Day 165 – Restricted Access

I missed my usual sleep in day 1st night in a city due to the doubleheader yesterday so I had it today. I caught a train into downtown in the afternoon to get some lunch. Spent the rest of the afternoon just walking around downtown going up and down the streets. I also made a stop at union station to do some scouting as to whether they have lockers there for rent (the hotel suggested I check there). Although my hotel was out in the direction of O’Hare airport, there was no easy way to get there late at night after the ballgame tomorrow. The hotel ran a shuttle but only during certain times and I wouldn’t be back for the last one and the 1st one in the morning wasn’t early enough. There were lockers at Union so I figured that would be best to bring my bags w/me tomorrow morning, store them there, and then I can just take the subway to the airport.

I was at the stadium early as usual and when I walked in and tried to go into the lower level portion the person wouldn’t let me in b/c I had an upper level seat. Apparently they don’t let you access the lower level unless you have a lower level seat. This is the 1st stadium that I’ve had a problem being able to walk around the main level. Other stadiums have people watching certain levels that are just full of suites and the press area and they don’t allow the general fan into those levels. However, I’ve never seen a stadium restricting people from their main level and concourse area. I’m not talking about during the game or even right before, this was more than an hr before game time. I had to convince them to let me walk around the lower level concourse and promise to come back out the same exit so they know I wasn’t trying to sneak in to lower level seats. I didn’t run into this problem yesterday since the 1st game they were allowing everyone into the lower section and the 2nd game I didn’t try, I just went straight up to the upper level.

One of the reasons I wanted to walk around the lower level was b/c I wanted to get some pictures of the statues they have. Like several other ballparks they do have statues of former players and they also had one for Charles Comiskey, former owner. My camera battery was rather low yesterday so I didn’t want to use up what was left since I didn’t expect to have problems getting access to the lower level another day.

I really thought the Jays were going to complete the comeback tonight and keep the magic going. What it has done is put them in a position where if they take 3 or 4 from BOS this weekend they’re right back in it. Certainly not an easy task, but they’re 3 – 2 in BOS and both losses were walk-off losses.