{"id":418,"date":"2012-06-30T10:46:02","date_gmt":"2012-06-30T14:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/?p=418"},"modified":"2012-07-03T12:33:05","modified_gmt":"2012-07-03T16:33:05","slug":"418","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/?p=418","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The one and only Mets trip to Wrigley Field this season had been circled on my calendar since the schedule came out late last year.\u00a0 I went out for the final two contests of the mid-week three game set and had a wonderful time.<\/p>\n

The Cubbies are in the early stages of a substantial rebuilding effort.\u00a0 My Dad and I sat just beyond the vines in right field for\u00a0Anthony Mike<\/del>\u00a0Rizzo\u2019s Cub debut Tuesday night.\u00a0 The 22-year-old left-handed slugger (pictured above) wore uniform #44 and had a couple hits on his first night wearing the blue hat.\u00a0 Rizzo is the start of what should be a significant injection of young talent acquired and deployed under first-year personnel whiz Theo Epstein.\u00a0 The former Red Sox boss is charged with conducting a top-to-bottom overhaul of an organization that stunk in each of the last two seasons.\u00a0 Epstein will be expected to reload the Cubs with youth before adding much in the way of new, expensive free agents.\u00a0 He\u2019ll likely be allowed two or three seasons to execute his plan before contention is expected.<\/p>\n

Rizzo\u2019s power is legitimate but plate discipline will be a focus as he goes along.\u00a0 He seems to have trouble laying off pitches at his ankles.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mets first baseman Ike Davis came up to the big leagues last year with attributes and expectations similar to Rizzo\u2019s.\u00a0 After a flurry of immediate success, Davis got hurt and missed the final five months of the 2011 season.\u00a0 His first three months of 2012 have been bad.\u00a0 On Tuesday night, Davis was tossed from the game when he argued a blown call on a pickoff attempt at first base.\u00a0 It was the first MLB ejection for Ike and it prompted an unusually emotional on-field defense from his manager Terry Collins (pictured above with Davis and umpire Manny Gonzalez).\u00a0 It\u2019s way out of character for Collins to yell at an umpire.\u00a0 Gonzalez likely felt compelled to give Davis the thumb after Ike\u2019s glove brushed him during the initial debate of the call.\u00a0 Ike\u2019s removal from the game was costly since his spot in the order came up in the next and final inning of a 5-3 loss.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>My Dad and I had a red hot at Wrigleyville Dogs on Clark before the game. Earlier in the day we roamed the city as tourists on familiar turf.\u00a0 We hung out on the concrete blocks along Lake Michigan just north of Irving.\u00a0 We had lunch at Tamales Garibay on Kedzie.\u00a0 We grabbed an intensely flavorful cup of joe from the Intelligentsia coffee bar on Broadway.\u00a0 We knocked around Logan Square and sat in the center of that neighborhood next to the Illinois Centennial Monument which has sadly been defaced with scribble.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The next day I went back to the ballpark and met up in the right field bleachers with my brother Chris and old pal Matt.\u00a0 The wind was blowing straight out at a good clip so you knew baseballs would be flying.\u00a0 It turns out it was only the Mets who benefited from the breeze.\u00a0 Danny Murphy hit his first two home runs of the year.\u00a0 Ike had one and so did Hairston.\u00a0 17-1 Mets was the final.\u00a0 The first Murphy long ball landed just a few rows in front of us.\u00a0 Sitting in the bleachers gives one the perspective of an outfielder.\u00a0 The ball is a tiny white speck against the blue sky backdrop and it\u2019s an unusual feeling to interpret its movement as it gets closer to you.<\/p>\n

The ballpark was less than full both of the games I attended.\u00a0 There was plenty of room to stretch out in the bleachers.\u00a0 I thought the crowd was less annoying than in recent visits.\u00a0 It got a little boozy on Tuesday night but not in a bad way.\u00a0 We had a bachelor party sitting behind us on Wednesday but even those guys turned out to be pretty tame.\u00a0 My only beef about the ballpark experience is the incessant ad reading by the PA announcer 45 minutes before first pitch.\u00a0 It\u2019s a stream of commercials that runs a solid 15 minutes.<\/p>\n

The old guy who sells umbrella-shaped sun hats outside the park was in fine form before both games I attended.\u00a0 Wearing a leisure suit and speaking through a small mega-phone, the guy\u2019s sales pitch was pitch perfect.\u00a0 \u201cGet your sun hats, people!\u00a0 Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Howard Stern wear them.\u00a0 They come in many different colors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlicensed vendors sold two dollar bottles of water on Waveland and a father-son combo entertained with aggressively-played percussion on upside-down plastic paint pails.<\/p>\n

We went to The Piano Man on Clark and Grace for a round after Wednesday\u2019s game.\u00a0 It\u2019s just far enough from the park that you avoid the loudmouths.\u00a0 The sixteen-ounce cans of Old Style are ice cold.\u00a0 Yum.<\/p>\n

My brother Tim took me to the airport Thursday morning.\u00a0 We squeezed in breakfast at Mac\u2019s in Park Ridge before the drop-off.\u00a0 Mac\u2019s opens at 5:30 AM.\u00a0 When we arrived at that time, the griddle was already hot and the coffee had already been brewed.\u00a0 We were in and out in 20 minutes.\u00a0 I\u2018ll repeat what I\u2018ve said here before: the corned beef hash at Mac\u2019s is as good a way to start one\u2019s day as there is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The one and only Mets trip to Wrigley Field this season had been circled on my calendar since the schedule came out late last year.\u00a0 I went out for the final two contests of the mid-week three game set and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s28tEv-418","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":422,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}