The whole classic story

(Update
Some photos have been uploaded to the album.)

Intro
I've been back from Toronto for a little over a day, though I'm still crazy tired. The trip was probably not the best idea given the times, but it seems to have been worth it looking back from this short distance.

Premise
After my 2006 inaugural World Baseball Classic experience (see game summary, trip summary), it seemed a no-brainer to attempt to attend the second WBC. However, it was not without its twists and turns.

I went, in 2006, with a like-minded sports-loving friend and all was right with the world. It was in Phoenix, a town I enjoy, we participated in tons of great sporting events, and I got make the short trip to Tucson to see my ailing grandmother for what turned out to be the last time. With minor exception, looking back a few years, it was a really great trip.

Prelude
The intent was basically to do it all over again this time around, only the WBC folks decided to mix it up on us, having the first round of the classic in cities outside the United States. This became known as the first problem. While we could have caught the second round in Miami or the semis/finals in San Diego/L.A., there was a bit of risk in not fulfilling what I felt was the key goal of this endeavor... seeing Team USA. I mean, I'm all for seeing some great baseball games, but in less than a month, I'll have a number of options in that regard within a few hours drive. Why make a long plane ride if you're not going to see Team USA? So, given that Team USA COULD have lost in the first round, the only logical choice seemed to be to pack for Toronto.

The second problem this year was that my previous WBC travel partner became decidedly unavailable (though later quite the opposite, however not in time to join plans already in progress). So I had to find a new travel partner that understood the merits of making an international trip to see a baseball game. Not an easy task in my part of the world (college football country). But I did convince a close college friend, who has attended a number of ballgames with me in the past, that this would be a worthy trip.

There was a third problem as it turned out, in that my friend wanted to bring his wife. I don't mean that to sound like "it was a problem that he wanted to bring his wife". It's just that I knew his wife wasn't as into sports as he and I, and so the problem became a fairness issue, or how to balance the trip out with non-sports activities.

So I created an itinerary that was reasonably well balanced, I thought, with the WBC game, an NBA game, and a trip to Wayne Gretzsky's restaurant on the one hand, and museums, shopping, and a theatre show on the other. Well, you know what they say about best laid plans. Which is not to say the trip wasn't rounded and excellent. It just didn't quite go according to plan.

Before getting into the trip details, I must note that there was actually a problem four... my friend did not have a passport. And there was some uncertainty as to whether he could get one in time. Fortunately, he was able to do so, averting a trip planning crisis.

Adventure
Thursday morning I hit the road for Dallas. It was decided early on that, living in different parts of the country, we would all meet-up in Dallas and fly to Toronto together. I don't disagree with this plan in retrospect, but the three plus hour drive with road construction threatening to delay your trip doesn't exactly relax you. Traffic delay and parking uncertainty overcome, I made it through security in short order and met up with my friends with great anticipation of a remarkable trip ahead. Aside from long waits in airports, the Dallas to Detroit to Toronto flights were mostly uneventful. Well, there was the incident involving beef jerky, but that's mostly just embarrassing and revealing of my ignorance, so we can skip that part.

The customs line in Canada was not too bad, though I thought the Canadian border agent was noticeably less nice to me than he had been to my friend's wife. Not that it made a difference. It took us no time at all to find a cab to take us to our hotel, though I did feel like the driver took a longer route than necessary, having studied the map a little ahead of time. The cab fare was our single biggest cash expense of the trip. Almost everything else we paid via credit cards, as was recommended on many travel sites.

The hotel, a Holiday Inn, wasn't particularly fancy, but it would do fine. After we checked-in, we got situated in our rooms and then met for dinner and to discuss the itinerary for the next day. Dinner in the pub and grill attached to the hotel hit the spot just fine.

The next morning we met downstairs and began our short walk to a breakfast place down the road. Called "Over Easy", the food there was quite tasty with hearty portion sizes. Breakfast concluded, we walked across the street to visit the Royal Ontario Museum.

We spent a good four to five hours at the museum, which resembles New York's Natural History Museum. As far as content, the ROM seemed more thorough in some areas than the NY NHM, but less thorough in others. I realize this is an unfair comparison, but I've been to both and so can't help but compare. Following our visit to the ROM, we walked back to the hotel for a short break before catching a subway ride downtown.

