewart's 2019 Baseball Trip

I had negotiated a 2.30pm late checkout, which was a bit inconvenient really, as my flight wasn't until 9pm.  I had received an invitation to Classified - a "secret" new restaurant in terminal C at Newark Airport, available by invitation only.  The website won't even tell you where it is - you have to make a reservation in order to get directions! I made a reservation for 5pm and left my hotel at 2.27pm, not hurrying at all.  In the end, I arrived at the airport at 3.30pm and was in the appointed area at around 4.20pm, so I looked in some shops and sat and waiting for a bit until 5pm. I went to the appointed meeting area and gave the special password to the lady, who then led me through an unmarked door and through a maze of twisty passages, to come out in a small seating area. It is an expensive restaurant, but the food was excellent, and the service was good too, which is easier when you only have around 20 tables, mostly for 2 people only, to deal with.  In ...

I spent the final full day of my holiday at a Scrabble tournament in the middle of Manhattan. Whilst I often talk to people at baseball games about where I've come from and why I'm attending games, these are passing acquaintances of a couple of hours - except for Angelique at the Giants home park in San Francisco, of course. So attending a Scrabble tournament is a different kind of event to go to, because I have something more direct in common with the other people at the tournament.  I actually know some of the people already, have heard of others, and sometimes they're heard of me, particularly as I post in Scrabble Snippetz and on the NASPA Facebook groups. So, it was today, although it nearly wasn't!  For some reason, the alarms on my phone were really quiet and didn't wake me until I woke up naturally just before 9am - I needed to leave the hotel by 9.20am to ensure I got there, as I needed to take 3 different subway trains to get to the venue by 10am. ...

I've posted a flurry of articles today as I catch up with game 3 in Boston all the way to tonight's game. I'm now going to bed, as I've got to be up bright and early to go uptown to the Manhattan Scrabble tournament being hosted by Cornelia Guest at the Honors Bridge Club.

The one and only game in New York, and the final game of all for me this season, was to see the series opener between the Toronto Blue Jays and the New York Yankees, who had clinched the AL East division title the previous night against the Angels. After leaving Virgil's BBQ, I went straight up to the stadium, using the 4 express train.  I was surprised at how empty the trains were, because usually they are packed.  Perhaps it was because there was still 50 minutes before the game was due to start, so I beat the rush. That also meant that I entered the stadium much sooner than usual, too.  So I got to hear both National Anthems play - because, of course, games involving the Blue Jays have the Canadian anthem played as all as the United States anthem. I had a cheaper seat than usual, emphasis on the relativeness of the cheapness, given it still cost $135.  However, the view was good from here. Crew Chief 'Country' Joe West was umpiring the game tonight.  ...

I had an early start this morning, as I'd worked out I had to leave my hotel by 8.20am in order to make the 11am flight, with some contingency.  Being right at the end of the line does have some benefits: notably, you can always get a seat, because it's not full when it leaves Riverside. On my travels today, I saw this sign that reminded me of the Korean airliner crash at SFO a few years ago where a news channel had been fed fake funny names of the plane crew and went ahead and broadcast the names anyway ("Sum Ting Wong", "Wi Tu Lo", "Ho Lee Fuk", "Bang Ding Ow") In the end, Green Line, Red Line, Silver Line (actually a bus that starts electric and switches to diesel half way) got me to the terminal with half an hour before boarding was due to begin.  The flight was uneventful and very quick - only about 50 minutes actually in the air. At Newark, I recharged my phone and then travelled into New York by train, arriving at 2pm in ...

Since I had plenty of time to spare before dinner, I decided to wander up to the Charles River and walk along it for a bit. All the space along the river is public and open, unlike in Cambridge back home, where the University of Cambridge colleges keep as much of it private as they can. There are bike trails and walking areas everywhere.  I didn't cross the river into Cambridge itself, but I saw a lot of sailing boats, eights rowing and people just sitting watching. There's an esplanade that's more wooded, and I saw people in canoes that were obviously not skilled in the art given that half of the time, they seemed to he headed into the trees - much like the punters back home. I'd already looked up how to get to my restaurant on the T from Fenway or Kenmore stations, but by the time I'd walked all the way along the esplanade, I noticed that I was only one stop away from Copley Square anyway, so I carried on walking there instead of taking a train for a f...

