This afternoon was another Camp Day, this time at Jerry Uht Ballpark in Erie. This game in Erie marked my first time back in my home state since the beginning of the trip, and what can I say, this place is Erie-sistable. Seriously, they sell t-shirts at a shop across the street from the ballpark that say “Erie-sistable”—I bought one on a random trip to Erie last summer. Besides their creative t-shirts, Erie has a very nice stadium that has a nice variety of seating, including two levels of seating, and a beer garden with nice views of the field. Thanks to Rob today for helping us out and getting us all setup once we were inside the park. The previous night’s game had been rained out, so today’s first game was part of an Erie SeaWolves/Reading Phillies doubleheader. Interesting note about doubleheaders in Minor League baseball—whenever teams play each other twice in one day, each game is only 7 innings with a 30 minute break between each game. And for all those people who bought a ticket for the first game, they were encouraged to hang out for the second game for free. Pretty good deal.

Afterwards we traveled down along Lake Erie and headed to the Lake County Captains game. Before we got there, we decided to treat ourselves to Little Caesars Pizza, which used to be on the East Coast before closing down most of their locations except for in the Midwest part of the country. They have the best deal ever for pizza—$5 for a large! The pizza is amazingly greasy, and afterwards your stomach might not feel so hot, but it’s only $5! The Captains play their games at Classic Park, which was recently built four years ago. The town of Eastlake, Ohio assumed a $1 million dollar debt to build the ballpark, and in order to pay off the debt the town had to let go of five police officers and cutback on police services (source). How crazy is that? Usually towns will raise sales tax for a year to raise funds for a ballpark, not by cutting public services.

The video above was shot by myself as Mike and I battled it out in a foot-long hot dog eating competition. What can I say, Mike totally destroyed me and managed to eat almost the whole thing. I attribute my loss to my dedication to shaky camera work while trying to capture the moment. In case you were wondering what Mike’s big prize was for winning the eating competition… he got to keep his hot dog apron and he was given six more hot dogs, which he promptly gave away to some hungry senior citizens seated by our table.