Today was my first ever major league double header. The Twins and the Tigers split a pair of games at Comerica Park and I was in the stands for both games. My original plan for the weekend was to go to Chicago and see the Red Sox shut out the White Sox (well, okay, I didn’t know it was going to be a shutout). However, after a phone conversation in which my mother expressed concerns about me hanging out in the south side of Chicago alone and my father pointed out that my beloved Twinkies are in Detroit this weekend, plans changed. What sealed the deal is that the Red Sox will be in Detroit in a few weeks, so I can catch the Good Sox then, without having to give money to the Evil Sox. Besides, despite what my father believes, I maintain that I am a Twins fan first and Red Sox fan second. It’s just that it’s a close second.

Prior to today’s games, I bought a new scorebook. It’s just so much nicer than scoring out of a program. I even left blank pages at the front so that I can transfer my program-scored games into it. Unfortunately, I think the scoring from the game I saw with Amrys and Mike is lost forever with the old scorebook. It does occur to me that I could recreate it with the MLB radio archived broadcast, and perhaps I shall.

The actual game reports will have to wait until tomorrow. But there will be pictures, so it will be worth the wait.

Edit: All pictures from both games are posted here.

I reclaimed the television for the final round of the Home Run Derby. But I was reduced to radio for David Ortiz’s three homer performance in the semi-finals that eliminated him. It’s too bad home runs don’t carry over from round to round, or it would have been Abreu and Ortiz in the final. On the other hand, with the first round going the way it did, the second round would have been moot.
Abreu was on fire tonight — 41 total homeruns, more than double his nearest competitors (Ortiz and Pudge Rodriguez had 20 each). Granted, the homerun derby doesn’t actually count for anything, but it was still an impressive display.
But more importantly, I learned an interesting piece of baseball trivia tonight: Twins legend and Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew is the man behind the silhouette in the MLB logo.
Also, I had a mild epiphany during interviews with Varitek, Ortiz, and Damon and I would like to officially declare the following: David Ortiz is my favorite active MLB player and my two favorite all time teams are the 2004 Red Sox and the 1991 Minnesota Twins. (The 1987 Twins are close, but there’s too much overlap between them and the 1991 Twins for me to consider them a separate team.) I suppose there’s a bit of stating the obvious in that.

First of all, a public service announcement… I fudged the date of these new entries, so they’re not on top.
I spent the first half of the evening watching the Homerun Derby at home, despite it taking place only 45 minutes away. I entered my name in the lottery to win tickets four times – one for each game I went to this season, minus the Oakland game – but didn’t win. At the Oakland game, I was chivalrous enough to let Anand enter his name, but he didn’t win either. (And believe me, if he had won the pair of tickets, I would have been the one going with him.) My roommate has claimed the television from 10 to 11 to watch some TV show that I’m not remotely interested in. But luckily, I have my subscription to MLB radio to help to follow the Derby — which appears to be about 30 seconds behind ESPN’s TV coverage.
Bobby Abreu dominated the first round, opening the derby with a 30+ minute display that resulted in 24 homeruns. That’s six more homeruns than he has thus far in the regular season and four more than his 2003 season total. Unfortunately for Abreu, the homers don’t carry over and he has no advantage going into the remaining rounds.
The other dominating performance in the opening round was my man, the 1996 Midwest League All Star Game Home Run Derby Champion, David Ortiz, who hit 17. During Ortiz’s turn, Al Michaels was interviewing Jason Varitek. “Do you remember him vaguely as a Minnesota Twin before he came to Boston?” Why, yes, yes I do! Which brings an Erin-Rhode-superstition to mind… way back when, I was a first baseman in Minnesota, before moving to Boston. I then proceeded to attract three Minnesota first basemen to move to Boston with me: David Ortiz, Doug Mientkiewicz, and David McCarty. The question now becomes, will this trend continue now that I’ve moved to Michigan? Is there a Detroit-Boston trade involving Kevin Millar in the works?

