Day 7 – Chicago

After a late night yesterday I set the alarm for 10am and was out of the motel by the 11am check out time. I had accommodation arranged for this evening so I drove straight over to it and was able to get an early check in. I checked out my emails and looked at the Chicago White Sox website for details of the stadium and parking for the game which I am attending today. The game starts at 7.00pm but the parking opens a lot earlier and with it being peak hour traffic before that I decided to leave for the game at 3.30pm.

There was some traffic on the journey in and it did take quite a while to get close to the ground. I know if I do not have the GPS in the car I would have had a very difficult time finding the place. They organise the parking very well, the season ticket holders or sponsors parking follow red signs and the casual parking follow green signs and there are traffic control people at every intersection organising traffic and pedestrians.

It cost $23 to park but I ended up only 200 meters from the stadium. A lot of people were already there when I arrived about 5.40pm. Most of them were set up in the car park with deck chairs and were busy with cooking on portable BBQ’s. This is a popular past time to American sports fans and is called Tailgating. Tailgating is more important to some people than the game itself.

I had prearranged my ticket for the game and it was to be picked up before I could go into the game. This process is called Will Call and at this stadium they have an automatic machine that you walk up to and insert the credit card you bought the ticket with and the ticket prints out. It was very simple to arrange and took no time at all.

On entry to the ground I had a quick walk around the area behind the seating and looked at all the merchandising but did not buy anything. I had a seat on the lower level looking straight down the third base line and was just heading to my seat as the National Anthem was sung. Everybody in the area behind the seating just stopped in their tracks and was silent until the anthem was finished.

The White Sox were playing the Cleveland Indians and it was not long and White Sox were on the board with a run in their first innings. They got another run in the second before Cleveland got on the board with a run in the fourth inning.

By the ninth inning the Sox were leading 7 to 6 but Cleveland got a run to level up the game. It was getting late by then and extra innings would really drag out the night so I left then to get a break on the traffic. It was a good experience and I really had a good time there. Another reason I left was that I also had to go back to the hotel to do some washing as it was the first hotel that had a guest laundry I had stayed in.

I quickly stopped at the Rivers Casino which was only two blocks from my hotel and picked up the chips for my collection. I was in and out in 20 minutes breaking even on the tables.

The baseball game ended going to 14 innings with the White Sox finally getting a run to win the game 8 to 7. If I had stayed there till the end I would have had roughly an extra 2 hours at the game, so it was good I left when I did as I got all my washing and drying done and still got to sleep about 12.30am.