BBQ and Baseball

When Todd and I went to Phil's BBQ in June, we saw their flyer for a Phil's BBQ tailgate + San Diego Padres baseball ticket for $25, with 100% of the proceeds benefiting Big Brother / Big Sisters of San Diego, we couldn't say no. We love Phil's BBQ. We like baseball. And Todd was a Big Brother in the Big Brother / Big Sister program in Ohio for five years. So we bought our tickets and impatiently waited for Monday 8/15 to arrive.

I had taken the day off work on Monday. Todd came home early from work, and we left for downtown around 4:30 PM to meet Sally for the BBQ and baseball. We parked at the Hilton parking lot across the street, and walked on the footbridge over to the ballpark.





Sally met us at the ballpark side of the footbridge, and we walked together to the tailgate parking lot where the Phil's BBQ tailgate was happening. We were able to find seats together and sat down to eat.  It was a cold and cloudy day for San Diego, but the BBQ was awesome!





We had ribs and chicken, potato salad, and cole slaw.




The best part was, the meal included a scoop of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Mmm... Cherry Garcia, how I love thee.


I made Todd and Sally pose in front of one of many Phil's truck out there at the BBQ.


I asked Sally, "What does this remind you of?" and she said, "The A's game"! She was referring to when we were 16 years old and we took the BART (subway) from Pleasanton to Oakland Coliseum for the "Safeway BBQ Days" with the Oakland A's. For $10, you got a chili hot dog, cracker jacks, peanuts, a drink, and a scoop of Haagen Dazs ice cream, plus a ticket to the game and $2 for the BART ride back. We loved it as teenagers and still have such fond memories of it!

We got into Petco Park and found our seats. It was really high up! In fact, we were only two rows from the very top of the stadium. But I didn't mind, because I had never been up there before, and it allowed for some photos from an angle of the park I had not seen before.


Hello nosebleed. :p






After a couple of innings, Todd got hungry again, so he went and got some popcorn.


Game in play.


Can you believe this guy's name? It's like his mom wanted to make up for his last name or something.


We left in the middle of the game, somewhere around the 5th or 6th inning, because it was a "school night" after all, and we had to be at work the next day.

The footbridge looked so cool at night with the stairs all lit up.


Petco Park lit up at night is pretty spectacular too.


The game ended up going into extra innings, with the Padres losing to the Mets 5-4 in the 10th inning. It was such a fun summer week night out, which we're trying to do more of before summer ends. Of course, living in San Diego means summer never really ends, but the amount of daylight gets limited as we go into fall. Hurray for more after-work week day fun! :)