They call it Beantown - I call it Dumbasbeanstown

Boston can't begin to fathom why Johnny Damon wouldn't come back to them. I can't begin to imagine why he'd go back.

I'll go back and start being nice.

The stadium feels tiny - in a cozy way. Almost like a minor league stadium must feel. The field feels small despite the 420ft center wall; maybe that's because I was staring at the green monster. The scoreboard shows how to score every play after the fact and previous at bats (though without scoring notation). They also display the final lines for pitchers - something I haven't seen in another park which I thought was silly in its omission. Papelbon coming in to the Dropkick Murphys is fun. The vendors outside of the stadium lend a feel of authenticity, like people love their team so much that they just have to pitch tent outside. The fans are passionate.

There, a number of nice things. That's all though.

The stadium feels tiny. It's cozy in your seat, but it's cramped everywhere else. The concourses are miniscule. The concrete under your seat angles down so when you put your things under there, they soak through in the inch of water at the back that you don't see. The scoreboard is generally out of sight for at least a quarter of the lower deck seats. There are pillars obstructing your view if you aren't in front of them or satisfactorially behind them. The scorecard comes in a program (something I'm realizing is more common) that's reasonably priced (I don't remember, $5 maybe) and comes with a couple baseball cards (as if anyone collects them anymore). The layout is terrible with what little scoring instruction on the back of one team's page and the pitcher stats on the back of the other. Every box has more boxes for balls/strikes. Useful if you want to measure every stat - but you're not including extra fouls for total pitches/plate attempt or getting really good defensive stats, so it's not really worth it in my opinion. It just clutters things up. The scorecards look like they were designed by a middle schooler. And not one going on to a graphic design career. There's zero fan interaction (kiss cam, animated races, shirt give aways, whathaveyou) aside from the pedophile anthem Sweet Caroline being sung by the entire stadium. The vendors are outside because there's practically no room inside. I'm not even sure if you can go back out to them after you're in. The fans are passionate in the way Brick loves lamp - blind passion without really knowing what's going on. For example, my entire side of the stadium got excited for a home run - one that was clearly a foul ball sailing well into the seats just past first base.

I can see why the stadium is loved. It has charm. It's unfortunate for baseball where the game has become secondary to the event - and not a very good one at that. It's clear that, while there are plenty of baseball fans, the social fan has bought most of the tickets. It could be a better experience if more work was put into the extras. The stadium just doesn't stack up in tangibles to any of the other stadiums I've been to.

No apple in the Big Apple

--For those of you not in the know, the Mets have a giant apple that pops up when the home team hits a homerun (which they did not do).--

New York was rainy and dreary the whole time we were there. Add that to the Long Island RailRoad operating at 60% due to a main signal box fire, and things weren't the best. We made a good time though, eating a lot of NY style pizza. We had an off day after the Yankee game and then made our way to Citi Field, home of the Mets.

Stepping off the subway, you can immediately tell things are different than New Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. There, you felt like you were stepping off a decrepit, aging platform into the diamond in the rough - kindof like going to CoPa (moreso in it's earlier years). At Citi Field in Queens, though, it felt like they'd given a facelift to the who
le area as even the subway station felt pristine - more like a fresh airport terminal than a NY subway.


We entered through the Jackie Robinson rotunda - which was very nice - and a nice touch to honor the Brooklyn Dodgers' past - though I wonder if the LA Dodgers don't do the same thing. The stadium felt like a good size for a modern stadium - and it seats about the same as CoPa, so I may be biased on that one. Food was mercifully cheap (6.75 for a cheeseburger - 8.50 for a double) but they tricked you on everything else (5.75 20oz soda). It has a couple beautiful and huge video boards. In most parks they'd be unfortuante as they block the view out of center field. Here, though your view would be of Laguerda airport. Unfortunately, they don't block the sound of jetliners scraping their bellies on the stadium every half inning or so. The double video boards showed the full lineups for both teams at all times which was nice - though, even though they highlit who was at bat, they displayed the due up list just below the lineup which felt reduntant. It was also pretty pointless to have both screens showing the batter's stats and image. It would have been a lot nicer to have, you know, different information on the video boards that are practically side by side. I feel like I'm saying a lot of negative things about Citi Field. Maybe because of the loud jets. Maybe because of the upper deck first row view:

