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Colorado Rockies v San Diego Padres, Saturday 18th June 2022, 7.10pm

June 25, 2022

After staying in Laramie, it was a relatively short two-and-a-half-hour drive to Denver where we met up with Jen’s brother and sister-in-law. David had planned a wild camp for the four of us in one of the forest parks in the Rocky Mountains and so we set off before lunch with their two dogs.

We didn’t have to move too far off the trail to find somewhere to pitch the tents and we spent a very enjoyable twenty-four hours out in the mountains. Whenever I’ve wild camped it has always a bit slapdash with cereal bars or maybe a tin of rice pudding. David and Jackie had brought us four Cornish hens and tequila. I need to up my game.

Jackie is a big baseball fan and regularly goes to see the local major league team, the Colorado Rockies. The night after the wild camp they had a game against the San Diego Padres at Coors Field in Denver and so Jackie and I went along.

Denver was extremely busy as their ice hockey team was at home in the finals of the Stanley Cup. That meant two large spectator events within about a mile of each other. We arrived early though and with a pre-booked parking space a few minutes’ walk from Coors Field we were soon inside.

Our early arrival meant that we were able to pick up ‘bobble-heads’ that were given away free to the first fifteen thousand spectators. I’ve enough tat in my life and so mine will end up at Jackie’s parents.

I wasn’t driving and so was able to have a couple of beers. They came in twenty-four-ounce cans, which is about a pint and a half, I think. I must be getting used to American prices as fourteen dollars a can didn’t seem out of the ordinary. I also had a polish sausage which was an improvement on the usual hot dog as it had a bit more spice amongst the minced lips and eyelids.

Our seats were in the upper tier, reasonably central behind the plate. At twenty-five dollars they compared very favourably with the prices I had been paying for minor league games. We got an excellent view of all that was going on in the stadium and also the Rocky Mountains to our west.

We also had a good view of the scoreboard which switched sports every time the hockey team scored a goal in their game. We saw the Avalanche put seven past their Florida opponents and take a two to nothing lead in their Stanley Cup final.

As the game went on, I thought back to my time in Kazakhstan where I worked with a Rockies fan. It was the year that they made the World Series and my friend Mike had talked up their chances as the season progressed. It didn’t conclude as planned as they lost at the final hurdle, but for a few months back in 2007 I was caught up in it all by proxy. I think Mike died a few years back, but I’m glad I got to the Coors Field that he wistfully spoke about.

The game was evenly matched and level at four-each at the end of the seventh. The Rockies nipped five-four in front in the eighth and then brought on a new pitcher for the ninth. Apparently, he was a fella with an interesting backstory in that he had been a decent player then lost form sufficiently to retire, before coming back after regaining his confidence training in his garden.

It went well for him, and he finished off the Padres without them drawing level. With the supporters of both Denver sides celebrating victory, it was a lively atmosphere outside as we headed back to the car.

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Gem City Bisons v Casper Horseheads, Thursday 16th June 2022, 6.10pm

June 23, 2022

The reason that Jen and I were travelling west was to attend a family celebration in Colorado and after the stay at Platte River State Park in Nebraska, the next destination on our route was Laramie in Wyoming. I’d picked it partly because I’d heard of it and assumed it must have some wild west connections and partly because there was an opportunity to take in another ball game.

The five-hundred-and-twenty-mile drive was brightened with sightings of deer, turkeys and maybe a fox. There were also a couple of bad crashes. Not us though. We broke the journey with a stop at a Pony Express Station in Gothenburg.

The lady in charge told us the history of the place and sold us a couple of postcards. Apparently, the Pony Express only ran for an eighteen-month period in the mid-1800s. The work was dangerous, and for this reason the company preferred to recruit orphans. Seems a bit harsh to me, as orphans have already had it rough in life without then going to work and getting scalped for a ten-bob postal order in a birthday card.

The baseball game was at Cowboy Field and a convenient fifteen-minute walk from our hotel. I’d bought tickets online in advance for eight dollars each and I suspect that it might have been the only online sale. The young lad on the gate didn’t have a scanner, but said that they looked genuine enough.

Cowboy Field is at the University of Wyoming and the game was in a Collegiate League that had been set up, I think, to keep student baseballers busy during the summer holidays. Despite it being a campus, it sold beer and we were able to take advantage of being able to walk to the game by having a few.

