Burgers, brats, beer, baseball and fireworks.
Yesterday morning, we left Grand Junction, stopping off at Sonic for some drive-in burgers. From there, we finished the about 250-mile drive to Denver, across Colorado and some of the most beautiful scenery we’ve seen since British Columbia.
We made great time, getting to the park a little over two hours before the first pitch. We beat the crowds to a nearby bar called Lodo’s, where we grabbed pints. Justin left early to go check out the park, while John and I hung around.
We caught the start of the game on the TVs at the bar, watching the Marlins jump out to a quick 5-0 lead. When Florida scored another two in the top of the 2nd, taking a 7-1 lead, we decided to take our time, since the game didn’t look very interesting.
We finally walked over to the park in the 4th, at which point Florida was up 13-4. In the 5th, I decided to explore the park, searching for the mini-doughnuts that the New York Times had raved about. Ended up having to go all the way down to the field level (we were in the 300 section), near the first base foul pole; but I found them and they were delicious.
I got back between the 5th and 6th to see that the Rockies had closed the Marlins’ lead to four — suddenly, we had a close game.
With three more in the 6th, the Rockies brought the score to 13-12; the Marlins added another four in the top of the 7th, before a Matt Holliday grand slam in the bottom of the 7th gave us a 17-16 game.
In the bottom of the 9th, Garrett Atkins hit an RBI-single before the Rockies loaded the bases — with no outs — setting up a walk-off single by Chris Iannetta, scoring Holliday and giving the Rockies an 18-17 win.
For our 30th ballpark, John and I couldn’t have asked for a much better game.
Holliday told the AP afterwards: “If people came for the fireworks, they got more than the postgame fireworks. They got their money’s worth. Almost 40 runs, 40 hits.”
The postgame fireworks presumably were the reason that over 48,000 fans showed up for the game, making for a nearly packed house and a great environment to watch a come-from-behind win like last night’s.
Had we been sitting in the outfield, we could’ve gone down and sat on the field to watch the fireworks, but we had great upper deck seats behind home plate to catch the show. Always tough to get good pictures of fireworks, but got a few good videos.
We got on the road for a short while after the show, settling in Limon, Colorado, leaving us a little over 700 miles to traverse today, across what will be an uneventful drive through Kansas.
We’ll get to St. Louis tonight, where we’ll spend the next three nights at John’s place. Though yesterday was our last new ballpark, we still have one more game between the Cardinals and Cubs tomorrow afternoon at Busch Stadium. John and I saw a game there last year; for Justin, it will be his 25th park.
It was funny. Thursday night, the three of us sat around debating which parks we liked best and what had been the best game we had ever been to.
Though I’m still going to have to put some thought into my favorite park, the best game definitely was last night’s: the perfect combination of an All-American game on Independence Day with two great friends, along with beer, brats and fireworks.
30 down, 0 to go.
The Phallic Road Trip 