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Baseball Baseball Trip MLB

Baseball Trip 2026 – Day 1 – Las Vegas to Kansas City

 

Kansas City baseball museum at Kauffman Stadium
An exhibit at the Kansas City baseball museum at Kauffman Stadium.

TSA, SUV, and BBQ

After driving from Southern California to Las Vegas the afternoon before to meet up with Daniel and enduring a rough night on a regularly deflating air bed, I hoped I hadn’t tried to achieve too much on the first day. We had a morning flight from Las Vegas to Kansas City and a game to get to that evening. Turned out that part was no problem at all.

Our first potential hiccup came when we entered the departure terminal in Las Vegas to print out the luggage tag for Daniel’s suitcase. He really didn’t want to condense everything into a carry-on bag like I had, so we paid for one checked bag. The problem was there had been an enormous music festival in Las Vegas over the weekend and it appeared as though several hundred thousand people planned to fly home the same time we were departing. Though we arrived early enough to get through security before our flight, what we didn’t expect to find (and who would?) was a 3-hour-plus line just to check bags. The math was pretty simple: wait in that line and you’re not making the flight. Heck, it might be landing in Kansas City by the time you check that bag.

There seemed to be only one solution. I mean, we had a plane to catch and a game to get to that night. The itinerary did not make room for flight rescheduling or rainouts. So, we tossed a few larger liquid items into the trash knowing they’d never make it through TSA anyway and decided to get to the gate and take our chances that they’d check the bag when we got there. We didn’t really have a plan B short of buying a carry-on suitcase in the airport and shoving what we could into that. Sometimes a little confidence goes a long way, though. As we approached the TSA officer to enter the security area, he asked us if that bag needed to be checked. We told him we were checking it at the gate. He said as long as it fit on the conveyor belt, that was fine. Long story short, we got through security, found our gate, explained ourselves to the airline staffer at the desk and shortly thereafter watched her wheel his bag away to be checked. I think it was David Letterman who said, it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. Or maybe he said, if you don’t have permission, bring hors d’oeuvres. Regardless, we made the flight with ample time to spare even, and just a hair product and body wash short of the original contents of our luggage.

Chiefs and Royals stadiums next to each other

The Kansas City Chiefs and Royals play in adjoining stadiums that share parking, something I probably should have known in advance.

Airport sign in Kansas City

Our first day began in Las Vegas and took us to Kansas City.

A George Brett exhibit at Kauffman Stadium

This artistic depiction of George Brett’s hit total is among the exhibits at Kauffman Stadium’s Hall of Fame.

Posing with a Buck O'Neil statue

I had to sit down with the great Buck O’Neil and hope he’d whisper one of his famous stories to me.

Kansas City baseball museum at Kauffman Stadium

An exhibit at the Kansas City baseball museum at Kauffman Stadium.

Jason with Candy Wolfe

We found fellow Long Game community member and Kauffman Stadium usher Candy Wolfe in her section in the good seats.

Posing outside Kauffman Stadium

We take our first cheesy photo to establish our location just outside Kauffman Stadium.

Frank White Gold Glove display

Frank White Gold Glove display

Frank White statue

Frank White statue

Dick Howser statue

Dick Howser statue

George Brett statue

George Brett statue

Lifesize Bobby Witt Jr. bobblehead

Lifesize Bobby Witt Jr. bobblehead

Royals banners outside the stadium

Royals banners outside the stadium

Bobby Witt Jr at bat

Bobby Witt Jr at bat

Kauffman Stadium scoreboard

Kauffman Stadium scoreboard

We got into KC, shuttled to the car rental and found our car easily enough. Though I had reserved an economy car (what with the price of gas and all), they had nothing except SUVs on hand so we climbed into our (fancy for me) new Jeep Compass. I drive a car without any center electronic console or other modern bells and whistles, so there were quite a few things to get used to: lane assist (which went on and off randomly over the ensuing few days), a large center navigation panel (a heckuva lot easier to use than my little phone screen that I’ve become acclimated to), and the sort of engine where you don’t even feel it when you step on it. I definitely didn’t want to add a traffic ticket to the trip expenses, but the car tempted me into the occasional high speeds, I must confess.

By now, we still had about 4 hours until game time and hadn’t eaten much breakfast. It was something like lunch time to our two-hours-earlier stomachs, so we headed to the highly recommended and famous (sometimes famous places are more famous than good, of course) Arthur Bryant’s Barbeque. Like complete out-of-towner newbies, we struggled to figure out how to order at their counter and just stood there for several minutes waiting for someone to acknowledge us. Eventually we managed to get an order in: a sampler of pork ribs, brisket, baked potato salad, cole slaw and mac and cheese. Although as we soon realized, we actually got two types of potato salad and no mac and cheese, but we decided to live with it. Everything was really good, we pigged out in the best way possible, and because I was on vacation I even allowed myself the treat of a soda (!). I kept the name-emblazoned plastic cups from the lunch, not really part of a souvenir plan at that point, but I wound up bringing home items from throughout the trip. Better than letting them go into a landfill, right?

Chiefs and Royals stadiums next to each other
The Kansas City Chiefs and Royals play in adjoining stadiums that share parking, something I probably should have known in advance.

