Day 164 – Doubleheaders

The rain out last night has been scheduled for this afternoon as part of a day-night doubleheader. I thought they may wait until Wed to play the doubleheader to give more time to let the rain clear out, but obviously they looked at the forecasts and figured it would be ok today. It did indeed turn out to be a nice day, not too warm but still warm enough that you could be in shorts and a t-shirt.

I didn’t have any of my tickets yet for this series and all the box offices were closed last night. When I went to get my tickets for the afternoon game they said they weren’t selling tickets in the upper deck. So the guy said he would sell me the cheapest seat (in the OF) and I could just sit wherever I wanted. The stadium was fairly empty for a game in Sept. w/the home team contending for the division. Of course a lot of that has to do w/it being rescheduled from last night and a lot of people would be unable to book off work or whatever other commitments they already had during the day. Still I thought more people would have made the effort to come out, incl. some who didn’t previously have tickets. I picked a spot behind the Jays dugout on the 1st base side a few rows back. I didn’t want to get too greedy w/the seat selection since I prefer to not have to go through the hassle of moving seats during the game if someone showed up w/the actual ticket. Plus I’m a little superstitious about moving seats when the Jays are winning so I don’t want to put myself in a situation where I have to move.

I have to say I’m really not a fan of U.S. Cellular. It is really a plain stadium and the concourse is rather boring. There is nothing there that really excites you about it. I guess the one thing is they have pictures chronicling their history all along the walls of the upper deck concourse.

This being a day-night doubleheader, meaning you need tickets to both games, I had to leave the stadium before being allowed back in for the night game. This whole day-night doubleheader thing most teams do now is unfortunate. Is it such a bad thing to not collect revenue for 1 game and allow fans to see 2 games for the price of 1. At least why don’t they offer some sort of discounted ticket price for one of the games, and that way they don’t lose all the revenue while people can still afford to see both games. I would actually be a proponent of every team scheduling at least one doubleheader during the season, yes they can be day-night ones so the owners don’t lose out on their revenue. It is one way MLB could actually reduce the length of the season, especially since they’ve built so many off-days into the postseason. It might actually keep them from playing in Nov. It could also allow for extending the playoffs into some sort of Wild Card tournament or at the least changing the 1st round to best of 7, but I’ll leave my thoughts on the postseason for another time.

I guess the one advantage to being a day-night doubleheader is it allowed me to go find a place to eat that wouldn’t cost as much as eating in the ballpark. I just took off walking around the area and eventually came across a restaurant advertising itself as a Chicken & Waffles restaurant. Those are 2 of my favourite foods (although I’m more of a pancake person) so naturally I had to try this restaurant. Basically you had your choice of various combos most of them included either chicken or waffles and some included both. I ended up having waffles, hash browns and chicken. It is probably not a combination I will be regularly eating, but frankly as long as I like the various food items I really don’t care what they are combined with. To me food is food and if I like it I’m open to eating any kind of food at anytime of the day.

One thing I pondered while sitting eating my chicken and waffles between games was what were the Jays going to do w/their rotation. With no off-days coming up that means they will have no starters available on regular rest on Sat. Throw in the fact that they are playing a doubleheader Sat, and now they need 2 starters. My conclusion was unless they lost the next 2 they would try Burnett on 3 days rest and just do a bullpen game in the other w/one of Richmond or Parrish piggy backing the other. They could then bring Litsch back on regular rest on Sun.

I guess I have now completed the doubleheader cycle. I have been to a day-night doubleheader, a traditional doubleheader, and a 1.5-header (referring to the suspended game the Jays had to complete in BAL which was played before the regularly scheduled game).

I was up in the upper deck for the night game and by the end of the night it was a little cool in shorts especially since there was a pretty cool wind blowing up there. The long day ended with a pretty good fireworks display after the game.

When it was all said and done the Jays had swept the doubleheader pushing their win streak to 10 and the aces are going at it tomorrow as Halladay tries to push it to 11 (which would tie the Jays franchise record) against Buehrle. The over/under for the length of tomorrow’s game should be around 2 hrs.