The Trip: A Review Preview

After a (very) long weekend in New York City (well, with a considerable amount of time spent in New Jersey as well), I'm finally back in South Florida today. As promised, there will be a full review of the trip, especially of the ballgame that we attended on Saturday in Suite 36 (eventually the name of the suite will be permanently burned into your memory, as it is into mine).

So much happened and there are so many good stories to share that the review is actually going to be broken into at least four parts:

1. General review and pregame (today)
   
2. Saturday's game, the box, the people, etc (tomorrow)
   
3. Post-game party at the Marlins hotel (Friday)
   
4. The real story (Monday) - I went to New York City for 4th of July weekend, but I watched fireworks in Denville, New Jersey. There has to be a story in that, right? Oh, there is, and it's a good one.

Today's trip review will focus on the pre-game portion of the trip, which was by far the least fun. Actually, it was the worst part of the trip, it was just that not all of us knew it at the time.

Most of us arrived at the ballpark early for Saturday's game. I showed up (with my friends) in time to catch the tail end of Marlins' batting practice. RFerry arrived in time to catch some BP too. Carolina (with friends in tow) also arrived just as batting practice was wrapping up. We were expecting to see Wiggins bright and early too, and when it got closer to game time, we were starting to wonder where he was.

Eventually I got a hold of him - just before the game was to get underway. Wiggins, despite the circumstances, was his typical self. Although he didn't know where he was exactly (I think a nurse or a doctor told him) or what had happened (he knew that he had been in a serious accident, but didn't remember the details), Wiggins still seemed to be in a pretty good mood. Well, as good of a mood as one can be in when they're spending their Saturday in a hospital.

As you probably know by now (at least if you've been reading the open threads), John was in a serious car accident on the way to the ballpark. How serious, you ask? Well, I don't know the details specifically, but I do have some pictures. Here are two of his car after the accident: one and two (the pictures are large, so they may take a moment to load). Here's one of poor Wiggins after the accident. In case you've never seen him before, here's what he looks like when he's all dressed up for the opera.

I feel absolutely horrible that this happened to our friend Wiggins. He has been a big part of this site and has played a large role in making the whole FishStripes experience fun for me. I've never met John in "real" life (we only know each other virtually), but I was looking forward to getting to know him on Saturday. Sadly, that wasn't possible, but I hope that he recovers quickly and that we're able to get together at another road trip in the future.

Other Things
The additional pre-game excitement was that Beer God, of last week's post fame, ended up making the trip. He didn't show up until about 11 am on Saturday, as we were getting ready to head to the subway, but he made it nonetheless. After explaining to him that he was dead to me (after cancelling on the trip in the first place), we eventually made our way to Shea.

This was, of course, after my friend Nina, who concocted an intricate story about her New York friend "Tom" who was a huge Mets fan and wanted one of our tickets (at the last moment), but who couldn't give us a ride to the stadium because he had to work on Saturday morning, convinced me that someone unknown to me was going to use one of our tickets in the box on Saturday. The best part of that whole side of the trip is that Nina is no longer known by her name; she will forever be known as "Tom" - at least in my book.

Once Beer God (yes, he wore the t-shirt to the game) dropped his stuff off in the now crowded hotel room we headed off for the game. After taking ourselves into one wrong subway station, we made it to Shea fairly uneventfully.

The story picks up from there, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow for the actual game related tales.

If you were there, please add some comments about the trip. Just try to contain your excitement and keep your comments loosely related to the pre-game portion of the day. You know - getting to the stadium, etc. And yes, I'm saving my description of Carolina's brownies until tomorrow's game piece.