A little under two years ago, when I started this blog, I really had no direction. It started as a way to share my experiences and passion for baseball over the course my life. It also combined my recent discovery of craft beer and breweries. Things have gone great and I feel I have achieved quite a bit in a short time.
Through that journey though, I found that time was my challenge. I think anyone with a job, family, and responsibilities can understand. I mean, if you look, one of my last posts was on Opening Day in April. Yikes.
I am sitting on a ton of pictures, content, and travel stories that I can’t wait to share. So how do I go about doing that? Well, my first step is to take a step back.
Instead of trying to make the most robust posts with a huge picture gallery, I am going to scale them back to once-a-week, 500-word blog posts with a limited photo gallery. Easier for me to keep consistent, yet still realistic to achieve. These posts will come out every Friday and be promoted on my Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook pages.
Whew, I feel better already.
Some Baseball 2017 Highlights:
While I didn’t write many blogs about last year, it was actually the best baseball seasons as a fan that I ever had. I did accomplish many ‘bucket-list’ things like:
• Attending 5 World Baseball Classic games (2 in San Diego and 3 in Los Angeles) including the USA’s Championship win against Puerto Rico.
• Seeing the Milwaukee Brewers play this year and completing my goal of seeing all 30 MLB teams play live. Now on to the goal of all MLB ballparks of which I have seen 16 out of 30 total.
• Watching NL Rookie Of The Year Cody Bellinger of the Dodgers and AL Rookie Of The Year Aaron Judge for the Yankees play live. Both players also set the league rookie records for Home Runs.
• Connecting with Scott Emerson, my old Shadow Mountain High School (Phoenix, AZ) baseball teammate who is now the Oakland Athletics pitching coach.
• Getting my first foul ball at Petco Park off of the St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Harrison Bader.
• Attending Game 6 of the World Series. Which was my first World Series game I ever attended live.
And lastly, people say that baseball ended after the Houston Astros beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 7. But alas, there was more baseball to be seen in the Arizona Fall League where I saw 4 games and a ton of incredible prospects in the second week of November. You can see all of these pictures on my social media.
A Few Craft Beer highlights:
This year for Craft Beer has been incredible. This is definitely a ‘boom time’ for the industry as it seems like there are more breweries popping up here in Los Angeles and making life awesome. A few fun things I remember going to in 2017 was:
Green Cheek Beer Co. (2294 N. Batavia, Orange, CA 92865) – Got to attend the opening week here. Started by highly decorated former Noble Ale Works head brewer Evan Price, Green Cheek had it’s own unique personality while maintaining the high-standards that Noble (a favorite of mine and Beer Baseball Blog field correspondent Kevin Lyon) has set. Enjoyed the variety along with the ‘Failing Up’ Coffee Stout
Noble Ale Works (1621 S Sinclair St B, Anaheim, CA 92806) – Always a top favorite for the staff of the Beer Baseball Blog before Los Angeles Angels games. I am sure that will not change they have been under construction for most of the year for what I am hoping will be an expanded tasting room. A go-to for me is the ‘Big Whig’ and ‘Aim For The Fences’ IPA. One surefire prediction is that I will make Noble my Angels pre-game destination in 2018.
Carnitas Snack Shack (2632 University Ave. San Diego, CA 92104) – I think this now is our default first stop on the way to anything we do in San Diego. This is the original location, and it’s incredible times one-hundred. I never go wrong with the Carnitas tacos, but my more adventurous buddies like to order off the ‘secret’ menu which is a carnivore’s delight. But for me, the REAL treat is the Mike Hess Brewing ‘Blood Orange’ IPA. As someone who samples a LOT of Craft Beer, this may have been the highlight of the beer year.
So that’s it for now, but a lot more coming in the weeks to follow. Please follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Untappd.
Cheers!
Michael
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