Day 11: "The Hebrew Hammer"

It always seems like our best days are where we actually get to spend a full day in a city, and day two in Pittsburgh was no exception.  Even class in the morning was really fun -- we worked in our discussion groups and had a spelling/vocabulary competition with baseball terms.  Madison, Bill and I dominated with a final score of 449/500 points, and I would just like to say that even though Bill knew the majority of the terms, I totally got us the points for Krank and Alibi Ike.  I may or may not have gotten a little too excited about it but I wasn't expecting to be able to contribute considering my marginal knowledge of baseball. After that, we went out to lunch as a group at Primanti Brothers, which is a sandwich shop that is apparently a must if you're in Pittsburgh.  The sandwich consists of your choice of meat (I chose pastrami) with cheese, french fries, coleslaw, and tomatoes.  After hearing so many good things, most of us felt that it was highly overrated and altogether not that delicious.  Too much slaw for my liking.  It was decent though.

After eating we walked back to the hotel to get ready for class wiffle ball. We played in a small field right next to our hotel and it was SO much fun.  We even drew a small crowd at some points during the game.  The original teams were as follows: Danny, Stephanie, Erick, Dr. Bob (yes, he played!), and Conner vs. Me, Madison, Ben, Bill, and Kyle.  I would just like to note that for someone with no athletic talent, I did okay for the most part! I didn't strike out at all after the first few innings and I never struck out when we switched to batting with our opposite hands.  I sucked at outfielding but we'll just ignore that.  Our whole class was quite good, actually, but special props go out to the MVP of the game, Mr. Ben Forman, our very own Hebrew Hammer.  There were also a lot of comical moments during the game, although the best part was when Madison took out Dr. Bob when they were both racing to second base.  One second they were both just running and then the next thing I knew Madison was sliding to the base and Dr. Bob tripped over him and they just became a tangle of limbs.  Hilarious, although Madison is now failing the class according to Dr. Bob. My team won the first game and then we switched teams for the second game.  The new match up was Danny, Stephanie, Kyle, Bill, and Dr. Bob vs. Me, Madison, Bill, Conner, and Erick.  The team I was on won again, making it the third time of the day Madison and I were able to say #winning!

Needless to say, we were all sweaty and hot after playing two games of wiffle ball, so Dr. Bob rightly declared that what we needed was ice cream.  After walking around looking for an ice cream shop we ended up at McDonald's, and then we headed back to the hotel to shower and get ready for to see the Pirates take on the Tigers for the second time.

This game was again awesome because we got more free stuff, and no one loves free stuff more than me.  It was Neil Walker bobblehead night, and who doesn't enjoy a good bobblehead? The game itself was also a good one.  The score was 2-0 Tigers but the Pirates managed to bring it back in the bottom of the sixth by scoring 3 runs, and the final score was 6-2.  Let's go Bucs!

Oh, ALSO - Stephanie and I chased the parrot down (literally...we were definitely doing some of our best creeping) and got a picture with him! Cross "get a picture with a mascot" off the bucketlist!