Well, we saw just our second home team loss of the season up in Midland, with Great Lakes Loons loosing 9-5 to the Cedar Rapids Kernels (insert Linux and/or Corn joke here). But the loss aside, Dow Diamond, the home park of the Great Lakes loons is a beautiful park. It opened in 2007, and it shows. The concourses are spacious and the seats were a bit bigger than some of the parks we’ve been to. Also, from the attendance numbers, it looks like the Loons pull about 5000 fans a game. If you live near Midland, MI, I recommend going and seeing a Loons game, just make sure you get your tickets the night before.

So now the home team is 5-2 on the tour, and this game had the most offense of all the games we’ve been to so far. Even though they got the loss today, this Loons team played a lot better than the same team we saw play way back on May 17 at West Michigan. What killed the Loons was loading the bases twice and then giving up a base clearing double each time. From the ERAs of the relievers we saw indicated that the Loons may have been giving some playing time to some of their relievers. We also saw our 4 homerun of the tour, and the 1st homer by the home team. Still no triples however.

Next week is an off week, and then its to Fort Wayne to see the Silver Hawks play the Beloit Snappers.

Categories: Baseball
No Comments »

Last Sunday we went to Erie, PA, to watch the Erie Seawolves play the Akron Aeros. The Seawolves won the game 3-2. Erie scored three in the bottom of the second. That three run lead held until the top of the eigth when Erie’s starter gave up a 2 run, 1 out homerun. Erie’s closer came in and got a 5 out save. Erie’s a nice town and that’s a beautiful park that the Seawolves play at. It was an extremely long day, however. We left Lansing at 6:30am and didn’t get back until 9:30pm. The drive did seem shorter than that to Indy, but I think that’s because the drive to Erie has some variaty to it. Jerry Uht park was the smallest of the parks we’ve been to so far (6000 capacity, compaired to the 10k we’ve seen so far). The park almost had a rustic feel to it

And now the pictures.

That first picture is of the strange sunburn I got. Apparently I missed that spot with Sunscreen. Today we’re off to Midland to see the Great Lakes Loons play. I’m excited because Dow Diamond is only two years old and is supposed to be really nice.

Categories: Baseball
No Comments »

We had a ticket the other day with the hilarious engrish farewell of “I Hope Solution”. A coworker discovered that the domain ihopesolution.com was available. I registered the domain just for the lulz, but we decided to make a Sysadmin tip and trick blog out of the domain. The blog’s been live for about a week, go and check it out!

Categories: General Posts
No Comments »

Back in April, a buddy of mine suggested going to Grand Rapids Griffins playoff game. The problem was that schedule wise it wouldn’t work, we started about seeing other sporting events this summer. And hence the Epic Minor League Baseball tour was born. Two friends of mine, whom are both also named Matt, are travelling around the Mid-West going to Minor League baseball teams. Every Sunday we goto a different park in a different city and its been a lot of fun. The coolest thing is that the tickets at the Minor League parks are much cheaper than their Big League counterparts, we haven’t paid more than $15 for tickets.

So far we’ve been to Single A West Michigan (Grand Rapids), Single A Lansing, Triple A Toledo and Triple A Indianoplis. Barring weather, we will also be going to Double A Erie, Single A Great Lakes (Midland), Single A Fort Wayne, Single A South Bend, Double A Akron and Triple A Columbus. A game at Comerica between the Tigers and the Blue Jays will top of the Tour in September.

Now for those of you who love the baseball stats, so far in the tour we’ve been to 4 parks, saw 5 games (the Lugnuts and the Whitecaps played a double header at Oldsmobile Park). The home team is 4-1 in those games, with the Whitecaps winning game 1 of the double header. We’ve seen 2 homeruns and no triples. The game at Indy is the only extra innings game, with the Indians winning with a walk off basehit in the bottom of the 10th. Ian Snell, the Indians’s pitcher that game, threw 17 strikeouts, a Victory Field Record.

And now for some pictures.

From the West Michigan Game

From the Lansing Game

From the Toledo Game

From the Indians game

Next Game is this Sunday where the Arkon Aeros will play at the Erie Seawolves. After the game I’ll make a post with pictures and such.

Categories: Baseball
No Comments »