It’s only taken seven years to make it to one of New York’s ballparks, but my 2014 travels concluded in the Bronx, where I got to make my first-ever visit to Yankee Stadium.
It wasn’t the best park I’ve been to, but it was also far from being the worst park I’ve been to. Only one way to find out what the hell I’m talking about.
Over the weekend, I went up to New York. The reason for the trip was to visit Yankee Stadium, and take it off of my list of MLB ballparks, which I can happily say that such was mission accomplished. Otherwise, the rest of the trip was more or less a whirlwind of cabs, trains, booze, chicken fingers and cash flying out of windows.
I guess it could be said that I had a pretty New York experience, and I have no regrets about anything. I look back at the weekend fondly, and naturally I’m writing about it now, which says something too.
As for Yankee Stadium, I’ll get more in depth of what I thought about the place as a whole when I write about it for my ballparks page, but when my friend and I had planned the dates out for this trip, we didn’t even think for a second about the fact that this was the start of Derek Jeter’s final homestand. Not that either of us are remotely close to being Yankee fans, I have to admit that is something cool about having been there for a little bit of what people are perceiving as somewhat historic. Needless to say, tickets were pricey and the crowds were massive, for what essentially were games between two non-contenders, and I thought the vaunted Yankee Stadium was pretty okay, overall.
[2020 note]: the following is lost content that I never uploaded even back in 2014 when the brog was still up and running; that’s how much of a whirlwind things were between Dragon*Con and juggling between the ballpark site and other content.
Anyway, this is the photo dump of Yankee Stadium, that I realized never got uploaded whilst I was going through all old content, and looking back at these pictures takes me back to a time where I still really loved baseball, and this was one of those weekends of fate in which I got to score some bonus time with the girl that would eventually become mythical gf, wife and then babymama.
Continue reading “Photos: Yankee Stadium, the Bronx, New York”
Impetus: A United flight going from Newark to Denver has to make an emergency stop in Chicago, to remove two unruly passengers from the aircraft. The two passengers, seated one behind the other, had an altercation that stemmed from the rear passenger applying “Knee Defender” clamps, which prevent the seat ahead from being able to recline, and the front passenger taking objection to being incapable of reclining. It culminated with front passenger throwing a cup of water in the face of rear passenger, before the flight was forced to land in Chicago to remove both from the aircraft.
Never mind the story about the altercation, the takeaway from this entire story for me is that something like Knee Defenders actually exist. And I fucking love it.
Obviously, this is because I fly more than your average non-business traveler, and I’ve had more than my fair share of getting the one person on the entire flight who decides that they have to recline their seat. Seriously, there will be times where I get an entire row to myself, so I decide to spread out a little bit, and the person in front of me has the exact same idea, but has to make sure that they’re in the seat in front of me. As soon as the ding indicating that we’ve reached cruising altitude is heard, the seat plops back crudely, and if my leg is crossed, or the tray is down, it’s an unpleasant sensation of having something appear to fall into your lap.
It only took three years, but finally everything worked out as they should of, and I was able to make my long-awaited visit to sleepy Danville, Virginia, where I could get to see the Danville Braves rookie-level squad.
With Danville visited, I can now say that I’ve seen every single level of the Atlanta Braves minor league system, to which I am very pleased with.
Two more minor league baseball parks are added to my ballparks site, with the entries for McCormick Park, the home of the single-A Asheville Tourists, and Smokies Stadium, home to the Double-A Tennessee Smokies.
One was pretty awesome, and one was kind of pedestrian. If baseball parks interest you, read about them on my ballparks site.
So, Asheville. I was looking forward to visiting this place more than about any other place I had thought about visiting throughout the 2014 baseball season, because to my understanding Asheville was a town known for interesting dining, lots of local breweries, and it happened to be a place within reasonable driving distance that had a minor league ballpark I’ve never visited, AND they just so happened to be giving out a bobblehead, AND they were also playing against an Atlanta Braves affiliate. Needless to say, it was the no-brainer of no-brainers that I would be looking forward to this particular trip.
Much to my expectations, Asheville was a lovely place that I enjoyed a great deal. The drive to get there wasn’t the least bit difficult, and it frankly just felt good to get in my own car and drive somewhere I’d never really been to before.
Continue reading “Photos: Minor League Baseball in Asheville, North Carolina”