There was a great view of the hills in the distance, but the scoreboard was partially obscured by the trees that ran alongside the diamond towards third base.

The home side were Gem City Bisons, so presumably Laramie was once famous for diamond mines or something. The visitors were Casper Horseheads and clearly a town of ghosts with an equine bonce.

I’d estimate that around sixty people had turned up, mainly supporters of the Bisons, but with a few people cheering on the visitors. There must have been a shortage of baseballs as any that were hit into the crowd could be exchanged for a handful of lollipops.

The between innings entertainment included two fellas having to down a beer then spin ten times with their head resting on a three-foot pole before trying to race ten yards. There was also a musical chairs session which was won by a bloke who, when seeing that he was unlikely to be able to sit down first, snatched the chair and ran off with it.

The standard wasn’t too good, particularly in the field, but it was enjoyable to sit and watch a game with a few beers and the hills in the background. The Bisons were leading ten-two early on but the momentum turned around and it was the Horseheads who finished the game in front, winning by fourteen runs to twelve.

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Lincoln Saltdogs v Lake County Dockhounds, Wednesday 15th June 2022, 7.10pm

June 21, 2022

After Chicago, Jen and I continued west for another four hundred and sixty-five miles to the Platte River State Park. The drive took us out of Illinois, through the breadth of Iowa and into Nebraska. It’s a part of the country that is sometimes described as a bit dull, but I quite enjoyed the endless views of cornfields, punctuated by the odd grain silo or windmill.

The highlight was seeing a coyote trotting through one of the fields. I don’t recall seeing one in the wild before although I suspect that most Iowans have them rooting through their bins these days.

Something that I hadn’t expected about this part of the country was the high temperature. When we arrived at the state park the temperature was 102F. Out of habit I bought firewood, but who on earth would light a fire when it’s over a hundred degrees? I left it in the car to burn somewhere more suitable.

We went for a walk along the woodland trails that bordered the river. I was hoping, as ever, for bears and snakes. The best we saw though were birds and butterflies, including the one in the photo. If it had orientated itself differently could very well have served as a route marker.

Wildlife was easier to spot from the chairs outside the cabin in the evening. On the first night a wild turkey walked past. There were also squirrels that looked to be a mix between the reds and greys that we have in the UK, a rabbit and a few birds that had markings that I’d not seen before.

As dusk approached on the second evening, we were visited by a deer. It was only about ten yards away from our chairs as it emerged from the undergrowth and continued along a trail that we’d walked upon earlier in the day.

Not long after it had left us a tornado passed by that had trees crashing down and left the power off until mid-afternoon the next day. It did have the benefit of dropping the temperature quite significantly though.

On the third night of our stay, we drove into Lincoln for a baseball game. It was at Haymarket Park and in the same independent minor American Association league that included the Kane County Cougars that we’d watched in Chicago.

Lincoln Saltdogs were hosting Lake County Dockhounds. I’ve no idea what a Saltdog or a Dockhound is, but I don’t suppose that matters. The Saltdogs are mid-table in the Western Division, whilst the Dockhounds are towards the bottom of the Eastern Division. This was the second game of a three match series between the teams with the Saltdogs having taken the win in the opener the previous night.

Tickets were sixteen dollars a pop for lower tier box seats. We’d asked for something in the shade, but just about every seat bar those on the grass would have worked in that respect.

Most of these lower league games have some sort of promotional activity and this evening it was two dollar hot dogs and bring your dog to the game. We don’t have a dog so couldn’t take part in that one, but there were around twenty dogs dotted around the stadium. Most of them were on the grass, others took turns in a paddling pool.

I didn’t bother with the two dollar hot dog either as there were better things to eat. The offer seemed popular though with people taking handfuls of them back to their seats, presumably for large groups. Or maybe not.

Highlight of the between innings entertainment was a three-legged race for kids. It looked as if nobody had explained that striding in unison was the way to go and we saw a variety of alternate methods such as jumping and shuffling that invariably broke the coupling apart. I think a pair of dogs might have made a better effort.

The game was low scoring early on but by the time we had reached the seventh innings the scores were tied at five each. The visitors then rattled off seven runs in the eighth to eventually run out twelve-nine winners and level the series at one game each.

