y ourselves.1. Camden Yards ("Oriole Park at Camden Yards") is amazing. A lot of people have said Pittsburgh is the best baseball stadium. I haven't been back there in a few years, but I'm not so sure I can say that PNC Park in Pittsburgh is better than this one. Camden Yards is beautiful both for baseball and for pure aesthetics. It's a great place for both the intense and the casual fan. It is great for staying seated or for wandering around. Everything is well done and well spaced. The food could maybe be slightly better but I'd still rate it no lower than a 7 out of 10.
We arrived in the area of the stadium about 40 minutes before game time and went into one of the handful of bar/restaurants across the street clearly catering to gameday crowds. The fact that there were just a few of them immediately around the stadium was a small negative. We only had to pay $2 each for 16oz beers so that made up for the somewhat expected but still hugely douchey patrons. We then entered the stadium on time only to learn that the start of the game was delayed nearly an hour due to rain. This ended up being a good thing as it allowed us to wander around the stadium and soak it all in (no pun intended). I particularly like the section (which is part of the stadium) outside the seats but shy of the famous warehouse. They did a small but awesome thing out there: put little circular bronze plaques at the landing spots of almost every home run hit onto that terrace, including one on the wall at the spot of the only ball to ever hit the warehouse in competition: Griffey from the HR derby. I loved walking around and standing on the little plaques, looking back toward home plate in the distance and being amazed anew by the prowess of these big sons of bitches hitting home runs. Btw, that pic wasn't taken by me but was basically our view, except we were closer and slightly further up the base line.
2. Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia is pretty nondescript. It's new, which is nice, but there wasn't anything about it that was noteworthy. I think I said that if someone had the intent to make a new stadium but to conform to the same principles that gave us the old shitty PIT/CIN/PHI cookie-cutter stadiums, then that person would build Citizens Bank Park.
3. Yes Tom, it was great and all, but the water taxi that some of us managed to board in Baltimore was not in fact free.
4. I was not prepared for the amount of crab that appears on menus in Baltimore's restaurants, and not just the tourist-baiting ones. I'm aware they are known for the critters, but crab is everywhere in their food. I'm not complaining. Crab--or any seafood, for that matter--isn't hard to get here in NYC either, but you still rarely see it on menus. I'm impressed, Baltimore. You embrace that beast.
5. I got a crabcake sandwich at a place in Fell's Point late on Friday night. I don't harbor illusions that it was a top-notch crabcake, since those places likely aren't open past midnight, but it was mighty good. Very high percentage of crab so it didn't taste like fried filling. Very good, though it did cost me $15.
6. I don't know if it was the neighborhood we stayed in (Olde City), or the people we happened to encounter, but jesus, Philadelphia seemed to be inhabited with a very high population of jackass/douche/obnoxious people. Walking down Market Street late Saturday night looking for a cheesesteak (#7), even drunk I was taken aback by the floods of horrible people. Maybe it is a city with more college kids than I'm used to in slightly-older-dominated NYC, but the cool people in Philadelphia either don't exist or were somewhere I wasn't.
7. The other locally famous food item of the trip was of course cheesesteaks. I had two, one at Ishkabibbles, which I think is supposed to be a good one, but what the hell do I know. That one was indeed good if not exactly a difficult culinary item to produce. I did make the rookie mistake of not specifically indicating that I wanted cheese whiz, so I got simple cheese melted over the steak while on the griddle, and therefore my sandwich wasnt dripping with cheese like you would hope. Later that night the second one I got at a generic-looking place on Market St was a "classic:" with both onions and the whiz. A very important note about the cheesesteak is that though it was not nearly as "special" as the crab I got in Baltimore, I have been craving one pretty much ever since Saturday. I will try to find a reputable one in the city and see how it compares to the authentic version.
8. Bolt buses are a pretty good deal. Clean, relatively comfy, your seats are reserved, and cheap ($16 all the way to Baltimore). They remade the chinatown bus idea so that a white, middle-class, non-collegiate married guy could enjoy it.
9. Shit, the first time I wrote this post, I can't believe I forgot this one. It may be the highlight of the trip. It may be a top 5 baseball stadium experience. I came up with the great idea to heckle the Indians' third-base coach, a one Joel Skinner. Mr Skinner was a former player with a lifetime batting average of .228 (a fact Drew made sure to remind him of on one occasion). He also has an unfortunate tendency to position himself well outside of his chalk-outlined coach's box. And that is what gave me the inspiration to make his night a little less comfortable.
I think it started in the 4th inning maybe, after I'd consumed enough booze to start screaming in the company of thousands of otherwise mostly quiet people. I saw Skinner positioned about four feet outside his box and yelled: "Hey Skinner!.....................Get back in your box!" There is something simple and honest about that yell that appealed to me. So about two seconds after I yell that, Skinner (whose back is to us obviously) straightens up a bit, looks down, and sheepishly--but with pride like he didn't want anyone to notice that he'd heard me--actually took a couple steps back to the corner of his box. His turning around and running into the stands to fight me wouldn't have been a better response. He never even turned around, just those little steps toward the box made by a man who is caught in front of maybe a thou
sand people and trys to draw as little attention to himself as possible.So over the next few innings I let fly with a few more differently worded reminders (never using profanity) to Mr Skinner about the rules of baseball, plus Drew joined in with the .228 shame, punctuating it with a "that's bush league" comment. During this time, I put the blackberry to work and was able to figure out the third base umpire's name, which led naturally to my adding this to the final heckle: "Come on, Nelson, keep him put, that's your job. Wake up!" Unfortunately, the umpire was a little more stoic and so I didn't get a response out of him, but I did notice him talking to Skinner in between the next inning. Skinner kept standing outside the box though, so I guess the moral of the story is that Skinner is a lawless degenerate whom Major League Baseball is powerless to stop.
(Note: again that isn't my picture but that is the man himself, probably standing outside his box and maybe even kicking a dog.)
10. "This trip was a real home run." - Ryan
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