But we did get to see Maybin (who didn't play when the Marlins faced the Pirates) single in the second:


We got to see former Toledo Mudhen Mike Hessman do what he does best (when not being the active HR leader in AAA), look ugly striking out:

And we got to see a 9th inning walk off win:

The park was really nice but had a few major flaws. Unfortunately, you can't fix the proximity to the airport, and you're likely not going to bother with the unfortunately tall upper deck fence. The scoreboard repitition though is an easy fix. Throw in the pitcher's career stats against the batter or his seasonal splits or something on the smaller board. See, I did it for them.

Revisiting the Pitts in New York (City of Misery) by way of Philly

But first, back to Pittsburgh now that I have my notes. The pitcher's board displaying pitch speed, total ball/strike counts also had the cool feature of displaying vertical and horizontal break of the pitch. It didn't tell the type of pitch (which is seeming more common) but gave you the same information if you're smart enough. It'd be extra nice if it showed the breaks and the pitch type so people could get a correlation between pitch names and actions. You can boat right up to the park if you're so inclined. Almost no one was, so it seemed a good way to beat the crowd and save on parking - if you had a boat. Like CoPa and so many new retro parks it has a very open center field to display a great skyline. One fun thing they did on the scoreboard was they had a FishBook (think FaceBook) page for all the Marlins players. I have my doubts that their three and four hitters being friends with Jose Canseco was a coincidence. The scoreboard also had a display for who is warming up in the bullpen rather - another simple, obvious touch that seems to get overlooked but made the game that much better. A couple player notes: you can tell Tabata has packed it in as he lazily jogged out to a ball that ended up just escaping his glove for a double; Laroche has 8-bit music for his at bats; and McCutchen puts the afterburners on, even when legging out a home-run - good for him.

And now Philly. Citizens Bank Park is built in the Philly Sports Complex housing stadiums for their NFL and NHL teams as well. It's clear that they had nearly unlimited space to build as the stadium seems to sprawl - even leaving the exit ramp of exposed I-beams jutting out away from the stadium. The stadium only seats 2,000 more than CoPa but it feels egregiously large. Looking at it is a bit off-putting, but sitting in the 400 level seats felt closer than it looked - and was nice and breezy on a hot, humid day. It was an over-capacity day, and Philly fans wear a ridiculous amount of home-team gear. I got another scorecard, and while it was ticketed at $2, it was worth every penny. It allowed a full page for each team and gave another full page to common notations and game examples. Great to learn off of. Philly fans are definitely brutal to the point where, when a ball was called, I couldn't tell if they were booing the umpire's decision or the home pitcher, but I tended to think the latter. Strasburg was unfortunately injured, but he was on a roll and pitched a fun game while he was in. We did get to see former Tigers Placido Polanco (Phillies) and Pudge (Nats). After the game we tried out Geno's and Pat's cheesesteaks. Let me say, the Philly cheesesteak is the most overrated food I've ever come across. It's kindof like a slider, only unground and bigger and long. And less tasty. And more expensive. And more hyped. There's no point in going five steps out of your way to try one unless you have an insatiable curiosity.

Ahh, New York. We're in Newark, NJ actually. The bed smells faintly of stale sweat - until you get in, anyway. Then it's no longer faint. It took us three hours to make our trip into the city by shuttle, monorail, train, subway and foot. We were told it'd probably be an hour and fifteen minutes. Needless to say, we were late. We walked in just as Cano hit his grand slam, and got to our seats as they were rolling out the tarps.


So after leaving around 11:30, we got to see our first pitch in Yankee Stadium roughly four hours later. We caught about three innings and got to see former Tigers Marcus Thames and Curtis Granderson which was fun.

