Catching up: the Columbus trip
Continuing my retroactive posting, we take a look at the next road trip, at Columbus July 23-25.
Friday, July 23
Team flight to Columbus. Use phone's internet to view picture of our third-string goalkeeper, who's not on the trip, trying to stop penalty kicks from an elephant. True story. Players/coaching staff are amused. (Elephant penalty kick cross-promotion with circus as part of pre-All-Star Game promotion). Best wisecrack: "good thing it wasn't a battle of brains."
Stifling heat, just like in Houston! We see an assistant referee at the airport and consider offering him a ride.
At the hotel, I quickly switch gears into baseball fan mode, grab my scorebook, and walk the roughly one mile to the new AAA baseball stadium in Columbus. It will be stadium No. 116. Btw, downtown Columbus is sketchy.
-- begin ballpark recap --
I get there on a great night for minor league baseball, buy myself a cheap-ish reserved seat (figuring I'll move into a better seat), and head on in. I'm like 60 minutes early. I walk into a merchandise shop near my centerfield entrance and notice a baseball game playing on TV. Columbus-Pawtucket. Today's teams. I assume it's a replay from yesterday. After perusing the shop, I saunter back onto the concourse and notice that baseball is being played. Whoops! Turns out they were finishing the last three innings of a suspended game from earlier in the season.
Great, great ballpark. I'll try to spare you all the gory details. They had a Bob Evans concession stand, about which I got very excited. My mom and I fell in love with Bob Evans on a baseball trip in high school because it had cinnamon pancakes and cran-grape juice. Hard to beat that. Sadly, it was not a Bob Evans menu, but a baseball menu. Kind of ruined it for me.
I enjoyed the stadium a lot. I tried to sit in the shade as long as possible, and I must have moved 7-10 times before finally plopping into a front-row seat that forced me to (a) squint into the sun, (b) watch the third-base coach's butt instead of the batter, and (c) listen to the conversation of the three 20-somethings behind me. Which was mildly interesting.
A Rice alumnus was playing in the game, which I hadn't realized in advance, so I cheered for him every time up. He hit a home run, which was great, but also made a throwing error in the field.
At any rate, I enjoyed the place. The structure above the concourse - which included suites, picnic table landings behind home plate a la Bringhurst Field in Alexandria, and an apparently outdoor press box - felt very vertical in an old-time, downtown sort of way. It had standing room in the right-field corner, which seemed like a good touch. All the sections had standing room bars at the top of the sections. Behind the left-field concourse was a building with rooftop views, artificially created but still kind of cool.
Late in the game, I decided to see the park a little and moved over behind the first base dugout, which gave me a different perspective. It also provided a lot more mosquito bites! I fail to make contact with the Rice alumnus and make the long, sweaty sweaty sweaty walk back through darkened, sketchy downtown CLB to the hotel.
-- end ballpark recap --
I stay up til like 4 a.m. ET helping out with our coverage of the league's youth tournament championship, held in Houston the same weekend. Very frustrated I can't be there.
Saturday, July 24
Saturday is a fairly normal day - pregame interview at the team walk, early bus to the stadium, set up broadcast. I always feel like I'm in a cell in Columbus, where the radio broadcast booth is on the opposite side from the TV booth (thus making my calls seem reversed to anybody watching TV and listening to me) and fully enclosed. This means you have to run a really long cord to get any crowd noise before the TV crowd feed kicks in.
The game stinks - a 3-0 loss - and I return to the hotel for another late night (2 a.m. this time?) of youth tournament coverage. Early flight back Sunday morning is a tough one to wake up (6 a.m.?) for, but I'm glad to get back early-ish.
That sets up my crazy, crazy, crazy All-Star Week. Since this is retroactive, it doesn't make sense to include details in this post. At any rate, I don't think I can really begin to describe how stressful and absent of sleep it was. Suffice it to say, when I got home from work Thursday evening (7/29), I dropped the Thai food on the counter and collapsed, face-down, on my bed. Don't think I moved until RBG got home and woke me up.
