I've had a pretty good year for baseball games.
I've been to about ten Phillies games this year (including game 2 of the NLCS against the Dodgers), and been to games in six other parks (Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, Nationals Stadium, Yankee Stadium, Dodger Stadium against the Phillies, Angel Stadium, and Petco Park).
But last night was by far, the best sports experience of my life. I went to Game 3 of the World Series.
amurderofone was lucky enough to snag tickets from the Phillies lottery, and I did not hesitate to say yes when he asked if I wanted to come along with him.
We had standing room tickets, which I really didn't mind -- I knew just being at the park for the World Series would be an amazing experience. All week we knew that the weather would be a factor, since thunderstorms were forecasted for Saturday night. At the very least, we knew that the game would be rain delayed -- in a worst case scenario, it would be pushed back a day.
Despite this, we still got to Citizens Bank Park at 5 PM (for a scheduled 8:30 start). This was especially crucial since we wanted to snag good standing room spots. One of the best things about the park is that the sightlines are great everywhere, as the concourses open up to the playing field. You could literally watch the game while standing in line for a hot dog and beer. With this in mind, we got to the park at 5 PM and set up shop behind section 122 which was located pretty much behind home plate. Kind of funny that our standing room tickets were $50 face value ($700 on Stubhub) and the seats that were 4 feet in front of us were $225 face value (upwards of $3000 on Stubhub).
When we got there, yeah, it was raining really hard. But we were all in good spirits, and under cover, so the rain itself didn't affect us -- we were just worried about how the hell to kill so much time. We stood there, and stood there some more. It also dropped from about 65 degrees to 45 degrees in this time too, which we in Philadelphia certainly aren't used to at a baseball game. We never play this late in October.
After three and a half hours of standing around before the scheduled start, and another hour and a half of rain delays, the game finally started just after 10 PM. Most of you have seen the game already and know what happened, but "Clutch" Carlos Ruiz was my hero of the game, with a solo HR to break a tie in the 2nd inning and a walk off infield single in a 9th inning where the Rays had FIVE INFIELDERS. And yeah, the game ended at 1:47 PM and not a single person left early.
We're now two wins away from a World Series championship for the first time in my lifetime.
I took a bunch of pictures and videos from the game, including some of the deafening "GARZA! GARZA!" and "EVA! EVA!" chants, which I will upload shortly.
