That's a Big Ballpark, Eh?

Welcome to the first day when we finally had a chance to sleep in! We departed Syracuse at 11:00 A.M., driving towards the Peace Bridge entrance to Canada in Buffalo. We stopped along the way at a Starbucks for free Wi-Fi, which ended up not being free after all. Back on the road, it wasn’t long before we made it to the Canadian border. Our Canadian border agent was friendly and good-natured (we can’t say the same for our American border agent on the way back), though surprised by our story about traveling all over North America to see baseball games. In any event, he let us through and we entered Ontario. Shortly after, we entered Toronto in the midst of a downpour. Hmm, rain on our road trip. Imagine that. We can’t tell you how much more exciting and adventurous it is trying to find your way around a foreign city when you can barely see the street signs or the lines on the road. Really, if you’re planning a road trip, make sure you do it in the rainy/hurricane season. Otherwise, you’re cheating yourself. Seriously.

So finally we found a parking garage that looked fairly safe and walked toward the stadium. And when I say “toward the stadium,” I mean toward the enormous CN Tower immediately next to the stadium. Thank God for that tower. We bought our tickets at the ticket window, which oddly enough charged a service fee per ticket. Really, at the window? How are a few mouse clicks and the motion of sliding tickets under the window worth $2.00? These Canadians are money-grubbers. Now I know why books cost more in Canada. We wanted to try the hot wings place across the street, in keeping with our habit of having a pre-game snack followed by a full dinner, but the wait was too long for our taste, so we grabbed a sausage sandwich outside the ballpark. MB had a beef frank, while Susie tried the Polish sausage, which was perfectly crispy on the outside.

Our outfield seats turned out to be a few rows up on the third base line, right above the Toronto bullpen. We were close enough to hear the crisp leather smack of the baseball hitting the catcher’s glove in the bullpen. Not too bad, except for the partially obstructed view of the big screen—correction, North America’s largest big screen. That’s not the only superlative we experienced in Toronto. We also witnessed the world’s fastest grounds crew in action, so self-named because the only dirt in Rogers Centre is the small circle around each base and the pitcher’s mound. Still, I don’t begrudge them their title; they come racing out of the outfield gate at a full run and return in the same fashion, all to the “William Tell Overture.” Pretty impressive.

Even though Rogers Centre is massive and the roof was closed for our rainy weather, we felt like we were outside. It had the feel of an outdoor ballpark. We saw a great game between the Blue Jays and A’s. The Blue Jays won with a walk-off hit in the ninth inning. MB and I were ready to celebrate with the Toronto fans, but we have never seen fans exit a stadium faster than those Toronto fans did. Is there something we should know? Earlier in the game, we spied a Hard Rock Café in the hotel that makes up one section of the stadium, so when we walked down to the field level for photos, we asked the nearest usher how to get there. This might have been the highlight of our day, because in the course of our conversation, the usher said both “aboot” and “eh?” I think both our hearts jumped inside our chests, because we exchanged a quick glance.

Unfortunately, the Hard Rock had closed by the time we got there (sorry, Tom, no souvenir t-shirt for you). We ate nearby and started the long drive back to our (as yet undetermined) hotel in Buffalo. We had decided earlier that we would go through the border at night instead of in the morning, since we had a long drive back to New York ahead of us for the Mets game. We were both extremely tired, so to combat our sleepiness we played a rousing game of “Would You Rather?”, followed by a raunchy game of “Who Would You Do?” Note from MB: If you are ever on a road trip with Susie in the future, you do not want to play either of these games with Susie. She thinks of really gross scenarios.

Having changed $60 American into Canadian currency and getting ready to exit Canada, we were left with a Canadian money conundrum. We needed to make a pit stop and fill up the tank, so we pulled into a gas station and picked up some exclusively Canadian snacks at the mini-mart. MB kept asking me what else I wanted and giving me the remaining sum, and I felt like I was on old-school Wheel of Fortune, when you had to spend your winnings on hideous merchandise and furniture. “I’ll take the porcelain Dalmatian for $245, Pat.” We made it into the states with little difficulty and luckily found a nice hotel right in Buffalo. I’m sure we were asleep before our heads hit our pillows.