The Mancation

When my friend Todd Cohen and I came up with the idea of taking a vacation together back in January, I figured it was just a pipe dream. Either Laurie would shoot down the concept or, much like my many other hair-brained ideas, it would just peter out at some point. Laurie was (eventually) supportive of the idea and Todd came up with a plan that really fired me up – a baseball road trip to a bunch of different ball parks.

After much planning and coordination, Todd and I came up with an itinerary that crammed 6 games into 5 days in 5 different cities. We scoured the internet for tickets, flights, rental cars, hotels, seating charts, baseball schedules, and the occasional extra curricular activity in each city. The following is my recollection the experience, though I imagine Todd’s version may differ slightly and will most certainly include more references to my multiple restroom trips than I care to share with you (you’re welcome!).

Sunday; Oriole Park at Camden Yards – Baltimore, MD

NY Yankees at Baltimore Orioles; 1:35 pm

As I typically do whenever I have travel plans, I obsessively tracked the weather forecast for each city we were visiting for the week leading up to our departure. Each city had that ominous "clouds with rain" icon along with the dreaded "40% chance of showers" description.

For our first game in Baltimore, not only did the forecast call for thunderstorms, but there was an 80% chance of them! Sure enough, they started around 3am and finished… 2 minutes after we parked our car in Baltimore! Honestly, I can’t possibly comprehend how the game started. It was teeming the entire way to Baltimore and just suddenly stopped once we got there. Play ball!!

Our seats were pretty good - one section off the field and, critically, UNDER COVER! The game proceeded as normal and around the 6^th inning Todd and I started to debate moving down to get better seats. Now, my philosophy on this is pretty conservative. I don’t feel it right to take better seats until at least the 8^th inning, regardless of whether or not they’ve been empty all game. It just doesn’t feel right to me. Well, as soon as we started seriously considering it, the sky opened up and everyone was either leaving or running for cover. What did we do? We put on our ponchos and scored 5^th row seats! The rain delay lasted about 30 minutes and when the game resumed, we had amazing seats right over the Yankees dugout. Unfortunately it started raining about 30 minutes after the game resumed and since it was already the top of the 9^th inning and Yanks had blown the game open, we decided to leave.

As we exited parking lot N, I somehow managed to circumvent ALL the exiting game traffic and made it out of Charm City in record time. Game #1 was over and we were on our way!

Monday; Miller Park – Milwaukee, Wisconsin

St. Louis Cardinals vs. Milwaukee Brewers; 7:05pm

Laurie drove us to the airport for our 11am flight to Milwaukee. We were flying Midwest Airlines and I wasn't convinced the airline even existed until we checked in with them at BWI. Turns out the airline is known for two things: (a) leather seats; and (b) warm chocolate chip cookies with their beverage service. Truth be told, I wasn't particularly impressed with either, however, since the plane took off on time and didn't fall out of the sky, I consider the flight a success.

We rented a red RAV4 and headed out to our hotel near the ballpark. After checking in to the lovely Best Western on West National Avenue, we headed to the “4^th Base”, which is the sports bar featured towards the end of the movie “Major League” (when the people in the bar are cheering the Indians’ victory). It was a pretty cool place with lots of memorabilia. That said, $14 for a salmon caesar salad should be reserved for areas like NY and DC, not the ‘burbs of Milwaukee!

After lunch Todd and I trotted over to Miller Valley - home to the Miller Brewing Company. We took the free tour, which culminates in the serving of 24 oz of free beer. I’m not a fan of beer, but far be it from me to turn down a free drink. Unfortunately for the people sitting at my table, “turning it down” is exactly what happened when, after receiving my first 8 oz mug, I proceeded to deposit the entire thing all over the table! After this incident, the bartender cut me off.

