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!
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| My coneys and pasta and Garrett with his chili cheese fries |
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| 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.
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| 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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