Baseball (3) - Orioles Park at Camden Yards

Part of my plan for my visit to DC was to go to two more baseball games, an Orioles game and an Nationals game. I knew that my good friend Bill, also a baseball fan, would help me out. So on Tuesday night, we braved the rush hour traffic and went to Baltimore. We had excellent seats, about in the 20th row. 

How did we get such good seats? StubHub! People re-sell their game tickets on this site, and the closer it gets to game time, the cheaper the tickets usually are, since if they don't sell, the sellers get nothing. In fact, one guy we met suggested waiting until a few minutes until game time, because then they get really cheap. Of course, you must have a smart phone, because you can just download the tickets to your phone, show your phone at the gate, and in you go!  It's a brave new world.

My culinary choice in Baltimore was an 'Old Bay sausage,' which was a sausage with Old Bay seasoning, famous in Maryland. It was spicy and quite good. The only down side was that it had been raining for about an hour prior to the start of the game, but they had the infield covered, and it ended up starting about 20 minutes late. The above photo is the first pitch, and if you zoom in, you'll see a white streak just to the left of first base. That's the ball.

Of course, during the second hitter's at-bat, it started raining again, and we had to suffer through a two-hour rain delay this time. Below is the grounds crew putting away the tarp and spreading more dry dirt on the infield.

You can also see beyond right field a large warehouse. Between the park and this building was a long "alley," where much of the food was sold. It gave the park a nice feel, similar to Wrigley, being in the middle of the city.

After about the 7th inning, since there were so few people at the game, and so few left, they invited all the fans to move to any seat that was empty. So we moved down to about the 8th row, just behind home plate.

During some pitch, it could have been this one, the batter hit the ball and broke his bat. The top half of the bat flew into the stands right toward us! It hit one of the guys in the orange shirts a few rows ahead of us, bounced off, and was caught by a kid a few seats to the left. Luckily nobody was hurt. The bat was sharp. 

Finally, the game ended at 12:20am, with a 5-4 win for the Orioles over the Reds, and we drove back to DC. A long (but fun) night.