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Atomic Pork Chops v Winnipeg Goldeneyes, Saturday 11th June 2022, 6.30pm

June 12, 2022

After Buckingham, Jen and I drove up to Newark to swap the hire car for the one originally booked and then headed to the Keystone State Park for three nights. We had a ‘modern cabin’ booked. I think ‘modern’ refers to it having a bathroom, something that didn’t strike me as being particularly modern at all. It was an enjoyable place to stay, as most accommodation with a firepit tends to be, although there wasn’t much in the way of wildlife nearby other than rabbits and squirrels.

In an effort to try and see bears and snakes, or at a push some deer, raccoons or muskrats, we went for a hike around the lake and up into a forest. It was a good way to spend a morning but despite wandering around for six miles we didn’t really see anything other than birds and butterflies.

Next stop on the trip was Chicago. It’s somewhere that I’d picked mainly because I thought there would be good opportunities for sporting events. It’s also somewhere with a bit of family history in that one of my grandads visited it in the 1920’s and saw someone shot dead whilst walking down the street. He was in the merchant navy and travelling cross-country from New York to San Francisco to join his next ship. I don’t know how long he and his shipmates spent in the city but I thought it interesting, particularly when walking around some of the historical areas, that they might very well have walked the same streets getting on for a hundred years or so ago. We didn’t see anyone shot dead, so maybe Chicago is a bit safer than in the 1920’s.

One of the things that I’d like to do sometime is see a baseball game at Wrigley Field. Whilst it’s not quite the oldest, it’s probably the best known of all the baseball stadiums. The Cubs were out of town though and so we had to make do with a tour. It was very informative and we started off with some general info whilst sitting in various parts of the stands, before moving down to pitch side to stand in the outfield.

We then moved on to the locker room used by the visiting team and at various times over the years by Paul McCartney, Pele and Michael Jordan. It was strange to look around and imagine each of them preparing to head out into the daylight.

We then went up to the press box and finished up by sitting in the home dugout. I’ll get back for an actual Cubs game at some point.

Whilst there was an option of going to a MLB White Sox game across town, I decided to head for some lower league action instead at the Midwestern Medical Field. It’s a stadium that dates back to 1991 and has a capacity of almost eleven thousand.

The game was in an independent league for teams too far from others to be allowed to play in the AA or AAA leagues. The Kane County Cougars were taking on the Winnipeg Goldeneyes. Although for some reason the Cougars were playing as their alter-egos, the Atomic Pork Chops. This may have been a ploy to sell different shirts and more bacon products. Who knows?

We opted for central bench seats at fifteen dollars, although we could have paid ten dollars to sit on the grass. Or even ten dollars to walk past the grass and sit in the fifteen dollars seats. I had a hot dog which didn’t look as good as the hot dogs that I saw some other people eating so there must have been some selection option that I hadn’t noticed.

Jen went for a funnel cake. I’d not heard of it and tried a bit. It’s just mis-shaped donut really. It tastes ok but I can’t see it catching on.

Winnipeg Goldeneyes are a Canadian team, from approximately eight hundred miles to the north. I doubt that you get many away fans in this league. A father and son duo who had been roped in to sing the Star Spangled Banner also trotted out what I presume was the Canadian anthem. It’s not particularly catchy and maybe something like ‘I’m a Lumberjack’ would have gone down better.

For additional between innings entertainment we were treated to stunt dogs. These were collies that had been trained to catch frisbees and run between their owner’s legs. It was better than it sounds and but unfortunately none of them took a piss against any of the bases.

We also had races between the mascots and small kids around the bases and something called battle ball where small children put their upper bodies into an inflatable ball and then tried to concuss each other. They also sang Happy Birthday to those celebrating that day. Jen asked me if the song triggered any particular thoughts, which it didn’t. Turns out it was her birthday and I’d forgotten. Again. I like being married to someone who doesn’t make a deal about something like that. I suspect that some fellas in a similar situation may have ended up in a worse state than the battle ball kids.

Goldeneyes went three up early on and then twice finished an innings with the bases loaded but without adding to the score. It looked as if this might come back to bite them in the arse when the Pork Chops hit three single home runs, two of them in successive balls to level at three all in the sixth. The Canadians got away with it though running out five-three winners in the end.

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Chattanooga Lookouts v Birmingham Barons, Sunday 29th May 2022, 2.15pm

June 2, 2022

Bryant, Alabama was an enjoyable place to stay, and we spent four nights in a hut by a small fishing lake. There were plenty of opportunities to cook on an open fire and for watching squirrels and birds. At dusk and dawn I kept an eye out for the family of deer that we had been told would visit the lake. If they did show up then they managed to keep out of sight.

