Baseball Baseball Baseball

These events are rather old. I mentioned a while ago (2 weekends ago) that I got to got to two baseball games really close to each other. They were great.

The first one, Friday June 3rd, was the first game of a 3 game series against the Phillies. Based on previous fun (and cheapness) of the 303 section, Gwyn and I really wanted to go back. Also, friday nights are T-Shirt Nights! Everyone at the game gets a free shirt!

First note about this particular evening was the absurd parking. Once downtown, it took a good 45 minutes to realize that there were no parking spots, and make it out of downtown to the Strip, where there were lots of spots. The Three River Art festival was going on, so there were a ton of people downtown. People do not believe me when I tell them that I never once paid for parking in the Tri Citties, and only rarely paid for parking in Spokane.

Anyway, a trip from Gwyn's house that should have taken 30 minutes, ended up taking an hour longer, so we go to our seats a little after the first inning. But we did have a gigantic plate of Chicken Nachos, and some soda, and free t-shirts! We quickly forgot about the lameness of PGH parking, and enjoyed the game. Our seats where great. They were the farthest to the right in the right field grandstands, but in the front row (so no one in front of us). To our right was a fence and then the Allegheny. It was great. And the game was great. It went in to super over time (I think, I could be wrong, but in to 12 innings). But the Pirates did end up winning, which is always fun.

Yep. I am that in to it. For the record, that is my first Free Bucks shirt

I know the one thing you really want to know is all about the shirt. This would be my second free Pirates shirt (the first one I got with my Dad last summer when I first got here). It is a black shirt, with a P in the middle. The P is 'filled in' with a Yellow and White plaid. It is sweet! You can kind of see it in the pictures below as I wore it to the game on Sunday...

And that is a nice segway to Sunday! One of the familys at Shadyside have season tickets that they were not able to use, so they gave them to Jackie. Jackie called me the Thursday before and asked if I wanted to go, I said HECK YES! So it was Jackie, myself, Matt and Katie. Matt works with the Youth as well, and is a great guy, Katie is Matt's wife. She is equally as awesome.

Right after church we headed downtown for a 'Pittsburgh Afternoon.' We stopped at Primanti's on the way in to add to the ambiance (and to cover lunch). The we headed over to the park. It was a beautiful sunny day, a little on the hot side, but not unbearable. I definitely got a little red. When we got to the park I realized where our seats where. They were front row, right next to the plate. We were closer to the batter than the pitcher was. They were great. Certainly a different experience than Friday's game.

This would be free shirt number two

Can't complain about this view

Matt and Katie!

This game was the last of the games against the Phillies, and the Pirates had won the previous two games, this would mean that if the Bucks won, they would also be at .500 (which is a big deal here). It should also be noted that there is a healthy and strong rivalry between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Something that is rather interesting to me as the two cities are kind of analogous to Seattle and Spokane, one city is next to the water, one is more inland, one city is the largest in the state, the other is the second largest. But there is no rivalry in WA. Here there is a strong dislike for the other city. During the game they put up texts and tweets from fans, my favorite was 'Primanti's >> Cheesesteaks LETS GO BUCKS!' This is a bit of an anecdote, but on the news this week, there was some group that made a list of 'The Dirtiest Cities in America' Philly was number two on the list. The news stations played that up, it had nothing to do with Pittsburgh, just bashing on Philly.

Anyway, because all of these games were weekend games, there were a lot, I mean a lot, of Phillies fans. You would look out over the stands, and see a lot of Red (which is disconcerting on a free T Shirt night where people are given black and yellow shirts to wear, and there were still a lot of reds.) So now to where I was going with all of this Philly/PGH stuff. I have noticed something interesting about Pittburghers, they are kind of apathetic to certain things, the Pirates being one of them, but as soon as someone tries to tarnish anything related to Pittsburgh, the locals get super riled up. It is like the brothers who constantly make fun of each other, but as soon as a neighbor makes even a little joke about one of them, there is an all out fight. This is what happened at both games with the Phillies. The Phillies' fans would start a chant, or a cheer, and then Pittsburgh would drown them out. It was like a 'Normally we don't really care, but now that you are here, we are putting on the gloves and are ready to fight.' It is highly amusing and fun to watch.