Our First Ballgame

We made our way to our hotel, rested for a while, and then headed to Kauffman Stadium to see the visiting Boston Red Sox take on the Kansas City Royals. A veteran of highly extended and sluggish trips into Dodger Stadium, where it can easily take you an hour to get from the freeway to your parking space, I expected to find, you know, traffic. As the navigation took us off the freeway with no one around, I wondered if we’d done something wrong. And as we took a couple quick turns and found ourselves already through the parking kiosk and headed to the lot, I kept thinking it was too good to be true.

Posing outside Kauffman Stadium
We take our first cheesy photo to establish our location just outside Kauffman Stadium.

I probably should have known this, but it took me by surprise to realize that the Chiefs’ football stadium (it probably has some corporate sponsor name I’m not bothering to look up) is right next door to Kauffman. As in, if both had to play the same day, there was gonna be a major parking problem. I’m sure they have a plan for that. We made our way in and started exploring the ballpark. KC has a great team hall of fame on the outfield concourse that we toured as well as a big kid zone that no doubt makes trips with a family more like a minor-league experience. We were a little old for a merry-go-round, so we checked out the merch shops instead. I do rather like, against my better judgment about the concept in general, the Royals’ new City Connect logo with the fountain. But (spoiler alert) I knew we had a destination the next day where I definitely would grab some merch and wanted to avoid completely destroying my budget on Day 1.

Jason with Candy Wolfe
We found fellow Long Game community member and Kauffman Stadium usher Candy Wolfe in her section in the good seats.

We also managed to find someone there who I kind of knew. Because I had posted about our pre-meetup trip in the Long Game threads, I received a message from Candy Wolfe, who is a longtime usher at Kauffman. She told me what section to find her in, and sure enough we found her right behind home plate on field level just a tad towards first base. Great section to work in! Candy would be joining the weekend meetup, but I couldn’t miss a chance to say hello and check the box of my first meeting with anyone from the LG family. Very cool! (Candy also brought some Royals swag to the meetup for a special needs member of the group, which was doubly – nay, triply – cool.)

When the game started, rather than make our way up high behind home plate to where our seats were, we settled into a near-empty section between third and home on the lower level. No one cared. With just over 14,000 in the park on this Tuesday, there were plenty of great empty seats. Both teams scored in the first inning, and Boston added another in the 2nd, and we thought it would be a high-scoring affair. But then no one scored again until the 8th and Boston erupted for four runs and seven hits in the 9th to win it going away, 7-1.

A George Brett exhibit at Kauffman Stadium
This artistic depiction of George Brett’s hit total is among the exhibits at Kauffman Stadium’s Hall of Fame.

Who Asked for This?

There was unfortunately something keeping me from truly enjoying the game. Back home in California, hot windy weather produced an early fire season, with a huge one starting the day before in the Simi Valley area and threatening some homes of family members. And then, on the day we flew into KC, the Bain Fire started in the dry riverbed a couple miles from my house. These happen with some regularity and never come anywhere near us, primarily because the fire would have to jump several neighborhoods and catch overmatched firefighters without the ability to be in all the hotspots at once. In 10+ years at the current location, we’d never come anywhere close to real danger …

Until the first day I had gone on a real vacation since early 2020. Of course. And my youngest son was home by himself with animals and no transportation. Still, the fire may have been large and growing, but it really had to cover a lot of ground to get near us. Thankfully we in the region have the Watch Duty app to give us live updates on fire progress and evacuation orders and warnings. So I had my eye on the app with regular alerts, and I was texting with people in the area, some of whom were under evacuation warning already. 

Posing with a Buck O'Neil statue
I had to sit down with the great Buck O’Neil and hope he’d whisper one of his famous stories to me.

And, yeah, this fire kept moving closer and closer until our house was one zone away from an evacuation warning and two away from orders. That meant I needed to plan a way to get my son and the animals out just in case, and I spent several of the middle innings of the game on the phone making arrangements. The zone just to the north of ours went into an evacuation order, and our neighborhood went into the warning area … which meant at any time the alarm could sound to get out. As you might imagine, this grew more and more stressful as the evening wore on, and we solidified an evacuation plan. Imagine me half a continent away, wondering if the day I flew out of the area would be the day a fire got to our house with me powerless to do anything. Not the best way to start a vacation! 

By the time I got back to the hotel, I was looking up return flights for the next morning just in case. And I talked my son through packing up a go bag with essential documents and things in the house and giving him a list of a few things to take. He handled it calmly, thankfully, and did everything I could have hoped for. I’m generally a calm person, but I think I would have been losing my mind a little had I been home. I’m certain, having had time to give this a good bit of thought since, that I would have loaded up the trunk with all sorts of things from around the house as I waited on a possible evacuation order. I would have been pacing around looking for more things to save. … 

Yet, because I was nowhere nearby and unable to do any of that, I actually felt surprisingly serene. I wasn’t going to send my son rushing around the house to grab this or that. I just accepted that if we lost things, we lost things, and I couldn’t do anything to change it. I probably should have told him to grab the autographed photo of Mickey Mantle, Duke Snider and Pee Wee Reese, though. And my one album of reasonably worthwhile baseball cards. Don’t even get me started on some of the books and assorted keepsakes I would put on the list if I ever had to go through this, because it would be a long list. I’ve had a couple weeks to think about it and can’t believe all the things I didn’t tell him to grab!