There were a couple of options for things to do nearby, one of which was Rock City, a park where you could walk through caves and between giant boulders. There was a view from the top of a hill that took in seven different states. Nearer to Bryant was a cave that was home to thousands of bats. We turned up at dusk to watch them exit one evening and it was a constant stream from both sides of the cave. Many of the bats flew over our heads but they didn’t hang around. It was interesting to see but not as good as the bigger fruit bats that we would watch at dusk in Darwin a few years ago.

Bryant is also handy for Chattanooga and it wasn’t much more than a half hour drive to the A T & T Stadium for some third-tier AA baseball between the Chattanooga Lookouts and the Birmingham Barons.

Top price seats were $14 for the lower box seats. We went for the next section up at $12 on the basis that it was more likely to have some shade. What we should have done is bought the $10 General Admission seats as they provided the best shade of all. If we’d done so we could have got in for free as Jen is an ex-soldier. They were also free to anyone making a foodbank contribution and at a reduced price to over fifty-fives like me.

As you would expect there were lots of food options. Jen got a pulled pork sandwich whilst I went for ‘bacon on a stick’. It was a single streaky rasher in a barbecue type sauce. I don’t see it catching on. If I hadn’t been driving, I could have chosen from a wide selection of beers.

Our seats in the upper box section were in the sunshine so we moved back to the unreserved General Admission seats higher in the stand. The stadium was small enough to provide a good view from just about everywhere and so we watched from under the shade provided by the roof.

We stood for a rendition of the national anthem that sounded like the strangling of a cat and then applauded those who had served in the military. I think it was just for US personnel rather than the likes of the Taliban. Jen gets a bit embarrassed to stand up for this sort of thing, perhaps because she didn’t ever get shot at, but it’s commonplace to make a fuss of service veterans over here.

I think that one of the best things about baseball is the variety of entertainment that takes place at the end of each innings. We started off with a bloke having to decide whether to swap a bobble head doll for a mystery prize. Apparently it might have been a million dollars but turned out to be a baseball cap. There was a contest where kids had to put on a tee shirt that was handed to them as a frozen block, a dizzy bat race, a ‘find the lady’ style cap shuffle, guess the crowd and a kid taking over as the stadium announcer.

There were a number of cam events too. We had a jump cam where people would leap in the air and a dance cam that seemed popular with the grannies. There was a smile cam, sponsored by a dentist, and an air guitar cam with a bloke on a podium who looked like he was grating cheese.

Highlight of the day was a Barons home run in the seventh that cleared the stand and ended up outside somewhere. The fielder didn’t even move. That one contributed to a seven-three lead for the visitors as the Lookouts started their ninth.

They managed to load the bases and threaten an epic comeback but couldn’t quite pull it off at the death and the score remained at seven-three to the Barons.

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Memphis Redbirds v Nashville Sounds, Tuesday 25th June 2019, 6.35pm

August 4, 2019

After Lynchburg we headed back into the mountains and along the Blue Ridge Highway. We stayed a couple of nights in a hut at the Fancy Gap campground which was close enough to a music place for us to nip up and listen to old people paying bluegrass on fiddles and banjoes. I doubt that they were paid for their efforts but it seemed a great way of getting them out of their wilderness cabins.

We moved further south along the highway, breaking the journey to Newlands with a stop at some museum. I didn’t really have much interest in its contents but that didn’t matter because we stumbled across a snake on the pathway up to it. It was just crossing from one grassy area to another and so we were able to stalk it. Jen reckoned that the shape of its head meant that it probably wasn’t venomous. It was moving slowly enough for me to have caught it but as I doubt that my medical insurance covers me for Steve Irwin-style mishaps we limited ourselves to photographing it in the undergrowth.

We had three nights at Newlands where it rained for much of the time. It was a decent place to be holed up though and with a creek running by the back of the house I was able to pass some time fishing for trout. I didn’t get as much of a bite with any of the flies that I was using but I didn’t break any rods either. It was enjoyable just being down by the river

Newlands was the last stop on the Blue Ridge Highway before the Smoky Mountains. We camped for three nights inside the national park at Big Creek Campground. Once again we were lucky enough to be next to a river and one afternoon I cooled off after an Appalachian trail hike by sitting up to my shoulders in the fast flowing water. I watched a humming bird hover a foot above the water looking for fish and it occurred to me that life rarely gets much better than this.

