Ok my turn

Well, I have let Izzy chronicle the trip so far. First, let me clarify that in no way have I been impressed with the Cleveland festival or the North Halstead portions of the trip. Izzy seems to have a 6th sense of finding these parts of the trip and I feel very uncomfortable...

We have seen some impressive games so far. I agree with Izzy that Wrigley was the highlight of the trip thus far. PNC park was nice in the fact that it is along the river and we had really nice seats down the right field line. More White Sox fans than Pirates fans so it was a mixed game. The Pirates pulled out a surprise 4-2 victory over the White Sox thanks to a good pitching performance from Paul Malholm. No home runs in the game and no shots down the line for us to get a home run ball. All in all not the most exciting of games, but we had a good time with 26,647 other baseball fans. Highlight had to be the footlong hotdog.

Saturday had us at Jacobs Field to see John Smoltz pitch against Paul Byrd. Smoltz is a future hall of famer and Byrd has only walked 4 batters all year. Smoltz started off by striking out the first 6 guys which was cool. He ended up winning the game 6-2 with Edgar Renteria with the first home run of our trip. 35,153 fans with 1/2 of them being Braves fans. The highlight of this game for me was getting my first foul ball off of the bat Chris Woodward of the Braves.

In Cleveland we also got to hear a little Jimmy Buffett outside the stadium where they had brought in sand for "beach week". That was unexpected and pretty cool too - except Izzy taking his shirt off during the concert!

Sunday had us at the "Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field". This has been the best game so far. First because of it being a sunny day game in Chicago and two because the balls were flying out of the ballpark. Unfortunately for the 40,964 Chicago Cubs fans (I don't think we saw more than 2 Padres fans) the team from San Diego won 11-3. We saw 5 homers from the visiting team and Mike Cameron hit 2 for the day. We also saw Adrian Gonzalez and Mike Cameron hit back-to-back homers in the 3rd inning. The day before the Cubs and Padres had a big brawl and a no-hitter which went into the 7th inning - all of which we missed by a day. Another baseball highlight of the day was seeing Greg Maddux win his 339th career game - a sure hall of famer.

Ok, enough of the baseball review. More details will be forthcoming...