A friend and I drove all the way to Detroit in June to watch the Cubs lose three in a row to the Tigers. Among the observations and highlights:

* Comerica Park is a nice place to watch a baseball game. The area surrounding it is a little scary, as you might expect in a economically depressed, aging downtown area. But, despite all the stereotypes associated with Detroit, my car wasn't broken into and I wasn't mugged. And the number of panhandlers who approached was about equal to an average day at Wrigley Field. The real security concern happened to us during a game, when a couple of meatheads in our section got into a fist fight. Here are some pictures from Comerica and elsewhere around Detroit.

* The Detroit Zoo is a nice way to kill a few hours during the day before a night game. Brookfield and St. Louis' zoos are better, however.

* Also a nice time-killer (and money-killer), the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, which is a 15-minute walk or 5-minute cab ride from the ballpark. I ended up winning $60 at the slots, so the trip wasn't a complete failure. And here's a money-saving tip, if you don't mind walking a bit. Park for free in the MGM's parking structure and then walk over to the ballpark to avoid paying for a spot over there.

As mentioned above, the Bricks and Ivy headquarters moved into a new location over the summer. One of the highlights of the place is a room in the basement with a pool table and lots of shelves to display my Cubs stuff. And yes, I've saved room for the wife's Cardinals stuff. But as you can see, I've done pretty well filling up my side. The wife is still developing her collection. My mom and I helped her get things going for her birthday last week by getting her figures of Albert Pujols and Ozzie Smith.

Today is 9/9/09. The number 9 is closely associated with the game of baseball for a variety of reasons, so Major League Baseball is celebrating with a series of giveaways today through its Twitter page. I actually won one of the giveaways today -- a $9.99 credit to the MLB shop. There's a $9.99 sale page at the Shop today. The Cubs section doesn't have anything worth owning on it, so I think I'll be nice and get this for the Cardinals-fan wife. It can go on her side of the shelves.

Earlier in the season, I blogged about the silly Comcast channel lineups that discouraged me from ordering the cable package that includes the new MLB Network.

I'm happy to report that Comcast has seen the error of their ways (no doubt due to my series of sternly worded e-mails to the corporate office) and has moved the MLB Network into a package with other sports channels that only costs me an extra $4 a month instead of the $13/mo. package it was in earlier in the year.

I love watching the old games during the game and the instant live highlights at night. It'll be nice to watch something other than my old Cubs DVDs in January to feed my hunger for baseball in the winter.

 

It's an understatement to say it has been a disappointing year for the Chicago Cubs. The highly paid stars (with the exception of Derrek Lee lately) just aren't pulling their weight. And the bullpen is just ridiculous. But you simply have to give the Cardinals credit. They pulled off some critical mid-season acquisitions that have made their lineup a lot better compared to Opening Day. I still think it'll be the Phillies and Yankees in the World Series with New York winning it and renewing their spot as the most annoying team in baseball.

While it's been a sad season for some of us here at Bricks and Ivy, I'm actually finding myself enjoying baseball a little more this September. The past two years, I suffered from the usual Cubs angst associated with clinching a playoff spot and worrying about what's going to happen (or not happen) in October. No such worries this year.

And while I am looking forward to seeing what Jay Cutler can do for the Chicago Bears this year, I will be sad to see the Cubs go away for the winter. I'll proudly don the blue hat this Friday as I take in the Cubs-Reds game. And while the outcome on the field will be meaningless, I'll still be sitting in the best place in the world to watch a baseball game.

* PARTY IN THE BACK: Mullets remain a viable and popular hairstyle for men and women.

* SIGNS, SIGNS: Some fans need better guidance on good ballpark sign-making. A teenage couple behind us brought a two-posterboard-sized sign with them. On one side was the word "Charge." They held it up every time the organist played the "Da-Da-Da-Da, D'Daaaaa!" song. Which is fine, except for the letters were festooned with purple glitter. Inappropriate. The guy must have really liked the girl to keep holding that thing over his head. If it was me I would have "accidentally" left it in the car or let it fly out the window while doing 70 on I-55.

On the other side of the sign was a poem that mentioned the Cardinals, Albert Pujols, the Cubs and Lou Piniella. Didn't read the whole thing, because I didn't want to let on that I was interested. It went on for six or seven lines and was spelled out in 3-inch stenciled letters. Again, inappropriate. A good ballpark sign has a message that can be read and understood in 2 seconds or less. So for the average Cardinals fan, that would be roughly a one-word sign. 

* MY HERO THE USHER: The mark of a good ballpark usher is how he handles annoying people or touchy fan-conduct situations. The guy overseeing our section tonight gets a gold star.

After the game, a group of young-20-somethings gathered in a section just beyond the left field wall. They were apparently haggling someone down on the field level to throw them a ball. At one point, one kid took off his shoe and lowered it over the wall by the laces, as a sort of baseball-lift system.