Anyway, after a night spent trying to sleep while having my phone volume turned up to hear any updates, I awoke to learn the crews had made progress on the fire overnight. Soon they lifted the evacuation warning for our neighborhood and started lifting the outright evacuations in some nearby zones as well. The fire never got super close to us, but we had all seen the previous January in Pacific Palisades and Altadena the danger of flying embers sparking new blazes in multiple areas at once. It will be hard for anyone in SoCal to assume they’ll be fine ever again.

Airport sign in Kansas City
Our first day began in Las Vegas and took us to Kansas City.
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Baseball Baseball Trip MLB

Baseball Trip 2026: Prologue

Daniel and Jason at Busch Stadium in St. Louis
About to take in a game in St. Louis while wearing our new Negro Leagues jerseys.

The Long Game

Sometime around June of 2024, after hearing baseball writer Molly Knight appear as a guest on writer Joe Posnanski’s podcast, I decided to subscribe to Molly’s Substack. Over the ensuing two years participating in The Long Game community, I learned that:

  1. It’s possible for a bunch of random people on the internet to come together and support each other and their baseball fandom without being negative.
  2. You learn a lot about what’s going on with more teams when you listen to the people who follow them closely.
  3. Group chats during games (especially playoffs) are incredibly entertaining. 
  4. There is no shortage of smart, interesting people out there, and your life becomes richer when you engage with them.

(Before I proceed with this Baseball Trip Prologue, though, can we take a minute to discuss how rare a thing item #1 on that list is? We are talking about a platform where you aren’t required to reveal who you are, in an era in which social media grew so toxic that I stopped using almost all of it, in which people who in most cases do not know each other outside of this group choose to be kind, positive, and nearly apolitical. I don’t love that Substack is trying to be social media instead of a safe creator space, but The Long Game still swims mightily against the tide. During the 2025 ALCS between the Mariners and Blue Jays, I felt so badly that one of our rooting communities had to wind up disappointed that I just wanted the series to keep going so no one had to lose out. And even as the team I have always followed, the Dodgers, pulled off the World Series comeback, I felt genuinely heartbroken for our Jays fans who came so close to seeing a great team achieve a glorious finish.) 

OK, on with the story at hand … I found out that Molly had the idea to organize meetups for her community at ballgames, but the one she proposed in 2025 didn’t fit in my budget or calendar. Over the course of the next few months and particularly during the playoffs last season, I became much more engaged with the group. I participated in many of the weekly Saturday zoom chats and became one of the leading “yappers” in the Substack chats. I started to connect with individual people in the group along the way. 

So when Molly announced that this year she planned a Memorial Day weekend meetup that would include three games in two cities, I realized I had to give some serious thought to trying to go. I brought it up with my 23yo son Daniel, who really liked the idea. He’s a big baseball fan, and it’s something we bond over. Plus we haven’t lived near each other for a few years, so it was a great opportunity to spend quality time together. 

I’ve reached a point where experiences outweigh things, and this felt like an experience we needed to have. Call it YOLO or FOMO or whatever, but the meetup felt like something I couldn’t miss this time.

At Milwaukee's American Family Field
Heading into American Family Field to watch the Dodgers take on the Milwaukee Brewers

Planning the Trip

The meetup schedule included games at Chicago’s historic Wrigley Field on Friday and significantly less historic Rate Park on Monday, with a jaunt to Milwaukee to see the Dodgers play a National League Championship Series rematch on Saturday in between. (I once walked around Wrigley Field when I was in Chicago and the team wasn’t in town, just as I once stood on the other side of Fenway Park’s Green Monster in Boston. But that was as close as I’d gotten to seeing a game at either legendary stadium.)  When Molly sent out an interest form in February, I signed us up. And then when she started buying tickets and I had to start paying for them, well then it became entirely real.

Along the way, I started doing some thinking about whether it might be possible to extend the trip a few extra days and see more games in more cities. I became a deep student of the MLB calendar and opened up Google Maps on another tab to try to figure out what was possible. I mean, as long as we were flying to the Midwest for a few games, tacking on to the experience made sense. Who knows when we’ll get another chance?

(This wasn’t actually my first time studying the MLB calendar, because before Molly introduced the meetup plan I had been trying to figure out whether an East Coast trip that included a stop at the Hall of Fame might be possible. I found a couple of possible stretches where we could get to games in places along the Baltimore/DC-Philadelphia-New York corridor, and I still think that’s a trip we need to try to do in a year or two.)

My initial trip extension would have been on the back end, when it was possible to see games on successive days in Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. But Daniel had commitments in the week after, so I reversed direction and looked at what we could do pre-meetup. I landed on a plan to fly into Kansas City and see a game there, drive to St. Louis for another game and then drive to Chicago to meet up with the Long Game crowd.

