Matthew Monday: Iron Man Bobble Head Doll

On June 28^th Matthew and I drove down to Baltimore (about a three hour drive) to watch an Orioles game.  I hope most of you remember that I am a Baltimore Orioles fan.  Matthew, unfortunately, is not, but he enthusiastically comes to all the games I go to.  I try to go one game a year down in Baltimore, and I specifically picked that 28^th day in June.  The reason was the give-a-way that game.  They were giving away a Cal RipkenJr.  bobble head doll but dressed up as Iron Man, the Marvell Comics superhero.

Cal Ripken is a famous, hall of fame Orioles, and one of the most popular.  But he has long retired (2001), but he is now part of the Orioles ownership and keeps in touch with the fans.  His popularity has not faded.  Cal was known as “the Iron Man” because he played in 2632 consecutive games over seventeen years.  Can you imagine, seventeen years without missing a game.  It is more than remarkable.  It is superhuman.

So the Orioles organization came up with a bobble head doll of Cal dressed as the super hero.  Now, truth be told, Iron Man was my favorite comic book hero as a kid.  The identity of Iron Man was a man named Tony Stark, who was an engineer and designed and invented the Iron Man get up.  You may know this from the Iron Man movies.  I can’t help but think that part of me went into engineering because I identified with Tony Stark. 

So when the Iron Man bobble head came out I just had to get it.

Here are some pictures of the bobble head. 

 

The detail in the Iron Man uniform is amazing.  This is one of the better bobble head dolls.

Oh about the game.  It was another of the 2025 games of a disastrous season.  Orioles lost 11-3 to the Tampa Bay Rays.  Not only that, it was a day game, and the sun and humidity were brutal.  I think it was in the 90s with high humidity.  It was a real penance to sit there. 

Here is a nice picture of me and Matthew though.

 

 

Matthew Monday: Our Trip to Scranton, PA

Concerning our big decision on which baseball park to visit next (for those that may not recall or know, we are on a lifetime father/son mission to attend all the major league ball parks together), we decided on Pittsburg.  But, Matthew wondered, if we could also go to a AAA team ball park, since we had never been to a Triple A stadium.  We have been to several Single A stadiums, and of course we have been to Major League stadiums, but never a AAA or a AA.  Of course I said sure.  I had not either.  So I suggested that on the way to Pittsburg we could go through Scranton Pennsylvania and see the Yankee’s AAA team, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders.  That’s quite a mouthful.  Scranton is the main city in the Northeast Pennsylvania area, but the stadium is closer to a suburb called Wilkes-Barre.  I should mention that Scranton is the birth place of President Joe Biden, but that had nothing to do with the decision.

Posts on Pittsburg and the Pirates game will be forthcoming.

So what was there to do in Scranton to kill the day before the game?  There was the Nay Aug Park nearby that had some hiking trails.  So we decided to go there.  The park turned out to be a complex of sorts which has a waterfall as its main hiking attraction.  So we decided we would hike to the waterfall, which was about a mile or so away.  It’s not a very large park and quite manageable.

The park also had a couple of museums within the complex, but one caught our attention since it was near where we had parked the car.  It was a coal mining museum at the mouth of a closed mining tunnel.  Here are some pictures.

 

The trek into that opening was not very deep but being underground is weird.  Here are a couple of pictures.

The Scranton mines were famous for having Anthrocite Coal, which contains among the most concentrated energy of the various coal types.  According to Wikipedia, Anthrocite “has the highest carbon content, the fewest impurities, and the highest energy density of all types of coal and is the highest ranking of coals.”  We got a lecture on this from the guide that was there.  Apparently Anthrocite Coal was very important to the industrial development of the United States, and it could only be found in the Scranton area

The hike to the waterfall was mostly on a downward slope to the waterfall, but of course we had to go back up to come back.  This was a beautiful summer day on August 1^st.  Here are some pictures of the hike, Matthew leading the way.

    

 

And then finally a full picture of the Nay Auk Gorge and waterfall.