The plan called for a touristy visit to the CN Tower, Canada's largest structure, and one of the largest structures in the world, followed by dinner and an NBA game. Unfortunately, I didn't buy Raptors tickets in advance, which turned out to be a poor decision. I was trying to keep the agenda somewhat flexible, and I thought for sure in a city like Toronto with SO MUCH to do, they surely wouldn't sell out a basketball game for a team that wasn't in contention (sure, we sell out our very non-contending Oklahoma City arena quite often, but we just got the team, so we're still so darned excited about it). While I did have a plan B, it was based on a fairly narrow time frame, which also turned out to be problematic.

Well, the CN Tower portion of our day went quite excellently. Having been atop the Empire State Building (yes, even the 102nd floor), and as splendid as that was, I have to say the CN Tower experience might be just a tad better. I mean, wow. The views were spectacular... the city, Lake Ontario, the glass floors, etc... just amazing. Well, okay, the glass floors were just plain scary, but they added a dynamic to the experience not achievable in New York. You should have seen my reaction when trying to step out onto the glass floor when someone else jumped on it, making it shake. Did I mention I'm not great with heights?

We followed our tower observation with a meal in the aptly named 360 restaurant. Very much like the former "Nikz at the Top" restaurant in Oklahoma City, the 360 rotates, giving you a 360-degree view of the city and lake while you enjoy your high-priced meal. The atmosphere was remarkable and the food was excellent (also like Nikz). But we couldn't linger too long because we had to execute plan B following my NBA miscalculation.

The plan involved enjoying a show at a local mystery theater. Unfortunately, as we left CN Tower, we were notably behind schedule and needed to walk a significant distance to make the subway (I led us in the wrong direction, north instead of east, meaning we had to go to the St. Andrews station instead of Union Station costing us valuable time). Looking back on this, we should have just caught a cab and we would have been fine I think. Though it didn't take us long to figure out the value of cabs. When we finally reached the subway, we noticed how impractical it was becoming that we would actually make it to the mystery theater on time (thus keeping it a mystery in a sense). So we began discussing Plan C. Trouble is, I hadn't written a Plan C, so we were having to make it up on the spot.

Plan C became the let's just walk back to the main entertainment district and catch a movie plan. Seemed reasonable enough. It was a Friday, Watchmen had just come out, what a nice fall-back. So, we got off at the next subway stop, walked probably about as far as we did going from the CN Tower to the subway, and we got in line for tickets. We new we were too late for th 7pm showings, and that we'd have to wait for 9 or 9:30 showings, but we should also have accounted for the possibility of sell-outs. Ugh. As we were in line, we saw the marquee message that read "The next available showing of Watchmen is 11pm". There was nothing else even showing until 9:45, and we weren't sure that one was worth the wait. So, Plan C was turning out to be as much a flop as A and B. We stepped out of line and went to the book store cafe next door to contemplate the evening.

Not much discussion was needed before we determined the details of Plan D. It was stunningly simple and at that point the most value we could achieve without further spinning our wheels. (Technical note: Much of this aimless bouncing about would not have occurred if I had been able to use my splendid smart phone... but U.S. mobile providers have criminally high [IMHO] international data roaming rates, and so I was very much lacking in the actionable intelligence gathering abilities I'd come to rely on in the states.) Plan D was to, in fact, head the heck back to the hotel and get some sleep because we were bloody tired anyway. At the time I was disappointed with this plan (because hey, I don't sleep anyway), but once I got back to my room, I enjoyed it quite a lot. And this time, we caught a cab, so our trip back to the hotel was quick and without further walking.

Our last day in Toronto started out with another breakfast at Over Easy. We had plans to try another place, but decided we liked our previous day's breakfast enough to do it again. Then we hit the subway (once we found the darned station... you know, in New York subway stations are VERY obvious... in Toronto, not so much... or is it just me?) to one of the bigger malls in Toronto to do some gift shopping. We just spent an hour or so walking around the mall and making our selections as we didn't want to stay too long, have travel issues again, and possibly miss part of the game, which was the reason for the trip to begin with. So, we got back on the subway and headed back downtown.

Lunch plans called for a trip to Wayne Gretzky's restaurant. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Trouble is, pretty much everybody else going to the game thought of that as well. This time I had plans B and C prepared as well, and we did have to go with C, as B was just as packed. My friend's wife had the excellent suggestion of Plan D (skip external lunch and just get hot dogs at the game). Being men, we ignored that plan and stuck with Plan C. And then it started to rain. And we had window seats and so we saw how wet the people were getting walking to the game. Wonderful.

