2011 Pittsburgh Pirates Preview/Ballhawk Goals

April 1st is just 31 days away! Lets hope for a great 2011 MLB season and a great ballhawking season!

Things that I want to see from the Pirates in 2011
Andrew McCutchen to hit around .290 with 15 HR's, 65 RBI's, and 30-35 stolen bases.
Pedro Alvarez to hit 25-30 HR's.
Neil Walker and Jose Tabata to have great 2nd seasons, and build off their excellent rookie seasons.
Also for Lyle Overbay to prove me wrong and not be a bust, I originally said he'd only hit like 6 HR's and play terribly, hopefully he'll end up proving me wrong.
Joel Hanrahan will hopefully have a great season at closer, around 25 saves would be nice.
The starting rotation not sucking, which probably won't happen.
Garrett Jones hitting atleast 25 HR's.

I'm not going to go into much more detail than that, I'd just like to see a winning season from the Buccos.

2011 Ballhawk Goals
75 balls.
Average around 2-3 balls a game.
Catch another home run.
20 autographs.
Go to Cleveland, Baltimore, and back to Washington D.C. for a game.

That's basically it, I'm not creating insane goals, because then I won't feel bad that I didn't reach them at the end of the season.

Other Pictures From New York City

Sorry to keep you guys waiting for these pictures. I wanted to have it up on Thursday or Friday, but I've been lazy and busy since my last post.












*Next post, 2011 Pirates season preview*

2/13/11- Penguins @ Rangers (Madison Square Garden)

I was excited I got to be at the world's most famous arena!
Below: Screen outside Madison Square Garden

*I meant to crop the picture, instead I wanted to get all my NYC blogs finished.
Unlike the game against the Islanders, I got to see warm-ups at this game, even though I missed the first few minutes because the lady at the concession stand took 15 minutes to serve me and 2 other people.
Below: Warm-ups

Where my seat was, it was a little dark, so when I got a picture of myself it turned out dark.
Below: Me at Madison Square Garden.

I took a picture during the national anthem (something I'm going to start doing at the hockey games I attend).
Below: During the anthem

Then when the game started, I took the picture that I always take.
Below: Game picture/View from my seat

Section-348 Row-E- Seat-1
In the first period, there were 4 goals scored within the 10 minutes, the score was tied up at 2. The second period was all Rangers, they scored 3 goals, and took a 5-2 lead. Then the Pens scored a goal in the 3rd, but couldn't come back. The Rangers won 5-3. The attendance at this game was 18,200.
Below: Final score on scoreboard

When I got outside of the arena, I got my picture taken again, but I edited this one a little bit.
Below: Me outside of Madison Square Garden

Below: 3 tickets I collected at this game

Final post about New York will be up tomorrow, it will have all of the other picture I took in New York City.
*My next Penguins will probably be in the playoffs

2/11/11- Penguins @ Islanders (Nassau Coliseum)

It starts on Friday morning, at 6 in the morning to be exact, I was on a tour bus on my way to New York City. With rest stops, stops for food, and traffic, I missed most of warm-ups at Nassau Coliseum. Our hotel was right next to the arena, so when we all arrived at the hotel around 6:30, I took my suitcase into the lobby, grabbed my jersey, put it on and ran over to the arena. Quickly, I took a picture of the arena.
Below: Nassau Coliseum

I got there just in time to take a picture of warm-ups.
Below: Warm-ups

Then I got a nice picture during the national anthem.
Below: During the National Anthem

And I took a picture of the opening faceoff plus view from my seat.
Below: Faceoff, view from my seat.

Section- 221 Row- L Seat- 3
I randomly decided to take a picture of the scoreboard, because this arena is older and I thought it looked cool, makes me miss Mellon Arena.
Below: Scoreboard

As you can probably tell from the picture, the score was only 1-0 at this point, before the Islanders went crazy, and the boxing match started.
Then a penalty shot was given to the Islanders, so I decided to make a video of it, watch it below.

At the 1st intermission, I took a quick picture of the concourse, because I thought the arena had a minor league/high school/college vibe. Plus, the whole was small.
Below: Concourse

I didn't take any pictures of the fights, brawls, scraps, because I was too focused on that, and listening to all the penalties that were given. This is something you never see, and after the Islanders scored their 9th goal, I somewhat wanted to see them score a 10th goal, it would have been somewhat sweet to see that. After the game, I took another picture of the scoreboard with the final score.
Below: Scoreboard again.

The next morning before I headed to Manhattan, I took a better picture of Nassau Coliseum.
Below: Nassau Coliseum

Below: What I collected at this game.


The Islanders won 9-3 in this "wrestling match" I would like to list all the goals, penalties from this game, but that would take a while, so I'm going to take the easy route, and put a link below about the game.
Game recap from the Penguins website (click here)
A total of 346 penalty minutes from this game, that is crazy. The attendance at this game was 12,888. Even though, the arena was small and sort of to get to, I liked the arena, like I said before, it had a minor league vibe, which I like.
*Stay tuned for the next two posts*

Two In One Post

This is just like my last post. So here we go!

1) Super Bowl
What can I say? The Steelers lost, too many mistakes. That is basically the only thing I have to say about, but anyway congratulations to the Green Bay Packers on winning it.

2) New York City
I will be leaving for New York City early Friday morning. I will be at the Penguins @ Islanders game Friday night, and then the Penguins @ Rangers on Sunday.

Just thought I would update you all on stuff! My next post will be the two posts about the Penguins games.