So Isabel had to go to San Diego last weekend to speak at some conference, and I tagged along to play some golf and get away from the NBA for a few days before the playoff swing starts in earnest.

On Saturday night we went to the Mets/Padres game at Petco. Got tickets from a Padres PR guy I knew who used to work for the Lakers. Isabel and I parked near the stadium ($12) and then spent a while walking around the area near the stadium. Isabel decided she wanted a baseball hat, though she has a small head and has never been able to find one that fits. In the stadium store we discovered that a kids’ hat fits, so she got a blue Padres hat. I tired to talk her into a brown/gold/orange throwback but she wasn’t having it.

I got a few fish tacos (no dirty jokes, Todd) which were terrific, and we found our seats along the third baseline. We discovered it was military night, with the Padres wearing camo jerseys. They began it all with a parachute jumping exhibition, which was pretty cool. Eight Navy seals came diving in, and the announcer said they were going 60 miles an hour. I don’t know about that, but it seemed pretty accurate, because they all looked like they were going to crash into the field until the last second.

Pedro Martinez was going for the Mets, and he was mowing guys down. It reminded me a little but of when Greg Maddux was on the Braves and he’d give up like 2 hits through the first 5 innings. The only significant thing that happened was when Pedro decided to try and fire one past Mike Piazza, and he drilled it into the upper deck.

San Diego is weird because the weather is always about 65 to 70 degrees, but there’s this arctic wind that comes through every few minutes. We left after 7 innings. Not much else going on. The Mets pounded them, as they’ve been doing to everyone all season. Other strange thing was that that guy Cousin Sal from the Jimmy Kimmel show was sitting behind us.

Due to my extensive travel schedule this spring, I was out of town for every Hawks bobblehead giveaway. Thanks to Dave and Todd, I was able to get The Joe Johnson and Marvin Williams. I missed out on the Zaza and Salim dolls. Seeking to complete my collection I turned to Ebay. The week before Easter, I saw a couple of Zazas up for bid. The auction was ending Easter Sunday so I planned to check out while I was at my folks’. Of course I forgot so I have no idea what they sold for. As of friday though, there were no bids at a starting price of $4.99.

This past week I saw a Salim. He had one bid at $6.99. After several bids, I had the highest at $21. That was friday. The auction ended this past sunday. Some time Saturday, my max bid ($25) was topped. I figured that was all I was willing to pay for a whining prima-dona like Salim so I let it go. I got an E-mail Sunday saying it had been sold for $44. Is that what I should expect to pay for these things? I’ll keep looking, but I think I’ll have to wait till Zaza’s playing for the Tblisi Shitbags and Salim’s somewhere in Canada to get a decent price.

I had my first Texas Ranger experience of the year last night and it was pretty fun. With my Mother joining me, I had my first surprise when parking was only $5. Not bad. We made our way to the stadium to discover decent seats down the first base line. Ameriquest Stadium is interesting because it seems much bigger compared to some of the other “new” ballparks. We each picked up a delicious beef bar-b-que sandwich before settling into our seats. The food was quite good and washed down well with my gigantic Coke. The game was a pitcher’s duel as Millwood errr Mike tossed 5 innings of shutout ball despite being in constant trouble with walks and hits. His pitch count was so high that they had to yank him after 5. At that point, clinging to a one run lead courtesy of Kevin Mench’s 4th homer in the last 4 games, CJ Wilson came on in relief. Obviously, CJ was late on something as he quickly gave up a two run dinger to Nick Swisher and then a solo blast to Eric Chavez (Millwood/Mike was smart enough to walk Chavez 3 times). The Ranger fought back with one run in the bottom of the 6th but were unable to plate any more runs so we were left with a 3-2 final. We left after 7 to beat the traffic. I’m looking forward to the Astros summer visit although I hope only one of the three games is played during the day as 100 plus degree temps do not make Matt a happy boy, just a lobster boy.

