Second Stop: PNC Park

 

Despite the bad start to this trip, it was one of the best I've ever been on. Just my sister and I driving from Long Island to Chicago together in roughly two and a half days. It was fun to spend so much time with her but it was sad knowing that soon after we got to Chicago, she wasn't coming back with me. My sister is almost three years older than me, and we've always been super close. I've made it through her going away to college in Boston, coming back home to finish school on Long Island as I leave to for upstate New York to get an education of my own. She then leaves for England for a year to get her masters, moves to Brooklyn and is now out in Iowa. You'd think at this point that I'd be used to the distance, but I think it becomes harder every single time. Knowing that we'd be separated for another couple of months put just the slightest damper on our trip. 

Anyway, our trip started off with me almost slicing my finger off while trying to cut a bagel. I have NEVER in my life cut myself on something, and of course, five minutes before we left I split my finger open. I probably could've used a stitch or two, but just bandaged it off and off we went. In proper fashion, we got lost a couple of times but finally made it Pittsburgh.

We didn't have much time to wander around before the game, but I'd like to apologize to the city of Pittsburgh. I had it in my mind that the city was a dump and that the stadium must be too. I could have been more wrong. The little bit I saw of the city was gorgeous. We decided to drive to the game and quickly found out there wasn't a parking lot at the stadium. Furious about this, we drove around looking for a parking garage, mad at the thought of paying a ridiculous amount of money to park in a dingy garage. There was a parking lot right across the street from the stadium, well really there are dozens of them, and it costs $5 dollars to park! That's unheard of! We park, cross the street and are met by three different yellow bridges, all of which cross the river to the entrance of PNC Park. It is a gorgeous walk, and one I'd never get sick of. We get to the box office, hoping for cheap tickets to the game and are greeted by the nicest woman I've ever dealt with from a box office. She scored us $40 seats that were roughly 10 rows back from the opponents dugout. It usually costs more than $40 to just get INTO a ballpark in New York, let alone getting amazing seats.

Even the walk up to PNC Park is gorgeous, the stadium itself is like its own little Pirates town. There are restaurants and bars where you can hang out before the game starts. We skip all that and head straight into the ballpark where I'm instantly impressed. The ballpark had this very intimate feel, like you were one of few who got to experience it. The fans were incredibly excited to be there, even though the Pirates were at the beginning of a decline that would knock them out of the playoffs for yet another season. The view of river and the Pittsburgh skyline were gorgeous, especially while the sun was setting. It was almost hard to watch the game because everything about the park was so beautiful you didn't know where to focus your attention.

The game was awesome, Pirates were down by one in the bottom of the 9th and in between innings, they played one of Kiera Knightly's speeches from one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, it was such a great way to pump up and already electric crowd. The Pirates ended up losing but it was still a great game to watch. Another incredible thing about the stadium, and something they NEVER do in bigger cities, the ushers let us stay after the game, go down to field level and take pictures. Not only that, but they offered to take our picture! That's definitely something that doesn't happen in New York. 

Overall, PNC Park was more than a pleasant surprise. There is nothing better than going somewhere with low expectations and finding yourself completely blown away by how amazing something is. Even the fans were super friendly, talking to us about our trip, how beautiful the stadium was, and how nice it was to see out of towners appreciate PNC Park. My one regret is that we didn't take advantage of the food options there. There's a restaurant in Pittsburgh called Primanti Brothers, and they are known for their sandwiches. Crazy combinations of food that look absolutely amazing. They have a stand at PNC but my sister and I never made it there. I guess there's always next time.

Game Information: 

August 13th, 2012 7:05 PM

Harang vs Karstens

Final Score: 5-4 Los Angeles Dodgers defeat Pittsburgh Pirates

W: Harang L: Karstens S: Jansen

Rankings: 

1) Fenway Park, Boston Massachusetts

2) PNC Park, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania

3) Citi Field, Flushing New York

4) Yankee Stadium, Bronx New York

 Here are some pictures!

Next stop: Chicago (Wrigley Field)

First Stop: Fenway Park

This has been a dream of mine since I can remember. Despite being born and raised in New York, Boston has always been my second favorite city. I love the people, the history, the atmosphere, and most importantly, the baseball team. My friends and I finally had the opportunity to go to Fenway last summer and despite the fact that it was a stressful trip, it was one of the best experiences of my life.

There are certain people who are very good at planning trips, I am not one of them. I am not always known to be a patient person, and the ugliness of that rears its head the most whilst planning things. Somehow, everyone thought it was a good idea for me to plan this Boston trip. MAJOR red flag. I got the tickets, $40 seats in right field near the Dunkin Donuts sign, that was a piece of cake, and something I've become quite good at. Next up was the hotel, something that needed to be cheap and easy to get to. Maybe not my biggest strength. I found a good deal on a hotel outside of Boston, got one room for 6 people and hoped for the best. The plan was to have two queen sized beds, a cot and an air mattress. All of that would've been fine had it been for the air mattress not having that pesky little air pump it needs to inflate. The six of us put our heads together and decided to put the beds together, creating what we now lovingly refer to as "Mega Bed." We had driven up in two separate cars, hit some traffic, probably got a little bit lost but finally made to Boston. We didn't get there with enough time to do a stadium tour so we saved it for the next day.


After some complaining about the size of the room, how hot it was and blah blah blah, we headed out to Fenway for that night's game. We went to grab food at Cask'n Flagon before the game and then headed into Fenway.