One morning I’d been cooking sausages and an orange spider appeared from under the table and started to eat some of the grease that was on the knife I’d used to prick them. I’m not usually scared of spiders but a spider with a knife cranks things up a level. He was a leg short, no doubt due to some past cutlery-related mishap but seemed friendly enough. If I’d known how much he was going to enjoy the sausage fat I’d have saved him some of my breakfast.

Big Creek signalled the end of the camping part of our trip and was followed by a couple of nights in each of Nashville and Memphis. We are heading back to Nashville on the return leg of the journey so I’ll describe that then and move on to Memphis now.

We were staying in an area described as ‘historically hip’ which to me just means ‘likely to be murdered’.  We got away with it though and were able to pay a visit to the Civil Rights museum which is based around the motel where Martin Luther King hadn’t been quite so lucky. We also did a tour of the Sun Studio where we stood in the small room where so many of those early rock’n’roll classics were recorded. It’s not really my kind of music, but I sort of wished it was.

Being in Memphis meant that we could take in a third baseball game of the trip. I think Memphis Redbirds are a triple A team, and so their contest with localish rivals Nashville Sounds was just one tier below the Major League. From what I understand that would mean that most, if not all, of the players involved would be contracted to a top tier team but were currently judged to be not quite up to the top flight and so were farmed out to one of their affiliates. I’m also told that an injury or form crisis in the MLB side means that players turning out for the Redbirds or Sounds can suddenly receive a top-tier call up, with their places at this level then being filled by some fella from a double AA team.

The Uber car that took us to the game had a small hole in the windscreen which I assessed to be about the size of a bullet. However our driver assured us that it had been caused by nothing more serious than someone throwing a rock at the car. That’s ok then.

We had pre-booked tickets at Autozone Park and after a cursory bag search we were up on the second tier beyond third base but not quite beyond the netting. There wasn’t a big crowd though, maybe a thousand in a ten thousand seater ball park and so it was easy enough to move a few seats along for an unobstructed view.

A lot of the people on our tier seemed to be on work trips out and as such many of them had little real interest in the baseball. I did wonder how such a low crowd would make the team viable but I suppose with the amount of money kicking around at the top level, funding an affiliate team is just seen as one more Major League expense.

There were some decent craft beer options at $8.75 which you could pretty much consider to be a tenner once you’d added the tip. Whilst it was cheaper than the Mets it’s still an expensive do. At those prices I doubt many people in the US get shitfaced in the way that I did when I attended baseball games in Korea.

There was a hint of rain in the air and so we moved downstairs after the first couple of innings to increase our chances of staying dry.

Both sides were quickly off the mark and as we reached the end of the third visitors Nashville had an 8-4 lead with the home pitcher having already been hooked for being too easy to hit. It slowed down somewhat after that with the main entertainment coming from a catch that one fella dropped only for a teammate to scoop it up before it it the turf.

Three hours is enough for me at these games and after getting the circulation going doing the seventh innings stretch, we kept moving all the way out of the gate. We didn’t miss much with Nashville adding a further two runs in the ninth for a 10-4 victory.

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Lynchburg Hillcats v Wilmington Blue Rocks , Friday 14th June 2019, 6pm

June 24, 2019

After the Mets game it was time to start what I regarded as the proper holiday. The plan was to drive down to Louisiana and Mississippi to see Jen’s family and then get back up to New York for the boat trip back. We had thirty days before embarkation and had plotted a route that took us along the Blue Ridge Highway to the Smoky  Mountains, then on to Nashville and Memphis before heading south for a few days  prior to a mad dash back for the boat.

We started with a couple of nights in Shenandoah National Park, staying in the nineteenth century paymasters cabin. Bedding must have been in short supply in the olden days as we had to use the sleeping bags that we’d brought for the nights when we’d be camping.

The big advantage of the park though was that the Appalachian Trail went past our cabin and so we had easy hiking options that didn’t require us to find a starting point. First day we hiked north and didn’t see very much at all in the woods. Second day we started earlier for the southern option and were rewarded with a deer, a few chipmunks and something in the undergrowth that was probably a groundhog.

