Sunday, May 26, 2013

Day 10- the extra one in Cincy


May 24, 2013
Cincinnati: extra Innings of the BBT

     We decided to switch our plans at the beginning of the tour.  Originally Garrett and I were going to take a long time traveling from Chicago to Detroit, stopping in South Bend, Ann Arbor, and just take our good ole time getting to Detroit on Wednesday, then we would go to the Tigers game on Thursday, and Niagara and Toronto today.  We decided instead to stay with Taylor and Hayley, foregoing the trips to ND and Michigan stadiums, but keeping us all together.  I had wanted to do the other leg in order to catch those stadiums and Niagara, but we figured out a way to make that trip to Niagara work just as well by going to Toronto first, and it wasn’t worth splitting up just to see 2 stadiums at that point.  This was all decided after I had my flight plans, so we had an extra day to kill today since the games were over a day earlier than planned.  So Garrett and I followed Taylor and Hayley down to Cincinnati (where his parents live) for what I like to refer to as extra innings of the BBT.  Just like a baseball game has nine innings but goes into extras after a tie, we decided to go to an extra game at the end of our tour that wasn’t originally planned!
TJ examining the ball he just caught,
wearing his Bronson Arroyo wig
     It worked out that we got in at 4am because of the late game in Detroit and I slept until noon!  Haha it was a pretty lazy day.  We went and hit some batting practice in a batting cage around the corner from the Jensen home, hit on a field, and took a few ground balls.  That was a lot of fun once again.  We went home and showered and took our time getting ready before heading to downtown Cincy for dinner and the game around 5:00.  We went straight to the ballpark where we got standing room only tickets (the game was long sold out and stubhub’s tickets were out of budget…).  We went inside for the tail end of Cubs batting practice and camped in left field.  Taylor caught one of the last balls hit!  He leaned a little over the fence, looking straight into the sun and made the catch, with his catcher’s mitt and all!!  Garrett brought his Cubs hat to the park, but it didn’t work!  He almost had one of the ball shaggers toss him a ball, but it ended up going to a young cubs fan next to us! Haha  but he still stuck by his hat and pretended to be a cubs fan the rest of the game.
Hayley isn't a fan of the service at Skyline!
     We then stepped out of the stadium and headed to the legendary skyline chili.  The people of Cincinnati love their skyline.  Taylor is in love with it, atleast.  Earlier in the trip (in Minnesota at Matt and Camie’s), I explained my feelings about skyline and asked Matt for an amen to my evaluation.  He did not agree. Haha he has been converted.  But my feelings are this: Skyline is very good (It’s Chili, how could it not be?!), but it is not the best chili I have ever had.  It is unique enough that I can totally understand why people have such fond ties to it though, and I could even see it growing on me.  I call it the In-n-out effect- a lot of the liking of the food is because it really is great, but a good chunk is also because it means you are home.  It’s a little bit of goodwill and nostalgia, if you will.  So we had our Skyline (I got a couple dogs as well as the pasta with chili- both great) and headed back to the ballpark.
My coneys and pasta and Garrett with his chili cheese fries
Garrett pretending to be a Cubs fan....
     We got back in just in time for the first pitch. We spent the first couple innings behind home plate standing on the concourse and eventually found our way to seats way up in right field.  Garrett and I hung out on the back fence next to a group of coaches who had brought their team to the park.  Those coaches were crazy! Haha they must have each downed more than a half dozen beers, and probably were gonna drive the team home after the game, and ironically give the team a message on being responsible citizens later this week during practice!  Haha.  The game was a good one.  The Reds ended up winning, 5-4, I believe.  After the game, there was a home run derby on the field while they set up for Friday night fireworks beyond the centerfield wall.  A bunch of fellas were competing in the state championship softball home run derby.  They had kicked us out of the outfield seats for firework safety, which was too bad, but we stuck around and tried to catch some foul balls anyways, but to no avail.  We all decided we would rather get in the hot tub and eat ice cream at home rather than watch fireworks, so we headed out as soon as the HR derby was complete, seeing some fireworks on the way out.  We got home, ate some ice cream while the hot tub heated up, spent some time in the tub, then got to bed.  Simple day.  Good extra innings.
beautiful view of the stadium

Stats:
Miles Traveled today: 50
Hours in the car today: 1
Miles traveled total: 3250
Hours in the car total: 49
Narcotic searches: 2
Jumbotrons: 2
MLB Baseballs: 2

Scoreboard (Cincinnati picks didn’t count as this was not an official BBT game):
Garrett* 6-0
Eric 4-2
Hayley 4-2
Mitch** 3-3
Taylor 3-3

*Correctly predicted the Tigers beating the Twins 7-6
**Correctly predicted the Dodgers beating the Brewers 3-1





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