I could go overboard and write about MLB’s trade deadline today. Obviously, there have been some spectacular trades–some loved by the fans, and some not. Some even lead to bad grammar, like this poster spotted at Progressive Field in Cleveland:
I find few things harder to tolerate than obviously misplaced quotation marks. It’s not sarcasm (around the word “trade”, I might believe that explanation). Use underline or bold or asterisks for emphasis!
But I’m not going to do that.
I didn’t write last week because the hours I normally should’ve written, I was in Chicago, touring Wrigley Field. Stupidly, I forgot to upload those pictures, and the cameras are at home and I’m not, so instead I’ll share the photos I did download. (Hey, between four girls, we took 808 pictures in six and a half days. Be glad I didn’t upload them all!)
First, I have to send a kudos to the staff at Wrigley with Wee Sister and two of our friends, in our Annual Girls’ Trip. We arrived ten minutes late for our tour, because it shouldn’t have taken over an hour to get from our hotel to Wrigley, but it did. We walked up to get our tickets from Will-Call, and the person had our tickets out, and knew who I was before I even said anything. She said we were late, but pointed out where we could go in. The guy inside the gate unlocked the gate to let us in, and walked us to our tour group, where we were able to slip in unobtrusively. Our tour guide was funny, but very knowledgeable on the history of the Cubs and the stadium, and shared details of the stories that were lore, and explained why either they probably did happen, or why they probably were just stories. (As a bonus, he was cute, too!)
From Chicago, we continued on to Cleveland, to watch three baseball games at Progressive Field (obviously, the Twins were in town, because that’s what the Annual Girls’ Trip is about: watching the Twins play on the road). We watched the game from three different views:
Upper deck, behind home plate.
Lower deck, left field.
Cheap seats.
Things to note when going to Progressive Field:
Parking is found all over the city, and prices could vary greatly. The first day we parked in some old parking ramp that was a little creepy, and paid $20. The next two days, we parked much closer to the stadium in a newer/nicer parking ramp, and only paid $10. We didn’t check out the trains to see if that would work.
The gates open an hour before the game, except for Gate C, which opens earlier for fans who want to watch batting practice (but fans are only allowed in selected areas). We, of course, did not know this and stood around waiting for the gates to open the first night.
In an effort to make sure Indians’ fans get excessive calories, the stadium does not allow you to bring your water bottle, but you may bring juice boxes. While I understand not allowing disposable water bottles, it’s a bit annoying to not bring a polycarbonate water bottle, which is clearly not disposable, and I will be taking home with me. I hate leaving my seat during the game, so the drinking fountain option was highly inconvenient.
You may bring your own food, which is good because the food selection is very limited. The usher at the door recommended to us that we forego buying food at the stadium and bring in our own. However, you may not bring in a whole pizza, but you may bring in single slices.
While they don’t allow noisemakers, they do make a special exception to the annoying guy with the drum. Anyone who’s listened to Indians’ games knows what I’m talking about. We found him annoying.
These benches were very cool. They spelled out “Who’s on first?”
One of their in-game contests, not quite as famous as Milwaukee’s Sausage race, was their condiment race. I believe Onion won twice, and Ketchup once, while we were there:
It was a cute race; something to distract the fans while the players meandered on and off the field between innings.
We were there for hat day, so we had our trip mascot model it for us:
On our trip back to our frightening hotel Saturday night, we stopped at Ghetto K-Mart. We were bewildered that you could buy Twins boxer shorts there (along with Indians boxers, pajama pants and shirts, as well as Red Sox shirts):
Wee Sister and I will hopefully be heading to Kuaffman Stadium next weekend. I’ll try to share pictures then.
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