Yup. Another post about the best game in the world.  Baseball. For those of you who missed the last installment of as the baseball spins, I will bring you up to date. Our intrepid baseball stadium travelers (Josh & Steven) visited Pittsburgh’s PNC Park in August to get to the midway mark in the stadium tour(*). This weekend we are doing a two-fer by visiting Miller Park in Milwaukee and the southern of the two Chicago stadiums.

Now, I know what you are thinking.  You live in Chicago, how is it that you haven’t visited those stadiums already? The answer, my friends, is in the arcane rules of stadium visits as compiled and administered by Chief Rules Officer Josh. Apparently, any stadium visited prior to the official start of the stadium tour in 2013 does not count. So, while we have been to both these stadiums before, because those trips were before the start of the tour, they do not count. Rules are rules and must be followed.

Friday night we are going to Miller Park in Milwaukee. It is about a 90-minute drive and knowing Josh, we will need to be there 2 hours early in order to wander the stadium. It was 90 degrees here today, but by Friday, the high is expected to be about 70. Since it is a night game…we might be wearing jackets…Oh the winter is upon us! Miller Park is cool. It was one of the first retractable-roof baseball stadiums and the roof is a fan shape, so both sides open/close at the same time. Hopefully it will start out open and then at some point during the game they will close it. They used to open and close it after every game just because it is is cool to watch. We will see if they still do that.

Saturday night we are going to the stadium currently known as Guarantee Rate field. It used be called US Cellular Park, but everyone in Chicago still calls it Comiskey Park. It is an underwhelming stadium, build in the early 1990s.  The original Comiskey Park was built in 1910, and in the late 1980s the owner of the White Sox convinced Tampa/St. Pete that he would move the team there if they built him a stadium. They built the incredibly awful Tropicana Field, but while they were building it, Chicago agreed to build the new Comiskey and the team stayed here. This led directly to the expansion of baseball with the Tampa Rays (at the time they were called the Devil Rays, but now it is just the Rays).  Either way, the White Sox managed to move into a slightly less awful stadium in Chicago which seems to change names every 10 years.

(*) There is some dispute as to whether we have reached the halfway mark.  There are 30 baseball teams and we have visited 15 stadiums.  However, the stadium in Atlanta was torn down last year, and by a unanimous vote the rules committee (Josh) it was decreed that we must visit the New Atlanta stadium in order to complete the tour. The rules committee is also considering the question of whether the visit to the Nationals stadium for the All Star Game counted as the game played there was only an exhibition and therefore not a real game.  When we have a decision from the committee I will let you know.

All in all, should be a great weekend.  Two baseball games in 24 hours, what more could a person ask for?