Friday, July 23
Team flight to Columbus. Use phone's internet to view picture of our third-string goalkeeper, who's not on the trip, trying to stop penalty kicks from an elephant. True story. Players/coaching staff are amused. (Elephant penalty kick cross-promotion with circus as part of pre-All-Star Game promotion). Best wisecrack: "good thing it wasn't a battle of brains."
Stifling heat, just like in Houston! We see an assistant referee at the airport and consider offering him a ride.
At the hotel, I quickly switch gears into baseball fan mode, grab my scorebook, and walk the roughly one mile to the new AAA baseball stadium in Columbus. It will be stadium No. 116. Btw, downtown Columbus is sketchy.
-- begin ballpark recap --
I get there on a great night for minor league baseball, buy myself a cheap-ish reserved seat (figuring I'll move into a better seat), and head on in. I'm like 60 minutes early. I walk into a merchandise shop near my centerfield entrance and notice a baseball game playing on TV. Columbus-Pawtucket. Today's teams. I assume it's a replay from yesterday. After perusing the shop, I saunter back onto the concourse and notice that baseball is being played. Whoops! Turns out they were finishing the last three innings of a suspended game from earlier in the season.
Great, great ballpark. I'll try to spare you all the gory details. They had a Bob Evans concession stand, about which I got very excited. My mom and I fell in love with Bob Evans on a baseball trip in high school because it had cinnamon pancakes and cran-grape juice. Hard to beat that. Sadly, it was not a Bob Evans menu, but a baseball menu. Kind of ruined it for me.
I enjoyed the stadium a lot. I tried to sit in the shade as long as possible, and I must have moved 7-10 times before finally plopping into a front-row seat that forced me to (a) squint into the sun, (b) watch the third-base coach's butt instead of the batter, and (c) listen to the conversation of the three 20-somethings behind me. Which was mildly interesting.A Rice alumnus was playing in the game, which I hadn't realized in advance, so I cheered for him every time up. He hit a home run, which was great, but also made a throwing error in the field.
At any rate, I enjoyed the place. The structure above the concourse - which included suites, picnic table landings behind home plate a la Bringhurst Field in Alexandria, and an apparently outdoor press box - felt very vertical in an old-time, downtown sort of way. It had standing room in the right-field corner, which seemed like a good touch. All the sections had standing room bars at the top of the sections. Behind the left-field concourse was a building with rooftop views, artificially created but still kind of cool.
Late in the game, I decided to see the park a little and moved over behind the first base dugout, which gave me a different perspective. It also provided a lot more mosquito bites! I fail to make contact with the Rice alumnus and make the long, sweaty sweaty sweaty walk back through darkened, sketchy downtown CLB to the hotel.-- end ballpark recap --
I stay up til like 4 a.m. ET helping out with our coverage of the league's youth tournament championship, held in Houston the same weekend. Very frustrated I can't be there.
Saturday, July 24
Saturday is a fairly normal day - pregame interview at the team walk, early bus to the stadium, set up broadcast. I always feel like I'm in a cell in Columbus, where the radio broadcast booth is on the opposite side from the TV booth (thus making my calls seem reversed to anybody watching TV and listening to me) and fully enclosed. This means you have to run a really long cord to get any crowd noise before the TV crowd feed kicks in.
The game stinks - a 3-0 loss - and I return to the hotel for another late night (2 a.m. this time?) of youth tournament coverage. Early flight back Sunday morning is a tough one to wake up (6 a.m.?) for, but I'm glad to get back early-ish.
That sets up my crazy, crazy, crazy All-Star Week. Since this is retroactive, it doesn't make sense to include details in this post. At any rate, I don't think I can really begin to describe how stressful and absent of sleep it was. Suffice it to say, when I got home from work Thursday evening (7/29), I dropped the Thai food on the counter and collapsed, face-down, on my bed. Don't think I moved until RBG got home and woke me up.
posted by Jon at
23:41
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