2012 Ultimate Baseball “Fantasy” Adventure – A look back part 3

This portion of the review will actually cover 9 days starting on June 16th with the trip from Detroit to Toronto and going thru the game on the 24th at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati. In between those dates we went to Cleveland, Chicago to see the White Sox, Washington, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, uh, twice in 2 days, and Cincinnati. Before the full review just a note that we abandoned the car in Washington DC to take Amtrak thru the 3 cities in the northeast. However, when we got to the final game of that portion in Philadelphia we were greeted with rains that were heavy enough to rain the game out and scramble our plans that would affect the trip in the final week. First though it was a Saturday morning to travel to Canada. It’s been a few years since I’ve been to Canada and over 30 years since I’ve been to Toronto. The city has grown and the stadiums have changed since I was there last. While in Toronto and before the game that afternoon we hit the Hockey Hall of Fame, which started a trip plan of hitting other halls of fame. As a good hockey fan that was a lot of fun. As I noted in the original blog post what interested me most had to do with the historical perspective of Seattle’s winning the Stanley Cup in 1917. There was a lot of traffic coming back into the US so it took us longer to clear customs than what I had been planning. We wanted to get to Cleveland for the night to ease the next day and what we had planned in Cleveland. Sunday morning in Cleveland dawned bright and sunny and before the game we hit Hall of Fame number 2, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame that is very close to Progressive Field for that days game. The weather got worse as the day progressed and there was a fear that we might have rain problems. But we got thru the game, barely, before the rains came and they kept us company most of the way to our next stop, Chicago. It was our first major brush with weather and unfortunately it wouldn’t be the last. For the most part we had warm, if not outright hot weather for a great part of the trip. We had a good time in Chicago with my buddy Dave Brown and we spent the whole Monday together before heading to US Cellular Field for the cross-city game with the Cubs. It was an all night trip in the direction of Washington DC with an early morning stop at Hall of Fame #3, the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton Ohio. I was there in the early 1980’s so it obviously has changed in the 30+ years since. After that it was the drive to Washington DC to watch the Nationals and to follow thru with our plan to abandon the car for a few days. It’s been around 40 years since I road Amtrak so that was a very cool change in our original schedule by leaving the car and taking the train first off to New York. Our hotel was close to the train station in Washington that we had no problem leaving the car there, as the plan was to spend a night there after the game in Philadelphia. It was however an early wakeup call for the trip to New York and for us, basically a triple-header. We got there early enough to drop off our bags at the hotel where we would stay, do a preliminary check-in and head down to where we would catch a boat to Liberty Island and the Statue of Liberty. Another surprise was in store that I knew about, but no one else in the trip did. My wife Sandy took the red-eye flight from Seattle to JFK Airport then took the subway to meet us at same place to go see the Statue. When we got there and saw Sandy Shawn was very surprised, some might say shocked, to see his Mom. Of course his first question was “What are you doing here, you don’t travel anywhere by plane?” to which she answered to see the Statue and to catch a ballgame at Yankee Stadium before heading back to JFK and the flight home that evening. For the rest of us after the trip to the Statue and then to Yankee Stadium we had to go back to formally check in to the hotel for the night and head to Citi Field for the Mets game that evening. Having the 2 games in New York the same day was one of the things that made this trip work. Before heading to Boston on Thursday we had a bit of time to see some of the sights on New York. Between Ground Zero, the Empire State Building, and Time’s Square we were able to see a small amount of what New York has to offer, but alas it was time to get back on the train and head to Boston. There is nothing like a visit to historical Fenway Park to take in a Red Sox game. I kept looking for Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones, but I think they were still in Dyersville Iowa. We didn’t have nearly enough time to do Boston as it should be, but we did go by the “Cheers” bar before heading down to Philadelphia on Friday. Like so many other cities on this trip time just wasn’t on our side in terms of seeing things other than a ballpark. We did whatever we could wherever we were and enjoyed it all as good as we could. While heading for Philadelphia we could tell that weather might be an issue. There were thunderstorms on a good portion of this leg of the trip and it would be so bad that millions of people in the mid Atlantic region would lose power for a significant period of time while temperatures were at near record high levels. We got ourselves to Citizen’s Bank Park well before the planned start of the game and it was already raining. Got a good view of the tarp on the field, but alas at the end of the day, no baseball. At that point we welcomed “panic mode”. What were we to do next? Our van was still in Washington so we had to get there. They postponed the game in time for us to catch our scheduled train back to Washington. While on the way back to Washington we came up with a work around to cover for the postponed game. We would go back to Philadelphia on Saturday rather than Pittsburgh and pick up Pittsburgh early in the final week after they return from a week on the road. It looked very doable, but not without 1 very long trip in the final week. We got back to Washington DC and our hotel very late, but we had a little time on Saturday morning before we needed to hit the road back to Philadelphia. The weather in the morning was much better than the night before and it looked like we’d get our game in today in Philadelphia. The trip back to Philadelphia was fine as was the game, but then it was back on the road to head to Cincinnati. Originally we were going to drive to Cincinnati direct after the game, but that was when we would be coming from Pittsburgh and not Philadelphia. We made it to Wheeling Ohio before calling it a night then on to Cincinnati in the morning. Another beautiful day for a ballgame, but the road beckons immediately after the game for a long trip to Arlington Texas that will kick off part 4 of the look back at this trip.