Saturday, April 30, 2011

Purdue Baseball game

So this is not a bucket list entry, but baseball related nonetheless.  As a baseball fan, I'm ashamed that in my 5 years at Purdue I only just went to my first game at Lambert Field.  Purdue isn't exactly known as a baseball school like Florida or Cal. State Fullerton, but still at $2 a game, I should have gone to more.  Regardless of this fact, my buddy Matt and I went to Friday's opening game against rival IU.  Here's pictorial proof I was there:

Purdue Ace Matt Morgan on the
mound against IU.



IU struck first with a homerun by DH Alex Dickerson, but the Boilers were able to tie things up at 1 in the 3rd inning.  Going into the bottom of the 5th, Purdue was down 2-1.  Not too bad, but this next half inning was great and embarrassing.  Purdue got bases loaded with NO out and we walked away with only 2 runs off a 2-out single.  We should have blown this game open with the mixture of poor/stalling pitching by Blake Monar and a couple errors by IU 2B Micah Johnson (player of the game for PU).  He committed 3 of the 4 IU errors in the game.  In the 9th, IU took a 4-3 lead, which we tied up in the bottom half of the inning.  A quiet 10th and 11th inning that produced a couple singles for both teams, but not much else.  Our good old Boilermakers finally got the hit they needed and won the game on a single in the bottom of the 12th.  So to recap, for $2 I got 12 innings of baseball and got to watch a team that has a chance to win the regular season Big Ten.  (Going into Saturday's game, we're tied for 1st with Michigan St.). 

I had a blast at the game, I know Matt did, too.  I just wish I had gone to more games in my career here.  BTW, the new stadium next year is going to be awesome!!! Go check out the the pictures of the new facility:  http://www.purduesports.com/view.gal?id=70025

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

The Start

Welcome to The Bucket List.  A few of my friends have been writing their own blogs for a while now (Mildly Competent, The Pit, and Perspectives of a Young Scientist), so I thank them for inspiring me to do this.  Just a quick overview of what this blog is about:  Last year for my 22nd birthday, my mom got me this book right here:












I was pretty excited to thumb through the list to see what I had accomplished so far (probably about 10% of the entire list). Soon after, I decided that anything on the List that I had accomplished before getting this book would not count as a check-mark for my bucket list, so I'm starting at the beginning (with the exception of # 53 Maintain a Baseball Card Collection).  1/162 baseball related things to do before I die.  This book contains everything a baseball fan should expect to experience before they die: games at every park in Major League Baseball, watching great baseball movies (The Natural, Bull Durham, The Sandlot, etc) and reading a ton of baseball related books.  My goal is to accomplish all 162 items on this list and blog about each one of them and the experiences I had while doing them.  Wish me luck because this is going to be a long, fun journey.