 It was well worth the hike!

The game that night was between the RailRiders (which is a reference to trollies which were popular in Northeastern PA at one time) and the Louisville Bats, the Triple A team of the Cincinnati Reds.  The Triple A stadium did not look too much bigger than a Single A.  It was perhaps a shade larger but it did not have any upper decks like Major League parks have.  Here are a couple of pictures of the stadium.

I should also mention the price of the tickets were quite economical.  I think they were $17 per ticket, which is much cheaper than our Single A team on Staten Island.  If you’re in the Scranton area, do go to a game.

It was some sort of Hispanic culture theme the night of that game.  It was a wild, high scoring game where the Bats beat the RailRiders 10-8.  It was very enjoyable. 

Matthew Monday: Adley Rutschman Bobblehead Day

This and a series of Matthew Monday posts will document the baseball games Matthew and I attended this year.  I already mentioned our Father’s Day game at the Staten Island FerryHawks, which is an Independent Minor League game.  Today I’ll mention our game down in Baltimore on July 28^th between my beloved Baltimore Orioles and the San Diego Padres.  We even got to see former Orioles Manny Machado who had come up as an Orioles and who was traded—traded because he was going to be a free agent and Orioles weren’t going to pay him that huge salary he wanted—in 2017.  He got a warm reception.

Here are some pictures from the game.  We were sitting in left field, not far from the foul pole and just a couple of rows behind the left field wall.

I always love a picture of the Warehouse, that great brick building that was built in Babe Ruth’s day and is situated right behind the right field stands.

And here’s a couple of pictures of father and son both wearing Orioles tee shirts. 

 

For the record, Matthew is not, to his father’s dissatisfaction, an Orioles fan.

The game was great.  We got to see the Orioles win 8-6 with a big six run inning.  Now it was Adley Rutschman Bobblehead Day, and we each got an Adley Bobblehead doll.  Now Adley is a switch hitter, so they had two sets of bobblehead dolls, one batting right handed, the other left handed.  We had hoped that between the two of us, we would come away with one of each kind.  Unfortunately we did.  We both got a right handed batting Adley.  Now, where we were sitting, there was a man who had a whole bunch of boxes with Adley Bobblehead dolls.  At least six, if not more.  And I have no idea how and where he got them, and I was afraid to ask.  He asked if we wanted to trade one for the left handed batting Adely and we did!  So we got an Adley Bobblehead batting from each side of the plate.

Here’s a picture of both Adley dolls.

The black jersey is Adley left handed and the Orange is right handed.  We'll add these to our collection on baseball bobblehead dolls/

A fun time was had!  You can get the detailed box score of this game here.  

Matthew Monday: Fenway Park

The week before school started and leading up to Matthew’s birthday, he and I went to Boston and attended a game at Fenway Park, home field of the Boston Red Sox.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenway_Park  This was our father/son baseball bucket list to attend games in every single major league ballpark.  This was the fifth major league park we have now checked off.  The other are the parks of the Orioles (Baltimore, MD), the Yankees (New York City), the Mets Queens, NY), and the Nationals (Washington D.C.). 

The Boston Red Sox were playing the Houston Astros, and it was a bit of a wild game as Fenway Park games can be.  The Astros won 7-4.

Here are a few pictures.  First the famous Green Monster, the left field wall which is not deep but very high.

 

Almost as famous as the Green Monster is the Petksy Pole, the right field foul pole named for Johhny Petsky who had a knack for hitting homers just inside the pole.  This pole gives another odd feature to Fenway’s dimensions.  The pole is extremely shallow, juts in and then opens into a wide cavernous right field. 

 

Matthew and I sat in right field bleachers.  It was a pretty good view.  Some pictures of me and Matthew.  With the Green Monster behind us

 

And with the Pesky Pole behind us.

 

We had a great time.  We spent a few days in Boston.  I’ll share some pictures of that in subsequent Matthew Mondays.

