Perfect Day

On Saturday night, around midnight, I boarded a Greyhound bus in Miami headed for New York City. It turned out to be among the least pleasant thirty-three hours I have experienced this year, but the previous thirteen days made them bearable. The trip from Miami, which ended today at around 9:30 AM, and the other thirteen days provided many memorable experiences. Over the course of the next few weeks, I will be sharing these experiences with you. For now, we'll have to settle for a few basics which will form the foundation that the rest of my stories will build upon. While you read, perhaps you'd enjoy some music. Here's a great song from Lou Reed, with lyrics that have a special meaning for the most incredible experience I had on my trip and in my lifetime of watching baseball games in person (see item 4 below).

1. I left New York at 10:15 PM on Sunday, May 16 from the Port Authority Bus Terminal and arrived at this same terminal today at 9:30 AM, which means that my trip lasted two weeks, eleven hours, and fifteen minutes.
2. During these two weeks, I saw eleven baseball games in ten different cities, with Chicago being the only city where I saw two (two teams in Chicago, two different stadiums).
3. My first day was the most disappointing. Knowing that it was likely to rain, I hoped that they would at least play a few innings in Detroit. I even was able to walk around beautiful Comerica Park (a major upgrade in terms of architecture from the old Tiger Stadium that I visited as a child, but a downgrade in terms of history), teased by employees there who thought they would play the game. The game didn't happen and Detroit seemed like a ghost town. It was not a fun start to the trip.
4. My last day was, without a doubt, the most incredible game I have ever seen in person. Before I left on my trip, I knew that Roy Halladay (the best pitcher in baseball, if you ask me) was probably going to pitch on May 29 in Miami. Miami was the last stop on my trip and my law school friend from Miami and I bought tickets a few hours before it started (see ticket in picture above). The day of the game had a 50 percent chance of rain, but everything cleared up perfectly for the match-up between the Philadelphia Phillies and Florida Marlins. Roy Halladay did pitch, and he threw a perfect game. No Marlin safely reached first base. Twenty-seven at bats became twenty-seven outs. He allowed no hits or walks and hit no batters. His team committed no errors. It was my first time in Miami and I still can't believe my luck to have witnessed that. In the eighteen perfect games that have occurred since the beginning of the twentieth century (two occurred in 1880, for which there are no records of how many were in attendance), 482,785 fans have seen perfect games in person. That number might be off because I think it might count ticket sales instead of actual attendance. In any case, that is not many considering how many people have been alive in the past 110 years. I am glad that it was 482,785 instead of 482,784, and haven't been able to wipe off the smile since Saturday. There will be plenty more on this later.
   
5. My bus rides covered over 6400 miles. Greyhound people are interesting. I can't criticize them too much because I have been one for two weeks. There were some normal people, some shady looking people, some weird people, and some crazy people. I guess it wasn't much different from being in the elevators in my building here in New York . . . except I never slept on the elevators or spent hours on end in them. The stories from the actual bus trips do not have anything to do with baseball but are some things that you will be reading about in the near future.

Those are some of the basics. Tomorrow or Wednesday I will post again either about the first day or the last day. I am not sure if I prefer to ride the momentum of the perfect game and post about it now or to continue in chronological order as I had planned. In any case, something enjoyable should be up soon.