[Amazin69]

Cestus, Confortius, Altius, Michael! Best wishes by the Bay. Say "hi" to Wilmer for me! (*dies slightly, inside*)

Best decision I ever made was deciding not to go to that Dbacks game in 2017 to watch Michael wreck his shoulder. That looked lousy enough on my hotel TV; I didn't need to see it in person.

Mostly OT reminisce follows:

I was in NY on a combination trip; to Columbia SC to watch the solar eclipse at a Fireflies game (they stopped in the 3rd inning to play "Eclipse" by Pink Floyd, the Fireflies lost despite the efforts of Future Met Wilfredo Tovar), then hit NY and Philly on my way back to LA. (I wasn't going to fly cross-country just to see the eclipse.)

I had planned on going out to Shea II, but the night before, the concert in Camden NJ [Alice Cooper, Deep Purple] ran long, the bus back to the Trenton train station was late, I missed the last train back to Manhattan, so after zombie-ing in the station for several hours and catching the first one in the morning, I needed to crash and was in no mood to take the 7-Line to Queens for the day game. So I guess the Train Gods were sparing me?

The Philadelphia leg went much better as a I was able to get off of Amtrak, check into my Center City hotel, grab an authentic Philly steak, catch a bus, and hoof across roughly half of Fairmount Park to be able to catch Aretha Franklin, in what was her penultimate concert. (One in Chicago and then she made an appearance at the Kennedy Center Honors and that was it before she died; we all knew she was sick, but she knocked it out of the park.) So I assume that was the Train Gods balancing the scales, no pun intended.