Saturday, June 22nd, 2019

I just got back from a fun but quick trip to Kansas City with Nolan and Eben.  We headed down there yesterday after I was done with work, and we stayed at the American Inn in North Kansas City.  It wasn't the fanciest hotel, but it worked.  After we checked into the hotel, we went out for some yummy BBQ at Smokin' Guns.  Eben had a 1/2 rack of spare ribs with fries and corn, I had a 1/2 chicken with BBQ beans and onion rings, and Nolan had a hot dog with fries and a cookie.  It was all very good, and I liked their sweet BBQ sauce the best.  After dinner, we found a nice playground for Nolan to burn off some energy.

Today, after checking out of the hotel, we headed over to the Kaleidoscope near Crown Center in KC.  It's an interactive children's center where kids can make their own arts and crafts.  They can paint, make their own puzzles, there is a dark room with black lights, and just lots of crazy weird things for kids to explore.  Nolan had a lot of fun, and he made his own "dragonfly" out of some construction paper, markers, and tape.  After that, we headed over for an early lunch to Fritz's.   The best thing about Fritz's it that your meal is delivered to you via a miniature train!  Honestly, that's the only reason we go there, because kids love trains.  The food is "meh" at best.  Although I did enjoy the Oreo shake that I had there.

Once we were finished with lunch, we headed over to Kauffman Stadium for the Twins-Royals game.  The starting pitchers for today were Jose Berrios for the Twins and Danny Duffy for the Royals.  I thought that Berrios pitched very well, and he held the Royals scoreless through the first 7  innings.  However, he was pulled in the 8th after a walk and a single... and both of those inherited runners ended up scoring, as the Twins blew a 3-run lead in the 8th.  Three Twins hit solo HRs to build that lead (Miguel Sano, Jake Cave, and C.J. Cron).  My favorite moment in the game was the home run by Cron.  We were sitting in left field (section 105, row B, seats 9-11 to be exact), and his homer ended up landing like 20 feet from us.  I saw the ball make contact with Cron's bat, and I could see the ball coming towards us the whole way.  For a moment I thought maybe we could catch it.  I guess that we were on TV then, and if you look closely at ESPN's highlights of the home run, we are in the stands close to where it lands.  Anyways, the game ended up going 10 innings, where Cron and Eddie Rosario provided RBIs to break the tie and help secure the Twins' 5-3 victory. 

I believe that this was the 8th MLB game that I have been to (if you don't count the three spring training games that I saw in 2008).  Those games would be:

• 8/7/05 - Red Sox @ Twins (Red Sox won 11-7). Manny Ramirez hit a HR
• 7/25/06 - Twins @ White Sox (Twins won 4-3). Johan Santana was the Twin's pitcher.
• 7/4/10 - Reds @ Cubs (Reds won 14-3).  Drew Stubbs hit 3 HRs that game!  
• 5/29/11 - Pirates @ Cubs (Cubs won 3-2).  There was a rain delay, and we drank a lot.
• 6/9/12 - Cubs @ Twins (Twins won 11-3).  
• 7/7/14 - Twins @ Mariners (Mariners won 2-0).  Hisashi Iwakuma struck out 10 Twins.
• 6/21/15 - Cubs @ Twins (Cubs won 8-0).  Jake Arrieta pitched a complete game shutout.
• Then of course, today's game.  Twins @ Royals (Twins win 5-3 in 10 innings). 

The view from our seats in section 105.  We were two rows up from the bullpen.