After a quick nap, which turned out to be the only hour of relaxation time for the entire trip, we headed out to the ballpark. In the parking lot we got to mingle with the Sausage mascots and just missed schtick with Bernie Brewer. During the game they kept the roof of the dome closed because it was getting a bit chilly out. Overall, I’m a big fan of Miller Park, except for the old bat manning the Designated Driver booth. She had no sympathy for a guy on his first trip to the stadium who left his parking stub in the car (“We’ve haaad the same rules here firrr the last ten yeeears!”) Thanks lady – you’re the only blight on Miller Park! We had decent seats and the food was pretty good. Now, for the 2 weeks leading up to the trip I had been watching my diet (and those of you who are aware of my dieting habits know that I’m pretty militant about it - when I'm on it!), but decided that I was going to enjoy myself on the trip – just a bit – and try the local cuisine. This turned out to be a BAD idea, as you’ll find out later on at Wrigley. Anyway…I helped myself to a bratwurst, which was phenomenal, and some kettle corn, which I’ll never eat again as long as I live. The game itself was mildly exciting, though I couldn’t have cared less who won. I cheered for the Brewers because someone had to.

Another activity I wanted to do in Milwaukee is visit the Potowatami Casino, which was about 3 miles from the park. So, as we were leaving the park, all the cars were turning right. I saw a sign for the casino that pointed left and, just as in Baltimore, we avoided ALL the traffic leaving the stadium. This turned out to be the highlight for the rest of the evening.

We got to the casino, which was just about the biggest turd that I’ve ever gambled at. I've been to plenty of dive casinos in A.C. and Vegas, but I think the reason I hated this place so much was because NOBODY was having fun. Not the dealers, not the players. Must be because they make you pay for the drinks at your table! What the hell is that about?! Anyway, I hit a straight on Let It Ride, which paid me about $75, but I eventually gave back most of it back. Even though I left with $18 more in my wallet, I have never had such a crappy time gambling in my life. The dealers, the players, everything was just so damn depressing. We spent a total of about 30 minutes there before leaving and arriving back in our room around midnight. I had to take a long shower to scrub the dirty casino experience off of me.

Tuesday; Wrigley Field and US Cellular Field – Chicago

NY Mets vs. Chicago Cubs; 1:35 pm

NY Yankees vs. Chicago White Sox; 7:11 pm

We woke up nice and early on Tuesday morning, enjoyed a mediocre continental breakfast at the Best Western and then hopped in the Rav4 for our trek to Chicago. The trip ordinarily takes about 90 minutes, but there was so much construction and congestion that it took 2 solid hours. We arrived at US Cellular field (the White Sox stadium) around 11am. After circling the stadium (which is in the South Side of the city, a/k/a the Shitty Side), we eventually found the park-and-ride lot, which was right in front of the stadium. We had purchased a special parking pass that allowed us to park at the stadium early in the day, take the subway to work (or in our case, Wrigley), and drive home after the game. So we hopped on the “L” and headed to Wrigley. And thus began the interesting journey of our day/night doubleheader in Chi-town!

The first thing I noticed when we got on the train is that there were a lot of Yankee fans headed to the game. This made me feel better because Todd was wearing a Yankee hat (and later a Yankee jersey), which I was convinced was going to get his ass kicked. Todd likes to chat up anyone and everyone and was having a fun conversation with some other Yankee fans when this guy, let’s call him “Special Ed”, gets on the train and decided that he needed to be Mr. Conversationalist. One guy who Todd was talking to made the mistake of engaging with Special Ed and told him that he was from New York. “They still have that Bronx Zoo up there, right? Only it’s not called a zoo. It’s some sort of conservatory now.” This was an innocent enough statement, until Special Ed started quizzing the guy on the make up of the animal population. “They still have a juvenile rhinoceros there? I think they have a male, but don’t know about females. And giraffes? Do they have a giraffe house? I know they have a mouse house.” At this point everyone on the train was snickering at this guy, but it wasn’t until he started explaining that the “W” in David Wright’s name was silent and that it was a nice Anglo-Saxon name that everyone realized that Special Ed was indeed, “special.” Of course, the house didn’t come down until he started singing “New York, New York” (sadly, Liza Minnelli’s version, not that of Frankie Blue Eyes!). Thankfully at this point we pulled up to Wrigley Field and let Special Ed go about his day. For the record, Special Ed, the “W” in Wrigley is silent as well. Which brings us to…

