Best Baseball Park

This weekend Kenji and I drove out to Toledo, Ohio for our nephew's first birthday. To break up the 500 or so mile drive, we stopped for an overnight in Pittsburgh, where we planned to see a ballgame at PNC Park.

PNC Park is a relatively new ballpark, opened in 2001 or so. They did a really nice job of it, as it offers a really nice view of the city and its bridges from the infield, and has an awesome riverwalk built right into the park on the outfield side. Most importantly, PNC Park has relish, unlike some other stupid ballparks I can think of like, um, Yankee Stadium. ;)

When we got to Pittsburgh we though for sure the game would be rained out, as it had been raining pretty much the whole time as we drove through Pennsylvania. But since we already paid for the tickets we figured we might as well go and have a look at the stadium and eat hot dogs and have ice cream in a helmet. PNC Park has good ice cream too. You can get hard packed ice cream instead of soft serve if you want. And it's cheaper than the junky soft serve you get at Yankee Stadium. We had Moose Tracks, with chocolate syrup on top. :)

While we were eating out hot dogs, the rain seemed to let up, and the tarp guys started taking the tarp off the field. About an hour and half after the original game time the game started, and the Pirates whipped the Cardinals, 10 - 2. It was a really fun game because probably no more than 5,000 people were in attendance, so we pretty much had the run of the ballpark.

After the game, before going back to our car, which we paid a premuim of $12 to park in the garage right next to the stadium, we took a walk across the Roberto Clemente Bridge and back.

Most times when I hear people talk about Pittsburgh (except for my friend Thad), they don't usually have much good to say about it. But I rather liked it, at least what I saw of it.