The end result was a plan for five games in seven days in four cities, all in ballparks we’d never been to. (As it turned out, we audibled and added a sixth game! Is there a baseball term for audible I could have used there? It’s bad form to mix sports metaphors, alas.) Before the trip, I had attended major-league games only at these current parks: 

  • Dodger Stadium
  • Angel Stadium (nee Anaheim Stadium and Edison Field)
  • Petco Park in San Diego
  • AT&T Park in San Francisco 

Plus, I had been to these now-defunct parks: 

  • Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium
  • Metrodome in Minneapolis
  • Candlestick Park in San Francisco
  • Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego

I once had tickets for a game at the Oakland Coliseum, but we decided to do something else that day. I always figured I’d have another chance for that one. I’ve been to New York several times but never made it to old Yankee Stadium (let alone the new one) or Shea Stadium. I was in Montreal about 20 years after they killed the Expos, though Olympic Stadium still stands. I was in a long line across the street from Phoenix’s Chase Field to go see Bernie Sanders hold a rally. I drove past Milwaukee’s old County Stadium. I lived right near where LA’s old Wrigley Field once stood. I went to football games at the LA Coliseum, long after its baseball days were done. Alas, none of that counts.

It really isn’t all that impressive a list for a lifelong fan. But within a week, I would boost my current park list from 4 to 9!

At Chicago's Wrigley Field
From our seats in Chicago’s Wrigley Field, surrounded by members of the Long Game community.

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

Ambitious but carefully thought out, the trip was on. As game ticket purchases, hotel reservations and airline tickets started to stack up, I felt the anticipation building. And then I just had to wait two months for it all to take place.

The trip turned out to be everything I hoped for. It was my first vacation in seven years that involved an airplane and the first time I took more than a week off work in so long I can’t remember. 

I realized after returning that I ought to record the memories of the trip while they’re still fresh and turn this blog into a bit of a keepsake. For both of us, at minimum. For anyone else, if they’re interested. Mostly, though, to give me the chance to relive all of it and try to capture the details that mattered to me. 

I can’t wait for next year’s trip. Please kindly tell the masters of the baseball universe not to impose a long lockout so we can have games.

Categories
Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 161-162: The Regular Season Finishes

A quick reset before we try to alleviate the suspense. Despite losing five of six games, Jack Bauer Squared went into the final two games of the season tied for the division lead in the NL West. The 24×24 League is down to the wire, and even with a weak 77-83 record we were still playing for something and a playoff spot still very much in our grasp.

The four-game series at Olympic Stadium continued with our best starter, Mike Cuellar, taking the hill. $24 and Some Change got off to a good start in the top of the 1st inning with a two-run homer by Willie McGee. A homer by Dave Kingman in the 6th added another for the visitors.

Meanwhile aside from Bobby Bonilla’s second-inning double, JBS couldn’t get hits off Dave Righetti. Through 6 innings, that was all we’d produced. As I’ve noted, a sim doesn’t know the difference between Game 1 and Game 161, or the standings, or the desperation. So the game just unfolds with no special urgency in the air.

We got a rally started in the 7th inning, with back-to-back singles to start the inning followed by a couple outs. Then Rafael Ramirez singled to load the bases and bring up pinch hitter Bob Bailey with a chance to get us back into it. Bailey was not up to the task, however, striking out looking to end the threat.

$24 put it out of reach in the 9th when McGee hit his second homer of the game, and we went down meekly, 6-0. Predictably, our co-division leaders Steroids Make You Fast won their game to take a 1-game advantage into the season finale.

Game 161

That put our backs to the wall in a big way. We’d lost four in a row and six out of seven. It’s a depressing way to finish when you led by 3 games with eight left and suddenly to be down a game and the season finale looming. 

The only good scenario left would be for us to win and Steroids to lose in Game 162. Better take care of business, or it won’t matter what they do.

Burt Hooton got the start and immediately walked the leadoff batter and hit the next one. Up stepped catcher Ron Hassey, who drove in both runners with a double.

Believe it or not, Hooton wouldn’t allow another hit the rest of the game. He retired the next 20 in a row before yielding a walk in the 7th. The only question was whether we could get the runs to make the effort worth it.

In the bottom of the 1st we certainly looked like we could. Kal Daniels led off with a double off Dennis Martinez and scored on Bobby Murcer’s ground out. That made it 2-1.

In the 2nd inning, we got two runners on, but Ryne Sandberg flied out to end the threat. In the 3rd, we went down 1-2-3. 

In the 4th, we got a walk but nothing else. In the 5th, Kingman made an error, but we left the runner on 2nd.

In the 6th, we went down 1-2-3. In the 7th, Ramirez led off with a single, and we got a runner to second with one out. But Martinez struck out Daniels and Sandberg.

In the 8th, we went down 1-2-3. Our bullpen kept $24 to just the one hit with a perfect 8th and 9th, so it went to the bottom of the 9th stuck at the same 2-1 score from way back in the 1st inning.

$24 called on Tom Niedenfuer, a longtime Dodgers reliever perhaps best known for giving up two disastrous home runs to the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1985 League Championship Series. Dodgers fans certainly don’t remember his mostly effective run across his tenure with the team.

Sure, I digress, but the point is Niedenfuer was remarkably capable of blowing this game and giving us a chance to make the playoffs. He gave up a walkoff homer to light-hitting Ozzie Smith in Game 5 of that NLCS, after all.

So up stepped Garry Maddox to start us off, and he took strike three looking. Not helpful.

Bailey came in to hit for Gene Tenace, and he struck out on a bad pitch. Really not helpful.

Joel Youngblood came in to hit for Ramirez and try to keep hopes alive. He grounded to second. Final, 2-1.

