A few weeks ago, a couple sets of my relatives invited me to a family get-together in Newport Beach. I was so thankful for the invitation and I immediately made plans to go. It has been difficult to make new friends and connections down here, so any sort of social outings that I get invited to, I am definitely going to go. Especially considering that everyone that would be in attendance was going to be family that I have never met before, I would not pass up this opportunity.
It was a fantastic occasion and I am so glad I went. The members of the family were all from my father's side, and I got to meet a bunch of relatives that were so pleasant and jovial. I am so blessed to have such accommodating and nice relatives that offered an avenue of support for me as I continue to transition to life here. I have family that is spread out all over Southern California, and I hope that my travels will allow me to meet up with them and continue to get to know them. Up front here, I want to thank all of them for being so gracious.
For the past few months, I've been aching for a legitimate "Beach Day". With my busy schedule, I just haven't had time to drive, or take the train, to the beach and spend a day just laying out on the sand doing nothing. After the get-together, I really wanted to experience the feeling of laying out on the beach and doing nothing. I suppose you couldn't have found a better place to do that than Newport Beach.
I packed a beach towel, sunscreen, a bathing suit, and my book with the intention of spending a couple hours reading and relaxing. In reality, I started to read, but I fell asleep. The beach wasn't nearly as crowded as I thought it would be, and laying under the warm sun with the background of crashing waves is, apparently, too much relaxation for me. Folks, this is what we call a "good" problem. The alarm on my phone woke me up as I got a legitimate hour of sleep, on the beach.
Considering how much I'm going to be in Orange County for Angels game, I'm going to try and research ways of taking advantage of the beaches there, whether they're in Newport or somewhere else. My preferred beach is in Oceanside because it is literally three blocks from the Metrolink station. Newport and the rest of the OC beaches aren't nearly as accessible, but there have to be ways to get there using my preferred methods of transportation.
Before I left town, I stopped at the Newport Brew Co. to try out their craft beers. I had read about it on TripAdvisor, and I'm really trying to incorporate this aspect of community into my Baseball Road Trips. I find that these local breweries are great places to learn about communities and my purchases go to local causes. Besides, a young hipster like myself can't refuse good beer.
The campus of Cal State Fullerton is about 30 minutes from Newport. It is the second largest university in the state school system, second only to UCLA. The biggest claim to fame for Cal State Fullerton is their baseball program. Making almost twenty appearances in Omaha and winning the national championship most recently in 2004, the Titans are a baseball factory. Most of their success was bred in the 2000's by coach George Horton, who's now at Oregon.
The Titans play at Goodwin Field right on campus. As I alluded to in my previous post, Goodwin Field played host to professional ball in the Golden League for a number of years. The seating stretches from foul pole to foul pole with chairbacks between the bases and bleachers beyond those. All the seats are close to the action and it has the added benefit of not having netting all the way around. This makes it easier to experience the game and see the action on the field.
There are constant reminders of the successes the Titans have had in baseball. In fact, Goodwin Field had more homages than Dedeaux Field at USC. While I liked Dedeaux Field better as a venue, you can't deny the awesomeness of what Cal State Fullerton had accomplished. I suppose when your program is a perennial national championship contender and churns out MLB prospects left and right, you can publicly emphasis your tradition more than most.
The spunky underdogs just wouldn't go away. The Hawaii Rainbow Warriors were deficient in talent at every level, but opportunistic to keep the game competitive. Cal State Fullerton left runners in scoring position nearly every inning from the sixth on. Hawaii manufactured a run to keep the game tied into extra innings. Unfortunately for Hawaii, they lived too much I the edge and Cal State Fullerton pushed across the winning run in the bottom of the 11th on a Suicide Squeeze play. The final score was 2-1.
As you can see, this was a busy day with lots of stuff in addition to the baseball game. This is what makes Baseball Road Trips so great is that they are so much more than just the game. Every outing, no matter where, tells a story.
Weekend #3 sees me test my refinements. Saturday is Albert Pujols fleece blanket night at the 66ers. That should make a great addition to my apartment. Sunday will see me head back into Orange County for the second Angels game of the year, this time against the Texas Rangers. This will be my opportunity to test out the ideas I formulated with the biking and exploration in and around Orange and Anaheim.
Always take on a 3-0 pitch ;)
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