I don’t know why I didn’t think to do it until yesterday, but I decided to listen to the radio broadcasts of my foul ball. No mention of the catch on the Padres broadcast, but they talked about it on WFAN! Click Play to listen. 🙂
JetBlue is offering an All-You-Can-Jet pass for $599. It inspired me to take a trip, since I certainly have the time right now. All the flights are booked, but I haven’t finalized hotel, car, and baseball ticket details yet. Still working on that, but it’ll all come together soon. My itinerary:
9/7 SBA to LAX AA 3042 1:45PM-2:30PM LAX to LAS AA 741 4:25PM-5:40PM 9/8 LAS to JFK JetBlue 192 11:15AM-7:39PM 9/9 TB @ NYY 7:05PM 9/10 FLA @ NYM 7:10PM 9/11 NYM @ PHI 7:05PM 9/12 9/13 WAS @ NYG 4:15PM 9/14 JFK to BOS JetBlue 1012 1:35PM-2:36PM 9/15 ANA @ BOS 7:10PM 9/16 ANA @ BOS 7:10PM 9/17 BOS to TPA JetBlue 441 8:35AM-11:50AM 9/18 TOR @ TB 7:38PM 9/19 MCO to IAD JetBlue 334 1:15PM-3:19PM 9/20 BOS @ BAL 1:35PM 9/21 9/22 LAD @ WAS 7:05PM 9/23 IAD to FLL JetBlue 301 8:00AM-10:33AM 9/24 9/25 NYM @ FLA 7:10PM 9/26 NYM @ FLA 7:10PM 9/27 FLL to JFK JetBlue 146 8:45AM-11:27AM 9/28 9/29 9/30 JFK to DEN JetBlue 125 7:55AM-10:16AM 10/1 MIL @ COL 1:10PM 10/2 DEN to SEA Frontier 835 12:18PM-2:09PM 10/3 TEX @ SEA TBD 10/4 TEX @ SEA 1:10PM 10/5 SEA to LGB JetBlue 293 11:25AM-2:00PM LGB to LAS JetBlue 286 2:50PM-4:00PM 10/8 LAS to LAX AA 776 6:35PM-7:25PM LAX to SBA AA 3035 9:00PM-9:40PM
As I said, baseball tickets and hotels are not booked yet. If any of you are in those areas and want to go to a game, please let me know! If you can offer me a couch to crash on, that would be appreciated, too. 🙂
This trip has 13 games in 10 stadiums (Citi Field being the only one I’ve been to – 9 new stadiums!), plus the Giants season opener, if I decide to spend the money for a ticket to that. Gonna be fun.
I went to see the Mets play in San Diego on Saturday, a 3-1 loss dropping my season record to 2-8. Traffic on the way down was hell, I had just lost a bunch of money playing poker, and was in a pretty bad mood when I got there. Alex Cora, the second batter of the game, hit a home run to put the Mets up 1-0. That helped. Then, in the third inning, David Wright fouled a ball back that cheered me right up. Those of you who follow me on Twitter were the first to know…
Earlier this year, I caught a batting practice home run in San Francisco, right over the right field wall. That thrill was a highlight, much like discovering non gamstop casinos in the UK for the first time – unexpected and exhilarating. But let’s be honest, it was just batting practice. I couldn’t even tell you who hit it; just someone on the Giants, I suppose. Fast forward to Saturday, there I was, front row in the Toyota Terrace, section 203, at PETCO Park. As the game kicked off, the guy next to me was probing some teenagers he knew in the row behind about whether they’d brought their gloves to snag a foul ball. I waved my own mitt in the air and said I was ready. They just chuckled and ribbed me for my Mets allegiance.
The ball came back off the bat fast. I jumped out of my seat, reached up as high as I could, and it hit right in the pocket of my glove. The next minute or so was a blur. I sent off a tweet, a few text messages, some messages to Facebook. Took a picture of the ball. Missed Wright, whose jersey I was wearing, striking out to end the at bat. But at that moment, I didn’t care. I’ve been going to games for a long time, and always bring my glove. This was the first time I’d ever caught a ball during a game. A few times I’ve gotten balls that outfielders threw into the stands after warming up between innings, and once after catching the third out. That’s just not the same.
My next thought was wondering if I got on TV. When I got back to a computer, I checked both the Mets and Padres archived games on MLB.tv. Sadly, the camera stayed on Wright at the plate. I did notice something I completely missed at the game, though: I got a nice cheer from the crowd for my catch. I spent yesterday trying to figure out how to save that clip. A little hacking around with mlbviewer and mplayer, and I was able to do so.
So I now have a batting practice home run, and a foul ball from a game. Next step: catching a game home run.
Two and a half years ago, I switched from a long line of Treos (180, 270, 600, 650, over 5 years) to a Blackberry Pearl. When I first got it, I loved it. I did for about a year and a half, and then things started to go downhill. An operating system memory leak would cause it to slow down to almost unusable speed. T-Mobile’s coverage in my area seemingly got worse, somehow (all my Treos were also on T-Mobile). An OS update temporarily fixed the memory problem and made it usable again for a while, but then it came back. It would sit there for several minutes at a time with just a spinning hourglass, accepting no user input.
Finally, on Saturday, I made the switch back to Palm, though it’s a brand new operating system. I got to the Sprint store at 6am, and was second in line. The store opened at 8, and by 8:30 I was all set up with my number ported to Sprint. I now own a Palm Pre. At the moment, I’m thrilled with it. Let’s see if I still feel that way in a year and a half…
There are only a few applications available for it at the moment, and I’m still waiting on the SDK, but it can do most of what I want. The web browser is phenomenal. Far better than Safari on my iPod touch. The Touchstone inductive charger is neat. The battery life is crap, but that was to be expected. At least I can carry around a second battery with me if I need to, because it’s user replaceable.
With Classic, I am able to finally use Frames on my phone again, and don’t need to keep an extra Palm (Z22, which I will probably sell) at the bowling alley. My iPod touch (or an iPhone) is capable of doing this, but Apple won’t allow the software to be released. Just another reason I was convinced not to get an iPhone.
It’s better than the iPod touch as a photo viewer, because it gives me more control over the size and display of the images. If only it had more storage space, I might be able to replace my iPod touch as well. I might anyway, thanks to Pandora. I might just listen to that most of the time now, anyway. I’ll probably go through my music library and put a bunch of stuff on the Pre, though.
The Sporting News Pro Baseball app added all the Mets games to my Pre calendar. Supposedly, it will give me in game notifications during the games. I’ll find out tomorrow how well that works. The application does make it easy to check scores and see current game situations without notifications, as well.
The device also comes with Sprint Navigation, which gives me full turn by turn voice navigation. I’ve already used it once (though I knew where I was going) to try it, and it works very well.
Oh yeah, it works pretty well as a phone, too. Overall, very happy with my decision to switch back to Palm, even after today’s announcements from Apple about new iPhone features.
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