Matthew Monday: Father’s Day Adventure 2023, Philadelphia

This year’s Father’s Day adventure—an outing on Father’s Day my son and I have each year—was to go to Philadelphia, the Old Town Philadelphia of the founding fathers.  Philadelphia is about an hour and a half drive, which is not too much.  We left early, had a nice day, and found parking on the street which saved us some money.  We went to Independence Hall, where we got a couple of tours of the room where the Declaration of Independence was signed and a tour of the first Congressional rooms where the House and Senate debated and passed legislation while the final buildings were built in Washington D.C.

Here are some pictures.  First Independence Hall with a statue of George Washington.

 

Some pictures of the room where the Declaration of Independence was signed. 

 

And the Liberty Bell.

 

And we had Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches for lunch!  Delicious.  I should have took a picture of that. 

Matthew Monday: Our Trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Part 2

Two weeks ago I posted on our trip to Cooperstown, NY, where the Baseball Hall of Fame resides.  Part 1 was limited to our stay in Albany, NY.  This post is on our visit to the Hall of Fame.

Of course on that first post I had promised I would come back the next week, but alas I have a tough time keeping up during baseball season.  As you may know, I love baseball!  And thank God that love is being passed on to Matthew.  Today he just got his birthday present.  Twelve days after his birthday I’m afraid, but that’s because Amazon had to back order the 2021 complete set of baseball cards.  He was thrilled when it came in this afternoon and spent the rest of the night going through all the cards.  Truth be told, I spent a little time going through them myself.  ;)

As I explained in Part 1, we stayed in Albany because it was the nearest big town with reasonably priced hotels.  Cooperstown is a very small town in the middle of nowhere.  “Nowhere” being relative for a city boy, and from a very big city at that.  Cooperstown was about an hour and a half drive from Albany.  About 45 minutes was on a major highway, but then it was 45 minutes on back roads that wound around hills and farmland, up curvy ascents and down equally curvy descents, around ridges and along cliffs.   Some of it was white knuckle driving.  I was surprised that such a well-known site required such effort to get there.  I didn’t take any pictures of the countryside.  I was too focused on getting us there in one piece.  Matthew and I marveled at some of the local town names, though “town” might be too generous a term for some of them.  Frequently the names of the towns or counties or whatever they were seemed to have a “kill” in them, like Bobskill.  Must be a hunting heritage. 

The whole town of Cooperstown is just lined with stores that cater to baseball in some fashion.  Clothing, baseball cards, memorabilia, touristy tchotchkes, framed pictures, equipment.  Even the food outlets, which charged an arm and a leg—or maybe it was just inflation—had a baseball association.  It was a pleasure to walk down the main street.  Parking was difficult since it was all metered.  We wound up parking about a half mile away in the residential neighborhood, which was a blessing actually which I’ll explain at the end.

There were lots of displays at the Hall of Fame.  I could not take a picture of them all, nor if I did could I post that many here.  It was a baseball lover’s paradise.  I had been there once before with my wife, but I had mostly forgotten how thrilling it was to see all the baseball history.  Matthew loved it immensely.  He said it was one of the best trips we’ve ever had.

So here’s an early display as you walk in to the third floor, which is where they suggest you start.  I may have mentioned it, but you probably don’t recall.  Matthew, much to his father’s chagrin, is a New York Yankees fan.  You may remember I’m a Baltimore Orioles fan.  (Despite being a Yankees fan, I let him live in the same house, but at some point I may have to reconsider.)  Here is Matthew standing to a display of the greatest player of all time, The Babe.

 

And here I am standing on a display for two of the Orioles greatest, third baseman Brooks Robinson (#5) and fiery manager that led them to four World Series, two of which they won, and a number of playoff appearances, mostly during the 1970s, Earl Weaver (#4). 

 

Here’s Matthew’s favorite display, an icon for the 27 World Championships the NY Yankees have won.  To show you how incredible that is, the next closest are the St. Louis Cardinals at 11. 

