Oriole Park at Camden Yards

Camden Yards

333 West Camden Street

Baltimore, MD 21201

April 19, 2008

We arrived in Baltimore late the evening before and climbed straight into bed without showering…which is gross, but we were tired. The next day after touring the lovely city of Baltimore, we changed for the game and walked to Oriole Park from our overpriced hotel, the Tremont Plaza on St. Paul Street, hesitantly wearing our Yankees hats like battered women, assuming that O’s fans were just like the violent Phillies fans from the night before.

However, it turned out that we needn’t be concerned about being victims of a hate crime. Soon we were joined by a mass of Yankees fans making their way to the game as well. We were surrounded by a comforting blanket of navy blue and white. No one would be spitting on us while we rolled with this posse.

As we approached the stadium, our nostrils were greeted by the amazing smells of sausage sandwiches (did we mention that we like Italian sausages?), shish kabobs, and roasted peanuts. Initially, we thought a bunch of people were just hanging around making tasty delights, but it turns out that they were actually peddling their homemade shit. Being that we were in Baltimore for the purpose of exploring the city’s baseball stadium, we chose to continue on our merry way to “Birdland.”

Oriole Park is pretty much the cookie cutter for what all ballparks should be like. It’s perfect. A friendly couple (O’s fans, we’d like to point out) offered to take our picture. Lesson learned? O’s fans do not care what team you root for. Baltimore is like the Witness Protection Program for New York fans, whereas Philadelphia is the angry mob looking to deposit your body in Jersey…probably in Elizabeth. It smells bad enough there. One decaying body or two will definitely go unnoticed.  

The scintillating smell of Boog’s BBQ nearly tempted us from our ridiculous Sausage Theory, but no. We refused to let go of our love for sausage. You would think that our sausage sensation in Philly would’ve taught us something, but no. Nope. Can’t part with a sausage sandwich. There’s an excellent chance that we’d successfully complete the New York City Marathon in record time if someone ran in front of us with a sausage sandwich dangling in front of our faces. Sticking to this asstastic plan would prove to be yet another f*cking food mistake on our parts, but we’ll get to that later. Anyone in town visiting Oriole Park, eat at Boog’s BBQ. You won’t regret it. You will, however, regret a sausage sandwich.

We’d arrived at the stadium with plenty of time to spare, so we decided to check the place out. They had a jump, jump for kids who weigh less than we do, a wooden playground for kids who are shorter than us, and a fast pitch game that we weren’t interested in trying out because we’re lazy. We did get our picture take in front of an enormous poster of the field because we thought it would be super funny to tell people that it was the real field. We don’t know why we thought this was so funny at the time because as we recount this now, we’re not even chuckling at the prospect of sharing this “joke” with other people. We’re obviously complete morons.

As you can see by this picture, our plan didn’t work out. We just look like giant a-holes standing in front of a poster. We walked around a bit more and took other photos before heading to our seats:

The view of the field from our seats:

If you were an O’s fan, this game was super exciting. However, if you were like us, cheering for the Yankees, it was pretty pathetic. The Yankees were pummeled. Not only were they pummeled, but we were constantly being reminded of said pummeling by the random d*ckhead Red Sox fan shouting and carrying on like an imbecile two sections over. His behavior was so atrocious that his friends (who attended the game with him…willingly bought tickets to spend time with him) actually stood up and left in embarrassment.

Around the 6^th inning, we got bored of watching the Yankees run around the field like the Bad News Bears, so we went in search of The Bird because that’s what normal people do when they’re at a terrible baseball game. Obviously, the TBB have a very one-track minds. It’s either Italian sausages or mascots.

The employees at a nearby souvenir stand gave us a secret tip about The Bird…that we’re now sharing on the world wide web. Look at this a-hole picture of Serena with the cartoon picture of The Bird.

Aside from her looking like an a-hole for posing with a cartoon poster plastered to a souvenir cart, do you see that door in the background? Apparently that door is The Bird’s hidden portal from his hideout to the field. It became quite clear to us what we had to do. We walked to the closest sausage sandwich stand, bought our sausages, and had a sausage stakeout by this infamous door.

While inhaling these sandwiches like a lions devouring a zebra, we decided that we should probably start buying the food that ballparks are known for instead of dealing with the constant depression that follows eating lame overpriced sausage sandwiches. Serena had just finished her pathetic sausage and Lisa was nearly done with hers when the door we’d been waiting for opened. Low and behold, a giant, black, fuzzy bird stepped into the hallway. Lisa dropped the remainder of her sandwich on the floor and we ran for it. The Bird’s entourage took our picture with him, so we were guaranteed a normal picture. No fuzzy ass. No clapping Lisa. Normal. Except for that weird orb…

By this point, it was around the 8^th inning. Yes…we hung out with the souvenir stand people for close to 2 innings. Yes, we are aware how pathetic that really is, but if you knew how bad the game was going for us, you’d understand.

The next day, we packed up the car and strapped the kids in for the ride home. Our little travel family was slowly expanding.

We drove past the stadium again on our way out of the city.

It was a relief to finally cross into New York again. To be back with our people again. Who wouldn’t judge us for being New York fans. Or for loving Italian sausages. The city that can actually make a good Italian sausage sandwich.

Our weekender can best be summed up in the following words: “Life is a highway and we want to ride it all night long…until we get tired and hungry. Then we have to stop."