OK, so here's what went down while I was there. Friday was more of an easy going day. We didn't get there until late so we went over to the ESPN Wide World of Sports (which just got a complete redo) and checked it out. It's a very nice place and it is HUGE. I had never been there before, but I am definitely looking forward to going back at some point. We checked out some stuff while we were there, most notably the new playstation pavillion which they say they will host video game tournaments at. We also were able to walk right into the Braves Stadium with virtually no one there. I have a few pics I will post of that (although only a few are good b/c I didn't have the settings right on my camera). After that, we left and went over to the ESPN Club to get someting to eat. It was pretty good. I thought the most awesome part about it though was that they had TV's in the bathroom.
Now onto today. So we got to the park around 8:00 for the early opening. There was almost no one in the park at that point which was good. None of the events started until 9:30, so we went on a few rides first, then made our way over to the front of the park around 9:00. At that point people started to appear from a bunch of places. When we first got there, the Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders were out taking pictures with people so I jumped in and got one right before they left. Soon enough, they were on stage doing what they do and then Colin Cowherd came out to say some stuff.
At 9:30, we saw "Dream Job: The Experience" with Al Jaffe (the dude who finds all of ESPN's sports casters) with celebrity judge apperences by Chad Ochocinco and Ron Jaworski. It was a pretty good show. It used to be a actual show on ESPN to find sports casters. They picked 3 people before the show started to do it. They basically had to do what you see on Sportscenter when they do the highlights. They gave them a choice of what sport they wanted to cover for the highlight. The first dude that did it was ok, the second sucked (like I mean balls), but the last guy was amazing. He was energetic, threw in a kiss up line to ochocinco, and seemed to definitely know what he was talking about. He won by a mile
Also, in ochocinco news, his watch is freakin huge!
So after that was over, we went back to the stage at the center of the park to catch the globetrotters perform for a while. After they were done, there was a "Inside 1st and 10" featuring Jay Crawford, Skip Bayless, Colin Cowherd and special guests Ochocinco and Curt Schilling. Curt, Jay and Colin talked/ debated for a while before turning it over to guests questions. The first one to take a question was Schilling, who got a question about players using steroids getting into the HOF, specifically Clemens and Bonds. He didn't even blink twice before saying he absolutely thinks they don't deserve to get in. He was very vocal about Bonds also (of course). Skip said he disagreed, but the crowd agreed with Schill. Colin then came up and got a question about whether athletes should be forced to go to college or not. Both he and Skip argued they shouldn't have to go and the crowd agreed. Then Ochocinco came up to some question about excessive celebrations. I forget what they all said, but I know skip disagreed, ocho defended himself and ocho won.
So after that at 11:00, There was a Baseball Clinic with Curt Schilling & Bernie Williams alongside Karl Ravech, John Kruk, Chris Singleton and Bobby Valentine. It was pretty good. Obviously Schilling did a pitching clinic and Bernie did hitting. They had some preselected kids that got to go up on stage and do some stuff with them. Schilling showed them proper pitching mechanics and all that type of stuff and then everyone came up a few times to throw some pitches. Bernie showed his batting stance and the proper position you should be in when the pitcher is about to pitch. They also talked a lot about balance and stuff. Then some of the kids went around a few times and were supposed to hit into a net, but most just either missed or hit it so good it went over the net and into the park.
So then there was nothing we really wanted to do until 12:45 so we wandered around and into the "ESPN Sports Zone" where you could see how fast you could throw, take batting practice, play basketball, test your accuracy throwing a football and there was some golf and tennis stuff. While we were here though, after having just left seeing te baseball clinic, we bumped into Schill and Bernie throwing at the test your speed thing for pitching. They weren't really trying, just tossing it. Schill was throwing around 45 and Bernie 35. Before we left I got a shirt just to say we were there. So after that we went to get something to eat. We had to eat real quick b/c the thing we wanted to see started at 12:45 and we didn't get our food until 12:40. Luckily, we were right next to where we needed to be, we just had to shove that down quick.
So at 12:45, we got to "Baseball Tonight" right as it was starting and got seats right in the center of the room which was perfect. Karl Ravech, John Kruk, Tim Kurkjian were there with special guests Jim Palmer and Curt Schilling. It was good. Lots of baseball history/knowledge up there. They turned it over to fan questions and when the topic of pitch count came about, all of them agreed in full that it is a bad thing for the sport and there is no need for it. What they were saying though is that baseball, from little leagues on up, are capping pitch counts. I mean, at this point, but even over in Japan still to this day they send them out to pitch until their arm falls off. I mean, they have a different training program, but we could. I thought it was funny when the guy finished his question though, Bobby Valentine said the managers have pitch counts "To cover their a$$." LOL. After it ended, they stuck around to sign autographs. I got: Curt Schilling, Jim Palmer, John Kruk and Tim Kurkjian. Also, John Kruk is the dude!
So after that was over, we hung around that area for awhile b/c there was a whole ESPN NBA area set up outside the theatre that Baseball Tonight was in. There was some people playing around the world, they had some photo ops with some ESPN personalities, an area to measure your foot with NBA players, a place to see how high you can jump and the actual NBA on ESPN RV that is in the commercials. They let us look around and it has a ton of cool stuff in there. It has over 100,000 miles on it. There is a bunch of media passes from all of the places/NBA games they've been to and they had one of the fan voting things for the dunk contest this past year in Dallas and they had a bunch of other cool stuff in there. The guy who was in there said he has been all over the country and his favorite place is Dallas (I think he was talking about the Cowboys when they were there for All-star weekend).
Last, we went to see Inside the Herd with Colin Cowherd, with special guests Jim Palmer and Andre Dawson. It was sort of like the Herd in that Colin hosted, but b/c Andre and Jim were there, it just sort of took off to be a very baseball oriented show. There was a lot of HOF talk. Talk about who should be in the HOF, how the game is different from when they played, stuff like that. There was also this one dude who asked Colin how it feels to lose to Beadle everyday. I forgot what exactly he said about that, but he said SN is the fastest gaining in male viewers in 9 years at ESPN.
I may go again tomorrow, but we'll see what my dad says. There is still a bunch we didn't do. Tomorrow Carlos Lee, Joba, CC and Nick Swisher are gonna be there and I wanna do some of the NFL stuff if I can. I hope we go, but I might have to talk my parents into it.
on a completely separate note getting away from ESPN talk, I had never been back near the premier theater area before and saw this while I was back there:
Has this always been there? Is this just a nod to the film or could it possibly be hinting at a future expansion of the park with a radiator springs type area? Again, I have no idea, I had never been back there before and just noticed it and thought it was interesting.
More pics here:
http://s295.photobuc...Weekend%20Pics/
