On the second day of posts here reviewing the year, my true love gave to me,....

[captainsblog]

Six different sporting venues, and a beer.



Counting gets a bit whacked when imbibing so much; we're not going to make it to 12 anyway, so who cares?

(Speaking of whacked: one sidenote from the past few days.  Friday night, we were watching a wonderful but incredibly bizarre film starring Magneto and General Hux.  I got up about halfway through after a particularly spit-take-funny scene, started one of my fewer-but-still annoying coughing jags, tripped in the kitchen and introduced the back of my head to a corner of the kitchen table as I fell down go boom.  It hurt like the Dickens for a few hours- fitting for Christmas week- but no ill effects have followed.  I'm being much more careful until this f'er is completely gone.)

But back to the year in Sport:

In terms of games seen live, the total count was probably down from many years, but the variety made up for it.  Six venues in all, none repeated, and one and a half new-to-me.

That Plate Pale can came from my only Red Wing visit of the year, on a windy day in April. The ball was flying out of the yard to the point where things looked like a football score when I left:



And both Nottawa and Rochester would fly even more homers out before the visitors won it in 10.

A month later, my first visit to new Digs with Dogs.  It was Pepper's first Bark in the Park game, this one at the new Home of the Mets in Syracuse:





That's her, parading the infield with me before the game and then her first singalong to Take Me Out at the seventh inning stretch. She was a good girl, the Mets won, and we had our first visit with Met blogger Jason, who would later appear in more Devilish digs earlier this month.

August brought two old friend parks: I hadn't made it to Your Name Here Field in Buffalo all year, but got a chance to join some local Cornell people for behind-the-plate seats for a Bisons-Pawsox game. I also finally laid paws on the craft beer dedicated to Western New York's most beloved beer vendor:



That led into the late August road trip to Citi Field, meeting one of my longest-standing friends and his family and seeing Pete Alonso break a rookie home run record in an otherwise dismal loss to the Cubs:



I returned home, sure as shootin' the Mets would not make the post-season (they didn't, but made it much closer than anyone expected), so when the A-league Batavia Muckdogs made their post-season round and invited dogs to the game, it was one more Beautiful Night for Baseball with Pepper and Sadie:



(She sang along in the 7th here, too:) The Muckdogs won, but lost the remaining two of the three-game series on the road, ending their playoff chances (and possibly, we now know, their very existence:P)

That ended my/our outdoor ventures.  The Bills have been much improved this year, but I haven't been tempted to any of their games. But this month brought the final half-new venue: the Sabres, who play 40-odd games a year 20 minutes from here (never been to one of them), were returning to "The Old Barn" on Long Island, and there it was-



- looking nothing like the cakebox of my youth attending Nets games there.  But there was Jason again, and my other fellow Met fans Sharon and Kevin-



- who got to see an awesome game. The home team won, but the Sabres played well and took the game to ooooovertimmmme, earning a point that is still, somehow, keeping them within only one point of a playoff spot.

----

Of personal notes: I begged out of this year's Turkey Trot due to the Coughing Plague that was still much worse back then; my longtime cardio gym closed, its replacement venue never caught on with either of us, and when Eleanor joined the Y for swimming and such, I keytagged along for just 8 bucks a month extra for their "senior couple" package deal.  I still do the high-intensity shiz a couple of times a week; I worried when my foot started acting up a couple of Fridays ago, but I've beaten that back and managed one of my most effective-in-terms-of-numbers workouts just this past Boxing Day....

and, just as important, did not fall off the treadmill and hit my head;)

----

Sidenote to anyone reading this through the LJ crosspost:

You're probably not reading this through the LJ crosspost. Something weird's been going on for about a week and the linkage seems to be broken- maybe for good. So I'm manually adding this one this one time only, and if you haven't updated your link to where they appear originally, now would be a good time to do that:

http://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/

Comments

[conuly]

Apparently the crossposting issue can be traced to DW getting new servers. They're working on fixing it now, but it may be fixed.

[captainsblog]

Yeah, I've heard that it's a some-server-but-not-all issue. I'm glad you (and most of my old-school contacts) made the DW move, since I usually don't check the old Friends page.

[conuly]

I've got, like, three stubborn LJ holdouts.