After the game we got some tasty NY pizza and later went out to a tapas bar which was good (if obtrousively loud). Hopefully tomorrow is a nicer day. We might try to hit the MoMA. No ball game, though. Citi Field in two days - whatever day that is.

Honeymooning in Pittsburgh and Baltimore

Well, Claire and I are off. This will mostly focus on my baseball notes, but will have some other flavor.

I might come back to Pittsburgh as I don't have all my notes of things I wanted to say about it. One thing of note, however, is that driving in Pittsburgh is the pitts. Every exit seems to split at least three ways and the highways are all named something other than Claire's GPS calls them. It seems like there was no plan when laying down the roads.

PNC Park is amazingly awesome. It looks great, overlooks the water, has the requisite statues, good food, great beer selection (including Detroit-brewed Atwater Brewery Dirty Blonde). Parking wasn't bad, but I imagine it being terrible if the Pirates were drawing more than 15,000 fans. I also came to the realization that I think all the Pittsburgh teams share the same colors. Smart thinkin' Lincoln. A free program including scorecard. A free t-shirt on every Thursday game. They're giving away Negro League caps soon. I was astounded with the number of really cool promotions they do. It almost makes me want to be a Pirates fan. Alas, they're no good and I don't live in Pittsburgh. The scoreboard was nice, and included really nice previous at-bat info - including describing it by position number. This almost made up for not listing the position numbers on the scorecard (something I've gotten used to in Detroit). It would be really hard for a new fan to try to keep score with no positional numbers or common notations. The game got interesting towards the end with a McCutchen home run, but alas, the home team did not prevail.

Pittsburgh had a ton of walking traffic after the game and the skyline looked gorgeous. It's really something for Detroiters to be envious of as a post-industrial city. After the game we stopped by the recommended Church Brew Works which had converted an old Catholic church into a brewery/restaurant. We had an absolutely delicious "cinco fromaggio" pizza and a couple decent brews. It was a bit of an awkward feeling, sitting in a giant cathedral whilst drinking Thunderhop and chowing down some pizza, but it was really cool as well - after you got over the musty smell of old church layered under the other undesirable smells of bars.

For now, Claire and I are enjoying Baltimore. We got in this afternoon round-abouts 2 and, after checking in, walked down to the National Aquarium. They had a giant tank on the main floor filled with rays and what looked like smaller sharks. The highlight of the trip, for both of us I think, was the Jellyfish Invasion exhibit. Claire has a thing for jellyfish, and I have a thing for weird things.

After getting the obligatory collectible Hard Rock shot glass and snacking on some Cheesecake Factory, we walked on over to Oriole Park at Camden Yards to watch the Orioles host the Texas Rangers. The park was certainly nice - though perhaps not quite as impressive as I was led to believe. There was a fair amount of character, but you could definitely tell it was the first of it's kind. They have new scoreboards that look great - when you can see them which wasn't from our seats tucked under the upper deck behind home plate. I'm noticing that I find little things to like and dislike about the scoreboard displays. at OP@CY the pitch board displays the type of pitch which is fun. However, there is nowhere that displays previous at-bat results (other than the batters' record for the game: 0-1, 2-3 etc.). That was frustrating to me as I was trying to keep up with my scorecard and take pictures. I think I only missed one at-bat while Claire was gone, but it would have been really annoying if I'd been hungry enough to leave my seat for an inning.

The game was enjoyable with C.J. Wilson of the Rangers taking a shutout through 8 2/3 innings whilst Orioles Nick Markakis (RF) and Buck Showalter (manager) getting ejected separately during the game.

One thing I have noticed about Baltimore - and perhaps all of Maryland - is that people hate to use the rightmost lane to drive in. If there are three lanes, the center lane is is you're going five under the speed limit, and the leftmost lane (also known as the "fast lane" or the "passing lane") is used to cruise along at the speed limit in. I found myself in the right lane a lot.

Tomorrow we plan to get some crab before heading out to Philly for some cheesesteaks and to watch the Phillies take on the Nat's "phenom" Stephen Strasburg. Hopefully we got good seats - and don't get puked on.