After a few minutes, the usher came over to tell the kids to beat it. They ignored him. So the usher went over to the wall, got someone to give him a ball. He then promptly gave it to a 3- or 4-year-old boy standing nearby.

The 20-somethings were extremely steamed and walked away in a huff. Nice work.

* SLOW TRAINS: After spending a week in Washington, D.C. last month, I find I am spoiled on fast-moving, always-there public transit. The subway trains in D.C. had numerous cars that can take in a big crowd and the next train was usually never more than 5 minutes away. 

Tonight we took St. Louis' Metro from our parking spot at the East St. Louis riverboat to Busch. It gets the job done, but the relatively long wait between arrivals and the comparative lack of passenger capacity made me long for a D.C. Metro train to come gliding across the tracks tonight.

One thing the St. Louis trains do have going for it, however, is that they are a newer and brighter. And they probably smell better, although being smashed in with dozens of sweaty baseball fans makes it hard to judge.

* ARMS, LEGS and HOT DOGS: I'm always prepared to pay insane amounts of money for ballpark food. But a visit to Busch always reminds me things are a little more insane in St. Louis.

Upon arriving, we ordered two jumbo hot dogs (not really that much bigger than a regular frank), a beer and a small soda. Total: $24. 

Such a small amount of food and drink for two people should never require me to pull anything more than an $20 bill out of my wallet. And most of the time, I should get some change back.

Special thanks to Cardinals-fan wife for getting me the tickets for my birthday and for being willing to sit through a Cubs-Marlins game with me. Hopefully, I'll also have to thank her for sitting through 40,000 people singing "Go Cubs Go," one of her least favorite songs.

There are supposed to be a few changes in and around the ballpark this year, including a $15, 2-pound pretzel for sale at the concession stand. We'll see if the wallet and stomach and muster the courage.

I'll have a recap of the experience at MLB's best ballpark later this weekend.

No longer will this be the case for me. On our way back from our marathon trip to D.C. and Baltimore, we stopped in Louisville.

We had a great baseball-themed day on Monday, visiting the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory during the day and then catching a Louisville Bats Triple-A game at night.

The bat museum, which you can't miss in downtown Louisville because of the massive bat leaning against the side of the building, reopened just two weeks ago after a renovation project that added new exhibits and generally freshened up the look of the place.

Among the new exhibits are the bat Joe DiMaggio used during his 56-game hitting streak in 1941 and a Babe Ruth bat, right, used during his 60-home run season in 1927. The Babe put a notch around the Slugger label for every homer he hit with it.

BALTIMORE -- Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened in downtown Baltimore in 1992 and marked the beginning of the "retro" park trend that has become the norm in every newly built baseball stadium since.

Despite it being the oldest of the old-new parks, this place still does it right -- providing just the right mix of making you feel like you're at a stadium that's been there for years and the modern-day amenities that make your visit enjoyable.

We drove into downtown this time and were directed to public lots ($8) adjacent to the Ravens football stadium, located just to the south of the ball park. It was quite a long walk, under a highway, across a busy bridge and through a walkway -- about 15 minutes in all -- before we arrived at the ticket booth.

Seemed like too long of a walk, but I suppose keeping the big lots far away helps maintain the classic feel to it all. After all, my beloved Wrigley has hardly any organized parking system. You end up paying some dude $25 to back into his garage for the afternoon.

We got tickets again in the lower half of the upper deck behind the plate for $20 apiece. The seats were fine and provided a nice view of the Baltimore sky line and the famous B&O warehouses that loom over the right field wall.

Before we got to our seats, however, we entered the stadium through one of the Eutaw Street gates. Eutaw is a walkway that runs between the right field wall and those warehouses and is filled with food stands, gift shops, games and more. It reminded me of a carnival, and it really added a ton of character to the ballpark experience, something that was seriously lacking at Nationals Park earlier in the week.

We stopped by a BBQ stand on the Eutaw walkway. I ordered an extremely tasty roast beef platter that came with baked beans and slaw ($9). Cardinals-fan wife had the same thing with smoked turkey. Later, CFW sampled an Orioles O-shaped pretzel, right, ($4.50).

We usually don't invest too much money in team trinkets on these out-of-town stadium trips since we have no connection to the home team. But CFW couldn't resist picking up a tiny stuffed Oriole Bird, left. She declared it the second-cutest mascot in baseball, behind her own Fredbird in St. Louis.

If you're in Baltimore and are a big baseball fan, be sure to make time for a trip to the Babe Ruth Birthplace Museum (pictured below) just a few blocks from the ball park. It's fairly cheap to get into ($6 a person) and only takes a 30-45 minutes to go through. But it's a must-do stop for any baseball fan/historian.