There's always a possibility of being disappointed when you have such high expectations. It's very easy to get your hopes up that you're about to have an amazing experience only to be at least slightly let down  by what actually ends up happening. This was not the case at Fenway. If it's even possible, it EXCEEDED my expectations. I'm not an emotional person by any means, but I definitely teared up a few times at the realization that I was finally there for a game. It's always nice when you can finally check something off your bucket list. We were able to go down to field level for batting practice and took some unbelievable pictures. The Red Sox were playing the Minnesota Twins that weekend which was great because my sister is a Twins fan. We grabbed some food, I dropped my hot dog on my foot and had to sheepishly ask for another one, and then we found our seats.

We couldn't have picked a better season to go to Fenway, it was the 100th year anniversary of the ballpark. In between innings the kept showing montages of famous moments in Red Sox history. I'm sure I only paid attention to roughly about an inning of the game because I was so in awe of the stadium itself. My sister and I began one of the best traditions we have during our stadium tour, ICE CREAM HELMETS! Being a super slow eater, eating ice cream on a hot night usually doesn't end well, and this is no exception. I may have grown up in a lot of other ways, but I still can't eat ice cream without getting it all over myself.

One of the biggest highlights of the game was the singing of "Sweet Caroline," its become a tradition in Boston and while I'm not always big into that kind of stuff, it was awesome to be a part of. Just watch a clip of it and you'll see what I mean. That, followed by the rally video the Sox played heading into extra innings, I had chills.

The rest of the weekend was incredibly stressful, although looking back on it, its the kind of stuff to laugh off. Although it was crazy and stressful and clearly proof that I should not be in charge of planning anything, I made it Fenway! I actually did it, instead of just talking about it. It's great to experience different ballparks and different cities and there was no better place to whet my appetite than Boston. I'd like to go back at least once a year because the atmosphere there is phenomenal. Its no surprise that the Red Sox were dreadful last year, but the fans were acting like winning that game clinch them a spot in the World Series. What more can you ask for than a great game, a great stadium and great fans? It'll take a lot to top Fenway Park, it'll be interesting to see whether or not another stadium can do it.

Game Information: 

August 3rd, 2012 7:05 PM

  Duensing vs Doubront 

 Final Score: 6-5 F/10 

      Minnesota Twins Defeat Boston Red Sox

     WP: Gray LP: Padilla S: Burton

   Rankings:

         1) Fenway Park, Boston Massachusetts

2) Citi Field, Flushing New York

        3) Yankee Stadium, Bronx New York

Here are some pictures from the trip!


Next stop: Pittsburgh!

All good ideas and expensive undertakings are thought of within seconds. Well, maybe not, but this one was. My sister and I decided to tour all of the Major League ballparks on a whim. Of course we're big baseball fans, and like most baseball fans, we've mulled over the idea of doing this for a couple of years, but never made any concrete plans to do so. As most recent college grads do, we dreamed about hitting the open road, visiting every ballpark and seeing all of America the summer after graduation. While that's a nice thought, it didn't exactly work out that way. Things like law school, jobs, life, needing money to do such things got in the way of a summer long tour of America. In a quick re-grouping session, and I mean quick, we hatched an idea to see every ballpark, when it best suit our schedule.

If it weren't for my sister, Steph, getting a new car, this might not have ever happened. Last summer, right before Steph was about to start her second year of law school out in Iowa, she had gotten a new car, one that she needed to drive out there. Being the good sister that I am, I jumped at the opportunity to drive out there with her, excited not only for the fun road trip, but for the extra time I got to spend with her before hundreds of miles separated us for another couple of months. While searching for fun things to see along the way, we discovered how close we were to so many ballparks. We decided it would be nice to try to catch a game if the team was in town.

As if almost simultaneously, a light bulb went off in both our minds, instead of hoping the teams were in town, lets make sure of it! For every future road trip we go on, a baseball game MUST be included. It was decided that the best route to take was to stop in Pittsburgh, then off to Chicago for a day or two, where I'd then fly home and leave my sister to dazzle the University of Iowa's Law School program for another year.

It's almost been a year since we've come up with this idea, and we're in the midst of planning our ninth stop on this trip. We are nothing if not efficient. Before this idea came to fruition we had already seen Yankee Stadium and as lifelong Met fans, we've seen Shea Stadium more times than I can count as well as, of course, Citi Field. The first real ballpark that we went to on our tour was Fenway Park, a couple of weeks before this thought became a reality. As a Red Sox fan, I've been DYING to see a game at Fenway since I can remember. I got some friends together, and along with my sister we went up to Boston for the weekend and caught a game at Fenway. It was one of the best experiences of my entire life, definitely in the top 10 best sports moments of my life and I think it had a lot to do with our decision to go to other ballparks. We had such an incredible time at the game, and in the city of Boston that we figured it had to be fun to do this in every other baseball city.

We started our tour of parks on the highest of high notes, three of the best parks in all of baseball Fenway Park, PNC Park and Wrigley Field. To date, we've also been to Target Field in Minneapolis, Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, and Nationals Park in Washington D.C.

Despite the fact that we've been doing a fine job chronically our experiences, between saving the tickets, buying postcards, making scrapbooks, saving ice cream helmets from every stadium, I thought it would a fun idea to write about each experience, so I can always remember exactly what it was like, and what was going on in our lives when we visited a particular stadium. I'm a little late to party as we've been to a bunch already, but I'll do my best to re-create those moments. When possible I'll add a couple of pictures from each trip and a ranking of the stadiums after each visit.

First stop on our tour of stadiums: Boston's Fenway Park