Dollar Beer Night in Erie, PA

Spontaneous road trips are my thing. We've established this by now. So, laying around on a Monday, with Kristin having the day off and Lil' Rubby in town, we gotta do something cool. I bumped around on the internet a little bit and saw that Erie was home, and yeah, that's awesome with them being the AA affiliate of my Tigers and all, but there was a hell of a lot more reason to go to Erie on a Monday than that.

At first I thought it was a mis-print or somebody messing around. The site said Mondays in Erie's Jerry Uht park are "Buck Night." Reserve tickets are 3 bucks, and ridiculously, 12-ounce beers and hot dogs are a dollar. ONE DOLLAR.

We got to Erie in 90 minutes, messed around at their mall, then went to find the ballpark, which, for a AA stadium, is reallllllly nice. The sight-lines are terrific, it's clean and modern and smack dab in the middle of a neighborhood.

We got our first two beers (any beer too, not just one particular kind), and went up to the rightfield picnic pavilion to grab our one dollar dogs, drink our beers. and relax before the game. It was a crisp night, with the doubt of rain always hanging over head, but it was solid. A nice break from 90 degrees.

In the picnic pavilion a guy from a local radio station came up and asked us if we wanted to throw out the first pitch. We were like "hell yes," so he had us fill out entry forms to see who would win the "honor." It was deader than dead, so we were pretty sure our three entries were the only ones they had...We felt confident one of us was going to be chosen...Thank God for all of us they chose the only one who actually cares about the SeaWolves and the Tigers organization...yours truly.


...us with the aforementioned "guy from local Erie radio station."

So I was jacked up, but also four beers deep at this point. I might add, four beers deep on Klonopin and Cymbalta, a fairly empty stomach, and wearing sandals. Two other kids went out with me, they were terrible, the one kid did his best Steve Blass impression, while the other one had the personality of Mike Mussina (sorry -- inside joke ).


...is this heaven? No, it's Erie, Pennsylvania on a Monday night.

My first pitch was as shoddy as this pic (both results of dollar beer night). I got it there, but bounced it deep in the left-handed hitters batter's box but my catcher, Erie pitcher Casey Fein, scooped it. On the way off the mound I lost my left sandal briefly and felt like an ass, but Casey gave me props for getting it to him in sandals. I threw out the first pitch at a Erie SeaWolves game!!! Flippin' amazing!!! As corny as it sounds, it was kind of like a dream of mine that came true. As much as I LOVE baseball, and the fact that it was one of the Tigers' affiliates...It was amazing.



The game was really a well-played game too. It came down to the final pitch, Erie had a chance for a walk-off, but it wasn't to be. I would say between the three of us we came close to killing 20 beers, 9 hot dogs, and making really good friends with the people around us. The one kid, Jackson (6 years old), was a pistol, and we were trying so hard to get him a ball all game. His parents left without him getting a chance to say goodbye to us, so his uncle brought him all the way back to the seats just so he could say good-bye to us. It was so freaking cute that I melted a lil' and ended up giving him my first-pitch ball.