We also visited the National Aquarium in downtown Baltimore on Saturday. Big crowds and kind of expensive ($30 a person, plus another $21 to park in a downtown garage for 3 hours). If you're not a big fan of fish and feel like you're visiting it because someone told you it would be neat or because the travel brochure played it up, I'd suggest skipping. You can get as much out of the Inner Harbor experience by just walking in the area and taking in the atmosphere.

The game itself was a stinker. The Nationals lost 1-0, with the only run coming via a bases-loaded walk in the ninth inning.

But the beautiful surroundings of Nationals Park helped make up for the boring game. Here's a quick review.

The stadium itself is in a fairly undeveloped part of town, with the hopes that the arrival of the ballpark will spark something big. There is much construction work under way to help build the area into a thriving office/residential/entertainment district. (The initiative is known as Half Street.) But there's not much there now. So when we got off the train and exited the Navy Yard station, we walked down the middle of a shut-off street that had large walls on both sides. The walls contained advertisements showing off the Half Street plan. It was a little weird.

It seems most Nationals fans are trained to take the train to the game, which is good for the environment and everything. But since there is nothing around the park to do, everyone gets off the train and goes into the stadium, probably into the Center Field gate, which is the first one you encounter out of the station. 

That makes for a very desolate situation elsewhere around the ballpark. We walked to the home plate gate and this picture was the scene one hour before game time. There wasn't a soul to be found anywhere. Very eerie.

We were surprised by the extreme friendliness of the ticket takers and other stadium employees. All were very happy to see us and greeted us with a hearty "Welcome to Nats Town."

As you might imagine, getting a ticket wasn't a problem. We sat in the front half of the upper deck behind the plate for $21 each. It was Earth Day, so we got $3 off the price of our tickets for showing our public transit card. Only 15,000 in the stands that night. Hopefully the crowds will come soon.

The views around the stadium are nice. I think they could have done more to make the most of the monuments around D.C. This photo at left is one of the best views of the U.S. Capitol from the stadium. It's in the concourse on the upper level. If you're in the lower level, you probably can't see this. From our seats in the upper deck, you could only see the top one-third of the dome.

All in all, D.C. seems to be moving in the right direction with baseball. If they can just get some investors to take a risk on the Half Street idea and the team can start putting their money toward some talent that can lead to some wins, baseball might actually stay in Washington this time.

Tonight, we're headed to Camden yards for Orioles vs. Rangers. We'll have pictures and a review tomorrow!

Addition: The ALO, an Abe Lincoln blog you should check out right after reading this, points out that I forgot to mention the winner of the famous Presidents' Race at the game. It was, indeed, our friend Abe. Teddy Roosevelt had a lead for most of the race. But then, being the politician he is, he decided to stop and shake hands with fans down the right field line, allowing Lincoln to charge ahead for the win.

* I've been thoroughly enjoying my free preview of MLB Extra Innings and NHL Center Ice. It's so interesting to watch the local broadcasts of games from all over, especially the ones emanating from Canada. The commercials between innings or hockey periods are so odd.

The best part of the package is getting to watch Los Angeles Dodgers' games and hear the play-by-play call of the legendary Vin Scully.

Scully, 81, is in his 60th (!) season of working games for the Dodgers. His voice is almost melodic as he vividly yet simply describes the action on the field. The other main bonus: He calls the game all by himself. No color analyst.

In an era when TV producers are stuffing too many people in the baseball broadcast booth (see ESPN's new "Sunday Night Baseball" crew of Jon Miller, who I can tolerate, and Joe Morgan and Steve Phillips, who I cannot), the Dodgers have got it just right.

* Cardinals-fan wife and I head out on a long road trip soon. Included on the itinerary are stops  at the new Nationals Park in D.C. and Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore. After this trip, I'll have visited 15 of the league's 30 parks. Slowly but surely, I'll get there. Look for reviews of each ballpark right here on Bricks & Ivy.

* I also got a bonus trip to Wrigley Field added to my baseball schedule. Cardinals-fan wife was nice enough to buy us tickets for a Cubs-Marlins game on my birthday, which falls a few days after we return from our East Coast trip.

I have many friends who take this day off to sit in front of the TV and watch games all day. I like to save my vacation time to attend actual games. So without a Opening Day ticket this year, I dragged myself into the office like a normal Monday. Bleh.

To mark the occasion, however, I am sporting the royal blue dress shirt and the Cubs winter jacket, left, which is necessary since it's only going to get into the upper 30s here in Springfield today.

