SB Nation User Blog: steinmer

3 Baseball Games in 2 Days

steinmer — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:58:51 -0000

I recently was able to attend 3 Chicago baseball games in 2 days. The 2 Mets/Cubs games (bleacher) and then yesterday's White Sox/Yankees game (upper deck). Here is the story of how I lost faith in all of humanity, I hope you enjoy...

Monday April 21st:

I work from home at my apartment in Albany Park (northwest neighborhood) on Monday's. This allowed me to arrive at the stadium at a decent time for the 6pm ESPN game start time. At 4:30 I hopped on my bike and arrived at the stadium and entered the bleachers around 5pm. I decided to sit in "Fukudome Country" in right field, since I am a big fan and he is on my fantasy team. I took in the Mets BP while drinking a cold beer and taking in some sunshine and impressing some high school kids with my upcoming baseball odyssey while waiting for my friend to arrive.

I don't think I need to impress upon anyone how electric the game was on Monday. Lots of good baseball, and the fans in the right field bleachers were cheering for Fukudome every step of the way. The only annoyance came from the amature high school kids behind me. They asked me to buy them beer multiple times, but it seems that they had no troubles finding it elsewhere. After the game I biked home and awaited my marathon baseball experience for Tuesday.

Tuesday April 22nd:

Beautiful day! My roommate and I both rolled out of bed around 8am, got our lives in order and were out the door by 8:30am. We biked to the ballpark again, grabbed some McDonalds breakfast, and stationed ourselves in line for the bleachers by 9:30am. We were about 3 groups back from the front of the line. After a few hours of mundaneness, the gates opened, and we entered the stadium. A mad dash for front row seats ensued. We positioned ourselves in right/center, pretty much right in between Fukudome and Pie. A celebratory beer was in order, but unfortunately things went downhill from there.

I don't know what it was, but apparently it was a-hole day out in the bleachers yesterday. The same electric energy from the night before was missing and replaced with large amounts of unnecessary drinking. Right field was no longer "Fukudome Country", and turned into "I hate the Mets Country".

There was a singular Mets fan sitting right behind us. He was a really nice guy. Lived in DC, grew up a Mets fan in the Bronx. Very polite, ignored the Mets hating banter, and simply cheered for his team. Unfortunately the other people sitting around us didn't feel the same way. When the Cubs went up 3-0 early in the game, he made the mistake of thinking that the score was only 2-0, and said "it's OK, it's only 2". After that, the phrase "it's only 2" was repeated about 1,000 times in the next 2 hours. About 987 of those came from A Woman that Shall Not Be Named, who apparently grew up in NY and wanted everyone to know it as well. Things basically started getting uglier and uglier.

Fast forward to the Ronny Cedeno grand slam. Pandemonium ensued, and AWTSNBN was taunting the Mets fan behind me and putting her sweaty disgusting limbs on my roommate, as if he was going to be taken down to her level of child-ness. I turn around amongst the celebration, and I get smacked in the chest by a full beer, obviously meant for the non-deserving Mets fan. Obviously, I was furious. Not only did I (a die hard, well mannered Cubs fan) deserve such treatment, but neither did this Mets fan. In fact, I don't believe that any individual under and circumstances deserves to have beer thrown on them, but then again, that's my personal opinion. I turned in my rage to the security guard sitting 2 feet from me all game and said "are you going to do something about this?", while pointing to my beer-doused torso. "I didn't see who threw it" he said. That was enough. My roommate and I left almost immediately. Luckily it was 'free tshirt day' at the ballpark, so I had a replacement for my bike ride home.

After I biked home, showered, re-dressed, and walked my dog, I was on the train and headed to The Cell for the White Sox Game.

I met up with another one of my friends and tailgated with some of his co-workers outside of the stadium. Free encased meats are always welcome in my world. We entered the monstrosity of a ballpark with the idea that we would have a nice relaxing evening at the ballpark.

Because Wang was pitching for the Yankees, there were a large amount of Taiwanese fans enjoying the game and flying their native flag. It was a great atmosphere and a relaxing spring night until The Couple that Shall Not Be Named showed up. By this, I mean a ridiculously drunken young Sox fan couple that positioned themselves in the row between myself and my friends and a group of 9 or 10 Asian American Yankee fans.