Once again, I fudged the date on this one to make it look like I wrote it in a timely fashion. Once again, I apologize for my dishonesty.

This was the second of my California games. While the hometeam Athletics won 5-0, the real victory came in getting Anand to his first baseball game and having him not hate it. Just look at the picture — at first glance, it may appear that he’s just placating my baseball loving antics, but on careful inspection, it’s clear that that’s a man who’s enjoying himself.

The Coliseum itself was large (seats over 50,000) and empty (18,744 in attendance). Despite sitting next to the really insane fans in the bleacher seats, the atmosphere was much more subdued than the game I had just attended across the bay. But I still got my malt cup, so I was happy.

The A’s starting pitcher, Joe Blanton, took a no-hitter into the 5th, broken up by a single to shallow right by the DH, Marlon Anderson. In the meantime, the A’s had already scored three runs – one in the 3rd and two in the 4th after a pair of doubles by Eric Byrnes and Mark Ellis. They tacked on one more in the fifth, and with the Mets still scoreless, Eric Byrnes decided to rub it in by homering in the bottom of the 8th to make the final score 5-0.

Along with Anand, his fellow grad student Bobak joined us, armed with a camera. While I had to glare at the two of them for talking about their research during the game a few times, Bobak took some pretty decent pictures. Note the picture to the right: in the full size version you can actually see the ball reach Mike Piazza’s glove. I’ve examined that picture and referenced my scorecard to determine when it was taken: based on the three K’s hanging in the stands, this must have been taken in the bottom of the 4th. Nick Swisher’s at bat, the fourth A’s batter of the inning, and he walked on five pitches.

Okay, so I fudged the date on this entry to make it look like I wrote it the day of the game when I actually waited nearly a month. It’s a lie, it’s a deception – you’ll get over it.
This was the first of my California ballgames. As luck would have it, SBC Park is only a short walk from Breath’s apartment. We got up and headed over to meet Quinn and Dale in front of the Willie Mays statue that guards the stadium. Since they were late and I had their tickets, Breath and I had to settle for being entertained by the Giant’s cheerleaders who were selling raffle tickets to raise money for Aids awareness outside the gate. These may possibly have been the first baseball cheerleaders I have ever encountered.
Once our compatriots showed up, we entered the stadium and headed up to our seats… and up… and up. We were on the third deck on the first base side, in the second to back row – easily the highest up I have ever watched a ballgame. At first I was nervous about the seats, but the turned out to be pretty good seats for viewing the entire field, albeit from a distance. As an added bonus, because we were so high up, we had a good view of McCovey cove and all the boats waiting for splashdowns. The only thing we didn’t have a good view of was the scoreboard in right field.
The game started and, as usual, I kept score. I never got around to replacing my lost scorebook, so I was forced to buy a program. Much to my delight, the Giants scorecard had a little more substance to it than the graph paper they give you at Fenway. I did have a small problem scoring one play in the space allotted. In the top of the third, Grady Sizemore singled to right center. After Coco Crisp (yes, that really is his name) flied out to right, Sizemore attempted to steal second, but was caught in a hot box. I scored it 1-3-4-1-4-3, which spilled over to the neighboring box.
The rest of the game wasn’t all that exciting — the Indians scored first in the top of the third and followed it with a four run fourth, highlighted by Casey Blake’s three run homerun. The Giants showed a little life in the 6th and 7th innings, but it was too little too late and the Indians walked away the victors.