Feeble finish to the game. Feeble finish to the season. 

Game 162

It was, of course, a one-run loss. We would wind up 17-27 in such games. Going .500 in them at 22-22 would have put us 4 games ahead in the division. Such is the difference bad luck can make.

Five straight losses, including the final four at home against a team with nothing to play for. Lost eight of the final 10. 

We finished 77-85 despite allowing only 3 more runs than we scored. With normal luck, we would have been 81-81, which would have been good enough.

And of course, predictably, Steroids Make You Fast lost its finale and won the division by a single game. Yup, get even one of these painful 1-run losses back and we’re tied. Win two of them, and we’re in the playoffs.

Instead, the season comes to a screeching halt. We choked away our lead and couldn’t manage even a single win when it counted. 

Here’s the (almost) final NL standings. There is still a tie for the wild card to be resolved before the playoffs can begin.

What felt like maybe a magical storyline instead turned into a humbling one. We played our way out of last place to sit with a solid lead only to fritter it away. It’s been an exciting season, if not a successful one ultimately. I’ll have a post mortem post to write on what went right and what went wrong.

Life, as with sim baseball, will go on. I’ve got 18 other teams going right now, and 11 of them are in first place. Three are deep into the seasons and doing very well. I could have made a better choice to build a running story around, but you can’t predict that. Hopefully it’s been worthwhile anyway.

I’m not done here even if the season is. Plenty more to say, and infinite space to say it in. See you in the next post …

Categories
Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 159-160: Are We Having Fun Yet?

Hey, sports fans, remember when Jack Bauer Squared had a 3-game division lead with 8 games left? Yeah, we didn’t exactly put it away.

Coming home to Olympic Stadium to finish the regular season with a four-game series against the only team eliminated in the division certainly sounded promising. All $24 and Some Change had left to play for was pride, and heck we were pretty lucky not to be there with them.

But there we sat with a 1-game lead and a magic number of 4 and destiny still in our hands. Win out, and we’d be .500 and in the playoffs. Get some luck and we wouldn’t even need to win them all.

So of course we came out to open this decisive series … and laid an egg. The visitors roughed up Bert Blyleven for 5 runs before we even got a chance to bat, and sure-handed second baseman Ryne Sandberg’s error proved pretty costly mixed with the three doubles $24 racked up.

They added another run in the 2nd to make it 6-0, but we had some fight in us at least. In the 3rd, Sandberg and Bobby Bonilla belted two-run homers to close the gap to 2. 

But $24 blew it open in the 5th with 4 more runs off Blyleven, whose ERA ballooned to 5.10, the highest it has been the entire season. The 10 runs he allowed were a season high, and he likely won’t get another start now unless we manage to make the playoffs and win a round.

JBS put a couple runs on to make it a bit more respectable before falling 10-6. Of course our closest competitor Steroids Make You Fast won their game to forge a tie with 3 games to go. Forget the magic number anymore. Now it’s a straight-out sprint.

Game 159

On to the second game of the series, and we sent Teddy Higuera to the mound to follow up his excellent previous start in which he took a no-hitter into the 7th. Instead, he did his best Blyleven impression.

$24 and Some Change once again scored 5 in the top of the 1st and another in the 2nd, an exact duplicate of the game before and a matching 6-0 lead. We managed to make it respectable with a 3-run 6th and added another in the 8th before Carlos Delgado struck out with the bases loaded to end the threat.

That proved our last hurrah as we dropped a 6-4 decision. The only solace was the Steroids also lost to remain even with us at 77-83 and two games to play. 

Game 160

We’ve lost three in a row and five out of six right when we had our destiny in our hands. It’s fairly depressing, because I keep getting my hopes up that this team has turned a corner only to get smacked back again. 

A Rod is only 2 games back of us and could still wind up in a tie for the division lead if they can knock Steroids off twice and we falter twice more. That could certainly happen. Nothing to suggest we look like a team prepared to win a game, that’s for sure.

We will know in less than a day whether the season goes on for Jack Bauer Squared. We could win the division, we could wind up in a one-game playoff, we could wind up in a three-way tie, or we could lose the race by a game or even two. Lots of possibilities in these final two.

Mike Cuellar, our mostly pretty good ace, goes in the final series’ third game. He’ll be followed by Burt Hooton in the regular-season finale. If we wind up in a one-game playoff, Higuera would get a shot at redemption.

Keep those fingers crossed!

Categories
Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 157-158: Trying to Hold On

This division race, aka the Battle of the Bads, is down to the final 6 games. A 1-game lead is tenuous at best for Jack Bauer Squared, and all that’s saved us is no one else in the division is playing well either. 

We’re all playing each other at this point, so the team that finishes strongest could emerge on top. Hoping it’s us is about all there is left, since the results are largely beyond my control.

After losing two low-scoring one-run games at Yankee Stadium to A Rod, some Wood and a Big Unit, we needed something good to happen in a hurry. It took until the 5th inning, but Bobby Bonilla hit a 3-run homer (his 14th) to put us ahead 3-0. Garry Maddox doubled in a run in the 7th to make it 4-0.

Meanwhile Teddy Higuera wasn’t allowing anything. As in, no hits through 6 innings.