After a drive along the skyline we spent the next two nights camping at Big Meadows in Virginia. This was also on the Appalachian trail and we hiked a circular route that detoured to Hollow Falls before rejoining the trail for the last section back to the campground.

Jen was walking in front as we turned a corner to discover a mid-sized black bear stretched out in the sun on a rock no more than about six feet ahead of us. It had probably been asleep but was quickly wide awake, frantically crashing through the bushes to get away from us. I’m not sure which of the three of us got the biggest shock but I now know that Jen’s go to expletive in times of high stress is “Holy Fuck!”.

I’m pleased to say that over the past nine years, I don’t recall doing anything to trigger that particular response. The bear paused briefly about fifteen yards away to stare at us, no doubt muttering something similar to itself, before ambling off into the woods.

Back at the campground we discovered a second bear wandering around close to our tent. This one was much smaller and probably less than two years old. It didn’t seem interested in us, preferring to spend its time digging up roots. If we got close it would move away, occasionally grabbing a tree trunk but never bothering to climb up. At one point it halfheartedly chased a deer that got too close but I think they both knew that the gesture was more for show. After an hour or so a warden turned up with an air horn and what looked like a paintball gun to chase the bear away into the woods.

Our next stop took us out of the mountains for a couple of days and into Lynchburg. This gave us the opportunity to take in a minor league baseball game at the City Stadium.

I’d booked the seats online a few months earlier, opting for the $8 unreserved ‘bleacher’ seating mainly for the flexibility of being able to choose who I sat near to. If I’d wanted, I could have had a seat behind the plate for $15, but I’m not overly keen on looking through netting. It’s like those sensors or what ever in a car windscreen. Once you’ve noticed it, it’s hard to filter it back out again.

Our tickets were easily collected from the ‘Will Call’ line at the ticket office. I didn’t even need to show ID, just told them who I was and the bloke behind the counter readily handed them over.  As we made our way into the stadium we were given pink tee shirts as part of a mammogram awareness campaign and then a bag each for putting them in. It all seemed a lot for an $8 dollar ticket.

Once inside, we chose ‘bleacher’ seats at third base, just beyond the netting and in the shade. Best seats in the house in my opinion. There were plenty of bars selling beer at less than half the price than at the Mets the previous week, but I was driving this time so wasn’t able to take advantage.

Local side Hillcats were supporting the mammogram campaign with one-off pink player jerseys that were being auctioned off after the game. This fixture was the sixth in a run of eight consecutive daily meetings in the Carolina League between the two sides. The visitors, Wilmington Blue Rocks, had been having the better season but had struggled in the recent head-to heads.

A lot of the crowd seemed to know each other, although I’d expect exactly that in the UK at a lower level football game with a smallish attendance. There were a few college kids in who gave the impression that it might have been their first night ever on the drink, but we’ve all been there.

As we reached the sixth innings Jen and I moved around to the seats at first base for a different vantage point. This coincided with the sunning starting to set and for a while, until the full benefit of the floodlights kicked in, I thought the twilight conditions were a significant disadvantage to everyone other than the pitcher.

Our move coincided with the opening of the scoring, with the Blue Rocks scoring two runs in the sixth, before the Hillcats countered with one of their own.  A third run for the visitors in the eighth was enough to clinch the win.

Overall it was a much better evening out than the Mets game had been. Warmer weather, cheaper prices and a smaller, more traditional ground all outweighed the drop in playing standards that I’m not experienced enough to notice anyway.

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New York Mets v Colorado Rockies, Saturday 8th June 2019, 7.15pm

June 14, 2019

It’s a while since I’ve been to a sporting event, the last one being a football game in Spain three months ago. There has been stuff going on in Malaysia but with it being so hot and with Ramadan kicking in, the matches haven’t been starting until 10pm and that’s too late for me. Shame really, as ex-Boro player Herold Goulon was in town recently with his Pahang team. I’d seen him play for the reserves at Central Avenue  a few years ago and thought it might be worth seeing how he was doing these days, but my curiosity wasn’t enough to justify a midnight finish.

It will be unlikely that I’ll see any more Malaysian sport now as I’ve finished my contract at the power station. Three years was enough to see whatever I wanted to in the region and I’m gambling that after a bit of a break I’ll be able to pick something up closer to home. My daughter and grandkids came out for a holiday before we left and we took a trip over to Sarawak to get up close to the proboscis monkeys and wild pigs.

proboscus monkey

After flying back and making full use of everybody’s luggage allowance Jen and I set off for a holiday in the States. I’d not been since we got married in 2013 and so felt it was time to catch up with her family and see a bit more of the place. To make it more of a trip we went by boat from Southampton, a seven night crossing on the Queen Mary 2.

