Road to Nowhere - NY & CLE Road Trip Diary (with pics)

I'm back from the road, where Ms. Sslinger and I went to NY, Cleveland and back to NY to follow the A's.  We hit the road with the promise of seeing some great baseball, some old friends, and taking in the local culture.

We got in Friday night and before heading up to a friend's place we stopped in at a bar to check on the opening game of the trip, only to see the inning when the Mets blew it open.  Oops. Our first game was Saturday night at Shea Stadium, and on the way out to the stadium on the 7 line, dressed in our green & gold, we had our first encounter with the local fan base.  The train had crossed over into Queens, maybe 3 or 4 stops in, when a bunch of guys got on the train in matching t-shirts from some bar saying something like "7th Annual Mets Pre-Game Party", and they had clearly been out there a while.  One of them spotted me and barked out " Hey, there's an A's fan!  Are you going to the Mets game?"  To which I responded "No, I'm going to the A's game", which cracked them all up and we talked baseball the rest of the way, commiserating about the end results of last year's playoffs.  The trip was on.

It was a nice night out, and we had great seats on the third base line through a friend who works at MLB.  Still not a great park, but with field level seats it's not nearly as bad as in some of the other sections with overhangs, etc.  You can definitely see the construction going on for the new ballpark out there, which should be open by 2009.

Great baseball game, horrible ending for us with Casilla giving up the run in the 9th to spoil a great pitching effort by Blanton.  So far, the A's were 0-2 on the trip.

Sunday, my daughter came down from Boston to meet us and go to the Serra exhibit.  You could only photograph the two pieces out in the courtyard, and the pictures can't possibly do them justice, but suffice it to say the exhibit was overwhelming.  

For those who've never heard of him, he's best known for his sculptures using huge plates of steel, and the scale of them creates just a completely physical experience.  Very cool stuff, and if you're in or visit NY, I encourage you to go.  Then we went into the park and just enjoyed the rest of the beautiful day in NY.

Needless to say, the A's got blown out by the Mets and were 0-3, and Ms. Sslinger & I were starting to get a bad feeling about the shape the baseball side of the trip was taking.  Monday night we tried to find a sports bar that had the A's-Indians game on but had no luck, but with regular checks of the score on my cell phone we could see that series wasn't starting any better.  Tuesday we left for Cleveland and went to the game with an old friend who lives there now.  Jacobs Field is great, and we had awesome seats behind home plate.  One of the cool things they have there is the Batter's Eye, a bar out in center that is open to all, so on nights with small crowds lots of fans just buy $7 upper deck seats and go straight there and hang out for the game.  Nice deal.

After the game we went with our friend to the Ritz-Carlton for a drink, which is where the team stays.  We saw Blanton come and go, Duke hang out in the bar, and Ms. Sslinger saw Crosby & Ellis.  No one was looking too happy after the 5-run 9th inning gave the game away.  The team now 0-5, and we were beginning to wonder if the trip was such a great idea.

Of course, in Cleveland, we had to go to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame/Museum, which was pretty cool.  My favorite thing to learn - Tina Weymouth was a control freak!  She wrote out instructions to the Talking Heads' road crew with some really specific details, then concluding with admonishments such as "it is your responsibility to wake yourself up and be at the gig on time or early" and "approach things with a no-nonsense attitude - if you anticipate problems you have a better chance of resolving them."  Fun stuff.  The original art for the cover of More Songs... was also cool - all those pictures in the squares that make up the album cover are individual 4"x4" Polaroid photos, and they're pieced together to make the total piece.

That night we were treated to a rain delay, but in the sprit of all the fans we met, the people sitting next to us were season ticket holders and they gave us passes to get into the Terrace Club, so we hung out up there during the delay.

And the A's finally won!  Now 1-5, but at least we weren't going to go winless the entire trip.  Yay!  While we were out at the Batters Eye we had run into Barry, a fellow A's fan and Continental Airlines pilot who splits his time between San Lorenzo and Cleveland.  We then met up with him and other A's fans after the game at the Thirsty Parrot.  It was interesting meeting NRAFs from places like Buffalo and Indiana who had come for the games, and none of them were originally from the Bay Area.  They had started following the team for the players, and because their friends were Yankees fans and that would suck.  So the A's.

We had a great time in Cleveland, the ballpark and the people were awesome, but overall I can't really argue with Ichiro.  We got to watch the final game in the airport as our flight back to NY was delayed, and we met a reserve catcher from Johns Hopkins U who was on his way to the UK to play some exhibitions.  Pretty cool.  We also met a family of 5 A's fans from Pleasanton doing the same road trip.  But of course the A's lost again, so now 1-6.

Back to NY and we had tickets for a bunch of friends on Friday night.  Before the game, we went to the Museum of the City of NY, which had an exhibit on baseball in NY from '47-'57, the years before the move west when all three NY teams were at their peak and almost every world series featured at least one if not two NY teams.  A good way to prep for Yankee stadium.

We got to the game early enough to be able to partake of a beverage at Stan's, across from the stadium, as well as go to monument park.

We also caught the A's in BP, and I saw Piazza working on his throwing under the caring eye of Larry David.  A scary moment, of course.  

Our seats were in the nosebleeds, which provides for almost a vertical view.  But the sky at night was beautiful.

As with the first two games we went to, this was a really good game but once again the A's came up short.  At this point, the A's were 1-7 and we were spent from the agony of the losses.  DMT Shooter, send me my required penance for losing faith and deciding not to go Saturday!  Or, as I prefer to look at it, we changed up the mojo by not going.  Gaudin pitched a beauty on Saturday, with the only blemish coming when I was at a friend's place and he turned on the game just in time to see the one hit of the game.  Needless to say, I left soon thereafter.  Sunday we couldn't watch the game on tv in our hotel or the airport, but we had our cab driver put it on the radio and we heard the great score.  At least things were looking up at the end.  We met a fellow A's fan at the airport, who had also been in Cleveland, and compared notes on the trip.

Traveling to follow the team was great, and both meeting A's fans on the road and talking baseball with the local fans really makes it all worthwhile.  To a person, whenever the local fans realized we were there on the road following the team, they were very cool about it and appreciated the fandom.  I can't wait for the next trip.

Oh, and we got the final score just as they were announcing to turn off all portable electronic devices.  Sweet.