Alas, Rod Carew tripled to lead off the 7th, and A Rod pushed a pair of runs across. We got them back in the top of the 9th as Bobby Murcer tripled in a run and scored on a pinch single to push the lead back to 4.

In the bottom of the 9th A Rod got a run in, and Bob Woodward came out of the pen to get the final out. He ended the rally for his 36th save to wrap up a 6-3 victory.

Game 157

Meanwhile, Steroids lost and that dropped our magic number to 4 while increasing our division lead to 2 with 5 to play. Our destiny was still in our hands.

The series finale had a lot riding on it, and we opened with a run in the first on a single by Bonilla. Mike Cuellar did his best Higuera impression and held A Rod hitless through the first 3 innings, but it didn’t last. 

The hosts chalked up 2 runs in the 4th, and it stayed 2-1 until they broke through again in the 7th, this time for 4 more runs. We threatened to make a game of it in the 9th but dropped an 8-4 decision.

Game 158

With Steroids winning its series finale, our magic number didn’t budge and our lead dropped once again to 1 game. That sends us to the final four-game series of the season, at home against $24 and Some Change. Nervous time all the way now.

Categories
Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 155-156: Magic Number Unmoved

Maybe I should have complained. At least about the one-run losses or something. I should have known anything promising would not last in this crazy season.

The series opener against A Rod, some Wood and a Big Unit at Yankee Stadium turned out to be a pitchers’ duel. Mike Cuellar had his fifth good outing in his past six, battling the hosts’ Wilbur Wood effectively.

Bobby Murcer got Jack Bauer Squared on the board first with his 28th homer in the 2nd, and Cuellar kept it 1-0 until allowing a two-run homer to Rod Carew in the 5th. And then … crickets from the offenses.

JBS got runners the last four innings but couldn’t manage to break through against Wood and the bullpen. The 2-1 loss, the familiar one-run kind, cut the division lead to 2 and moved the host A Rod squad within 4 games as they try to pull off a late comeback, too.

Game 155

So with the magic number unmoved and still at 6, we headed back out for Game 2. After A Rod took a 1st-inning 1-0 lead, Garry Maddox singled home Murcer to tie it in the 2nd. But A Rod came right back to take a 2-1 lead in the home half. 

In the 5th, A Rod struck for another run off Burt Hooton while JBS couldn’t manage anything else off Randy Johnson. It stayed a 3-1 game until the top of the 9th as we tried to rally. With one out, Murcer singled to bring up Maddox, who promptly belted his 9th homer of the season to tie it at 3.

Gary Lucas came out of the pen to pitch the bottom of the 9th and try to extend it to extra innings. Third baseman Bobby Bonilla booted a grounder to start the inning, however, and Carew singled the runner to third. A single by Dan Gladden ended it just like that, 4-3.

Game 156

The familiar refrain of the one-run loss and missed opportunity results here. That’s now 5 more one-run losses in the past 12 games, putting us 17-26 in such games. At 76-80 we now have just a 1 game lead over Steroids and 3 over A Rod. 

The magic number remains frozen at 6, and suddenly we are a loss away from blowing a 3-game lead in just 3 games. We badly need to show up the last two games of this series.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 153-154: Two Dramatic Finishes

The showdown series continues between Jack Bauer Squared and Steroids Make You Fast with first place in the NL West and a playoff spot on the line. After JBS took the first two games and opened a 3-game lead, Steroids desperately needed to win at least one of the final two games at Dodger Stadium to keep us from running away with it. 

The third game evoked a playoff atmosphere for sure, and if it had been aired on national television it might be fondly remembered as a classic. 

Ryne Sandberg tripled in the 1st inning, his 15th (second in the league), but Carlos Delgado and Bobby Murcer failed to bring him home. In the bottom of the 1st, Steroids jumped out to the lead instead on Willie McCovey’s two-run homer. JBS got one back in the 2nd when Garry Maddox doubled and scored on Gene Tenace’s single, but Steroids came right back with one of their own to make it 3-1.

Things stayed quiet until the top of the 5th, when Kal Daniels belted his 20th homer, a two-run shot to tie it, and Murcer singled in Sandberg to give JBS a 4-3 lead. Steroids, however, came right back to even it in the bottom of the 5th on three straight singles.

Undeterred, Maddox singled to lead off the 6th and came home on a single by Rafael Ramirez to put us back up, 5-4. Then in the 7th, Delgado singled and Murcer doubled him home for a 6-4 lead. Steroids got one back in the 8th, and then Tenace singled in a run in the top of the 9th to put us back up by 2 before we left the bases loaded.

That set up Bob Woodward and his microscopic ERA for a shot at his 36th save in 37 chances. With one out, he hit Jose Canseco with a pitch and allowed a single to Cal Ripken Jr. to bring the dreaded McCovey to the plate. 

McCovey belted one to right-center as the graceful Maddox and speedy Murcer raced to the wall to try to make a game-saving catch. But our outfielders ran out of room as McCovey’s blast just cleared the wall for a walk-off three-run homer.

The 8-7 victory kept Steroids’ hopes alive and cut our division lead back to 2. Woodward’s ERA ballooned to 1.35 as he allowed as many runs in that inning as he had all season. Our magic number remained at 8.

Game 153

That set up the final game of the series, which would either end with JBS up by 1 game or 3 with 8 to play. That’s a big difference.

