Welcome!! (Pittsburgh)

Hello everyone! Welcome to the Official Blog of Ryan and Matt's MLB Stadium Road Trip 2010. We will be trying to post as often as possible, and really wherever we can find internet. Currently, we thank Maggie Reid and Alexa Stefanko for their hospitality (and internet). I will be attaching a picture to each of the posts I do here, but if you have a facebook account, you can see all of my photos on my profile.

My day started yesterday at 5 a.m. when I woke up to finish grading papers, writing final evaluations, and driving to my place of business to drop them off. I also (started and) finished packing my suitcase for the trip. After picking Ryan up, we were on the road at about 9:30. Luckily, the GPS took us the scenic route to Pittsburgh, and the drive was not bad at all. Ryan and I began our search to see a license plate from every U.S state. We found more than half on the first day! Also, there was a parade of cars from Canada, so we got bonus points for seeing license plates from two different provinces.

Once at the ball park, we wandered over to the right field porch for batting practice hoping to catch a big fly. As I was fumbling with my camera and Ryan was checking his phone, we heard a faint "Hey, look out..." and then Ryan was hit in the stomach with something. My first instinct was to protect my camera. I don't think Ryan minded though, because he got a home-run ball!

The ball game was fun to watch, because we saw a lot of scoring. (Houston @ Pittsburgh, who would have guessed?) Lessons learned: When trying to keep a scorecard for a NL game, bring a pencil. At around the 8th inning, we decided to walk around the ball park to view the game from a different angle. We moved from our seats under the video scoreboard in left field, around the outfield to the first base line. After the Pirates went up by 6 runs, a lot of fans left (the stadium was almost full capacity... again, who would have guessed?) so we moved into field-level seats for the top of the 9th. We even saw a spectacular fireworks show after the game!

Once the finale was over, Ryan and I made our way back to the car, and drove through the night to Cincinnati. We arrived at Maggie's at around 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, got some sleep, and woke up to do it all again!

Stay tuned for an update on today's game - Colorado @ Cincinnati.

-Matt