We have a blog

Three years ago, friends of ours named Luke and Sandy went on a baseball road trip and kept a joint blog about it. So I figured we should either rip them off, or pay homage to them, depending on whether or not Luke and Sandy are going to be reading this.

This is actually the replacement for some “manual” blogging I had been doing about this trip on my own web site, so I’ve copied all those entries over to here. The advantages are that Levi can easily make entries here as well, and we can both make entries from anywhere…including while we’re on the trip, if we can beg, borrow, or steal a computer capable of connecting to the Internet at some point.

It has also been rumored that Luke may be joining us for the first portion of our road trip. I hope he can make it, even if I disagree in part with his opinions on National Anthem etiquette. While I will happily sing along to an instrumental version (especially if it’s being played live by an organist), I will remain silent if someone is out on the field performing, because I actually want to listen to their performance. But I do agree that the cheering shouldn’t start until the end of the song, no matter how good the singer is at hitting the high note.

Therefore, in case they do instrumental versions of “O Canada” in Toronto and/or Montreal, I want to be sure I have the lyrics down.

On another note, my mother tells me that my cousin is getting married in Connecticut in July. Depending on the exact wedding plans (and the exact wedding location), I may attempt to come up with a scheme to visit New York for a day, a city which is a noticeable gap on the road trip itinerary. The Yankees will be in town that weekend, right before the All-Star break, playing my hometown Devil Rays.

I realized that there may actually be a few other people in attendance at the Expos-Dodgers game, due to the presence of Quebec’s very own Eric Gagne in the visitors’ bullpen.

However, the Olympics will also be going on that week, so maybe all the locals will be staying home to cheer for the Canadians. Let’s hope there aren’t a lot of people thinking that this year’s Olympics are taking place at Olympic Stadium, despite the name, because things could get ugly.

Well, in this age when people don’t have to take responsibility for their predictions, I guess Sports Illustrated will be okay despite clearly picking wrong in the National League Central.

I was going to post my picks this week, but I’ve been too busy with work and with hours on the phone trying to alter the car reservation Jim made. There is no reason to get a Taurus when we could get a purple Lamborghini.

The first tangible sign of spring

Hey, the Phillies tickets showed up in the mail already! We’ll actually be meeting up with my aunt and uncle at the game and our mutual friend Maura, so I’m going to mail those people’s tickets to them ASAP.

On another note, I bought Padres tickets over the weekend for a May game against the Cubs. This isn’t directly relevant to the road trip, except that both the Padres and the Phillies are going to be playing in new stadiums in 2004, so it’ll be fun to do a comparison and contrast. The Padres’ stadium, Petco Park, already gets points for being named after something warm and fuzzy (well, as warm and fuzzy as a chain store can be, i.e., much warmer and fuzzier than Wal-Mart), whereas the Phillies’ stadium, Citizens Bank Park, loses points for being yet another stadium named after a cold, impersonal bank. Actually, at least it’s a bank that still has “bank” in its corporate name, unlike its baseball stadium naming rights counterpart across Pennsylvania, PNC.

As so often happens

Straight out of the baseball preview issue, this is Sports Illustrated’s predicted order of finish for the various leagues and divisions, with the teams we will be seeing on this trip highlighted:

NL East
1. Philadelphia Phillies (1x)
2. Florida Marlins
3. Atlanta Braves
4. Montreal Expos (1x)
5. New York Mets

NL Central
1. Chicago Cubs
2. Houston Astros
3. St. Louis Cardinals (2x)
4. Cincinnati Reds
5. Milwaukee Brewers (2x)
6. Pittsburgh Pirates (3x)

NL West
1. Arizona Diamondbacks
2. San Francisco Giants
3. San Diego Padres
4. L.A. Dodgers (1x)
5. Colorado Rockies

AL East
1. New York Yankees
2. Boston Red Sox (2x)
3. Toronto Blue Jays (1x)
4. Baltimore Orioles
5. Tampa Bay Devil Rays

AL Central
1. Minnesota Twins
2. Chicago White Sox (2x)
3. Kansas City Royals
4. Cleveland Indians (1x)
5. Detroit Tigers (2x)

AL West
1. Oakland A’s
2. Anaheim Angels
3. Seattle Mariners
4. Texas Rangers

Honorable mention to the Twins and Mariners, whose Midwest League teams we’ll also be seeing.