Tag: ballparks

Hello World

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So, to cut to the chase, Dragon*Con has come and passed, and it’s back to whatever we consider “normal life.”  Either it’s me beginning to show my age, or the fact that the temperatures within the proximities of Dragon*Con fluctuated from sauna to meat locker, but I have unfortunately come down with something pretty brutal and I’ve actually been home sick for the last two days.  Like real, debilitating sicknesses don’t occur to me very often, so this is somewhat notable for me.

But anyway, since I’m trying to keep it somewhat chill and just trying to cope through with rest and nothing strenuous, it’s afforded me a lot of time to catch up on the most arduous of tasks following any sort of event – processing of pictures.  Over the span of the last two weekends, I went to four new baseball parks, and then there was Dragon*Con itself, so in all that’s almost 600 photographs for me to sort through and try to make somewhat presentable.

Going outside of my normal OCD protocol, I’m actually going to be releasing Dragon*Con photographs and posts before I get to the baseball ones.  Considering that pretty much nobody other than me cares about my baseball ramblings, and the unwritten notion that there’s a general limited window of time following a Dragon*Con in which attention spans are at their most piqued, it’s a decision made for optimum social reasons over chronological order.

That being said, I welcome myself back to my beloved brog, and I look forward to sharing my picture takin’ with the rest of the internets.  Hopefully everything is received with fond reminiscing and plenty of laughter.

Marching through Triple-A Baseball: Lehigh Valley

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Lehigh Valley wasn’t a part of the itinerary.  The last ballpark that we were going to visit was going to be in Auburn, New York, but since 2013 has been the rainiest year in the history of mankind, much like everything else has been at some point, Auburn was rained out.

But instead of tucking our tail between our legs and accepting an unexpected baseball-less evening, quick thinking on Huzzard’s part opened the gates for us and immediately after finding out the cancellation in Auburn was official, we were already on the road, headed south into Pennsylvania, since we needed to be going in that direction anyway.

Apparently the Lehigh Valley IronPigs were home on this particular evening, and because of a prior rainout, they had a double-header that needed to be played, because of where they stood in the standings.  Which meant that it was just enough time for us to get down to Allentown, PA to catch an official game, at a new park that neither of us had been to before.

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Marching through Triple-A Baseball: Syracuse

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Syracuse was one of the marquee places on our itinerary because my boy Huzzard is a Nationals fan, and the Syracuse Chiefs are the Nationals’ AAA affiliate.  He had actual incentive to seeing Syracuse, as it put him one step closer to being able to say that he had been to every single Nationals affiliate, and obviously I can relate, because I’ve seen all of the base minor league affiliates of the Braves as well.

I’d actually been to Syracuse a few times in my life, since it’s where my sister went to school back in the day.  Although my memories of the place often involve cold, or really cold weather, but I did remember the gigantic mall there, that used to be called the Carousel Center, based on the fact that they had a carousel in the center of the mall.  Apparently at some point, it was renamed “Destiny USA,” and almost threw me for a loop when looking for it, because I’d never heard of a mall called something like that.

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Marching through Triple-A Baseball: Rochester

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s funny, when I know I’m going to minor league parks, I have this mindset that I’m going to be going into the tiniest dregs of civilization, and expecting to be the only Asian guy on their planets and expect to be treated with discrimination and prejudice.  Although such horrible treatment has never happened to me before (although almost in Jackson, MS), there’s kind of a general standard that is associated with the minor leagues.

That being said, it wasn’t until this trip got closer did it really dawn on me that Rochester is actually kind of a big deal of a city.  It’s not like a name I hadn’t ever heard of before like Zebulon or Fort Mill or Aberdeen; Rochester was a name that I knew as one of the more notable cities in the entire state of New York that seemed to flourish and exist outside of the general perception that NYC is the center of not only the state but the entire planet.

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Marching through Triple-A Baseball: Buffalo

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The first stop on a multi-day minor league baseball trip was Buffalo, New York.  Buffalo’s actually a city that I’d been to a few times in my past, as I used to have family out there, as well as used it as a cheap hub in order to get to and from Toronto.

But anyway, as terms of a place to watch baseball, Buffalo kind of misses the point.  Either they were trying to prove to Major League Baseball that the state of New York actually needs more baseball teams, or they simply don’t really get that minor league baseball is kind of supposed to be small potatoes, in order for the players to grow and develop, but then again the way Triple-A baseball is nowadays, that’s kind of out the window now that I think about it.

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Impending brog hiatus

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I feel the need to write something before I embark on a four-day weekend a week before the craziest four-day weekend of the year.  Needless to say, between the events of this weekend, and the events of next weekend, there really isn’t going to be much time for me to actually makes posts to my beloved brog, unless it is of the mobile and fluffy variety.  I take pride in my ability to maintain commitment to my brog, and refusal to let it become one of the millions of blogs out there that have gathered dust and been abandoned by disillusioned posers from all walks of life.

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A first time for everything

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Last week, I had a general idea of a schedule in which I wanted to write what I wanted to write about SDCC, and when I wanted to have my Comic-Con photos all sorted, processed and ultimately uploaded.  Basically, I told myself that I wanted to have everything done in a week.  Because, I was going out of town during the weekend to gather another bobblehead as well as see a new baseball park, and then I would have more photos to sort and share, and something else to write about next week.

I made my trip out of town over the weekend, but apparently the rains that have plagued Georgia over the last fucking year two months decided to come along with me, and proceed to ruin the one thing I really wanted to accomplish.  Needless to say, it rained just enough for the Danville Braves to cancel the one game I had planned on going to see.  Naturally, the announcement came LITRALLY minutes before my brother and I pulled into the parking lot, not to mention that it had actually stopped raining when we entered Danville itself.  But all the prior rain had sufficiently soaked the outfield to unsafe playing conditions and for the D-Braves to call the game.

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