After scarfing our lunch, we headed to Skydome (yes, I know it's called the Rogers Centre now, but to me it will always be Skydome), getting plenty wet and wishing we had listened to the wife. Thank goodness for domed stadiums. And we arrived at the stadium early enough to catch the tail end of batting practice and to take plenty of pictures.

We had decent seats (35 rows from the field, between third and home). But the lower-bowl was a packed house and I started to wonder if the more spacious upper bowl might have been a better option for comfort purposes (attendance was in excess of forty-two thousand, much more than 2006). There were some obnoxiously loud and drunk Team Canada fans behind us (many in the section agreed they were too loud and annoying, so it wasn't just us), and to the left of us there were a couple of French Canadians that I'm sure were talking about us in French, concerning our American flags and frequent cheering for Team USA in a Canada-friendly crowd. Also, they got up every ten minutes to get a beer (where did they PUT all that beer they drank?), though they couldn't go at the same time. Seemed like every five minutes one of them got up to go get something else.

ANYway, this was about the game. And the game was quite excellent. Unlike my last WBC game, which was a Team USA blowout, this game was close the whole time, with USA victory not assured until the last out of the last inning with a full count. You can't ask for better baseball than that. As a bonus, I got to see three 2008 World Champion Phillies (Victorino, Rollins, and Stairs -- though playing for Canada) perform well, AND I got to see my childhood baseball hero Mike Schmidt coaching third base. What was decidedly less exciting was the fact that I blew an opportunity to get autographs from Victorino and Stairs following the game because the game went longer than expected and I made dinner reservations much too soon afterward. Oh, and did I mention it was still pouring outside?

The original plan called for walking to dinner. With the length of the game and the rain, we opted out of that plan rather quickly. However, catching a cab outside of a building with thousands of people exiting turned out to be far more difficult than anticipated. We ended up getting rather soaked again before we finally got a cab. Fortunately, we made it right on time for our reservations.

Dinner at an acclaimed Italian establishment, was excellent, and the desert was WAY larger than I expected. And I hate wasting perfectly good cheesecake. But once again my planning didn't turn out so well, as we finished dinner much quicker than expected (unlike the previous night), and so we had quite some time to wait before the next item on our agenda, a show at the (in)famous Second City Theatre, where many greats of comedy got their start.

Of course, that show required another walk in the rain as there were no cabs to be found. Did I mention that I gave my umbrella a good hard look before I left OKC, but though surely I wouldn't need it? Well, even with all weather crud on the trip, it all turned out to be worth it, as Second City was amazing. As a huge fan of sketch comedy, I had long wanted to get a live look at where SCTV came from, and at the very beginnings of many SNL players' climbs to the top. And SC didn't disappoint. It was a completely amazing and funny show, and I am reasonably certain I will someday see some of those same stage actors on my TV set, whether in SNL or some other hilarious endeavor. If you're ever in one of the SC cities, don't miss an opportunity to catch a show.

Not unexpectedly, it was still raining after the show, so we caught a cab back to the hotel. Considering we were being picked up by an airport taxi at 6am, AND that we had to spring ahead for daylight savings, there really wasn't much time for sleep, so, after setting up a wake-up call, I had to hurry up and pack so I could get at least SOME sleep. Even though I don't do that much, the trip was starting to catch up with me.

The trip to the airport the next morning and the trip back through customs and onward to Dallas was unremarkable (though we finally got a big enough plane to stretch out in, oh, and we think we saw the mini-me actor at the Detroit airport), as was my drive back to OKC. But it had been about fourteen hours of traveling of some sort, so I was very much like a zombie upon my return. I picked up the kids from their mom's, got some to-go dinner, and went HOME. It was SO nice to be home. Though there are some things to miss about Toronto.

Conclusion
While I didn't get to know her as well as I would have liked, Toronto, in my experience, is an excellent place to visit. Very New York-like with plenty of international flair (it's a VERY diverse city). With its close proximity to the U.S., the lack of language barriers, and the general similarity of most things (except money, metrics, and temperature), Toronto is a fantastic alternative to Europe if money and time are an issue. I'm eager to bring the kids back during a future summer so we can do all the kid-friendly things I skipped-out on this time around.