…historic Wrigley Field!! Everyone I talked to about this trip told me how great seeing a game in this stadium would be and that I also had to go drinking at Murphy’s Bleachers and/or the Cubbie Bear for the full immersive experience. Look, it's obvious that I’m a huge baseball fan and respect the tradition of the game, but at the risk of being extremely unpopular, I have to say that Wrigley Field is a friggin’ dump! Seriously, 90% of the stadium has an obstructed view of the field, the scoreboard doesn’t have a total column so you have to actually ADD up the runs in each inning, and when you walk up the ramps, you are deposited directly into the middle of a seating section! I’m all for the history of baseball and I’m sure in 1939 the place was great, but it’s 2008 people! Put up some graphics!

Anyway, before we went in, Todd and I had a beer at the Cubby Bear to appease the Baseball Gods and bought some souvenirs to appease the shady vagabonds hocking obscene and racist t-shirts.

The game itself took an eternity. And what do I do when I’m bored? I eat. A LOT! So much so that by the 6^th inning, the nastiness started to catch up with me. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say Cub fans aren’t exactly appreciative of a man doing his necessary business in the stalls during the game. Frankly, the pressure of a heckled bowel movement isn’t something I’m used to, so it took a bit longer than anyone would have liked. That said, I think the guy who went in after me got his comeuppance!

The famed Seventh Inning Stretch at Wrigley was pretty cool. The whole place gets into it, even when sung by former Cub, Doug Glanville (who??). Thankfully Todd agreed to leave after the end of the 8^th inning, after the Cubs broke the game open. We rushed downstairs and onto the subway – a ride I was absolutely dreading. I imagined a sardine-like experience with guys mugging me at knife-point, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was nothing like that. We got on the “L” and were off without a hitch. For those of you keeping score, that’s 3 straight stadium exits without a traffic delay!!

The ride to US Cellular Field was relatively quick and uneventful. Once we got there we checked our rental car to make sure (a) it was still there and (b) nobody had broken into it. Much like the rest of the stadium, I was surprised to see everything was ok! We went inside early and secured a front row seat to Yankee batting practice. We walked around the stadium a bit and I have to be honest – I was pleasantly surprised. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but the inside is comfortable and relatively relaxing. In the interest of full disclosure, it could be that I was so disappointed after the Wrigley experience that anything would have impressed me.

Nevertheless, our seats were in left-center field, on actual bleachers. At first I was a little peeved – after all, we paid good money for the seats -but much like many of the other stadiums, we struck up conversation with those around us and ended up having a helluva time. The wheels started to fall off the bus around the 7^th inning, after the Yankees broke the game open and all of the meathead Sox fans had imbibed their body weight in beer. The most important lesson I learned in Chicago is that Cub fans and Sox fans hate (and I mean HATE) each other! The first people to have their hats ripped off their heads and thrown around were the Cub fans. That’s not to say that the Yankee fans were treated much differently (as evidenced by the beer thrown directly at us from afar in the 9^th inning), but for once it was nice to see others getting excoriated before the Yankee fans!!

Once the game was over we headed to our prime parking spot and zoomed right out of the stadium. That’s 4 effortless exits in a row!! We drove about 30 minutes to our hotel – The Radisson – by O’Hare airport, which was quite nice. Too bad we checked in at 12am and were on our way to the airport by 8am. No rest for the weary.

