It was a fun game to watch… except for the score!
My wife Priscilla and I just returned from a trip to Baltimore where we watched the Red Sox lose 15 to 10 Friday night. There were plenty of fireworks in the game between the Baltimore home runs and Xander Bogaerts and Alex Cora being thrown out. Plus there were actual fireworks after the game!
For years Priscilla and I have wanted to visit all of the MLB ballparks. Life got busy and then my health issues so we had kind of forgotten about it but the children surprised us with tickets to Camden Yards to begin our quest. We’ve actually been to three out of the thirty: Fenway of course and Yankee Stadium. Camden Yards was awesome!
We flew Providence to Baltimore on Thursday.
I have always felt that a baseball field is the most recognizable landmark from the air. Agree?
We had a hotel that was two blocks away from the ballpark and about half a mile from the Inner Harbor. We took a walk to the harbor and had a great lunch.
If you’ve never been, I highly recommend a visit to the Inner Harbor. We took a Harbor Cruise Friday afternoon before the game and learned about some Baltimore history.
I didn’t realize Domino Sugar was originally from Baltimore.
I had a nice surprise before the game. My good friend Greg Kalil is the PA Announcer for the Tampa Bay Rays and when he found out we were in Baltimore, he contacted his colleague who is the PA Announcer for the Orioles and arranged for us to have a tour of the press box!
It was great to meet Adrienne Roberson.
She gave us a tour behind the scenes and even let us visit the Red Sox crew. We had a chance to talk to Dave O’Brien and Joe Castiglione before the game. Sorry, no selfies as the guys were working and it just didn’t seem right to ask. Priscilla said I was like a little kid meeting his hero when I talked with Joe. Hey! What can I say! Big fan!
After that we found our seats, had some Camden Franks. Not bad but not as good as a Fenway Frank if you ask me.
The ballpark is beautiful and we had great seats! (Thanks Matt!) They are celebrating their 30th anniversary this year! Seems like it was just yesterday!
Yes, it was a crazy game and ended up lasting over four hours! We stayed for the whole thing, despite the score. We figured that we had traveled all this way, there were fireworks after and we only had to walk two blocks back to the hotel.
After a hearty breakfast the next morning we walked a few blocks in the other direction to find the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum.
It’s a small museum but it features Babe’s rookie baseball card that once sold for $8-million! Not to mention some old uniforms and one of the Babe’s bats.
All in all it was a terrific first ballpark trip. We even got a stamp in our new Baseball Passports that my daughter Sarah bought us.
Note to my fellow scorers: I filled in all details while waiting at the airport the next day.
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