The All-Star Classic

After a loooooong 12 day road series (during which I went to Alaska to meet my perfect new godson, more on that later!) and an awesome game at Miller Park, Cy finally came home just in time for us to head to Peoria, Illinois for the Midwest League All-Star Classic this week!

It is SUCH an exciting honor for Cy to be named to the All Star team. Basically, the managers (coaches) across the league vote on players who have performed well in the first half of the season to be selected for the team (voting happens differently in different leagues/levels- in some places player and fans get a portion of the vote too). Then the selected players from the East and West divisions of the league get together and play a game. Two players from the Timber Rattlers were selected, Cy and Carlos Leal, one of our catchers.

Each year a different team in the league host the Classic, and this year the Peoria Chiefs took their turn. Peoria is about a 5 hour trip from Appleton, so Monday morning we hit the road. A big group of the staff from our front office went, so we had a nice little caravan of rental minivans cruising down the highway ;)

via TRats marketing directer @hilarybauer7 on twitter

We arrived late in the afternoon and got checked in. Boy oh boy was it a great change of pace to stay in a nice hotel! Most of the time on the road, Cy's team stays in some pretty...interesting... places (think bedbugs) MiLB glam, y'all. So we were absolutely thrilled to stay somewhere nice, clean, and comfortable!!

That evening we headed to the CAT Museum for a pre-dinner cocktail hour. It was so cool to see all the Cat equipment and dozers and motors and stuff. If you know how much of a gear head Cy is, you know he was in absolute heaven. From there, we were shuttled over to the ballpark for dinner. The original plan was to have dinner at a restaurant on the riverwalk, but the rover was flooding so the riverwalk was shut down. The Chiefs did a good job of pulling together a plan B at the last minute! We ate and hung out for a while, then headed back to the hotel for the night.

Tuesday morning we slept in and walked to a little cafe for breakfast. Cy had to head to the field at noon, so I basically spent the rest of my afternoon doing pretty much nothing. It was really relaxing though! I met up with Carolina (Carlos' girlfriend- love her!) at the field at about 5 for the home run derby.

The derby was interesting. They decided to have the hitters hit in towards the fans instead of out like normal. Great idea in theory, but in practice it was kinda boring because there weren't a lot of home runs hit into the stands AND the players were way out in the outfield and hard to see. The game started after that, and it was different than your typical game because they switched pitchers at least every inning so that everyone got a chance to play. This made it kiiiinda drag out a bit haha! Cy threw the first 2 outs of the 6th inning with 5 quick pitches. After the game there was an awesome fireworks show, and then we headed to the post-game street party at a nearby pub. By the time the day finally ended we were exhausted! The next morning we headed back home to Appleton and enjoyed the day off.

It was a whirlwind of a trip, but a very cool experience! All in all though, Cy and I are boring creatures of habit, so we are glad to be back to our "normal" after over 2 weeks of crazy ;) We are playing at home pretty much until the 7th (with just a quick 1 night trip in the first week of July) and I am so glad. Right now 2 more girlfriends are in town visiting (along with the now THREE of us who are here full time!!) so our little group is having a blast.

Hope your week has been wonderful!!

xo, Han