Following Todd’s lead of posting off the Hawks topic, I thought I’d mention my trip on Monday night to the crumbling Shea Stadium for Braves/Mets game 1.

We (me and guy I work with that’s a Mets fan) left the office at 6 and hopped on the express 7 train (Rocker’s favorite) and was there by 6:45. Lots of people in line for walkup tix…took us about 20 minutes to get seats in the upper deck behind foul pole ($9 each). By the time we got in and sat down it was bottom of 1st and Braves were up 1-0. Nady homered in bottom of 2nd to tie it up. Braves got another to be 2-1, then Delgado hit a friggin’ bomb off of Sosa to make it 3-2, Mets. While the ball was in the air, Andruw jumped into the air and did a 360 and threw his hands up, obviously pissed at Sosa for that pitch. Mets got another in 4th to make it 4-2, then Andruw homered in 6th to make it 4-3. Andruw hit another bomb in the 8th (to the opposite field) but the wind was coming in hard from the outfield and the ball was caught right at the wall.

Being at Shea really made me appreciate Turner Field. To get a beer we had to walk past 8 closed concession stands to find one that was open, and that one had such a long line that I missed an entire inning. The stadium is pretty dumpy, and the bullpens look like construction sites, with cones and plastic tape out there and everything.

The Mets fans are rough and really into it. I was getting heckled relentlessly for wearing my Braves hat, and I finally just took the damn thing off to shut up the drunkards. When Delgado hit his homer in the 3rd, fans were actually yelling for a curtain call. I was like, It’s the third inning!! When the game ended it was like the Mets had won the World Series.

I got home and was pretty worried about the Braves, because our pitching has been so abysmal. Then Davies and Hudson finally got it going, thank god.

Anyone been to any games in ATL?

After not finding anyone to take the tickets for the Washington game, I decided at about 6 PM that Ismail and I would go to the game after all. We got there a little after 7 and, to our surprise, it was Salim Stoudamire Bobblehead Night. I was lucky enough to get all four issued this season- Joe Johnson, Marvin Williams, Salim and Zaza.

The game was really close for the first 3 quarters. The Hawks played much better defense on everyone not named Gilbert Arenas ( he had 41 points) and did a good job on the boards. This was the second time that I had seen the Wiz this season and both times we were unable to stop Arenas. In the 4th Quarter, the Hawks would pull away after hitting a ton of three pointers. Josh Smith is really becoming a key player on this team; tonight he had 25 and 8. It seems that every game over the past two months has seen him get a double-double.

It looks like this will be my final game of the season. I have a ticket for the Miami game, but we have Region finals that night for my soccer team. It’s been a good year- i’ve seen real progress in this team. While there has been some real rough patches, it’s been evident that they’re improving and maturing. I still wish that we would’ve taken Chris Paul over Marvin, especially since we still need a legitimate PG running the show. I hope that over the off-season, we can acquire a PG and another Big Man (PF or C) that can play good interior Defense. I like Zaza, but his defense sucks.

I’m ready for next year. Season Tickets anyone (if they’re 5 a game, of course)? Rise up, mofos…

Spring Break is here and we decided to visit our friend Matt and to go see Chicago play Dallas in an MLS Match. Since Chicago only plays once a year in Dallas and it fell during Spring Break, I knew that this game was meant for us to attend. Also while we were there, we wanted to go to the Mavs-Nuggets game and the Stars-Sharks NHL game.

On Saturday morning, my wife, my 3 Year Old son and I arrived at the Atlanta airport before 7 AM for an 8:10 AM flight to Dallas. The line to check in was ridiculously long and by the time we reached the ticket counter, it was 8:30 and we missed our flight. Not once during the 90+ minute wait did anyone from AirTran go through the lines looking for Customers that were on flights leaving in the near future as I have seen in my past experiences with Airtran. We were wait-listed for the next flight at 11, but we did not make it on that flight either because that flight, and from what we were told, all flights, were overbooked. Additionally, no considerations were made for the fact that we were travelling with a small child who ended up getting sick because he sat around in the airport for 9 hours. We finally caught a flight at 3:30, but by then, we missed the Chicago-Dallas MLS game that we were supposed to attend.

