This last weekend was such a blast! I'm so grateful my final paper was moved back a week, otherwise I would not have been able to have had the opportunity to go down to Orange County this weekend!
First of all, I've always wanted to go down to Cal State Fullerton because that baseball team's almost like a legend among all D1 collegiate teams. They just have so much history, and for an A's fan, have had a lot of players go professional. The field was beautiful, it was extremely hot all weekend long, culminating with a 95-degree day game on Sunday. It almost had a minor league feel, so again, I'm really excited I got to see the park!
But that's not entirely the whole story.... I sort of got to see history in the making!
See my article and read the PDF I made to understand what I'm talking about :)
Other than that, get ready for a brief recap of the weekend.
THURSDAY: My sister came and picked me up and I got to check out her house in Newport Beach for the first time. I'm really jealous of where she gets to live! Only one block from the ocean she lives and to kill time while we were waiting for our friend Gianna, we walked a couple of blocks down the street to this small dive bar on the ocean. It was a neat little sports bar with a Mexican theme, so of course we each had a margarita to start things off. While waiting, this group of guys from Jersey (just imagine the accents already...) stopped at our table and "had to find out who we were." Small world, one of them went to UCSB. But a cute awkward and tall guy started talking to me since I was getting so heated with the Angel's game on tv. In the land of the Angels, I was actually cheering when they started getting pounded!
Long story short, they invited us to come over and take shots in Huntington Beach (where we were ironically headed for dinner), but to our better judgment we turned down the offer from what would have been a drunken chauffeur. Then Gi finally arrived and we headed out to a delicious Mediterranean hole in the wall restaurant in downtown Huntington. We stayed there for hours, as the waiter flirted with us all night and gave us free appetizers and baklava after dinner. The baklava, he said, was a gift after I correctly guessed that he was originally from Turkey, and not Greece, as my sister surmised.
This is where it gets weird, "Max," he said his name was, started to develop a little crush on my sister and then he started showing us pictures of Istanbul, saying we should go visit soon. While it is much prettier than I'd ever imagined, his next suggestion was proposterous. He told us to go and his parents would pick us up from the airport, house and feed us the entire time. Wow..... As the night began to dwindle away, he suggested we go to bars with him. Instead we booked out of there and went to a bar where I met my friend
Chris, who works at our athletic conference office and who I have almost daily contact with, but I had never met up until that point. It was a good night made that much better when our friend Max randomly showed up. Needless to say, Aimee was quite unhappy about the whole thing, especially after I kept saying she'd dance with him.
FRIDAY: Oh yeah, did I mention I was on a work trip? We didn't have to be at the field until 4ish, with game time set for 7 p.m. So Aimee and I took our time waking up, then quickly showered and hopped on bikes and rode around Newport all afternoon. About lunchtime, I decided I wanted to go to a little diner and find some kind of brunch food, so we found this cute little surf shop-inspired diner and got egg white omelets with all kinds of fruit and veggies. And I indulged my inner child by ordering a tall, cold glass of chocolate milk.
After riding around a bit, we stopped at the harbor and then made our way back to her house, packed up and watched tv at my hotel suite in Brea before it was time to head back to the field. That was an exciting night, as my Tigers defeated Cal State Fullerton, the NO. 6 TEAM IN THE NATION!!! 5-4 in the top of the ninth inning, after we put up four runs in that inning! It was also my first time on radio since all the broadcasts prior were broadcast solely on the Internet, and the person working in the studio for the radio station had nothing but good things to say about my broadcast. So that was an exciting moment for me.
SATURDAY: Taking our time waking up again, we headed down to the lobby and had breakfast with Ben, my co-worker since the softball team was also playing at Fullerton last weekend. After breakfast, Aimee and I met our student team manager, Antonio, and headed to Downtown Disneyland! It's been about five-six years since I last went to Disneyland, so that was fun to come back to the area again. We first went novelty shopping and then found ourselves in the ESPN Zone. Antonio treated us to a game card and we played sports/arcade games for the better part of an hour. My favorite part was actually striking out Alex Rodriguez of the NY Yankees in a pitching simulation. But I won't tell you that my fastball only clocked at 43 mph. Embarrassing.... the gun must have been off. That's ok though, because I get bragging rights since Aimee walked A-Rod on four-straight pitches and Antonio gave up a home run ot Jason Bay. After we ran out of points, we headed to the House of Blues for lunch and then drove back to campus to catch some of the softball game that afternoon. About an hour later, it was back to work for me, so I went up the concourse and on the other side to the baseball diamond, where I got to broadcast another win for Pacific!!! This time it was 14-10, after we posted four runs in the sixth, seven in the seventh and two in the eighth for our FIRST series win EVER against the Titans. Super exciting.
SUNDAY: Wasn't all that exciting, as we woke up and went straight to the field for the only day game of the weekend. Actually, scratch that. Baseball games always make for a fun day. Can't win 'em all though, but we fought hard and almost pulled out the sweep with a 4-3 loss before making the 6.5 hour bus ride back up to Stockton.
Again, it was a great weekend and I'm so glad I got to go! There's nothing better than baseball, except maybe baseball in warm weather, no, how about baseball in warm weather in Southern California on the beach?
Heaven.
