2007 Baseball Road Trip

On May 17th 3 of my friends and I started out for our annual baseball road trip. This year our travels were taking us to Syracuse, Philadelphia and (Cooperstown for the annual Hall of Fame Game).

Our first stop was Syracuse to see our baby Jays play. Howie Clark, my first baseball crush, had recently been called up to Syracuse after only playing a handful of games at AA (this is a fantastic story as well, but not one to talk about here) so you know I was excited to see him! First though we made our usual stop at the Carousel Centre to do a bit of shopping. We always make a point of going to Bath & Body Works because it is 1,000x better than the Body Shop. I managed to resist spending too much money :o)

The game was enjoyable. Instead of moving down to left field part way through the game we stayed in our good seats 3 rows up from the dugout so we could watch the guys we know play. The left field seats are fun when there are guys in the bullpen that will be fun and interactive. We won the game, but had to work for it.

After the game we waited out by the door to see the guys. I was able to see Howie :o) And we also saw Russ. Then we started our drive to Philadelphia. We made it as far as Wilkes-Barre where we stayed at the Red Roof.

Friday morning we finished the drive to Philadelphia and got to the hotel about an hour before the tour we had booked for Citizen's Bank Park. It was too early to check into the hotel, but we were able to leave the car there and wander around the stadium until time for the tour. The tour was amazing! We had to miss two areas of it because it was a game day - the clubhouse and the batting cages. We did get to go into the dugout though - too bad it was the Phillies one :o) We saw soooo many places that we wouldn't get to see if we just went to a game, including the Phillies box, the media rooms, etc.

The game Friday night was a good game. We lost, but I didn't feel bad about the loss. As long as I am watching good baseball I am happy - of course, wins are much better though! We were heckled like crazy though and both the ushers from our section and a group of guys beside us (who acted as our bodyguards) were constantly making sure we were okay during the game.

Saturday we made the trek downtown to see some of the tourist sites. We went to the big market and had some cheesesteaks and we saw the Liberty Bell (can't go to Philly without seeing that). Saturday's game was a lot of fun - it wasn't much of a game, but we enjoyed blasting the Phillies! Plus we got to see Rosario - I am still not so sure why we gave him up for practically nothing. It was funny to see absolutely NOBODY heckling us that night!

Sunday we had to check out of the hotel and then went to the only day game of the series. This was just a bad game all around. We lost and we ended up making a game of it, but it was just sloppy baseball.

After the game we drove to Cooperstown and stayed at the HoJo.

First thing Monday morning we headed down to the Hall of Fame - it was just fantastic to be there!
There is just sooo much to see and I think to fully appreciate it you need more than 1 visit. We ran into Ace there and he assaulted us - actually, he saw our Jays jerseys and came up to give us a hug! It was scary. When we were done in the museum there was a parade down the main street which had the players coming along in trolleys at the end. Then we followed them to Doubleday stadium for the game. The actual stadium is very quaint. I can actually see the old time baseball taking place on the field. I could picture all the upper class in the grandstand and the riff-raff down the lines where we were. All the guys seemed to be having fun (which I later learned they were not really). Overbay, Vernon and Rios were part of the homerun derby which V-Dub won. We ended up losing the game, but the fans had a great time. I got to see Howie hit a homerun too! Since I missed all his real homeruns I was quite happy to see it!

On the way home we were tempted to stop at Syracuse for another game, but figured it was best to go straight home.