The final game in Boston saw our best pitcher, Madison Bumgarner - whose nickname Mad Bum and number 40 are on my hat - pitching.  This game should have been our best chance of winning any of the games in the series, but it turned out to be the only one we lost. The weather is certainly turning autumnal, as it was chilly again at the time I left, but due to get quite warm in the middle of the day, up to 28C/82F or maybe higher. My seat was in the Grandstand, section 25, where the seats are quite narrow - they are still the original seating layout from when the park was constructed over 100 years ago. I still couldn't see the main scoreboard properly because of the pillar obstructing the view, but I was able to see left field, which had been tricky in the first two games as I was on top of the wall that you can see in the second picture.  In those two games, I was sitting either side of the right-hand lighting stanchion. The hand-operated scoreboard is one of the last r...

The middle game of this three game series was another night game.  It has turned rather chilly here this evening, so although I'm still wearing shorts, I've wearing a double polo shirt, my Giants shirt and coat (and two pairs of socks!) It took 15 minutes to get into the stadium, as the staff are glacially slow at processing the queues through the security lines. Today, I was in section M9 on the Green Monster, which is just to the other side of the lighting stanchion, which means that I had an unobstructed view to pretty much the whole field except, obviously, for the bit at the base of the wall. When you first go up to the Monster seats, you get a little Monster stamp on your wrist so that you don't have to keep showing your ticket - it's a weird looking thing. Today's starter was Jeff Samardzija, one of our better pitchers and it showed.  After last night's 15 inning game had used almost everybody on the roster, it was vital that the starters on both ...

I spent half of the day asleep trying to get better, and then waited until about 6 before heading to Fenway Park for Tuesday's game.   This was first game of a rare 3-game series between the San Francisco Giants and the Boston Red Sox.  Since this is an inter-league matchup and not one of the 'natural rivalry' series, these teams only play every 4 years in the regular season. I was sitting in the Green Monster seats - the seats on top of the giant green wall in left field, created so that the field could fit in the space available whilst making the difficulty of hitting a home run (over the monster) approximately as difficult as it is anywhere else. I was sitting in section M10, which is the furthest away from the plate and in seat 1 of the second row, which has a somewhat obstructed view.  At first I thought I was going to be the only person in the whole section, but the front row had been taken by a business party of 10 who turned up late, and more people tu...

I managed a small breakfast and then set off for the airport.  The metro tunnels in St Louis look old, and when the MetroLink system was built, Wikipedia says it was built on existing rail alignments, so they could be decades old - MetroLink itself has only been around about 25 years. The first flight was to Washington, on one of the small ExpressJets.  I was worried I would have to gate-check my big bag, which wouldn't normally be a problem, but I have a very tight connection time in Washington (45 minutes technically, but 30 in reality giving that boarding finishes 15 minutes before the plane is due to depart) and that includes changing terminals from one side of the airport to the other. However, the restriction on carry-on items (2 max) seem to apply only to Economy passengers, so I can take my large bag, laptop bag and backpack on with no problem.  In fact, the first class section was half empty anyway, so I was able to place all three in an overhead compartment...

The last game of this series is a day game, with a 1.15pm start.  I found another single seat that the website would let me buy, in the middle of a row, but it is only a row of 5 seats near the back of the club area again, next to the press box.  It was in the shade, which was good. It's clearly not just me that has trouble buying individual tickets - the man sitting next to me asked me whether I had just the one ticket, and how I'd managed to buy it! Not so good is that I now have a cold, and with the heat, I've not felt very well. This was an exciting game, very few runs until the near the end of the game.   The biggest moment came in the Milwaukee half of the ninth inning, when training 4-3, one of their star players, Ryan Braun, was batting with 2 out, down to his last strike, and he hit a grand slam to put the Brewers in front 7-4.  This quietened the crowd down considerably. When St Louis came to bat in the bottom of the 9th inning, they managed to s...

