Contrary to a certain Green Day song, September has been a whirlwind of excitement, traveling and school for me, which up to this point has prevented me from blogging about anything remotely related to baseball. Also, the fact that the Marlins had another stereotypically Marlins season and the Nationals fell under the curse of Jonathan Paplebon (yes, Paul, I’m blaming him for their demise now instead of myself) left me with little material over which to generate excitement.
So, in order to post something this month and avoid a gap in my archives, here’s how September shook down in my own little world.
I came back to Dayton to start school, where I promptly had to put on my soccer thinking cap again and cover a few games for Flyer News. Last year, I mainly did basketball so I had to shock my soccer term synonym generator back into existence.
I attended my first ever Dayton Dragons game with some friends. The Dragons are the Cincinnati Reds single-A affiliate and they have a rockin’ stadium. It was about as nice as Oklahoma City’s triple-A park I visited this summer. Fifth-Third Field is the name of the Dragons’ park and it was apparently used as a model for more minor league and spring training stadiums.
The Dragons played the Lansing Lugnuts, where Fredericksburg’s own Ryan McBroom tore it up this season. He was the cleanup hitter in the game I saw, and had several RBI in the series.
Last weekend I trekked about 4 hours up the road to the University of Notre Dame (which is really just an older, more pretentious, less-obviously-drunk-on-the-weekends version of Dayton) for their football game against the Ramblin’ Wreck of Georgia Tech. Tech lost 😦 as they have a tendency to do when I see them play in person, but it was a great experience to be at the Home of the Irish for a big matchup.
This past weekend I took an 8-hour bus jaunt over to Philadelphia to see Pope Francis (briefly in person, mostly on a big screen) celebrate what was predicted to be the largest Mass ever in North America. The turnout was around 800,000 people and I don’t know if that’s as many as they were expecting or not.
The trip was exhausting, but well worth it. We arrived back in Dayton at 6:30 Monday morning and I had a class at 8 a.m., so you can do the math on that one.
That’s where I stand right now. I’m still predicting a Cardinals-Royals World Series, although the Pirates and Blue Jays have both been coming on strong lately.
Here’s to a happy October and hoping the NL pennant winner isn’t from San Francisco or St. Louis!
The Top Step 