No one pushed a run across until the 4th inning, when JBS put together a big two-out rally. Ramirez, pitcher Burt Hooton, and Daniels singled successively, and then Sandberg doubled in a pair for a 5-0 lead. Maddox hit his 8th homer in the 5th to put us up 6-0 and well on our way.

Steroids wasn’t going to go quietly, however. They got to Hooton in the 6th, first on a homer by (who else?) McCovey and then on a walk and two singles to make it 6-2. In the 7th McCovey singled home Ripken and scored on a single as Steroids chipped away again to close the gap to 6-4.

The JBS bullpen was a bit fatigued and turned to little-used lefty Gary Lucas to start the 9th against the feared McCovey, whom he promptly walked. After a strikeout from Lucas (side note: he’s a native of my longtime town, Riverside, CA), the JBS manager summoned usual starter Bert Blyleven from the pen to try to get the final two outs.

Blyleven, who was being skipped in the rotation during the critical series, rose to the occasion and recorded a strikeout and a groundout to preserve the 6-4 victory. The win lowered our magic number to 6 and sent us into the final 8 games with division opponents 3, 5, and 5 games behind us. 

Game 154

At 76-78, we may not be a juggernaut but we’ve got a shot at a .500 record and a playoff spot. After the way things were headed midseason, I can’t complain.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 151-152: We Have a Magic Number

As this exciting season rushes to a conclusion, I figured it was worth breaking the series-by-series update pattern to spotlight the games even more closely in the final stretch of the pennant chase.

Jack Bauer Squared entered a four-game road series against second-place Steroids Make You Fast; Just Ask Jose with a one-game lead with 12 games left in the season. The goal in a series like that is to do no worse than a split, so we would at least emerge with a one-game division lead with 8 to play.

In the 2nd inning, Steroids got back-to-back homers from Willie McCovey and Andy Van Slyke to open the scoring, but Kal Daniels responded with a 2-run homer in the 3rd to even it. Steroids responded with two more runs in the 3rd, but we tied it again in the 4th on run-scoring singles by Garry Maddox and Rafael Ramirez. Definitely a playoff feel to this one!

In the top of the 6th we broke the tie on a sacrifice fly from Ramirez and turned a 1-run lead over to the bullpen to protect for 4 innings. In the 7th, Ryne Sandberg walked, stole second, and scored on Carlos Delgado’s single to put us up 6-4. Everyone seems to be chipping in on this one.

Cal Ripken Jr. led off the bottom of the 8th with a homer to cut the lead to 1, but that was the extent of the damage. Bob Woodward took the mound in the 9th to try for his 35th save and struck out Jose Canseco with the tying run on second to preserve a 6-5 win. Woodward’s ERA dropped to 0.55, and he still has only allowed earned runs in one game all season and any runs at all twice in 38 appearances.

Game 151

That was huge, as it put us 2 games up with 11 to play and at the very least assured we wouldn’t get swept. We brought back Mike Cuellar on short rest to start the next game and hoped for one of his Dr. Jekyll outings that have at least recently been more common.

The second game began auspiciously as Daniels led off with his 19th homer, and we took advantage of an outfield error by Canseco (famously not the best of outfielders) with a run-scoring single by Bobby Bonilla for his 100th RBI (joining Delgado and Bobby Murcer in the club). Cuellar helped his own cause with a run-scoring single in the 4th, and Sandberg drove him in to put us up 4-0.

Murcer hit his 27th homer in the top of the 7th to make it 5-0, and Cuellar kept it going until the 8th. An error by Ramirez helped Steroids pick up two runs, but Cuellar got McCovey to hit into a 3-6-3 double play to end the frame.

With Woodward resting, Rod Beck took the mound for the 9th and worked a 1-2-3 inning for his 3rd save. Cuellar upped his record to 17-12 and lowered his ERA to 4.34, the best it’s been the entire season. Considering it was at 6.72 after his first 10 starts, he’s been pretty solid in the 33 since (3.67 ERA across that span).

Game 152

The win put us 3 games ahead of Steroids with 10 to play and actually made me look for the first time at our magic number, which is 8. That means any combination of our wins or their losses reaching 8 puts us in the playoffs, and with two more head-to-head games here we could knock 2 or 4 more off that total.

Still, it’s a long 10 games starting with these two to finish the series and then facing the rest of the division. A Rod, some Wood and a Big Unit is only 4 games back, and we play them next. I’ve blown and overcome bigger leads, so it’s nice to be sitting at the top but it’s not a comfortable spot by any means.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 148-150: Another Missed Opportunity

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Jack Bauer Squared is playing one of the league’s worst teams and has a chance to do something helpful toward trying to get into the playoffs. And after going 4-2 against two division leaders, surely we could at least do the same against the league’s weakest teams.

Uh, no.

Things started out well enough. Burt Hooton carried a no-hitter and a 1-0 lead through 5 innings, but it all fell apart in the 6th. Todd Helton??? put up 4 runs and chased Hooton, and then they roughed up the bullpen to cruise to an 8-1 win.

Fortunately we stayed tied for the division lead with Steroids Make You Faster, but it was definitely a missed opportunity to move in front while they lost to the wild-card leader 24 Hours at Wrigley.

