Drive for the Cure Baseball Trip: Baltimore Recap

NY was great.  I (Collin) love New York, but we were all ready to get the hell out of there.  Three days is plenty.  Don’t get us wrong, we had a blast, but the concrete jungle was trapping us.  We are men that need to run freely.  Okay, enough with the bad and slightly feminine reference.  So, it was off to Baltimore, home of the Orioles and the Ravens (but, since Nate and I are Texans fans, we don’t like to speak of the Ravens).  We hit our first roadblock when we tried to drive out of NYC.  The traffic was gridlocked.  Seriously, Nate was getting pretty angry and the road rage came out. I have never seen him drive like that.  He got this crazy look in his eye and began running lights, honking at Asians (because we went through Chinatown not for a racist reason Collin.....), and flipping off passerbys.  Okay, so maybe I exaggerated a tad but all of that would’ve been warranted.  Then, to cap it off, once we got out of the city we hit some bad traffic on the Jersey turnpike.

Because of all this, we were kind of late getting to the stadium, but we got there around the 3^rd inning.  We all have come to the consensus that Fenway is our favorite park… but Oriole Park at Camden Yards is right up there with it.  This place was unbelievable.  The park is great because it is just that – a park.  When you walk up Eutaw Street, there is an old warehouse to the left and right field is to your right.  This street separates the field from the old warehouse.  Lining it are tons of food vendors (this proved to be the place to be for us in the 4^th inning), merchandise guys, and tons of fans dawning the orange, black, and white.  Inside this old warehouse are more places to eat, places to drink, places to be merry, along with official team stores.  Above all of this are the front offices of the Orioles organization, and probably somewhere in there is a penthouse dedicated to Cal Ripken, but that’s just a hunch.  He is a god in Baltimore.

When we walked in, each of us received a Jim Palmer mini statue.  Jim Palmer was a stud HOF pitcher for the O’s back in the day, and that day they had just revealed a statue of him that was placed in the Oriole’s version of “monument park”.  It was pretty cool, but these mini statues turned out to be a hassle for us packing the car. It’s like playing a game of Tetris trying to get the car packed.  After finding our seats, which were under an overhang, we decided to go grab some food.  We went right back to Eutaw Street, which is inside the stadium grounds for those of you who don’t know, and got almost the best BBQ sandwich I’ve ever had (what up Rudy’s).  We all got these humongous sandwiches, which were almost as big as Nathan’s backpack he packed for the trip aka Gigantor, and some fries.  We headed back to our seats and began to work on our mountain of food.  We would’ve been happy seeing an average ballgame at such a beautiful park. Lucky for us, we were in for a doozy.  I would say that this baseball game is the 2^nd best one that I have ever seen.  I say the 2^nd best and not the first because when I was 15, I saw the Astros and Braves battle for 18 innings in the NLDS.  This game included a grandslam, an Ausmus homerun (equally as stunning), and a walkoff bomb.  I’ll put my Astros loyalty aside for a minute and describe to yall how great this game was.

It started off with a few runs by each team, and was pretty quiet until the 9^th.  The Orioles were up by 3 going into the 9^th against the Tigers with their closer who has been lights out this year.  That’s where the game got a little dicey.  The Tigers scored 2 runs to make it a 1 run ballgame with 2 outs and men on 2^nd and 3^rd. Then, a guy knocked a basehit into left field, the tying run scored, and the go-ahead was coming around to score.  The Oriole’s left fielder gunned him out at the plate.  That in itself would’ve made the game memorable and exciting, but it only started there.  The game went into extras and in the top of the 10^th the Orioles put in a kid for his major league debut.  Talk about a tough spot.  But, the kid did great and went 1-2-3.  In the 11^th, the Tigers scored in the top of the inning, and the Orioles tied it again in the bottom half.  After a scoreless 12^th, the Tigers scored again, making it a 1 run game.  In the bottom of the 13^th, the Orioles came roaring back.  They tied the game on a basehit to center with 2 outs and put the winning run on first.  Teagarden came to the plate and with his second at-bat of the year, juiced one into right center and had his first ever walkoff bomb; this one of the 2 run variety.  The place went nuts.

After the exciting finish, we met a guy who was just as big of a baseball fan as we were.  Matter of fact, he had been to 28 ballparks and was finishing his tour in Florida to hit the other 2 later this year.  He was nice and chatted with us about parks, blogging, and baseball, and even took some pictures for us.  We headed to the car and I drove us to DC, where my Uncle Michael and Aunt Kathy were putting us up for the night in a hotel.  It was our original plan to meet up with them after the game, but after it went into extras we didn’t get back until 11 and decided to wait til the morning.  We woke up and met my Uncle Michael and Aunt Kathy in the lobby of our hotel for breakfast and coffee.  It was great to catch up with them, as I haven’t seen them in a long while.  It was also good to introduce them to Josh and Nathan and thank them in person for their hospitality.  We had a great conversation, a quick picture, and then it was time to hit the road.  Off to Cincinnati… the chili capital of da woyld. (Ron White fans anybody?).