2014 Season Re-cap

Our first full season of our baseball stadium tour is complete. We saw 5 MLB stadiums plus a former MLB stadium. Our tour began at the end of March when we flew to Montreal to see the Toronto Blue Jays take on the Mets. Overall we had a great time in Montreal but the stadium was one of our least favorite.

In May we flew to Boston to see a game at the Legendary ballpark known as Fenway. My wife had been there before but I was completely new to Boston and can’t wait to back. Being early on in the season the weather was very cold which made us consider leaving early. Ultimately we stayed through the extra innings to see Oakland beat the defending champions.

In July we rented a car and drove to Detroit to see a game at Comerica Park. We both though Comerica was great and consider it to be an underrated ballpark. We were hoping to see David Price pitch for Tampa but missed him by a day. The home team lost again and we got soaking wet trying to find our car. Which made for an interesting car ride as we drove from Detroit to Sandusky, Ohio(Cedar Point) in the middle of the night.

Nationals Park

The first weekend in August we flew to Washington where we were able to see two parks in one trip. We saw and loved Orioles Park in Camden Yard. Again the home team lost and we were beginning to think we were cursed. The next day we went and saw a day game at Nationals Park. It was a pitcher’s duel between Max Scherzer of the Nationals and Cole Hamels of the Philies. Ultimately the Nationals won which broke the losing streak for us. We saw the end of the game and hustled to the airport at fast as we could and just barely made our flight.

Near the end of August we flew to Florida to visit Orlando. While we were there we drove down to Tampa to see a game at Tropicana Field. We were glad to check it off but did not have a high regard for the stadium. I would say Tropicana Field is considered our least favorite stadium, as the very least it was the worst stadium we had visited up to this point.

The 2014 season gave us a great start to our tour. Instead of one trip we did small getaways about once a month. We saw the defending champs, a grand slam and almost got a foul ball in Detroit. Our favorite park visit so far is Baltimore with Washington in second. The 2015 season we took a different approach and visited another 5 parks but all in one trip. Next up we are going to the west coast and visiting all the California parks.

Go to Part 9: San Francisco Giants – AT&T Park

Click to see the Current status of the Stadium Tour

Baltimore Orioles, Camden Yard

Part 6: Turning Two

August 2nd, 2014. Baltimore Orioles defeated by Seattle Mariners 6-3

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For this trip we visited two parks, Camden Yard and Nationals Park. We flew into Washington Dulles airport, stayed in Baltimore and rented a car. The two stadiums are only a 45 minute drive from each other so it’s an easy trip to check off two parks at once. The first day we hung out in Baltimore around the stadium. You’ll want to head over to the harbor where there are lots of restaurants and tourist attractions. Having stadiums built right in downtown is the current trend with new stadiums which all began with Orioles Park. Considered the first in our current generation of modern stadiums, the park is also considered our personal favorite at this point in our stadium tour.

We entered the stadium at the Eutaw street gate which leads right to the famous B&O warehouse. It was cool that the street is part of the stadium, seeing it on tv I never really thought about how interesting it is that the warehouse building is basically a part of the stadium. We picked up a shot glass and grabbed some beers. Now being Toronto Blue Jays’s fans it was a little strange going to see a game at a rival team’s stadium and cheering them on. We always see games against teams other than the Blue Jays just for the sake of variety and generally we root for the home team (unless I have a pitcher in my baseball pool on the visiting team). In Detroit we had some Jays gear on and we got some confused looks so we avoided that this time.

One thing I noticed during our lap exploring the park is that the bullpens are right on top of each other(Home and Away team) and right next to fans allowing for great heckling opportunities. Not that I would partake in such activities myself. We found our way to our seats in short left field and the game got under way. Despite us loving this stadium one of the drawbacks to the game that we both noticed is the constant use of that “Charge” sound byte thing, I’m not sure what to call it or how to type it but it’s something like this… da da da daaa da daaa… Charge! They played it easily 50 times from when we started noticing it. After the 7th inning it was probably played every at bat. Unfortunately we also didn’t get to see what they do when there is a home run, I believe the only homer was from Seattle(We were the only people happy to see a Cano dinger).

 

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Baltimore lost the game making it the third home team in a row to lose on our tour. Games are always much more fun when the home team wins but we still had a great time at Camden Yard. I don’t want to spoil anything but this park remained our absolute favorite park for awhile. Actually Baltimore itself was a pleasant surprise as we never really heard much about it before going. And up into the trip my only perception of the city was completely based off the show “The Wire”.  If we had more time to check out all of Baltimore maybe our opinion might change but that would have to be for another trip because we had to get up bright and early the next day to see the Washington Nationals take on the Philadelphia Phillies.

Completed Stadiums: 4 of 30

To see the current completion status of our baseball stadium tour Click Here

Go to Part 7: Washington Nationals – Nationals Park