Game 148

JBS came out strong in the second game, racking up 3 in the 1st and 7 more in the 3rd to coast to a 13-5 victory. Steroids lost again, so we moved a game in front in the division race but still 3 games under .500.

The recently-maligned-in-this-space Ryne Sandberg drove in 3 runs, and Bobby Murcer’s 3 RBI pushed him to 102, the first to get to 100 on the team this season. The 102 puts him 25th in the league. We have two hitters leading the league in anything: Sandberg is tops in at-bats at 670 (also second in triples at 14), and Carlos Delgado leads in doubles at 46. Kal Daniels and Delgado are in the top six in on-base percentage.

One of my league mates corrected me on something I said about Sandberg in a previous post, too. Though I said he was putting up numbers that would be the worst in the sim history, the records I cited only applied to a particular group of leagues all played at the same salary cap. And because this league is a higher cap than that, it’s reasonable to expect better pitching and therefore lower performance.

Game 149

On to the rubber game of our series, and once again we led early. This time Teddy Higuera had a shutout going through 5 and we led 2-0. Again the 6th inning turned the tide, as Todd Helton??? smacked a pair of homers to take the lead and went on to win, 5-2.

Game 150

The two losses in the series were definitely a missed opportunity, as Steroids Make You Faster got swept. So we emerged a game ahead with 12 to go, but we could have opened up a little space that would have been nice.

And coming up next: four games head-to-head with Steroids at Dodger Stadium as we begin the final three series of the year, all in the division. With teams only 3 and 5 games out behind us, it’s still possible for any of these four teams to win it. It’s also quite likely someone will win with a sub-.500 record too, since we’d have to go 8-4 just to get to 81-81.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 145-147: A Missed Opportunity

Let’s reset the scenario here for Jack Bauer Squared entering the season’s final 18 games. We came into our third straight road series at 71-73 and tied for first place in the National League West. Coming off series with the two division leaders where we went a combined 4-2, we headed to play the league’s two worst teams next before finishing with 12 division games.

If ever there were an opportunity to take advantage of, the series at Tigers of the Ontario Peninsula qualified. Every win feels precious right now, and you have to beat the teams below you. If only I could have explained that better to my code bits.

So we opened the series in Tiger Stadium by squandering run-scoring opportunities early. We left seven runners on in the first 4 innings and led just 1-0 despite outhitting the Tigers 5-0. The Tigers put up two runs in the 4th and another in the 5th off Teddy Higuera and then it stayed 3-1 until Bobby Murcer led off the 8th inning with his team-high 25th home run.

We put runners on the corners after that but couldn’t get the tying run home. We ended up with a 3-2 loss, dropping to 16-22 in one-run games. Meanwhile Steroids Make You Fast moved a game ahead of us by winning their game.

Game 145

No time to mess around now against a team we needed to beat, and we came out stronger in the second game. Ryne Sandberg hit his 10th homer and Garry Maddox doubled in two in the 1st inning to give Mike Cuellar an early lead. 

We got another start from good Cuellar, fortunately. He gave up only 1 run and 2 hits in 8 innings, and Bob Woodward nailed down the final out for his 34th save of a 5-2 win.

Game 146

Steroids lost their game to push us back into a tie, both of us now two games under .500 again. You start to get the feeling there won’t be much separating us at the end of this season.

A bit of a brief sidebar here feels needed to discuss Sandberg’s performance for me. The 1984 Ryno was an MVP for the Cubs, hitting .314 with 200 hits, slugging over .500, stealing 32 bases, and a Gold Glove fielder. 

He was my 3rd-round pick in this draft, where great hitting second basemen weren’t that easy to come by. I’ve had him batting 2nd all season, where I still believe he belongs. It’s just … he’s been really disappointing. He’s played fine defense at least, with only 7 errors, but I needed quite a bit more offense than that out of him and there’s just no sign he’s going to provide it. 

He’s played all 147 games and has put up a meager .245/.278/.370 slash line (compared with .314/.367/.520 in real life). For what it’s worth, in 53 seasons for other owners in his performance history, Sandberg’s worst season was .255/.293/.417. So he might be on his way to surpassing that for me. Gee thanks, random luck.

Now back to the action … We again got going early in the series’ final game, with Murcer’s 26th homer capping a 2-run 1st, but the Tigers quickly pounced on Bert Blyleven and opened a 5-2 lead in the 3rd. And then crickets until the 8th inning.

We rallied nicely in the 8th, loading the bases with no outs and Maddox clearing them with a double to tie the game. We couldn’t get Maddox home from 3rd with one out, alas. Then Gorman Thomas led off the bottom of the 8th with a homer off Joe Sambito, and we went meekly in the 9th to lose 6-5, another missed opportunity.

Game 147

That made us 16-23 in one-run games and 72-75 overall. Fortunately Steroids also lost their rubber game and remained tied with us. The rest of the division, as noted previously, isn’t exactly far behind either: 3 and 5 games back. With all division teams playing each other over the final three series (each four games), anyone really could wind up winning this.

Next up we come home to Olympic Stadium to face Todd Helton???, who at 60-87 brings up the rear in the NL but yet has won 8 of its past 10. Since we just learned that beating teams below us isn’t easy at all, there’s no chance of overconfidence going into this one either. But you know it would be a darn good time for a sweep, I’m just sayin’.