Cinergy and Wrigley Field

In the summer of 2002, I travelled from New Castle, PA to Silverthorne, CO to visit my sister. Since it is such a long drive, and I am a huge baseball fan, I decided to break up my drive by stopping in a few places along the way. My first stop was Cinergy Field in Cincinnati, where the Pittsburgh Pirates were playing a weekend series. This was perfect, because not only did I get to see a new stadium, but I got to see my favorite team as well.

Things got off to a rough start. I was barely a few hours into my trip when I got pulled over for speeding in Ohio. As if that wasn't bad enough, the officer didn't believe my story about where I was going and since I 'looked nervous', he decided to search my whole car, while I sat in the back of his police car. It was humiliating. So he finally let me leave and I arrive in Cincinnati. I check into my hotel and decide to walk to the ball park since it was only a few blocks away. Cinergy Field (formerly called Riverfront Stadium) was almost identical to Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. There was nothing that impressed or stood out to me about the stadium. It was like so many others that were built in the early 1970's. So, the game goes into extra innings and when it was finally over (around 11 pm), I go to walk back to the hotel and I apparently went out a different gate than I went in, but did not realize it. I tried to follow the directions back to my hotel but I was going the wrong direction (remember, this is before GPS and smartphones). So I wandered around downtown Cincinnati (not the ideal place to be lost on foot at midnight) for about an hour or so before I finally found my way.

The other ballpark that I want to discuss on this blog entry is Wrigley Field in Chicago. It is my favorite all-time ballpark (other than PNC Park). I went there in the summer of 1998 (on another trip to my sister's). This was the season of the famous Sammy Sosa-Mark McGwire homerun chase to break Roger Maris' single season homerun record. I arrived early just so I could soak up the atmosphere and ambiance of the stadium. Wrigley Field is basically right in a neighborhood. As a result, there isn't (or wasn't back then anyway) any stadium parking lots to park in. So all the nearby businesses open up their lots and charge whatever they want for parking (I think I paid $25 or $30, which was a lot for parking back then). Tickets for games during that season were hard to come by, so the only thing I could get was standing room only tickets. That was fine with me because I got to walk around the stadium in between innings and see the whole ballpark. The best aspect of the ballpark was seeing the ivy on the walls up close. And seeing the apartment buildings beyond the outfield was neat also. It was awesome to see an old time park instead of all the new stadiums that were being built. And to make the trip even better, Sosa hit two homeruns in the game.