Monday Monday 9.29.2008 Part II

When most people envision the perfect vacation, they consider spending some time on the water. This vision might include a cruise through the Caribbean, camping by a lake, or lying somewhere on one of the world’s great beaches, but water took on a different role during our battleground state vacation seemed. The Pittsburgh and Cincinnati portions of Road Trip 2008 utilized water as a picturesque backdrop for our baseball stadium tour.

We left Cleveland two Sundays ago at about 8:30 in the morning heading for the Steel City of Pittsburgh to see the home of the team locally known as “the Bucs.” Although the nickname remains a shortened version of the word Buccaneers, please note that the team in Pittsburgh happens to be the Pirates of Major League Baseball and not those shoulder pad wearing heavyweights from Tampa Bay (also known as the Buccaneers). In a previous email, I mentioned that my favorite stadium to date was Comerica Park: a great park made for the Detroit Tigers in a city known more for their abundance of violent crimes than for their proficiency on the baseball diamond. However after making a short stop in Pittsburgh, my opinion has changed. Baseball has been a part of the Pittsburgh culture almost as long as steel has been a part of their economy, but PNC Park perfectly combines the city’s history of steel with their tradition of baseball.

We arrived in Pittsburgh a little early, but not too uncomfortably early as we had adequate time to properly survey each and every side of the stadium before the gates opened. I should mention that we borrowed Gerard’s GPS for this trip, and it caused me a lot of stress both leaving Cleveland and arriving in Pittsburgh. In other words, we couldn’t get it to turn on when leaving Cleveland and we couldn’t get it to stay on while approaching Pittsburgh. Luckily we did manage to get the GPS to start and Cleveland and a baseball stadium makes for a rather easy target when entering the downtown strip of a smaller city. Not unlike a lot of older cities in this world, Pittsburgh has a river (the Alleghany) running through it giving me both a third and fourth dimension by which to characterize the city: baseball, steel, bridges, and water. The only problem with all of this is that the phrase “bridge to nowhere” comes into full affect because making one wrong turn might have you crossing a bridge that leads you somewhere you don’t necessarily want to be.

Provided you find your way (as we did), you can start your Pittsburgh experience by walking across the closed off Roberto Clemente Bridge that connects the middle of downtown with the stretch of property containing PNC Park. This bridge although usually open to traffic, remains closed on game days providing safe passage for fans to cross.

Entering the stadium, we were handed bobleheads depicting some of the all time Pirate greats (something I didn’t know the Pirates ever had).This is only worth mentioning as it is one of the most impressive stadium gifts since Petco Park gave me $1 hot dogs and sodas. I don’t have a whole lot of game highlights to give, but I will say that this marked the final Pirate home game of the season and as such I couldn’t find a Helmet Sundae because they were out of Helmets. In any event, our seats were on the second level, but good nonetheless and provided an excellent view of the steel Roberto Clemente Bridge and the Alleghany River below.

Although I could continue narrating our relatively brief trip to Pittsburgh, I feel it prudent to move along as I have used up about 500 words on Pittsburgh and I still have at least one more city to go before calling it quits on Part II of this weeks Monday Monday email.
Maggie and I grabbed a bite to eat at the Pittsburgh Hard Rock Café before departing the city for Cincinnati. That’s right folks, there will be no staying overnight in Pittsburgh because we’re on a mission and the Cincinnati game begins the next day at 1:00PM.

As I said before, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati are both characterized by their rivers. Where Pittsburgh’s history is in steel, Cincinnati has a rich history of using the Ohio River as a border between Kentucky and Ohio. Although this might not seem like a very significant border, it’s somewhat important to note that crossing the Ohio River from Kentucky to Ohio in the years before the signing of the emancipation proclamation meant a chance for freedom. In fact, Cincinnati has a history as a key stop for slaves traveling the Underground Railroad. I gathered this small history lesson at our last stop in Cincinnati: The Freedom Center (Underground Railroad Museum).

From our hotel room in Covington, Kentucky, we could see a number of bridges crossing the river and both major sport stadiums. We visited Cincinnati for the Great American Ballpark, so I might better get to that segment of the email before I end up droning on for three pages. We paid about $15 per ticket for 500 Level seating, but fortunately the hometown Reds were playing a makeup game against the Florida Marlins (also the Reds last home game) and the good people of Cincinnati were all at work for this particular Monday afternoon. I say “fortunate” because the good people of Cincinnati sold so few tickets that they closed off the 500 level, the 400 level, the 300 level, and the 200 level. Maggie and I sat about 20 rows back behind the home team dugout. In other words, our tickets were upgraded by a leaps and bounds of dollars and they were made comparable to the Dodgers and Mets game we went to earlier this year.

As for the stadium itself, I would say it, like Pittsburgh, embraces its relationship with the river by allowing the outfield to open up to the river. I would wager a guess that if we were sitting in the 500 level seats that we bough, we would have had an excellent view of the river. I guess that is the only unfortunate thing about sitting in 100 level seats; good for watching the game and bad for watching the boats go by. Cincinnati, unlike Pittsburgh, displays its relationship with the river by decorating the Great American Ballpark with a huge steamboat in Center Field. In fact, the whole city seems dedicated to the steamboat era.

In a game that meant absolutely nothing to anyone because the Reds and the Marlins weren’t really competing for a spot in the playoffs, I would say that the game in Great American Ballpark made for the best show and for once we actually did see the home team win. The Reds were trailing by half a dozen runs going into the seventh inning, but the fans put on their rally caps and the Reds found a way to score big to win the game.

We followed up the game with a trip to the Montgomery Inn (Boathouse Location) where I had some of the best BBQ sauce that I have ever had. This might sound like blasphemy, but it completely blows Dinosaur BBQ and Sticky Lips out of the water. I have a quart of the sauce in my possession as evidence. This was also probably the nicest dinner that Maggie and I had the entire trip as we sat in a nice white table cloth restaurant watching barges of coal go down the Ohio River.

Later that evening, we went to a live showing of WWE’s Monday Night Raw. Although I hate to say it, I have been fairly disappointed with the WWE product in recent months. Don’t get me wrong, WrestleMania 25 in Houston is still calling my name, but I hope the industry turns around by then. One thing I can say with some degree of confidence, whenever we go to watch Professional Wrestling, Maggie and I are definitely the best two looking people in the arena. 25,000 people and not a bra, tooth, shower, or belt between them. . .

The next morning we hit the Aquarium and the Underground Railroad Museum before hitting the road on the way back to Pittsburgh to spend the night in a hotel just off the highway. The only purpose of spending the night here was to make a halfway point between Cincinnati and Philly. I had full intentions of detailing our Philadelphia trip in this email, but since I am approaching three full pages of text. . . .it will have to wait until Part III.

Have A Great Day and I Hope You’re Reading,

Ryan