"Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over." -Ernest Hemingway

Baseball: White Sox

May 18, 2008 By Leave a Comment

So, I’m going to break my trip stuff up into several posts. I’ll do the baseball stuff tonight (Chicago teams anyway). So, we’ll start with US Cellular and the White Sox.

Here are the things I liked about US Cellular:

Heated bathrooms
Easy to get in/out of
View of city if coming in from the El
Great at blocking the wind inside the stadium
Great intro video (here’s a video of it here someone else did. I might have one too).

Here is what I didn’t like:

The food in the place smelled horrible!
Fireworks during the day, pre-game, seemed a waste. You couldn’t see them.
No real view from the park.
Grass was only decent.
Seats were average (and over priced)
It was empty!

Here is the main thing about US Cellular Field. It’s an okay park. It’s not crappy. It’s not that old (about 17 years). It has decent seats. It’s decently clean. But that’s the thing. It’s only decent. There is nothing special about it that stands out to me. It has no character and that is boring.

White Sox won their game against the Twins though. So that was good. After game one, Home Team 1–Visitors 0.

Filed Under: Sports Tagged With: , , ,

Warm Nights

May 15, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The weather outside right now is just about perfect. My computer says it’s 69 degrees in Seaside. I so much prefer warm nights to warm or hot days. I guess I’m not a super fan of the sun. Right now outside, it feels like I’m sitting on the beach in Florida. It’s not muggy (i.e. Kentucky), it’s just perfect.

The new trip update plan is Saturday. I got nothing to do until Saturday evening, and I’ve started sorting pictures and videos and stuff, so I’ll just do my blogging then. For now though, I’ll leave you with a pic of Wrigley Field.

Filed Under: My Life, Sports

Hockey

May 11, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Hockey is a pretty cool sport. I’ve never really watched it. Penguins won tonight. Watching outside in the rain with other people was pretty cool. Of course, I couldn’t handle the whole game. I was wet and my cameras was getting wet, and I just couldn’t have that. So I left there and went to a sports bar with like 30 TVs, which was awesome.

Later, when I write more, I’ll tell you about the well-known baseball pitcher that was also drafted to the NHL the same year he was drafted to MLB. He happened to be at the game tonight (which should give away which team he might play for).

Filed Under: Sports

Pittsburgh Update

May 11, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I have plenty to blog about, but I’ll do it when I get home and can put everything together. Right now though, I’m in Pittsburgh. I went to visit my brother today and will most likely be going back over there tomorrow night after the baseball game for another quick visit. It’s raining here. Supposed to rain tomorrow too, which doesn’t make for a great sight-seeing and baseball game day, but oh well.

Chicago was great. Jeff was a good tour guide too. Anyone want to guess what my favorite part so far has been, outside of the baseball and seeing my brother?

Chicago Tribune Building. Yep. It wasn’t even on my list of things to see, just a “if I get around to it.” It was amazing. I’ll probably blog more about that later, but I was like a little kid there. The plaza area by it was hands down my favorite place in the city other than Wrigley.

Tonight my plan is to head into Pittsburgh and go to a bar or something to get dinner and watch the Pittsburgh vs. Philadelphia Stanley Cups Playoffs game (hockey for those who don’t know what the Stanley Cup is). Can’t get tickets, but being around crazy sports fans always makes me happy.

Filed Under: My Life, Sports

Chicago

May 6, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I’m heading out in the morning for Chicago. I think I leave San Jose around 1:30pm PST. I’m excited although I’ve planned nothing yet. I’m just excited about the mere fact of baseball. I don’t really have much else to say tonight. I got a lot to do that I haven’t done yet, like pack and pretty much everything else. In lieu of that, here’s a treat for you.

And my poor poor Pirates:

Filed Under: Sports

PNC Park

May 1, 2008 By Leave a Comment

So, my trip to Chicago and Pittsburgh is less than a week away. I’m super excited. I was also talking to my friend Josh tonight who was telling me that apparently the stadium in Pittsburgh, PNC Park, was picked the best park in the country a couple of years ago by ESPN. Being able to watch my favorite baseball team ever in the best ballpark in America is just about heaven for me. Sure, being at Wrigley and seeing the Cubs will be amazing too, but Pittsburgh is the place I’m most looking forward to going for baseball.

On another note, I know I really haven’t blogged this week, or put up my postings from last week. I just haven’t been motivated to do it yet and I’ve had a semi-busy week. I’ve just been having a thinking week I think.