No, that’s not a typo — Reds, not Red Sox. Last night Martine, Dave, and I went to the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati to see two of the worst teams in Major League Baseball. But if nothing else, the seats were half as much as Fenway in a very similar location. And thanks to the cute kid sitting next to me, my arm got on the Jumbotron. Having lost my scorebook, I once again kept score on the second-rate scorecard provided in the program. I think I will buy another scorebook prior to the California games — it’s just so much cleaner. (And for a Boston Globe article on scoring, check this out, courtesy of Jeff.)
Last night was my first trip ever to a National League park, and thus the first time I had ever seen a major league pitcher bat in person. And Randy Keisler made a pretty strong argument against the DH. After the Reds first pitcher, Ramon “not Papi” Ortiz gave up six runs in the top of the second, Keisler came in to finish out the inning by striking out Reggie Taylor. After a 1-2-3 third (5, 6-3, and 4-3), Keisler came up to start the bottom of the inning. And what a start! With the Reds down 6-1, Keisler smashed a 373 foot homerun to right-center, just a few rows away from where we were sitting. This was the start of a five run inning for the Reds to tie the game at 6.
Another 1-2-3 inning in the top of the 4th (K, 4-3, and 3) for Keisler and he was up to bat again to start off the fourth inning, this time with a double. He scored the go ahead run later in the inning when Ken Griffey Jr. hit his 510th career homerun, a 369 foot shot to center. For a brief second, I thought I might be witnessing history — a pitcher on his way to hitting for the cycle. But coming up again in the 6th, he struck out and never got another at bat. Still, it was pretty obvious who the player of the game was.
Randy Keisler, if I was a Reds fan, this is when I’d offer to name my children after you.

Once again, I stood in line for a few hours yesterday and wound up with Chris House’s seats at Fenway. The company was different — Amrys and Mike — and the game had a much better ending, but the opponent (Baltimore) was the same and upon shuffling around, I sat in the exact same seat. Amrys took pictures and has already blogged about the night.
As I mentioned before, last time I bought a program and kept score. However, I was highly disappointed with their score card, as it was little more than some graph paper. With this in mind, I stopped off at City Sports before getting in line and bought a scorebook. I found it much more pleasing to keep score in the traditional manner with the miniature field and places to keep track of the pitch count.
Keeping score at ballgames is somewhat of a lost art — although it was the topic of my favorite mystery hunt puzzle this year. My dad taught me how back when I played softball, but I was somewhat surprised to find out that neither Amrys nor Mike knew how to score a game. To my mathematical mind, it’s very satisfying to have a record of all of the games events reduced to a single piece of paper. You can even use LaTeX if you like (source code here — scroll down).
In a way, a filled out scorecard is kind of like it’s own language — Mike likened it to hieroglyphics. It does miss a handful of events that don’t translate neatly into the “language,” including extra foul balls beyond the 2nd strike (which makes calculating the overall pitch count impossible). Another problem is that there’s no distinguishing a spectacular play from a routine one — although I did star Trot Nixon’s diving catch in right field. But there was no good way to mark that Jay Gibbons triple (marked as a long ball to deep center) resulted in Johnny Damon crashing headfirst into the wall, which caused him to sit out the remainder of the game. As the saying goes, “They all look like line drives in the scorebook.”
I’ll take this book with me when I go to all of the upcoming games at various stadiums that I have planned. This way it will become a sort of diary of games. I’ve just added a Reds game in Cincinnati next Tuesday night — a detour to visit Martine on my way to Ann Arbor.

So far in my life I have seen Major League games at four stadiums: The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, County Stadium in Milwaukee (no longer there), Skydome in Toronto (now Rogers Centre), and good old Fenway Park in Boston. With any luck, I’m going to nearly double that this season.
The plan is to go to a SF Giants games at SBC Park, which is apparently only five blocks from Breath’s apartment, on June 12. It may turn into a big Putz outing if Dale and Quinn and whoever else is in the area decide to join us. (First things first… we need to invite Dale and Quinn.) Later that week, I’m tentatively planning to go to a game at the Coliseum in Oakland with a non-baseball fan, that is, if he ever gets back to me. Otherwise, I suppose I will go by myself… or drag Breath to a second game.
Once I’m settled in Michigan, I’ll likely go to a Tigers game… no definite plans on that one yet, but it will make four stadiums in one season.