Royalty Tours USA

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Royalty sees the Mets down in the City of Brotherly Love!

Phillie Phanatic
Saturday morning I went to Avis and I rented a car for the weekend. I picked up the King and off we went to another one of our many second homes, this time we went to Philadelphia to see the Mets play the Phillies in an early afternoon affair.

We got to see the best pitcher in the major leagues pitch. I'm talking about the "Doc" aka Roy Halladay. He didn't let us or the fans in jammed packed Citizens Bank Park down either.

Doc pitched a gem of a game as he went the distance in beating division rival, the New York Mets. He struck out eight batters as the Phillies backed his great pitching with just enough run support to beat the Mets, 2-1.

Thankfully the game took only 2 hours and 25 minutes to play. My rule of thumb is to allow 3 hours on average. As I like to say, a baseball game can go two hours or five hours. I just hope that it goes fast when I want it to. Unfortunately for the King and I that doesn't seem to be the case that often. This time we got a break.

Since the game went so fast we had plenty of time to get to our next game which was in Trenton, New Jersey, 40 miles away. In addition, we were able to sit down and enjoy a quality meal at a rock bottom price. We wound up going to the Golden Corral for dinner. Stay tuned as I'm going to write a special post about that unique experience.

After we ate, we continued on our way to Trenton to see a minor league baseball game between the Trenton Thunder who are the Yankees double A affiliate and the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, the farm club of the Toronto Blue Jays who we saw play a few weeks ago in New Britain, Connecticut.

The last time we saw the Fisher Cats win. This time they lost to the Thunder, 4-1. We even got to see former major leaguer Kei Igawa pitch and he picked up the win in relief because starting pitcher Manny Banuelos didn't get the last out in the fifth inning to qualify for the victory. He pitched effectively for the two and a third innings he threw.

He pitched in Japan before the Yankees brought him to the States back in November 2006. Since he signed a huge long term contract, the Yankees are stuck with him. He didn't cut it in the big leagues, now he's pitching in the lower minor leagues after spending time in Triple A. He turned out to be a total bust.

Sunday afternoon the King and I went back to the Bronx to see the Yankees play the Blue Jays. This time the Yankees beat the Jays, 5-2.

After the game, we went back down to Philadelphia to see if the Mets could savage a game in their three game series with the Phillies. After facing the best pitcher in baseball, the Phillies followed up by sending their next best pitcher to the mound, that being Cliff Lee.

Fortunately for the Mets, Cliff Lee didn't have his best stuff on this night. The Mets managed to take a 1-0 lead but the Phillies fought back to tie the game after Lee departed for the night.

The game remained tied when we were forced to leave the ballpark after watching the game for four hours after the Mets batted in the top of the 12th inning. The King had to get to work. He works overnight at the Post Office. He starts at 2AM.

The Mets wound up winning the game in the 14th inning when catcher Ronny Paulino doubled in the go ahead run to give the Mets a 2-1 win. Paulino finished the game with 5 hits.

We hated to leave but we had no choice. We got back to the car at 12:23AM. I had to drive 100 miles to get him back to work on time. I got him there at 1:56AM. He said and I quote "I'm impressed." It should be noted we had to stop for gas too.

I proceeded to drive myself home and I got home at 2:27AM.

Monday morning I woke up and I returned the car back to Avis and then I went to work.

Another adventurous weekend was in the memory bank.

Thank you for reading and following along.

Yours truly,

Gary Herman

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