Ben Matasar

Fenway Park

2006-06-15T07:00:00Z

Last week I went to Boston to visit my best friend since high school. Naturally, I made sure the Red Sox were in town and got tickets. Descriptions of Fenway are neither new nor insightful, so I'm not going to go on at length about the walk up to the park, or the small chairs, or the Green Monster -- all of that is of course wonderful and well documented. One striking thing I did notice at Fenway is that everybody is into the game. They're completely focused on baseball: no dot races on the big TV, few beach balls, and just one attempted wave in two games. It's refreshing, especially compared to a place like Wrigley, where you get the impression everybody is more interested in getting drunk than watching baseball.

The first game, a nail-biter the Red Sox won on a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the eighth, is the most fun I've had at a regular season baseball game since the 1995 Mariners. I also can not say enough about the amazing Red Sox fans, and this is coming from one of their sharpest critics. They're annoying, whiny and intolerable over the internet. At the game, they're fantastic. Our second game was delayed by rain for five hours, and the stadium TV showed the Yankees/A's game. When it ended with a Yankees loss, the whole stadium erupted as it put the Sox one game ahead. I loved it, highly recommended.

A's Game

2006-04-22T07:00:00Z

I'm in California this weekend for a conference, and I decided to go to the A's game. I went by myself and just bought a ticket on the field level. I enjoyed the game even though the A's lost, but the most notable thing is that I sat next to Mickey Hatcher's wife Patty. He is apparently the hitting coach for the Angels now. She is nice, we talked for much of the game. A truly bizarre coincidence.

Back in the blogging saddle.

2006-03-12T08:00:00Z

It's been ages since I had a blog, but I now have enough projects and enough of a sense of self importance that it's time to go for it.

I converted the baseball-databank data to SQLite format for some other stuff I'm working on, and it's here: SQLite baseball-databank.