Queen Mary 2

I really enjoyed doing very little for a week. Internet access was slow and expensive so I barely bothered with it. Instead, I wandered around the deck and rounded off my evenings in the cigar lounge in the company of Roy Walker. I didn’t get around to seeing his show but he’s a very nice fella to smoke Cubans with and not at all ‘big-time’.

We were late into New York after diverting to Canada to drop off a passenger who wasn’t well. This meant that we arrived in the daylight rather than before dawn. Disembarkation was slow and so we spent a couple of hours on the deck loungers watching the river traffic on the Hudson go about their business.

Statue of liberty

Our first couple of US nights were in Long Island. I liked that it wasn’t full of tourists. I’m a tourist, but I’m happy to avoid the bustle of others if I can. It didn’t take long to get into Manhattan on the subway and so were were able to catch up with Jen’s brother and sister who live there whilst I walked around with my head tilted back in classic tourist pose looking up at the skyscrapers.

empire state building

I’d booked tickets for the Mets baseball a few months ago, but was spoiled for choice when the day came. GGG was fighting at Madison Square Garden and there was a big race meeting at the Belmont Horse Track. I’d probably have preferred the boxing but thought I might as well stick to the original plan rather than waste the $51 tickets.

We took the subway to Citi Field and had a wander around outside the stadium. Our seats were in the Bullpen section which is around by second base. It was fairly busy getting in but our phone tickets were scanned successfully and we were carrying nothing that attracted the attention of the security blokes.

citi field

Once inside, I headed for the beer queue. It was a short queue mainly because they wanted a minimum of eleven dollars for a beer. That’s about nine quid. I’m on my holidays though so we ordered a couple of twelve dollar Stellas to be greeted with “Do you have ID, Sir?”

As I’m fifty-four I rarely get asked for proof of age these days and I didn’t have anything suitable with me. Fortunately the lady behind the bar suggested that I get someone else to buy it for me and the person behind was happy to go through the pointless charade of taking my money, handing it to the bartender and then completing the reverse process with our drinks. After all the fuss I was happy to settle for the single round.

citi field concourse

Our seats were in the middle tier, but with it being a sharp incline we seemed close to the action.  I was surprised by how many empty seats there were though. It filled up over the first hour but there always seemed to be as many fans in the concourses as there were in the stands. It wasn’t helped by the chilly weather though or by the wind blowing through the seats.

citi field second tier

Whilst I’ve seen a lot of baseball, this was my first Major League game. To be honest, I wasn’t that impressed.  The balance between bat and ball seemed out of kilter with only the one decent hit in the time we were there. Too many of the pitches were top-edged into the crowd behind. The pitchers slowed the entertainment down by opting all too frequently to try and run out batters already on bases who were attempting to sneak a yard. Just get on with it.

One of the best things about the game was that the pitchers have to have a bat. None of that replacing with a pinch hitter nonsense. One had a really low average but was happy to have a slog which is what I’d have hoped all the batters would be doing.

citi field

Long before the end we’d had enough. A combination of little in the way of action, the arse on of obtaining an expensive beer and the cold wind blasting around us meant that we cut the evening short in the fifth innings with the Mets a run ahead. They added another after we’d left for a 5-3 win. In hindsight I should have gone to the boxing.

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Brothers v Guardians, Saturday 21st April 2018, 5.05pm

May 21, 2018

The first weekend after returning from Europe we headed off to Taiwan. It’s more than four hours flying time from Kuala Lumpur, but that doesn’t seem such a big deal after the thirteen hour flights to and from London.

First up was the baseball game at the Xinzhuang stadium between the Brothers and the Guardians. It’s the home stadium of the Guardians but baseball for some reason, lists the away team first. We’d booked a hotel just around the corner and so had no more than a short walk to the ballpark. We spotted a few black squirrels scampering around that looked larger than the grey squirrels in the UK.

As we approached the ticket office I was still in two minds as to where to sit. My preference is usually for the free-seating outfield seats, the ‘bleachers’ as they are known in America. It’s mainly because I’m anti-social and want the option of sitting apart from my fellow spectators if they are making a nuisance of themselves. Although I’ve also an aversion to watching a game through a protective net and by sitting far enough away I can get an unobstructed, if somewhat distant, view.