Wednesday; Comerica Park - Detroit, Michigan

Texas Rangers vs. Detroit Tigers; 7:05 pm

Our flight from Chicago to Detroit was relatively boring, which is good. We were delayed for about an hour on the tarmac, which sucked, but we’d been lucky up to that point with on-time travel, so this was bound to happen eventually. We got into Detroit at about 12:30pm and decided to take a detour to Ann Arbor, home of University of Michigan. Julie (my sister-in-law who lives in Detroit and went to UM), suggested lunch at Zingerman's, which was as good as advertised. After meeting up for lunch with two of Todd’s friends, we took a little stroll in downtown Ann Arbor and visited the Big House (football stadium) and Crisler Arena (basketball stadium). The Big House was under construction and we couldn’t get in, but we were able to find an unlocked door at Crisler Arena and went inside for a self-guided tour.

Afterwards we drove directly to Windsor, Ontario, home of my future brother-in-law (and Julie’s fiancée), Noah. Noah gave us a tour of his furniture and electronics store before heading over to his house. The three of us ultimately met up with Julie at Comerica Park, but not before the US border guards got some amusement out of asking us quite simple questions (e.g., how do you know each other) and watching as we gave absurdly complicated answers.

Inside the stadium we had phenomenal seats - 24^th row off the field and to the right of home plate. I continued my practice of eating everything I could get my hands on at the stadium (except the sushi – that just didn’t seem kosher for Passover to me). At first the Tigers were having their hats handed to them, but by the 5^th inning they were up 19-5. It was like recreation league softball. The high score, chilly weather and exhaustion started to make everyone a bit cranky, so we weren’t quite prepared for the "foul ball incident." Now before I tell the story, I have to explain my position on foul balls. I’ve attended a lot of baseball games in my life and only one time have I come within 10 feet of a ball hit out of play. It is for that reason that I would knock over man, woman and child to get at one. That’s all there is to it.

I can’t remember who hit this one – maybe Magglio Ordonez - but the ball floated in the sky for what seemed like 2 minutes. I calculated the trajectory in my head using the classic method made popular in the movie "Major League" (“It’s too high!”) and wasn’t quite prepared to catch anything because I figured the amateurs 2 rows in front of me would be able to catch a simple pop fly with their bare hands on a 55 degree night. Well, I was wrong and the ball bounced off their frozen paws, headed backwards and…hit me in the hip and bounced into the row in front of us! That’s right, I missed the f%@*^%$ing ball!! I’ve waited 33 years for this chance and I blew it. I’m such an emasculated Nancy! Luckily for Todd, who was sitting to my left, there was still a chance for one of us to emerge from this trip with his balls, reputation and a timeless story still in tact. Like a real man, he threw his body full force into the seats with reckless abandon and made his play for the ball. Unfortunately, he never saw the meathead sitting two seats away come diving in, HEAD FIRST, for the ball. The guy cracked Todd’s head to the left, putting him on the 15 day DL and forcing him to abandon his shot at the $5 baseball. Who ended up with it? The friggin’ guy BEHIND us!! How the hell that happened I have no idea, but that was our one and only shot at a ball and I loved every minute of it. I can tell you for sure that Todd did not. Hope that neck is feeling better, buddy!

We left the game at the top of the 8^th inning because it was cold and 3/4ths of our party was falling asleep. We got in Noah’s car and, wouldn’t you know it, the Canuck in charge of getting us out of the area and continuing our hassle-free departure streak decided that he would make a right turn into the wrong direction of a one way street!! We ultimately found our way out, virtually hassle-free, so we can count that as 5 in a row. After another entertaining border stop, we headed towards downtown Windsor, Ontario for some late evening entertainment.

Up until this point I maintained that this trip wouldn’t be complete without smoking a Cuban cigar and/or stopping into a strip club to enjoy some female entertainment. I have to say that I wasn’t terribly shocked at the number of strip clubs in Windsor; rather, I couldn’t believe how many “massage parlors” (a/k/a Rub ‘n Tugs) there were! Alas, neither Todd, Noah nor I engaged in anything of the sort. Instead, we simply found ourselves some $10 Cuban cigars and enjoyed watching the scantily-dressed 18 year old American girls try to get into the Canadian bars (the drinking age is 19 in Canada). We ultimately retired to Le Maison Tepperman around 11:30pm.