I don't wear this jacket as much as I'd like to. By the time I can get up to Chicago for a game, it's much too warm to wear it. And wearing it to work on a regular basis is a little over the top, considering I work in a semi-formal office setting. But I make an exception for today. It's fun to see the dirty looks from the Cardinals fans. Hoping to get flipped off at some point today.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my Cardinals-fan wife has a ticket to today's Opening Day game in St. Louis. She'll be attending with a girlfriend with plans to be in their seats by 2:30 p.m., when the pregame ceremony featuring the Clydesdales and the players being driven into the stadium parade-style starts.

She was a little anxious this morning about the frigid weather conditions and getting to and from the park. As it turns out, in her long career as a Cardinals fan, she's never had the opportunity to drive herself to a game at Busch Stadium. There's always been a friend, family member or, in the last two years or so, me to handle it.

So after helping her pack a bag (not exceeding the Busch Stadium security standard of 16-by-16-by-8 inches) full of winter clothing accessories and setting the GPS system to guide her car to the light-rail train station she will be parking at, I think she's set.

She did toss the camera into her bag. So if she can find it amid the piles of fleece and knit winter clothing items, we'll have some photos to share later.

Have a great Opening Day!

UPDATE: Cardinals-fan wife just called and said she got to the stadium just fine and arrived in her seats just in time to see the Clydesdales march onto the field. She is taking some photos, so we'll have those here later.

Until then, here's a shot she sent from her phone of the view from her seats!

UPDATE 2: Well, Opening Day is about closed. Cardinals-fan wife had a great time at Busch Stadium, despite the cold weather and the St. Louis closer blowing the game late. That's her below with her friend at today's game. I'm so lucky to have a wife who loves sports as much as I do. Hardly ever any fights over the remote!

The Cubs also got off to a nice start today with a win over the Astros. The performance of the Chicago closer didn't instill any great sense of confidence. But a win's a win. On to tomorrow. 

My team name is "Bricks & Ivy." (Sound familiar?) My team logo, left, is the famous "W" flag that flies over Wrigley Field after a Cubs victory.

Each year, I play with a couple of buddies from college and several other random people who find their way to our league, which is named "Steve Phillips Makes Me Sad." (I didn't come up with that name, although he kind of does. I think "Sunday Night Baseball" is going to be a little more painful to listen to this year. I hope I am wrong.)

In short, I'm not that good at fantasy baseball. I am an attentive owner and make sure to get injured players out of my active lineup and pick up pitchers who have two starts in one week. But it's never enough. I've identified two reasons why:

* I'm too partial to Cubs players. I call it "wearing my Cubbie glasses." Since I watch the team so much and am such a big fan, I tend to have an unrealistic view of how much Cub players can help me in relation to other players who are on teams I don't watch and/or don't root for. 

Case in point: Last year I drafted Kosuke Fukudome. He got me a few points early on, but he faded hard down the stretch. Ended up dropping him in August. There were plenty of serviceable outfielders I could have grabbed before him.

* I tend to grab too many players from the same team. At one point last, I think I held five Yankees at the same time. When the Yankees began to tank last year, my team did, too.

I think I've taken care of both of those issues with this year's version of Bricks & Ivy. Only one Cub on my team: Derrek Lee, left. I was tempted to pick up Milton Bradley, but then I remembered my Kosuke mistake last year and talked myself down from it.

I also don't have more than two players from any team. And there are only four pairs on my 21-player team. Two each of Tigers (Polanco and Galarraga), Brewers (Braun and Hoffman), Diamondbacks (Webb and Jackson) and Dodgers (Ethier and Wolf).

A couple of other reasons that I think it could be an up year for B&I: 

* I got the first pick in the draft this year. In past years, the first pick has been a virtual no-brainer: Either Albert Pujols or Alex Rodriguez. But neither of those names were at the top of the suggested draft lists this year.

That would have been Hanley Ramirez, left, from the Florida Marlins. I hesitated at first since he is a Marlin, after all. Plus, he's a middle infielder, which aren't historically big fantasy point producers. But I bit the bait and picked him up. We'll see if the hype was warranted.

* I noticed today that three of my five pitchers (Cliff Lee of the Indians, Francisco Liriano of the Twins and Brandon Webb of the D-backs) are scheduled to be Opening Day starters for their teams. So let's hope they can live up to the hype behind that and get me some wins this year.

So CFW will be accompanied by her CF friend, Sandra while I toil the day away at work.

I've never been able to score an Opening Day ticket at Wrigley. However, I have never tried extremely hard to get one. Weather-wise, an early April afternoon in Chicago can be a crap shoot. Odds are it'll be crap.

I remember several years ago I did go to the Cubs' second home game of the year. There was a snowstorm the night before. They had the field cleared off for the game. But I still had to brush rock salt off my seat and wear about five layers.

Now, this isn't to say that if I were to somehow come across a seat to the Cubs home opener (April 13 vs. Colorado 1:20 p.m.) I would turn it down.

But really, I'll be just as content to have Pat and Ron in my ear while I'm upholding the appearance of working.