I'll get to that in a couple of seconds, but by far, the best game I've seen so far....
We did a lot of sightseeing in Philly yesterday and as I was saying yesterday, the fact that Philadelphia has a small downtown core makes it a lot easier to hit all the sights in one day...there's so much history in this city....things like the liberty bell and independence hall that take you back to the 1700's....as Chris was saying yesterday, you can have someone teach you or your children about this kind of stuff in a classroom, but it's just nowhere near the same as experiencing it in the flesh and soaking in the history....
Of course, after all that historic stuff, we had to walk to Philly Art Museum to take a peek at the Rocky statue and run the steps....I decided just to walk up the steps 'cause I figure that the locals would just say, "Oh, there goes another stupid tourist running up the steps and pretending like he's Rocky..." As much as I am a tourist, I don't need to put myself through unnecessary embarassment....
Then we were off to the Phillies game....the stadium is located in what they call the Sports Complex and they have all their various sports stadiums in that area....so in that area, there is Citizens Bank Park (where the Phillies play), Lincoln Financial Field (where the Eagles play), the Wachovia Centre (where the Flyers play) and the Wachovia Spectrum (where the Phantoms play)....
As I said before, the game was an incredible game....a game where the Nationals kept taking a large lead only for the Phillies to rally back with grand-slams....there were 7 homers in the game by both teams, but the grand-slams by Ryan Howard and Raul Ibanez were moments in time that I'll remember for the rest of my life....Howard hits the grand-slam when the Phils were down 6-2 at the time....such a clutch hit and for those couple of seconds, it was like time stood still and then the excitement of the crowd just carried for a couple of minutes, even after Howard came out for the curtain call....
But even that pales in comparison to the Ibanez grand-slam....the game was tied at 7 after 7 innings, only for the Nationals to score 4 runs in the eighth inning....quite a few fans looked for the exits, but the Phillies rallied in the bottom half of the eighth to score two runs and to load the bases....then Ibanez comes up and smokes a fastball and right away, I can tell that it's coming right for me! The first second was shock, the second second was a little fear since the baseball is coming at a pretty good clip and I don't have a glove and the third second was trying to gameplan how I can get this ball.....Unfortunately, the ball was just out of my reach and landed a row behind me....I found myself in the rumble for the ball in which a fan jumps from a row behind to get into the pile....I quickly find that I'm not going to get it, but the experience of having it land right behind me is good enough....another story to tell on what has been an amazing trip already and I still have 7 weeks to go!
Alright, off to Baltimore to continue the "Promiscuous" tour....I got wind of it being called that yesterday.... (shaking head).... :-)
