Pirates Opening Day 2012

There is no better day than Opening Day.  It should be a national holiday.  Do I say this every year?  Probably.  Anyways, Lindsey and I went to the game because we are awesome people.  Although, allow me to complain about something (which everyone else has already complained about):  why the hell would they schedule the Phillies opening day? 

This is one of the few series that sells out regardless of when it is (mainly because it is cheaper for Phillies fans to drive to Pittsburgh than to buy tickets at their own damn park).  Opening day is one of the other days that sells out.  Why combine them?  Just seems silly to me.

Anyways, now that I have that out of my system.  We got up pretty early and left for the park.  Unfortunately, this year we could not afford to get a hotel room and since I had to work the following day, we knew we would not be going out after the game.  As always, we left a little too late and then hit traffic and barely had time to tailgate with Ryan and his friends.  At this point most of them were pretty drunk.  Next year we will remember to leave earlier (or stay the night before).

We had a few beers with them then went inside.  We found our seats and realized something.  They were under the overhang and in the shade we were actually kind of cold.  We stayed there for the first two innings, then we went for a walk and found a spot on the rotunda.

It was much better up there.  Also the majority of the people up there were Pirates fans, there were mostly Phillies fans in our section.

As most of you know, the game was pretty good.  It started off with Alex Presley and Jose Tabata getting on base, and the Cutch hitting into a double play.

After that, Roy Halladay and Erik Bedard had an awesome pitching duel.  From the rotunda we could really see how close Mayberry was to not catching the ball by Barmes and someone else (cannot remember at the moment).  Halladay did not give up another hit the rest of the game.  Pretty crazy.

After the game, we ended up sitting in traffic for about two hours.  Yeah, game ended during rush hour.  After two hours we finally made it to Monroeville and ate some sushi at the mall.  Yep, it was a pretty awesome day.  And yes, that is a picture of us beside Ralph Kiner's hands.  Give that man a real statue!