I had managed to find a single seat on the end of a row for today's game which the website would let me purchase.  I've never been in the Redbird Club area before - I've either been in the normal seats of the Cardinal Club right behind the plate. The club area is air-conditioned which was useful tonight (and will be vital tomorrow, with the temperature forecast to be 34C/95F tomorrow) I had a superb view from my seat, of the field, the surrounding buildings, and the Gateway Arch.  The seats are really nice too, deeply padded and comfortable. I got to see some of the best players in the game in this game. Here's Yadier Molina, the Cardinals' catcher coming to bat.  Meanwhile Paul Goldschmidt didn't manage to repeat his 7 RBI performance from the previous night, and in the end, it was 2 home runs from the Brewers that secured them a 5-2 win to even the series at 1-1. The game seemed quite short, but it was just 1 minute shy of 3 hours long.  Pe...

I've stayed at this hotel before, and I shall probably stay here again whenever I next visit St Louis.  The breakfast is decent, yet free ("included in the price"), the networking works, and it's in a quite convenient place for Busch Stadium and anywhere else in the Metrorail network. Today, I visited Forest Park, out to the west of the centre of St Louis.  I took the Metrorail west to Union Station to see whether it was any different to last time, and found that it was being completely redeveloped and was essentially a building site.  The fish were still there though! After not staying long there, I continued the train journey to Central West End and walked the rest of the way.  There's adverts everywhere for a shuttle bus from the metro but a) it was from the next stop along; and b) it stopped running for the year on 2nd September There's some lakes and trees, and some nice floral displays dotted around the place. There are also winding paths through...

Today was a travel day, where I move back East into the Central Time zone, so I've now been in all 4 mainland USA timezones, if you count the couple of hours I spent on the ground in Denver. The flight left slightly early and arrived about half an hour early, but I was so tired, that I didn't go to the ballgame tonight (St Louis won 10-0) I have a digital key at this hotel - my phone unlocks the door when I am close to it and press the button.  I have a high-floor room, with an Arch View.  This is the view from my window at sunset. After dinner, I returned and took some photos of the Arch all lit up.  With lights.  And the Moon, trying to poke out from the clouds. The Gateway Arch is really very big - it doesn't look it in pictures, but when you're standing near the base of it, it is extremely big! Thankfully, it had cooled off by the evening time, as it was quite warm when I landed. There appears to be a gang of young people riding laps around the downto...

The final game of the series was a day game with a 12.45pm start.  I managed to miss the first half inning of this game again.  Being a day game meant that my seat was out in the sun, and today was really hot - the temperature in the shade was over 32C/90F. I had lunch inside, and then walked all the way along the club level to the far end so have a look out over the bay properly. On the way back, I stopped to chat to Angelique, the friendly usher I meet at the ballpark each year.  She's going to be working at the new basketball centre just down the road as well as at Oracle Park now, and sometimes doing the concerts (Sir Elton John is there this weekend, and she's going to see that, too) There were really long queues for the ice creams, as you can see from the photo. We had Jeff Samardzija pitching this game and he did OK, but gave up 1 run here, 1 run there and eventually it was 4-0.  However, the Giants fought back to 4-2 and had the winning run, in the fo...

The third game of the series was another night game, starting at 6.45pm.  I managed to miss the first half inning of this game again, as it took so much longer than it should have done to get to the stadium.  I had an unexpected wait of 15 minutes for the Muni Metro.   This game never looked like being won, and it wasn't. However, it was my final chance of the year to see the stadium at sunset and as night falls, and on a beautiful late summer evening, that is pretty.  We are coming up to a full moon, and the moon looks much larger in the sky at the moment, so here's a view of it just past the right-field foul pole, looking out over McCovey Cove into the San Francisco bay. This is one of the reasons Oracle Park, as it is now called after they bought the naming rights during the last off-season, is consistently voted one of the top stadia in all of the Major League Baseball stadia. One of the strange things about this season is that although we lost a...