Filed Under: My Life, Sports

Baseball collectables

April 13, 2008 By 3 Comments

I like baseball. No secret there. In less than a month I’m starting my baseball journey for this year. If all goes as planned I will be visiting both Chicago ballparks, Pittsburgh, then later on in the year, Boston, both New York, San Diego, Los Angeles, Anaheim (I refused to call them the LA Angels), Oakland and of course San Francisco. That looks to be 11 ballparks this year–10 of which I’ve never visited.

So, I need some help. People have suggested that I have to either buy something from each ball park to collect, like preferably the same type of thing–a pennant, a bobblehead, something like that–or I need to come up with something to take a picture with in front of the parks. I suppose I could do both. I hadn’t planned to do either, other than pictures from each park. Anyway, if you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them

Filed Under: My Life, Sports Tagged With:

Crean of the Crop

April 1, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Yeah, that was corny, I know. But when I think of Indiana, I think of fields, and when I think of fields, I think of corn and other crops.

Anyway, Tom Crean to Indiana? Who saw that one coming? Not me. The other night I was talking trash about him. I was probably bitter they beat Kentucky (again). I actually have nothing personally against him. I learned a few things about him tonight I didn’t know. Like for instance, he was an assistant coach at WKU. I did know he was married to former WKU football coach Jack Harbaugh’s daughter. Harbaugh incidentally is an associate athletic director at Marquette currently.

Anyway, I’m a fan of Indiana basketball. Well, I was for a long time. Maybe Tom Crean can bring back that love for me. I promise to even get over whatever I held against him that was unfounded.

Filed Under: Sports Tagged With: , , ,

One Week

March 31, 2008 By Leave a Comment

One week til the SF Giants’ Home Opener game. This may have happened last year too, but their home opener is the same day as the NCAA Basketball Championship. That officially makes it the best day of the year.

I love baseball. I read a great post today by Walt Mueller about baseball and grace. It actually reminded me of something I was talking about the other day with someone. Maybe I’ll blog about that later. Anyway, here is his post that I liked. For anyone who doesn’t know, Walt Mueller is like the man on Youth Culture and how that fits in with our Christian lives. I heard him speak at Boot Camp in January and he was really good. He is a Phillies baseball fan so, but I won’t hold that against him. What about those Phillies? (Sorry Crystal, I couldn’t resist).

You like how I did that? I did a post that wasn’t about basketball, but still had to mention it, huh? Of course, now you get a post or two about baseball, then I’ll be silent on it probably until my trip, and then again until my next trip, and then again until, just before the playoffs.

Filed Under: Sports Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Bracket Strategy

March 30, 2008 By Leave a Comment

One day I promise I will stop blogging about basketball. Probably not until April 7th or there abouts, but I will stop someday soon.  Anyway…

Every year I join up with some people I know to make an ESPN Tournament Challenge group. We fill out our brackets and do all that stuff. We’ve been doing this for like, what 8 years now? Something like that. I’ve actually only met one of the folks in this group (Josh in Connecticut), but we all were friends from the FRIENDS Message Boards back in the day. That’s another story though.

So, Lisa, one of our group members, created a “control group” for this year. Basically what she did was selected all the top seeds to win in each game. 1 over 16, 8 over 9, 2 over 3. You get the idea. She did that for every single game. So far, she’s beating everyone in our group. In fact, she’s in the 81 percentile of all the ESPN brackets, which isn’t too bad. Of course, her Final Four are all one seeds. I assume from there she maybe picked the higher one seed for each match-up. North Carolina, being the overall one seed, she picked as the Champion.

What I find even more interesting though is that in the South Region (Memphis, Texas, Pitt, Stanford, Kentucky, etc…) the ONLY game that hasn’t been won by the higher seed was the Michigan St/ Pittsburgh game! It will be interesting to see if Memphis beats Texas tonight and keeps that pattern going.

If you saw my brackets you’d know I had Pitt in the Final Four, and everywhere but ESPN, in the Championship Game. So, of course, the only higher seed to lose in that region is going to be Pitt.

Okay, so here’s the deal. I don’t like the idea of all the top seeds (except Pitt) winning. So today, when Texas and Memphis play, we need to cheer hard against Memphis. It doesn’t matter for my bracket, it’s all about the underdog, right? And Memphis is NOT the underdog, despite what Calapari wants you to believe. They still got that 1 by their name. Unless they are overrated (ahem), then they are not the underdog.

I promise, me wanting Memphis to lose has nothing to do with the fact that I can’t stand them or their coach…heh.

Filed Under: Sports Tagged With: , , , , , , ,