I miss watching baseball games at the ballpark. On my most recent trip back home just last month, I was fortunate enough to go see an A's game (the A's couldn't hit Shane Reynolds... Shane Reynolds!) though. ESPN.com is doing a summer feature reporting each Major League baseball park in America. Here's the feature on Pac Bell Park. Love that place. One thing I want to add to the feature is that you can (or used to be able to) get a bottled Coke for $1 from the vending machines behind the bleachers, right next to the Coke Bottle slides.

As for my short list of Major League ballpark experiences... I've been to Pac Bell Park, Candlestick Park, the Oakland Colisseum, the Kingdome (eating Vietnamese sandwiches of all things), and outside of Fenway Park. I still remember a night game at Candlestick where a bunch of my friends and I were daring each other to go the rest of the game shirtless. Those of you who've been to the stick before, know the (as Ben Tao would say) cuh-jones it takes to take on such a dare. I know I say this a lot, but one of these days, I'm gonna tour the ballparks of America like these ESPN.com writers.

'Round these parts, Hokkaido just recently got a baseball team. And I mean recently. This season is the first season that Hokkaido has a team. A team from the Tokyo area got relocated to the big city of Sapporo... the Nippon Ham Fighters. Gotta love em. I mean, how can you not like a team called the Nippon Ham Fighters? I'm yet to go to a game, because Sapporo's like 2-3 hours away, but from watching the news recaps of the games it looks like I wouldn't have a problem getting a ticket... the stands are empty at the Sapporo Dome. Apparently, everybody in Hokkaido, like everybody in Japan, is a Yomiuri Giants fan. For those who have no idea what Japanese baseball is like, the Yomiuri Giants are the Japanese equivalent of the New York Yankees on steroids. Everybody it seems, is a Giants fan. Giants games are always televised here in Hokkaido. The number of Nippon Ham Fighter games I've seen on TV here... 0.

As of today, count me in as a Nippon Ham Fighters fan. I'm gonna go find me one of their baseball caps!