Ahh April. Spring is finally in the air, trees are blooming, and most importantly, baseball is starting a fresh season! One of the major perks of living in Las Vegas is that we are within a 5 hour radius of 4 different ballparks. We wasted no time after the 2013 season kicked off to go to L.A. and take in an Angels game. We usually like to plan to go to ballparks where the opposing team is the Brewers, but for such a close ballpark to us, we will have plenty more opportunities to catch an Angels/Brewers game in the future. We chose this particular Angels/Tigers game because Prince Fielder used to be a Brewer, and this was our first time seeing him play as a Tiger. I still love that guy, and I will forever cheer for him! We made the trek west on the I-15 on Friday night and rested up for Saturdays 12:10pm game.
We like to get to each stadium right when the gates open, which is normally 2 hours prior to first pitch. We do this for two reasons: 1) so we can walk around the stadium and get a feel for it, especially if it's our first visit, and 2) to see the visitors take batting practice. During batting practice, fans can pretty much move freely around the stands for their chance to get a ball, and we think it's a lot of fun. Also, the zoom on my camera is crazy amazing and I can zoom in on a batter from the furthest part of the ballpark and still see the blemishes on his face!! I like that part. ;)
Game time! The first pitch was thrown, and the baseball season was underway as far as we were concerned! Our seats were in the outfield, right next to their cool waterfall feature. Another thing we like to do when we visit ballparks for the first time is to sit where we can see cool features the particular ballpark has; in this case, Angel Stadium has a waterfall area in left-center, so we sat next to that. I believe the top of the first was a 3-up-and-3-down inning for the Tigers, and we thought we were in for a pitchers duel, but boy were we wrong. The Tigers starting pitcher, Porcello, saw 9 Angels cross the plate in the bottom of the first, requiring a pitching change before the top of the 2nd! I can remember just one other time seeing that many runs cross the plate in the first inning, and I'd rather not talk about that game! ;)
The rest of the game went by pretty quickly. There was only 1 more run scored in the game, and the final was 10-0 in favor of the Angels. Prince Fielder got a few hits, and it was really fun watching him play defense. We also got to see, and cheer for Albert Pujols for the first time in a long time. He used to be a Cardinal and they are big rivals of the Brewers, and in principle, I never cheered for him when he was in STL. 2013 was his first season as an Angel, so I was glad that I could at least have the option to cheer for him.
One thing I do remember was that this day got really hot. Usually L.A. temps stay right around mid 70's, and heat is rare, especially in April, but we actually had to move seats half way through the game to beat the heat and get in some shade. I got a little bit dizzy from the extreme temp changes going from the heat outside to the A/C inside, but after some rest, I was fine.
With little weekend trips like this to L.A., we like to find a cool spot to have dinner, so after a recommendation of an outdoor café in a marina, we were off! Being we were staying near Santa Ana, we had to drive to Santa Monica, but with Robbie's wicked map skills, we bypassed all the congested L.A. freeways, and made it there in less time than if we took the freeways! Good Work Robbie! We got an outdoor table at the restaurant that looked over the marina, and we were even there for the sunset, which was gorgeous. It was a great end to a quick little trip to L.A., and we had no idea that we would be back the next weekend! More on that in a later post!
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