Midnight riding in my old two seater rolling down the boulevard
Headlights shining on rusty fences as I pass the rail yard
Black leather jacket on a Friday night
Fire up the lighter and a Lucky Strike
The radio’s saying “take a walk on the wild side”
And it’s got me feeling like
Oh oh oh oh
Go wide open it’s a pedal down kind of a thing
Little bit of Motown smooth
A little bit of Memphis Blues
A sea of emotion raining all over me
Give me that heart and that soul
American rock ‘n roll
– Robert Ritchie
Sunday 2 September
Baseball Sunday!
We gathered at Mike’s house around 11:00am (or fashionably later, if your name is Allan Rovik) and headed downtown, a giant troupe of us in two cars: me, Nathan, Matt, Brooke, Miles, Paige, Mike, Bri and Allan. Our destination, Guaranteed Rate Field, home of the Chicago White Sox.
This baseball-mad city has two teams and in recent times, the Sox have definitely under-performed. Long time since their 2005 World Series championship. The Boston Red Sox were in town, the best team in the Major Leagues, with almost less losses than the White Sox have wins. With the holiday weekend for Labor Day, there were tonnes of Boston fans in the house. And why not? There are many worse places to spend a holiday weekend than Chicago.
Man, it was hot. We had great tickets up on the club level – complete with in-seat service, which is one of the greatest things America has ever thought up – but we were in direct sunlight for a lot of the game, save an occasional moment or three when the sun went behind a cloud. The temperature peaked at 91F/32C but it felt much, much hotter than that. Thankfully, the beer was cold and plentiful. And the company was great.
The game? Well, the White Sox, perhaps seeking to emulate Matt Alley’s stunning catch of a ball that’d been tossed up into the stands, surprisingly blanked the Red Sox 8-0 to tie the four-game weekend series at 2 – where was this offensive potency earlier in the season, fellas? Saw a couple of home runs, one to deep left and one to deep right, which set off a bunch of fireworks. Fun atmosphere with more than 30,000 in the house on a gorgeous day for baseball, where the Sox honoured their long time broadcaster Ken ‘Hawk’ Harrelson, who will be retiring at the end of the season.
Back in Wheaton, we all got together for Graham’s second birthday celebration. Everyone was in good spirits for most of the evening but things went downhill for Mike when the Miami/LSU football game started. Things did not go well for Miami almost from the outset. Graham, on the other hand, was possibly the happiest kid in America for those few hours. Great to see the Longhini’s again and also Brian and Debbie. It was one of those great nights where I feel very fortunate to get to hang with these guys.
Speaking of fortunate – Flash Passes at Six Flags Great America tomorrow!
kitchtrips 