Oh, the road trip...
Shea Stadium: AWESOME. I don't know who all these people are who hate Shea, but they're assholes. Sure, it's old and kinda ugly but man, is it fun. It reminded me a lot of Memorial back in the day. And man, is it huge.
It's a great example of a franchise really being part of its community and embracing it's fan base. We were sitting in the upper deck, on Merengue Night, with announcements made in spanish and english, spanish lessons from Jose Reyes on the big screen, airplanes flying about 7 feet overhead, airport-esque levels of security to get in, the loudest PA system I've ever heard, terrific hot dogs, $8 Coronas, and the most non-white ballpark crowd I've ever seen. It was so fun and so...Queens.
It was during this part of the roadtrip that I earned my new title of "World's Best Navigational Device", as I successfully navigated all 5 boroughs of NY on the fly. In the car, on foot, and on the subway - New York was no match for my navigational prowess, my friends. I pretty much beasted Philly, too.
Citizens Bank Park: Man, they aren't kidding - Philly fans really are assholes. Nice park, though. It's quite a small field, but the fan areas - the open concourses and various areas like that - are quite spacious. It's well designed and was a pretty cool place to see a game.
I'll write about the Camden Yards/Cal Ripken portion of the trip later, but I did want to put up a rather tardy shout out to the Yankee blog, River Ave Report. I did that little interview thing right before I went on the trip and haven't had time to link to it until now. Neil's a nice guy, and runs a good blog (despite the subject matter).
