When we went to Texas for the Sox series, the first game was delayed one hour for rain. For our inconvenience, we were given two free tickets for upper-deck seats. On game three, we were given four vouchers for seats of @25 or less as part of a giveaway. We redeemed all these tickets over the past weekend in what turned out to be a trip of ups and downs.
We left on Thursday and hit Fort Worth just in time for rush hour traffic. It took us two and a half hours to get from OKC to Forth Worth then one hour to get from Fort Worth to our motel in Arlington.
We had a room in the Days Inn on Collins in Arlington. I knew we were in for a treat when we pulled in to the lot and found that the motel shares a lot with the Afrika Food Mart and a loud Mexican bar. Butting up to the lot was what we cops commonly refer to as a "turd complex" which is an apartment complex that accepts Section 8. The employees of the hotel were unfriendly and the room was lousy. The coffee maker sit in the bathroom (it can't be moved because it's tied to the wall). The bed was extremely small and low to the ground and the bed spread looked faded with age. To top it all off, the entire place was full of teenagers. We usually pamper ourselves on this trip by staying in the Wyndam hotel, which we planned on staying at Sunday and Monday nights. While traveling to the park from the motel, we learned that out hotel had been sold to Sheraton. We kept our reservations but lost all our free stuff that we get there for being part of Wyndam's rewards program. But more on that later.
Game one was against the Indians, a great ball club, who had C.C. Sabathia on the hill. It was a great game but we were surrounded by weird people. Don't ever eat the pizza in Rangers Ballpark. It's just frozen pizza like you can get at Walmart.
After the first game, we drove down to Rockdale to stay with Charissa's parents. It's a great community and a cute little town but it's far away and really boring and I'm glad they're moving to the Tulsa area so we don't have to drive to Rockdale anymore. While in Rockdale, we drove to Round Rock to catch a minor league game between the Express and our own Oklahoma Redhawks. The Redhawks lost but we did get to see Freddy Guzman (my favorite minor leaguer) steal home on Round Rock's pitcher.
Sunday night we went back to Dallas, this time with Bill and Saphronia, and stayed in the newly renamed Sheraton, where we learned that the Seattle Mariners were also staying. We had rooms on the fourteenth (thirteenth) floor overlooking the ballpark. I LOVE this hotel and was so glad to be back in it after staying at the crappy Days Inn and the comfortable but boring spare bedroom of my in-laws house. We had a great omelet man who Bill has become friends with.
On game day II, we took a tour of the ballpark and ate in the restaurant attached to the park. At the game, we got to see a Sammy Sosa home run in an explosive fifth inning which saw five runs on five hits (two were home runs: Sosa and Wilkerson). The Rangers took an 8-7 victory and have taken the first three in their four game series against the strong Mariners lineup.
The final down came when we arrived home and learned that our friend who we had left to watch our animals had forgotten completely and our dog and cat had been five days without food or water. Both of them were okay but Cooper (the dog) had an abrasion on his nose where it looks like he kept trying to get the door of his house open. Chloe (the cat) had found a box of dog biscuits and was keeping herself fed on those. We took the dog to the vet just to be sure and he was given a clean bill of health. I felt horrible all day over it.
Thus rounds up our final baseball trip of the summer.
Go Sox!
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