First stop was the Trenton Thunder game at Mercer County Waterfront Park. The Thunder used to be an affiliate of the Red Sox, but are now affiliated of the New York Yankees. Tons of Riley family members came out to say hello and support the Tour for the Cure. I was also joined today by Mike Vitez, a writer from the Philadelphia Inquirer who was writing a story about the Tour and wanted to see what a day in the life was actually like. Since the Thunder have come to Trenton in the mid-1990s, they have become the first team in Minor League Baseball history to draw over 400,000 fans for twelve consecutive seasons at the Double-A level or below. Did you know… beyond the right field wall is the Delaware River, which separates PA and NJ. If a player hits a ball far enough and it makes it halfway across the river, he could theoretically hit a homerun into another state. Whoa!

Today we developed a super raffle team made up of my cousin Dan and my girlfriend Edyta. The crowd was not packed to capacity due to the excessive heat, but we still did pretty well for our raffle. Thanks to Patience for helping us out today!

Later on in the week my article came out in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and hey, we even made the front page. You can read the article here. In case you have never seen the Tour for the Cure raffle in action, the Inquirer also shot some video which can be viewed by clicking here. The video accurately portrays what I do every day during the raffle. It’s exciting.

The Thunder game finished a little later than expected, so we needed to jet in order to get to the Reading Phillies that night. The Phillies play at First Energy field, an older park built in 1951 that seats 9,000 fans. It’s a really great place to see a game, with the entire concourse level decked out in red and white paint, giving it a nice older feel. Ever wonder how many fans have seen a game at a stadium that is 56 years old? Well, on July 3rd, 2007, the stadium celebrated their ten-millionth fan to attend a game. Here is the crazy thing—the population of the town is just over 80,000.

The park has gone under quite a bit of renovation since it opened, and now offers a huge videoboard in left field along with a pool and picnic area beyond the right field wall. I highly recommend checking out both of the ballparks we went to today. Thanks to Scott for helping us out tonight!

Also, one last note about Mike Vitez, the guy who wrote the article in the Inquirer. He recently just published a book late last year called Rocky Stories, about people who come from all over to visit the Philadelphia Art Museum steps and run up them just like Rocky. I haven’t had a chance to read it, but it’s on my list of books to read when the trip is over.