For the next 20 minutes the female portion of TCTSNBN proceeded to yell the most ignorant and obscene things right into the ears of the Yankee fans sitting right in front of them. "F**K the Yankees", "GO SOX", "F**K Wang", "I'm trashed!", "WOOOOOOOOHOOO!", "Do you think they can hear me?", etc, etc, etc. Next thing you know, TCTSNBN began fighting because of the obvious embarrassment of the male portion of the dynamic duo. I swear that I saw him almost take a swing at her, it was that bad. Luckily, the Sox park isn't the bleachers at Wrigley, so security intervened. The pair from hell were banished to the outskirts of The Cell, where no one else was sitting.

Life was good again, we watched the rest of the game, and went home peacefully.

Overall, I can't really complain about the amazing day, the amazing baseball, and the chance to be with my friends. But on the other hand, I seriously think I lost a little bit of respect for the rest of humanity in the meantime.

Spring Training Question

steinmer — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:59:43 -0000

My friend and I have never been to Cubs spring training before, and we promised ourselves that we would finally go this year. With tickets going on sale at the beginning of January, we have some planning to do ahead of time. We thought that we would get some BCB input into our biggest issue:

Arizona or Vegas??

I have never been to Arizona, and my friend has never been to Vegas. I have family that lives in Vegas, so we could probably stay for free, but we would probably want to stay on the strip (given this is my friend's first trip to Vegas). Then again, the stadium is not on the strip.

Our original intent of going on the trip was to see the Cubs in spring training, but the opportunity to parlay a first-time Vegas trip is hard to turn down.

Can anyone shed some light on the subject? I guess what I'm looking for is an idea of what spring training in Arizona would look like, places to stay, establishments to take a few down at, and the type of atmosphere to expect. This will give us a better idea of whether we want to go to Arizona or Vegas.

Thoughts?

ESPN Article

steinmer — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:15:32 -0000

I didn't see this anywhere else, so I thought I would post it. The Cubs (and some former Cubs) are mentioned several times in this ESPN article:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/hotstove07/columns/story?columnist=crasnick_jerry&id=3131579&l pos=spotlight&lid=tab6pos1

Several Highlights

We aren't the only one's interested in Kuroda

Glendon Rusch's agent "has been fielding a lot of calls"

Mark Prior. Enough Said.

Jason Marquis is listed under the heading "Salary Dumps". Interesting.

A Lesson in Splits

steinmer — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 15:18:11 -0000

This is my first BCB post, so please bear with me. I've been trying to keep up with all of the posts, but if someone has already mentioned this, please let me know. I thought it would be interesting to look at a few cubs/brewers splits to help explain why the cubs seem to be winning close games, where the brewers can't seem to win to save their lives. Actually, I encountered these stats purely as a way to make fun of my brewers fan friend. So here we go...

We'll look at 3 stats. Batting Average with men on base, BA with runners in scoring position, and BA with runners in scoring position and 2 outs.

BA with runners on:
Cubs - .283 (8th in MLB)
The Crew - .265 (21st in MLB)

BA with RISP:
Cubs - .283 (6th in MLB)
Brewers - .258 (24th in MLB)

BA with RISP and 2 outs:
Cubs - .258 (12th in MLB)
Our soon to be 2nd place friends - .225 (24th in MLB)

Though the cubs stats don't make them out to be the best team in baseball or anything (btw, the Tigers completely kill everyone else in the situational splits), it does say something about the Brewers ability to hit the ball under pressure. Something to be said about a young team, probably.

Just for fun, here are some key contributors on the cubs for these splits:

BA Runners On - Min 100 PA's:
Lee - .355 (11th)
DeRosa - .342 (24th)
Floyd - .336 (26th)
Aramis - .326 (40th)

BA with RISP:
DLee - .380 (6th)
DeRosa - .344 (17th)
Aramis - .340 (21st)

BA with RISP and 2 outs:
DeRosa - .424 (4th)
Floyd - .400 (9th)
Jones - .367 (21st) - WOAH!

There you have it. Have fun, and let me know if I messed up!