Pirates 5, Red Legs 7

So these last few days have been pretty unreal, so sorry for the lapse in blogging. We left off in Pittsburgh, so we've got some catching up to do. We hung out in Johnstown, PA for a few days with the NU Club Baseball Team (correction, the NATIONAL CHAMPION NU Club Baseball team! Congrats guys!) It was about a 6 hour drive to Cincinatti, Ohio which was our next stop for the Pirates-Red Legs game on Monday night. (Everyone in Cincy calls them the Red Legs...they used to be the Red Stockings back in the day so I'm guessing it comes from that). So, we headed out Monday morning and got to Great American Ballpark around 5:30 for the 7pm game. We walked around a bit and chatted with a few of the ballpark attendants. The park is right on the Ohio River, which is the border between Ohio and Kentucky. It was a pretty nice ballpark, reminded me a bit of PNC and one of the big attractions is the river boat posted up in center field, which apparently Joey Votto hit a 470 foot homer into the top deck of last week. Would have liked to see that. Then we headed over to a nice restaurant and bar they have in left field and grabbed a couple beers before the game. They had a bunch of memorabilia there including the actual "big red machine" and a photo of Pete Roses last game.

We had $5 nosebleed seats but, like a lot of the parks we've seen so far, it wasn't even close to full so we moved down to the lower level along the first baseline. There was something a little off though, because everything just seemed a little bland at this place... but in the 7th they "turned on the lights" by turning on one of the original lights from Crosley Field from the original game and lighting off some custom pyrotechnics. The jumbotron all game had only the lineups with position and the score line. No stats, no info, and all the side screens were black, which we thought was quite weird but didnt really think too much of them. So after that it was back to normal with all the regular boards and lighting, which really made a big difference in the stadium. The Red legs ended up winning the game. 7-5. We had a campsite reserved but, since that seemed like a lame option as the game went on we decided to try to sleep in our truck and go out to some bars across the river... In another catch up post you will have to find out how well that turned out.