I can’t help but to think that AirTran had no intention of helping out its Customers because it knew the flights were overbooked anyway, so they knew this would help solve some of their Overbooking issues.

Anyhow, the Mavs game was great. The atmosphere was good and the fans were really into it. Dirk dropped 31 and the Mavs controlled the majority of the game. The American Airlines Center was as good as advertised. Janet remarked that the exterior resembled the old Chicago Stadium. The inside was really unique in that it felt more like an office building in the hallways than an arena.

With the Mavs up by about 20 points and less than 5 to play, the AA emptied out except for a few thousand. That’s when I commented to Matt that this is the kind of crowd that I’m used to at Philips.

It was Ismail’s birthday that day, so I bought him a Nowitzki jersey (his choice, I swear) and a Mavs mini-Ball. That night, we took him to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate.

The Stars game the next night was not as impressive. While I saw tons of fans wearing jerseys, they were not very animated and the crowd noise wasn’t nearly as intense as the Mavs game. IMO, I think Atlanta has a better hockey atmosphere than Dallas. The Sharks won the game in OT on a Joe Thornton goal with 20 seconds left.

Overall, the trip was good. Matt was a great host and the two games that we saw were both good experiences. If only Airtran hadn’t shit in my hat, the trip would’ve been perfect.

Holy Christ! What an exciting finish! My friend Elmar was in from Germany and I could not have asked for a better game for his first NBA Experience. A 101-99 victory for the Hawks on a shot at the buzzer is storybook stuff.

I ended up with 8 tickets for this game- two upgrades from the Hawks, my own seat and five from my dad’s work. I gave the upgrades to Steve and we sat in my dad’s seats in Section 303. I couldn’t find anyone else to go- Dave was watching Quin and Mile was busy.

For 35 a piece, the seats that we had were not much better than our 5 buck seats; they were in the corner behind the Wolves bench.

My friend Elmar, who was my host on my Hamburg Exchange in 1996, works as a Hydrolics Engineer for Case New Holland, the Bulldozer and Excavator Co. He was sent last minute here to Cartersville on Sunday and luckily he was able to come down and hang out. Two things that he was amazed by- one was how big Philips is, largely because their indoor areas rarely exceed 10-12 thousand. Second, he was surprised how many black people (and so few white people) were at the game and also walking around downtown. It’s funny how living here most of life, I don’t really process that sort of thing.

He liked the cheerleaders, but didn’t care too much for all of the music and lights. He also pointed out that the game was much more of a family experience than going to Soccer matches in Germany where grown men leave their families behind so that they can get drunk and enjoy the game.

Todd somehow scored a bunch of extra tickets for last night’s game against the T-wolves. He offered them to the group so I took him up on a couple. Little did I know that he was giving some sweet seats. Sec 114 row Q. That’s behind the visitor’s bench, a little closer to mid-court, about 20 rows up. Great view of what turned out to be the best game of the season that I’ve seen. We got there early in the 2nd quarter. The Hawks were down by double digits. As I was getting situated and checking out the surroundings of sec. 114, the Hawks started to get back in the game. By halftime, they were up 10. The second half was fun. By late in the 4th, the game was tight with the lead going back and forth. Finally, the T-wolves have the ball with about 7 sec left, down 2, and a time out. They run a play and score. A roll my eyes and think to myself, “oh crap…overtime,” but before I could finish my thought the ball is flying downcourt to a wide open Josh Childress who gets the layup at the buzzer…Great finish. Thanks for the tickets Todd.

We all give Mike a hard time about his obsessive love for #21, but I find myself pretty excited to see Dominique make the basketball Hall of Fame. In honor of Monday’s big announcement, here’s something for all of us to watch…