What might someday be

March 30, 2017March 26, 2017 / Greg / Leave a comment

Note: I’ve transcribed something I wrote in a notebook last year on August 12th in Minneapolis during a trip I took to watch some baseball games. Re-reading it, I like it, so I’m offering it to the world here. It’s about baseball. It’s about the Montreal Expos. It’s about what my baseball trip in the summer of 2016 got me thinking about. As I head to Montreal with my Dad to take in some preseason baseball, this is also about what I hope will happen one day.

August 12, 2016 – Minneapolis, MN USA

Two games and a rainout later, I can’t shake the feeling of what might be. A smallish downtown ballpark, a small market almost contracted into oblivion like what threatened my Expos. A northern city. A second sport city. It’s striking really. In between innings here, if I squint just enough and let my mind wander, I can almost imagine the same scene in Montreal.

I came to Minneapolis, in part, because of early days visits to Montreal. The thrill of the event in the Big O left an imprint on me. Growing up, baseball was everything. Ask me Al Oliver’s stats from 1983 and I can quote them to you. Between early life fanaticism, then growling older and wiser, baseball was always floating around in my mind. It’s something my dad and I have in common, and I love it for that alone.

Then 1994 happened. I was in college and studying hard, had a girlfriend, and an Expos season for the ages stopped. Bitter, my focus left baseball for a while. The Expos were terrible for a long stretch. But still, every time in Montreal I would head to a game or two, and that feeling would return. Even as I was disengaging from baseball, every time I was back in the Big O, beer in hand, there was something magical dancing inside me.

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Five days of Minnesota beers

December 14, 2016December 14, 2016 / Greg / 2 Comments

My solo trips in recent years have had a focus on baseball and craft beer. Minneapolis this year was no different and provided a great setting for both. Five days and nights spent in beautiful Target Field watching baseball bookended part of each day, and some exploration of Minnesota state craft beers took up a part of the remainder of those days. In the city, there was no shortage of beer options, even for someone who stuck to breweries and bars near the downtown or on one of the light rail lines. There were even a couple of great taprooms conveniently located next door to the ballpark I was heading to every day.

Modist Brewing’s taproom had a very stripped down, almost Scandinavian, feel. On a humid afternoon of city exploring, I pulled up a chair and tried four of their creations. My favourite (the picture on the left below) was their “First Call”. A light lager infused with espresso, this was deliciously weird and wonderful. If ever there was a morning beer, this was it.

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Five days of ballpark food

December 10, 2016December 10, 2016 / Greg / Leave a comment

I wasn’t intending to almost exclusively eat ballpark food while in Minneapolis, but when you plan a five day trip around seeing five baseball games, you’re not exactly leaving yourself a lot of spare time for dining out on the town. Lucky for me, the choices at Target Field were pretty solid, and quite diverse compared to the traditional hotdogs and Cracker Jacks.

Just beyond the centre field bleachers was one of my favourite concession stands – an outpost of the downtown Minneapolis restaurant, Butcher and the Boar. They served up these outstanding pork rib tips. Delicious!

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A downtown different with art

November 27, 2016November 27, 2016 / Greg / Leave a comment

Having traveled a significant amount south of the border, I’m fairly confident in saying there’s a definite similarity to the look of larger American cities. It’s even more striking as you move away from the east coast. Yes, all cities have their distinguishing features, but subtract obvious landmarks (like the Space Needle in Seattle) or geographical markers (a mountain off in the distance in Denver), and there’s a lot of sameness. Of course, I’m not speaking of New Orleans… that doesn’t look like anything else. But you get the point.

Minneapolis, especially in its downtown area, is a bit of an American cookie cutter environment of high rises in the usual architectural styles. Although that remained my impression through five days in the city, the longer I was there, public art kept catching my eye and added a lot of character to what I was seeing in my walks. Like these statues outside of Target Field paying homage to two Minnesota Twins legends: Harmon Killebrew on the left and Kirby Puckett on the right:

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An annual baseball trip

October 24, 2016November 20, 2016 / Greg / 4 Comments

A direct flight from my new hometown of Saskatoon made Minneapolis an easy choice for my summer baseball trip this year – five games in five days, including being able to squeeze a Sunday afternoon game in ahead of my flight back home. I picked up an assortment of tickets and figured the subpar Twins might allow me to upgrade a few cheap upper deck seats into some better seats over the course of my visit. That strategy worked out quite well, but for game one, I sprung for a legit good seat. Beer in my hand, I settled in for the first of what would be a lot of pitches over the five days.

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Night in row 8

October 15, 2016October 15, 2016 / Greg / 2 Comments

My last night in Minneapolis got off to a less than stellar start. As I left my hotel to walk to Target Field for my fourth baseball game in four days, a man walking toward me punched me. In fairness, he was suffering from something and staggering as he walked toward me and likely in his mind thought I was trying to block his walking path. His punch connected with my arm and I was more stunned than hurt. When I got to the ballpark about fifteen minutes later, I had mostly forgotten about that incident because it was a beautiful night for baseball. I grabbed a Minnesota craft beer and took up a seat for batting practice right down by the field. Little did I know what else I was in for this night.