Chad said he liked being mentioned in these stories. Well, this is the last installation, and we're going out with a bang.

Thursday

Today was the day of the magical doubleheader. Our first game was Montreal and Cleveland at Winter Haven, and the second game was Los Angeles and Houston in Kissimmee. On our way to the first game, we passed a crazy-ass Jesus car. Now, I really don't do it justice by calling it a "crazy-ass Jesus car". It was all black with gold writing ALL OVER IT. This writing consisted of quotes from scripture and various catchphrases. It was pretty intense, and Geoff tried to get a picture, but it is really hard to take pictures in a moving car. For Geoff it is, at least.

We got to the game, and I went to the souvenir stand to scout it it. I didn't see too much, and I didn't feel like standing around up there because I hate just looking at stupid crappy merchandise. However, Geoff took notice of the Hidden Treasures baseball card thing. This is how it works: you pay $15, and you get a packet. This packet contains one card in a heavy protective plastic case. One of these packets somewhere has a '51 Mickey Mantle or something, I don't remember. Anyways, Geoff was sucked in, and he had to buy one. I almost bought one too, but I somehow held off. Geoff opened his pack at the counter, because the souvenir guy was so nice and interested to see what he got. Geoff got a 1992 Mike Piazza Fleer Rookie. I think. I'm sure he can correct me in the comments. Anyways, it was all very exciting, and we decided that we would go look up the price in between our games at the Barnes & Noble near the motel. Anyways, at this point we decided to go sit back down.

Our seats were kind of wet because it was raining off and on, but we sat down and talked a little with the guy sitting behind us. Then, Geoff saw Peter Gammons. He was walking on the concourse, maybe 10 rows in front of us. He was going back towards home plate (we were over on the first base side, closer to the plate than the previous game, but still down a ways). Geoff and I freak out. Then Geoff decides that he really would not be able to sleep if we didn't at least try to talk to Peter Gammons. I can't really deny this, so we decided to pursue.

We walked down the concourse to where he was standing. A few people shook his hand, and then Geoff came up to him and said he was a huge fan, and asked for a picture to be taken. Mr. Gammons obliged, and the results are over in the photos section (I'm sure you've all seen it by now). It was pretty cool. We went back to our seats and talked about all the funny-slash-interesting things we could have asked him, if only we had more time. This was a fun game to play, for sure.

The Tribe game was pretty uneventful. We saw good pitching by Jeff D'Amico, another possible rotation guy. We saw Zach Day kinda suck. Not much else of note. All the good Expos, all three of them, they decided to stay home for this game, which was kind of annoying. We left once D'Amico got pulled, since traffic was such a bitch after the Tampa Bay game. Right before we left, I went back to the souvenir place and got a t-shirt - a decent Indians Grapefruit League shirt. I'm happy with it.

We get back home, and we go over to B&N. On the way in, Geoff says something about Leaf or Bowman having the real Piazza rookie the year before, maybe. Straight line for the Beckett's. Geoff's right, of course. There's a $40 Piazza from the year before. And Geoff's card is worth all of $1.50-$3. So never play that fucking Hidden Treasures crap. It sucks.

Anyways, this was a downer, but Geoff took it like a champ, and we went off to Kissimmee for the Astros-Dodgers game. Kissimmee is a crazy, bright-colored, touristy-to-the-max town, since it is really close to Disney World. It was nauseating, and we had to drive for a while down the main road. Just seeing all the places offering 6 t-shirts for $10 was incredible.

We finally got to the Houston stadium, and what a place it was. I liked it a lot. I loved the architecture, I loved the layout, I loved how freakin' close the seats were to the field. It was probably my favorite park overall. We got to see Tim Redding and Kaz Ishii do battle from our seats up on the 3rd base side. Seriously, no bad seat in the house, so it didn't matter. The game was somewhat uninteresting, since we didn't care about either team. Ishii was getting hit around pretty bad, and Redding wasn't that great either. By the 6th we were tiring of the game, and we decided to walk around and leave. We noticed the Dodgers bullpen was busy, and we wanted to see who was throwing and if it was worth sticking around. We walked down and around the foul area in left, and then back behind home plate. Behind home plate was unbelievable. I felt like I was on the field. It was great. Then we went over to the Dodgers bullpen. Our suspicions were confirmed, as the jersey said "Jackson" across the back. Edwin Jackson, the number one arm in the Dodgers system and one of the best prospects in baseball! So we went back to the foul area in left and waited to watch him.

He threw really hard, but he didn't have that great a showing. It was still exciting, for sure. Stuff like this is what made spring training great.

We headed back to Lakeland, and since neither of us had really eaten anything today, we were both starving. It was sorta late, and Taco Bell was definitely calling us. We made a run for the border.

I had 4 or 5 steak tacos. Geoff had 6 beef chalupas. We both clearly overstepped our bounds here. How am I so certain that we had gone too far? Three words - the Chad Game.

We were both in terrible pain after eating. Neither of us could really move. We both basically were lying on our backs, moaning about the pain and sorta listening to TV. Also, we laughed a lot. Everything was funny for some reason. It was as if we were high, which seems circular, since usually when people are high they want Taco Bell (think about it, you'll get it). But we were in massive pain. Massive. And then it started.

I think it all began once we were in bed. We were both in too much pain to sleep. For some reason, one that I cannot recall now at all, I thought of replacing part of people's names with 'Chad'. I have no idea why I started doing this. I started naming people to Geoff, and he started naming people back, because he got the game right away. THIS IS WHERE WE WERE. He understood, and I understood, but now, now no one understands.

All hell broke loose after I said "Chadoline". This pretty much brought the game to the mainstream, and we played it for the next 2 hours. Another huge turn was when I named some sort of place, instead of a name, and it wasn't that good. Geoff's response, though, was amazing - "What, like CHAD YORK CITY?" I died. The game had been fully developed, and we both LOVED it.

Other notables:

• Osama Chad Laden


• Honuchadchad


• Lake Chadichadchad

Then we got to my favorite one. I don't know how I came up with it, but the theme of game shows just came to me. Usually I never get this game show's name right, or I never remember it, but somehow I did, because that's the kind of night it was.

Press Your Chad.

I figure if you're still reading at this point, there's no way you don't find that funny. I mean, c'mon "No Chad, no Chad, no Chad, CHAD!" Now go look at Geoff's section of elscorcho. Yeah. It's pretty damn funny.

God. We played that game for a long time that night. And it really didn't end there, as you'll see whenever I post about Friday.

That's right, Friday isn't going to be in this post, because this post is fucking long already. Deal with it! I'll probably post Friday tonight or later today at work since I really do not have much to do.