(Repost from kart boards for those of you who know who Jones or I am)Date: June 28, 2010
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Event: Minnesota Twins vs Detroit Tigers
Participants: Mark Jones, Scott Abbey
Bios Mark Jones is a true Californian who just happens to show up all over the United States wherever and whenever he's wanted. He's a veteran of two Virginia Meets and a few local kart competitions and small meet-ups. Mark's been a part of the online Mario Kart for about 10 years, and is probably most known today for being the token black guy on the boards and messing around with the sites just enough to get inside your heads. Target Field was Mark's 6th (at least) MLB stadium, having already been to Fenway Park and others, in addition to the two parks near his home in the Los Angeles area. Whenever he manages to pass off his gigantic workload of site duties (being a slave master is tough work) to some other poor soul for a while, he enjoys golfing and being generally awesome. Due to his navigation and crowd control skills, Mark's in line for the next
My Phone Saves Lives and
Most Professional awards.
Scott Abbey has been a member of the Mario Kart Players' Page since joining MKDD about 4 years ago. He's been to one VA Meet and also competed in the 2009 GNC in App1eton, WI. While not managing to earn much karting fame, he's tried to do his part with some small site-related projects like advertising the kart IRC channel and hosting 325 prediction contests per year. Residing in a completely opposite area from Mark (rural Iowa vs big city LA), he probably spends more time talking to cows and picking corn than Mark does eating them both. Scott's just a college student, so he hasn't been converted into one of Mark's internet slaves (how would
you like to be stuck for 12 hours at a time clicking a button and typing a captcha string over and over again to keep the database running?)
quite yet. After successfully navigating the streets of Minneapolis both to and from the ballpark, Scott is probably on the short list for both the
I Didn't Kill My Passengers and the
Where's the Mini-Turbo? awards.
The Game: I left home at about 3pm to make sure I'd get up to the cities early enough before the game that the traffic wouldn't be absolutely crazy. I picked up Mark a few minutes past 5 at his hotel in downtown Minneapolis. As soon as I started driving I got us going in the exact opposite direction from where we needed to be going (whoever invented one-way streets should have given people from the country a heads-up). It was all fine, though, since we were a couple hours early for the game anyway. Eventually we got going the right way again, and Mark made sure I didn't have another error by checking the roads on his iPhone. The detour was no worse than taking the long way around on Yoshi Valley. Mark probably thought the traffic was light, compared to his daily drive at home, but for me it wasn't so simple. We ended up going in one parking ramp that cost way too much, so we just spun right out of there (think DKJP tunnel) and tried another one much closer to the field that cost half as much. After parking, we took a short hike through the Minneapolis Skyway to Target Plaza, and our destination was right in front of us.
The weather was
perfect the whole night, with the sun slowly setting and almost no wind. We chatted some in the sun, then went and picked up the tickets we ordered online. Since the stadium is new this year and the Twins have been playing well, they've sold out nearly every single game for the whole season and buying tickets was a bit of a challenge. We both decided it was a better idea to spend about $25 for Standing Room Only tickets straight from the Twins instead of paying $45 or more for 3rd deck outfield tickets on StubHub. After entering the stadium, we walked around to check various views while talking about everything from the French Revolution to interplanetary travel (not really). Don't forget to spend your Subway coupon, Mark! I probably won't be able to use mine.
The Matchup: Francisco Liriano (6-5) vs Jeremy Bonderman (3-5)
A few minutes before the first pitch, we both grabbed some food. Mark got a big hot dog and loaded it up with toppings and I grabbed some chicken strips and fries. The game started off with a HBP on the 2nd pitch, and the Tigers ended up scoring 4 runs in the top of the 1st. The first Twins batter in the bottom half also got plunked, which got the whole crowd going. I don't know if there was bad blood coming into this game or what, but the Tigers pitcher had a 4 run lead so he probably felt comfortable with some retaliation. The Twins managed only one run in their chance, and the game moved on. Even though Liriano struggled in his first couple innings, he ended up outlasting Bonderman in this one. For a while it didn't seem like Francisco would make it out of the top of the 1st.
After the first two innings, there was a bit less action for a while. We had been watching from a nice spot down the 1st base line, but we decided to take a stroll and see what other good views were available. We ended up in the outfield on a pretty nice 2nd level balcony area where we ended up staying the whole 2nd half of the game. From here, we ended up seeing Jim Thome get a TRIPLE and a home run in consecutive at-bats. It was a big night for the aging slugger. The triple would have been an inside-the-park home run for most other players, as it took just the perfect bounce sideways off a pad around an outfield display board. His home run was number 571 for his career, moving him ever closer to 10th all time.
Detroit fans got a sick feeling in their stomach (Twins fans too, I'm sure) during the 8th inning when Joel Zumaya, the fireballer from the Detroit bullpen, was suddenly on the ground behind the pitchers mound in obvious agony. The Minnesota batter fouled off a pitch, and next thing we knew, there was Zumaya grabbing at his elbow and looking seriously injured. He stayed on the field for about 2 minutes before walking off with a trainer. An injury this painful is probably bad news for the rest of his season, and possibly his career. It's too bad he got hurt, but that's probably what's expected to happen when you throw around 100 miles per hour.
The Twins tried to come back as the game progressed, but each time they drew close, they failed to capitalize with men on base and ended up hitting into 3 double plays on the night. The Tigers added a couple runs as the innings grew late, and ended up winning with a final score of 7-5. We drove Mark back to his hotel (wow, I'm surely almost a certified professional city driver after this business
) and then motored off for home. I made it back at about 12:50am and that was that.
I had a great time on the trip, and I'm sure Mark enjoyed it as well. It was fun meeting him again after first running into him in Virginia last year. This meet was pretty convenient, since he was in Minneapolis and had a free night and we were able to plan it about a month beforehand. Mark's now tied for first on my "most met karters" list, with a whopping 2 meetings. This ties him with Ngamer, who will probably take the lead this August when we head to Virginia again. A couple years ago I never thought I'd be crazy enough to meet up with multiple people from
the internet, but all my experiences so far have been smashing hits.
Various photos copyright Sports Illustrated.
