I aim to take full advantage of my solo trips. When I’m traveling alone, I make the kind of plans that I couldn’t get away with if I was traveling with others. My favourite solo trip plan, something I’ve been doing the past few years in an annual tradition of sorts, is to camp out in a big American city for 4-5 days, and spend most of that in a ballpark nerding out over baseball. The last few years I’ve pulled this off in Baltimore, Minneapolis and Chicago. This year… Philadelphia.

Five nights, five baseball games. After arriving in Philly via a red-eye and fortified by a brief nap at my downtown hotel, I hopped on the Broadway subway line and made my way out for night one at Citizens Bank Park in south Philadelphia. I treated myself to what would be the best seat of my visit a mere ten rows off the field. Here’s the first pitch from that glorious seat.

I knew my first night would be my best attempt to meet the Phillie Phanatic as he does a 7th inning stretch dance on top of the Phillies dugout. I never did get to meet him, but got a nice close-up as he said hello to a few kids in my section.

The Phanatic is my second favourite mascot behind only Youppi!, the former mascot of my Montreal Expos. While he performed between innings I was transfixed. Yes, I’m a seven year old at heart when I see a mascot.

Speaking of those Expos of mine, I don’t go baseball games without my trusty Expos hat. Got lots of nice compliments on it and many well wishes for the return of my team.

The game on night two of my trip was rained out which made for a Sunday doubleheader at the ballpark giving me lots of time to explore the stadium. I wish they had stuff like this at Olympic Stadium in Montreal when I was a kid. Here in Philly, you can climb a Phanatic wall.

My Sunday afternoon seat was a bit higher up than Friday night’s spectacular seat. It still offered a great view of the action. Luckily for me, those dark clouds off in the distance largely stayed away. After a Phillies blowout 11-5 win on Friday, this was a disappointing effort for the home fans as the lowly Padres dominated for a 10-2 win of their own.

With so much time at the stadium over five games, and esstentially a full day in the park on Sunday, I got to sample a lot of Philadelphia food favourites – a Tony Luke’s cheesesteak, some Chickie’s and Pete’s crab fries, and a delicious chicken sandwich from Federal Donuts. This stadium gets a solid A for its food offerings in my books.

After a short break between the Sunday doubleheader games, I was back for the series finale with the Padres on Sunday night. I started out high up in the left field seats where I actually kind of liked the view until the rains and wind came.

With a sparse crowd on an off-an-on again rainy night, I managed a reasonable sneak down seat under cover. Here, the crowd celebrates a Rhys Hoskins 3-run home run that keyed a 5-0 Phillies win.

Next up on Monday, the Dodgers came to town. At the time, it looked like a potential play-off matchup. Under grey and threatening skies, I got to watch a spectacular game from a great seat just off to the side behind home.

What made this a great game? Two teams battling for playoff positioning. A combination of good pitching followed by runs being scored in spurts resulting in lead changes and drama in the late innings. This is another Rhys Hoskins 3-run HR that gave the Phillies a 5-4 lead in the bottom of the 5th after falling behind early.

Sadly for Philadelphia, the Dodgers scored runs in the 7th and 9th to take a 7-5 lead before a late home run put the outcome in doubt before the Dodgers salted a 7-6 win away in a nervous 9th inning.

The last night of my trip offered up another great baseball game. I started out watching from my assigned seat down low, but I wasn’t a real fan of this seat due to the angle I had to turn my head to watch the action.

So I did something unconventional and made my way high, high into the upper deck. From here, away from the crush of the crowd, I thoroughly enjoyed my last game. With the game tied 4-4 and heading into extra innings, I made my way back to the hotel to pack for an early flight the next day. Little did I know then that the game wouldn’t end for another almost two hours when the Phillies hit a walk-off home run in the 15th inning. I wish this game would have happened earlier in my visit so I could have stayed for the whole thing.