However, it looked like rain was in the air and so I had to consider whether to go for something in the main stand that was undercover. In the end, my preference for being as far away from other people made the bleachers worth the risk and so we paid 250 dollars (six quid) each for outfield seats.

It turned out to be the right decision as the rain held off all evening. In fact, in hindsight, the cloud cover might have been smog rather than a potential downpour. We’d seen a fair bit of industry on the way in, which didn’t surprise me as when I was a kid it seemed as if everything made from plastic had been produced in Taiwan. So, bad for the lungs I suppose, but less need for an umbrella.

As I was unsure as to what refreshments would be available I brought a selection of beers in with me. Some of it was local, but I also played safe with stocks of a couple of Japanese beers. I usually plump for Asahi in these situations but on this occasion I supplemented the ‘Gold Medal’ Taiwan Beer with Kirin and Sapporo instead. I thought the local stuff tasted a little soapy, which I doubt very much is the flavour that they were striving for.

We’d selected our seats well as most of the visiting racket came from the section on the other side of the scoreboard. They had drums, a brass section and a megaphone or two. The singing section for the home fans was up to our left in the covered stand. Far enough away to be of minimal disturbance.

There were a few home fans near to us who piped up later in the game, but it was easy enough for us to shift along a block or two for a different and quieter vantage point.

The Brothers, who were wearing a mismatched grey kit that looked as if the trousers had been washed on a hot setting a lot more frequently than the shirts, took a 9-0 lead. There was a brief fight back from the Guardians that I thought might let them make a game of it, but in the end the Brothers ran out convincing 15-4 winners.

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Lamigo Monkeys v Elephant Brothers, Saturday 9th September 2017, 5.05pm

November 8, 2017

I’ve not been to the baseball for a while, or at least to a proper game. Jen and I went to a game in Darwin a couple of years ago that turned out to be little more than a knockabout and an excuse for a picnic. I’m not even sure that they kept score. As it’s more than four years since we left Korea, it must be that long since we’ve seen a baseball game. Never mind, a brief visit to Taiwan gave us the chance to put things right.

The baseball was actually a fallback option as the trip had been primarily to see a football game. However the Taiwan Premier League appears to be less organised than the lower divisions of the Stockton Sunday League and the game that we’d planned to see had been shunted, with minimal publicity, a couple of hundred miles to the other end of the island.

Whatever, an evening at the baseball makes a fine alternative and so we took a taxi to the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium. The area around the stadium was as busy as the roads on the way there had been and fans milled around the perimeter, making their way to the various gates.

We did an entire lap before finding the ticket office and after weighing up whether the home or away sections would be emptier we opted for outfield seats on the Monkey side of the bleachers. I can’t remember how much it cost to get in and the ticket doesn’t really make it clear. It might have been 350 Taiwanese dollars, which is about nine quid. Alternatively, that 350 figure might have been a block number or something. Sorry.

We got inside early in the first innings and found seats in an emptyish area towards the back. The section gradually filled up as the game went on with a mixture of families, couples and small groups of friends. I hadn’t been sure of the rules about bringing drink in and so hadn’t brought any beer with me. My gamble paid off though as I was able to buy reasonably cold cans of something that turned out to be made by OB, a Korean brewer. Or at least under licence from them. It seemed quite appropriate for the baseball and took me back a few years to the evenings spent at Jamsil.

Elephant Brothers had a few hundred fans to our left making a decent racket and overall the seventeen thousand attendance was pretty impressive. I’d forgotten most of the nuances of the sport and a fair proportion of the rules but it didn’t really matter. I’m happy just to sit with a beer as the sun goes down and wait for someone to twat the ball over the fence.

The visitors took the lead in the second innings and after being pegged back regained the advantage in the seventh. Lamingo Monkeys levelled in the eighth at 3-3 and then nicked a winner. I think they are having the better season of the two teams but I could be wrong. Fifty percent chance that I am.

As the game drew to a close we were turfed out of our seats by stewards who I think were setting up for a post-game concert and firework show. We watched the final balls from the posh seats down the side before nipping out and having the good fortune to quickly find a cab. All in all, it was very similar to going to the baseball in Korea and that’s a good thing.

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