Stewart's 2019 Baseball Trip

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...