 

It wasn’t just displays.  There were movie clips, quizzes, radio announcing, pictures of dramatic moments, team songs.  Baseball is Americana, and you got to live through the 20^th century of American baseball.  I also enjoyed the art section where they had statues and paintings on display.  They had several Norman Rockwells, such as this.

 

And they had this interesting painting of Christy Mathewson, a great pitcher from around the WWI era for the NY Giants.

 

I had a blog post a number of years ago on Christy Mathewson’s book on pitching, “Pitchingin the Pinch.”  

The plaque section of every baseball Hall-of-Famer is the climax of the walk through.  If they made it into the Hall of Fame, they have a plaque up for them.  Here are a few of my baseball heroes in successive order: Earl Weaver, Brooks Robinson, Eddie Murray, Cal Ripken, Frank Robinson, and Jim Palmer.

And a couple for Matthew, famed NY Yankee relief pitchers, Goose Gossage and Mariano Rivera.

 

And to cap it off, here is a picture of father and son in front of the Hall’s entrance.

1210

 

So finally, about that spot we parked a half mile away.  This was on a Saturday, and it was going to be difficult for us the next day to get to a Church for Sunday Mass.  Across the street from where we parked was—wouldn’t you know it—a Catholic Church, St. Mary’s Our Lady of the Lake Church.  https://stmaryscoop.org/  Cooperstown is on a rather large lake called Otsego Lake.  And wouldn’t you know it, we would make the Saturday Vigil Mass that counts for Sunday obligation!  Can it get any better than that?  God had certainly a hand in the working of the day.  Here’s a picture of the Church’s sanctuary.

 

The church goes back well over a hundred years, and the choir was superb.  If you are in Cooperstown, go to Mass at St. Mary’s.

Matthew Monday: Our Trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Part 1

For a year I had promised Matthew I would take him to the Baseball Hall of Fame this summer.  A week ago we went for the weekend. 

The Baseball Hall of Fame resides in Cooperstown, NY, which is roughly in the middle of upstate New York.  So where to stay was a question.  Cooperstown is not a very big city and when we priced the hotels they were very pricy for in the middle of nowhere.  So we priced around and decided the best value was to stay in Albany, New York.  From Albany it would be an hour and a half drive to Cooperstown. 

Albany is a three hour drive from home.  We got up early on a Friday morning and drove up, relaxed for a bit, and then spent the afternoon sightseeing Albany.  This Part 1 of our trip is going to cover the Albany pictures.

Albany happens to be the Capital of New York State, and it happens to be on the Hudson River, a very navigable river that leads into the New York City harbor.  

Henry Hudson sailed up the river trying to find a Northwest Passage.  He didn’t find one.  Here are a few pictures from a landing and park we found.  First looking up river.

 

The Hudson is 315 miles long, not exactly the Mississippi but still impressive.  Then down river with a special little boy in the picture.

The New York State Capital has impressive architecture.  It’s fairly wide some trees obstruct part of the view.  This is the best I could do.

 

The statue in front of the Capital is of General Phillip Sheridan, a civil war general born in Albany and was one of General Ulysses S. Grant’s key generals. 

 

I had no idea about this next one.  It’s The Egg in Albany.  Matthew seemed to know about it.  I didn’t.  I thought it was just a horrid architectural curio but it actually houses two theaters.  It’s their performing arts center.  

 

Does it surprise you it was built in 1978?  Not me.  Compare this architecture with the beautiful New York State Capital I posted above.  Modern art and architecture is junk.

Speaking of beautiful architecture, we did find the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.  This is Albany’s main Catholic Church.  

 

Unfortunately it was closed, but you can take a virtual tour here.  It looks gorgeous inside.  A few more of my pictures.

 

 

Now that is beauty.

Finally Matthew wanted me to take a little video clip of him swimming in the hotel pool. 

 

We had fun, and we didn’t even get to Cooperstown yet!  Now stay tune for Part 2 at the Baseball Hall of Fame.