Fifth game, Indians vs A's

Chris and I outside The Jake. We looked for a family to take the picture in hopes they wouldn't break our camera. Mission accomplished.
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Fifth game, Indians vs. A's

Chris here again. I get the honor of writing up the events of our day since it was probably the best day of the trip for me even though it was not baseball related.

We left Chicago and began our trek to Cleveland. As we looked at the map, we realized that we would be going directly through South Bend, IN, home of the University of Notre Dame. We saw that we had time to stop and visit the campus before getting to Cleveland so we did.

Let me tell you why this was such a great time for me. My Grandma Babs, who just passed away about 1 month ago, grew up in South Bend a few blocks away from ND and actually babysat the kids of ND coach and football great Knute Rockne. It is also where my grandparents met as well. Ever since I can remember, she had instilled in me the ND football tradition (even though they suck this year) and I have always wanted to visit South Bend and the ND campus. It was quite fitting that I was able to actually visit the campus so soon after she passed. The fact that it was completely an unexpected and surprising visit made it even more exciting and memorable for me.

We took some heat from the Cleveland fans for this one, but we stayed strong.
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The ND campus was one of the most beatiful things I have ever seen. It was an absolutely incredible place. It was a completely different world than the one right outside the campus gates in South Bend.

It was sweet to be there on the day before game day and see everyone getting ready for the game. We saw at least 2 temporary stores set up in tents outside the stadium that were filled w/ ND merchandise of all sorts. At least 98% of the people we saw on campus were sporting ND gear. It made you see how big football is to them.

View from our seats, pretty sweet.
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It was sweet to see the Golden Dome and Touchdown Jesus live and in person. The other buildings on campus were just as impressive. They were all very large old stone buildings with incredibly intricate carvings and beautiful wood doors. Also, among the pictures that we took of and around the football stadium was a banner commemorating Paul Hornung's Heisman Trophy. If you remember from our previous entry from KC, we were able to see and touch Hornung's actual Heisman Trophy at Chappell's Restuarant. It was a great detour and definitely made me happy.

Hey look twins, too bad there weren't many touchdowns to celebrate for ND or Jesus.
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We left ND after about an hour continued on to Cleveland. It was extremely annoying having to pay toll just to drive on a US Interstate that our tax dollars already pay for. It ended up costing us $15.20 in tolls for the 5 hour drive from Chicago to Cleveland. This was even more annoying since the roads in Indiana were by far the worst that we have been on this whole trip.

We pulled in to Cleveland around 5 PM. We were amazed that we were going 70 mph in the second lane of traffic during Friday evening rush hour. When we arrived at Jacob's Field (The Jake), we followed the parking signs to an EXTREMELY sketchy looking parking lot under the overpass. It looked legit though since there were employees milling all about and packed w/ cars. Fortunately, it was legit and everything was fully intact when we returned after the game.

The Gold dome, pretty amazing.
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We did our normal routine of walking around the park to check it out and then entered the park. I was a little perturbed because they wouldn't allow us to bring in our bottled water, something that was allowed by every other stadium. I immediately downed a bottle before going in. Once in, I asked Gabe where our seats were. I thought the tickets we had were in the outfield in the second level. It turns out Gabe had found AMAZING seats 6 rows behind the A's dugout online and purchase those instead. My mood immediately changed for the better when we got to our seats.

Chris with Coach Leahy, they both have the same hat!!!
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As a ballpark though, we were both disappointed with The Jake. It just wasn't as nicely set up as the other new parks we have visited. The concessions setup was really funky and there was nothing that really set the park apart as unique. The Jake had one type of microbrew that we found. It wasn't bad but nothing like the plethora of choices we have back in Oakland. We have come to realize how incredibly spoiled we are w/ all the great  beers and microbrews that we have back home at the Coliseum. Every stadium we've been to has either the Bud line or Coors line (or Old Style at Wrigley) and that's about it. Granted, 2 of the stadiums were owned by Bud and Coors but still, you'd think they'd at least have some of their own quality beers, not their crappy stuff. Other than that, it's been an extremely difficult task to find any good beer at these parks. However, I guess it's been good having to walk around looking for beer, gives us some exercise.

Oh, yeah, the A's lost. The did at least make it interesting by way of a Jack Cust 2-run homer in the 7th that closed the gap to 4-3, which was unfortunately the final score. We were hassled a bit for our A's gear but most of it was good natured. Fortunately, it was fireworks night so we were able to avoid the crowd by leaving immediately after the game and getting a few hours of drive time in. We ended up staying at some random hotel in Mercer, PA.

Now that I've rambled for entirely too long, I will leave any other important details I neglected to Gabe...

Gabe here, the only additional thing I would like to add about the dissapontment that was Jacobs Field is the "Party Porch" they have in center field.  This is an awesome idea, and one that we enjoyed very much in St. Louis as it was a great place to watch the game.  At the Jake however fans cannot see the action from this part of the stadium.  Apparentely the Indians owners thought it would be a good idea to put trees blocking the field.  I could understand if these were free tickets, but fans in this section paid good money to get into the game!!  I'm surprised someone hasn't tried bringing a chainsaw into the stadium to get rid of the view blocking trees.  As Chris mentioned our seats were awesome, and we had a great view of the field.  We also had about 4 other A's fans around us which made us feel a bit more brave about cheering our boys on.  One note on Norte Dame, I don't think I have ever seen Chris so excited, now I know what a kid in a candy store looks like.  The only thing more amazing than the campus is how unbelievably crappy the town of South Bend is.  It makes Oakland look like Tiburon.