Royalty sees a Major League doubleheader & greets other ballpark chasers!

On Sunday August 4th, the King & I along with our pal Chris Coats aka KC Superfan returned to Citi Field for the rubber match of the three game series between the Mets & the Royals.

We sat in section 516 where we were joined by Bryan Gilligan, Phil Butleman, Alan Gimpel, Al Linderman, Frank Anichiarico & Rich Wolber.

Chris Coats, me, Stephanie & Todd Dupee at Citi Field

In addition, we got a visit from a few ballpark chasers, Stephanie aka Snarky Mamacita and her friend Todd Dupee. It was great to meet & greet them. They have a blog as well which recaps their travels from their recent baseball road trip that they took to the Southeast as well as other trips from years past. Stephanie is originally from Cleveland, Ohio. Since I've traveled there many times over the years it was easy to relate to her. She now lives here in NYC. We plan to meet up again in the near future.

As for the game we saw, the Royals broke through in the fourth inning when third baseman Mike Moustakas hit a solo home run off of Mets' starter Zack Wheeler to give the Royals a 1-0 lead. In the top of the fifth inning, the Royals added three more runs thanks to a wild pitch, an error & a timing hit by Lorenzo Cain as the Royals batted around. The Mets got one back in the bottom of the fifth inning. In the sixth inning, the Royals tacked on two more runs to take a 6-1 lead. By doing so, Chris Coats who was forced to leave early because he had to catch a flight back home didn't miss anything except for a run the Mets scored in the bottom of the eighth inning as the Royals beat the Mets, 6-2.

After the game, the King drove Frank Anichiarico & I down to Philadelphia where we saw the Phillies play the Braves at Citizens Bank Park. Our pal Bryan Gilligan also drove down and he took our friend Phil Butleman there. We all sat in section 418 where we met up with our buddy David Sack who was there on the way back from a road trip he was on that took him through the Midwest.

The Phillies were celebrating the 20th anniversary of their 1993 National League Champion team over the weekend. It was nice to see some of the players who played on that team there as part of the festivities. They included Kevin Stocker, Darren Daulton, John Kruk, Curt Schilling & Mickey Morandini among others. The King & I could relate well to that team because we got to see them play a lot that year during the regular season as well as the post season. Ironically they beat the Braves to advance to the World Series against the Blue Jays which ended when Joe Carter hit a game winning home run in game six at the Skydome as it was called back then.

As for the game we saw that night, the Phillies' starter Cliff Lee didn't pitch well. He gave up two runs in the first inning on a single by third baseman Chris Johnson. In the fourth inning, the Braves added two more runs on run scoring singles by Jason Heyward & Justin Upton after the Phillies got a run in the bottom of the third inning. The Braves went on to win, 4-1.

Stay tuned for my w/o 8/5 in review. I'm still in the midst of catching up.

Thank you for reading & following along.

Yours truly,

Gary Herman