Thursday; Nationals Park - Washington, D.C.

NY Mets vs. Washington Nationals 7:05 pm

After waking up at 7am and waiting an interminable period of time at the border crossing, we finally made it to the airport for our final journey home. Say what you want about Detroit, but the airport has the single best food establishment I’ve ever patronized – an entire stand devoted solely to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!! Do you have any idea how awesome this concept is to a person living on hot dogs, nachos and funnel cake for the past 4 days?? No, it's not healthy, but it was exactly what I needed at that point in time! I opted for a chunky peanut butter, marshmallow and chocolate sandwich along with a small carton of milk. Sweet Lord, that may have been the greatest sandwich I’ve ever had in my entire life!

Back in DC, the wife met Todd and I at the airport and we went back to our house for a quick nap. A few hours before game time, Todd and I headed into DC to do some sightseeing. We stopped by the Spy Museum to see if we could get in and, of course, we couldn’t.

We eventually hopped onto the metro and weren’t really surprised to see that the Mets fans outnumbered the Nats fans by about 5-1. Seriously, nobody in this town gives a damn about the home team – the only people who attend games are the opposing team’s fans. It’s kinda sad, actually.

The area surrounding the stadium is total crap. It’s in one of the worst parts of DC, though they are trying to build it into something nice, which I give them high marks for. The stadium is pretty nice and the main attraction is the biggest HD scoreboard in the world (or something like that). Unfortunately our seats were in the outfield and under the section above us. That meant that we couldn’t see the damn thing! The game and the crowd was pretty boring. Once the Nats blew the game open, that’s when the crowd came alive. Welcome to the party – hope your ride on the bandwagon is long-lived! I can’t imagine what a TV viewer would think when watching the game because the entire section behind home plate –dubbed the Presidents Club at a cost of $350/ticket – was empty!

After the game we and the other 30,000 fans headed to the metro to go home. One of defects of the park is that only people in the Presidents Club can park at the stadium. Elitist pricks!! Everyone else has to take the metro or walk through the shittiest part of DC. We opted for the metro. I figured this was the point in time when karma would pay us back for the 5 consecutive no-hassle stadium departures. Despite the large crowd, we were out of the stadium, on the metro and back at home in no time.

Back at home base, around 11:10 pm, I was getting ready to tuck Todd in and sing him a lullaby (he can’t sleep without sweet music drowning out the screaming voices in his head). But tonight, we came up with a great idea – let’s turn on SportsCenter and see if the grand slam hit to our section was on TV. We turned on the tube and right then and there, the game’s highlights popped up. And sure enough, the grand slam hit by Felipe Lopez was on. See, since there was nobody in the stands, you could see exactly who was where in the ballpark. Thanks to the miracle that is the DVR, we were able to pause, rewind and freeze the picture. And sure enough, if you squinted hard enough, you could see Todd and I on SportsCenter!! You couldn’t have ended the trip any better.

My sincere thanks to my wife for allowing me the opportunity to leave for a few days and get some much needed time off. Also, my thanks to Uncle Jeremy, Aunt Stacey and Grandma Joanie for coming over and helping wrangle the little monsters.

Also, a colossal thanks and congratulations to Todd for being my partner in crime and not pushing me out of the plane or onto the train tracks when the opportunity presented itself.

To the Baseball Gods that were surely watching over us, thanks for the phenomenal weather, ease of exiting the stadiums and for giving us two Yankee wins and two Met losses. I’m sure the price will be the Yankees missing the playoffs for the first time in 13 years, but that’s ok – I’m going to need until the end of October to recuperate anyway.

And finally, for those of you nice enough to read this whole thing, here are two separate links to pictures from the trip. The first set is from Todd, the second are mine. Todd likes to take more pictures than I do, FYI. Enjoy!