Suite Lou's Sweet Adventures

Two years ago, my best friend and I decided that we would visit all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums. Hopefully after three decades of travelling and nacho-eating we can cross them all off our list.

We chose New York because it was the final season for Yankee captain, Derek Jeter. The soon-to-be Hall of Famer was making his curtain call around the league and the Toronto Blue Jays were in town at the end of July. Evan and I have been Jays fans all our lives, but we have never seen the boys play.

Staying in the Lower East Side of Manhattan Island, we saw it all: the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero, the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, girls, the Garden, Brooklyn, Central Park, Times Square, the meatpacking district and the top of the Rockefeller building.

People have asked me about the trip and the only word that remotely comes close to describing that blur of a week is, insane.
We got all of our touristy events done early in the week because the Jays and Yanks were squaring off on our last three days in New York.

I’ll never forget the feeling of walking past the stadium gates and catching a glimpse of the iconic field for the first time. I couldn’t believe that we finally made it to Yankee Stadium.

The series was fantastic. The games were intriguing, we saw a few future Hall of Famers play, there was lots of long ball, gorgeous defensive plays and the Jays took two of three from the evil empire.

Anything Jeter did received a standing ovation. Whether he was stretching hours before the game, or a video of him reading an ad came on the jumbotron, people lost it. Even if he made an error they still cheered when they would normally demand that player gets traded.

I proudly admit that I (sheepishly) booed Jeter. These Jays’ colours don’t run and my guys were in a pennant race. Clearly I offended the baseball gods and they have punished me by making me watch a Jays team that is a shell of what they were in the first half of the year as they stumble away from post-season contention for the 20th season. Ironically, it’s the same amount of years Jeter has played in the bigs.

The best part about the trip was that I got to spend it with some best friends I rarely get to see now that we are “mature” and getting on with our own lives. Hopefully we one-up ourselves again on the next journey.