Purdue at Illinois Chicago

First game of the year for me, it was forty degrees and windy. I love going to a UIC game just because of the view out centerfield is awesome with the city of Chicago's skyline. They put up a new videoboard this year, to take the place of their old generic scoreboard.

The game was moved back an hour till two because of the weather. I got to the area early, i found a deli that has been open since the forties that i wanted to check out. Manny's cafateria and deli on Jefferson street, about three blocks east of the campus.The atmosphere is that of an older time cafateria. Going through line and stuff like you are back in grade school. I got the corned beef on rye, the beef was dry and hard, and really didn't taste that good. The sandwich itself was huge, the bread wasn't nearly enough to hold the beef. The crust of the bread was really hard and I wasn't able to eat it. I also got a slice of applet pie. That was good, with healthy chuncks of apples. The sandwich, a water and pie came to almost 20 dollars.

Got to the stadium in plenty of time. The game was scheduled to go off at 1pm, but was held back to 2. It was 40 degrees out, thankfully I had the long underwear on, because it was freezing. Sat there and watched the warmups and infield practice. The place I swear had more Purdue fans than UIC fans. There were 135 people as the listed attendence. If that is the case then only about 200 can fit in the park. They are going to build a new park sometime soon with a huge donation from Yankee, Curtis Granderson.

The game was freezing cold, it was raining a little at the start of the game so I didn't keep score. I came home after wards and filled out a scorecard from the play by play online. Also realized that the scorebook I was going to use is way to small, so it is back to regular notebook paper for me.

The Boilermakers starter Jordan Minch was good, his fastball moved well. He would get hit hard in the sixth which would be his last inning. Before that he really wasn't hit that badly. He would give up two runs in the second. Minch retired 12 of the first 14 he faced. The start of the end would be in the fifth when he walked to after giving up a one out single. He then got an inning ending double play. In the sixth he gave up two, two run homers, getting only one out before being pulled. UIC got their other runs in the ninth, already down by a lot. They would get four runs on two errors.

The Flames starter Jack Andersen lasted all of an inning, he would get shelled in the second. Giving up seven runs, six earned. He would leave the game after a comebacker hit him square in the knee. In all the Boilermakers would get eight runs in the inning, plus tack on another one in the third. Purdue got single runs in the fourth and sixth. Their next big inning was a six run eighth.  In all the Purdue Boilermakers beat the Illinois Chicago Flames 17-10. Purdue first baseman Angelo Cianfraco really needs to learn to run out of the box, as he had a pair of doubles, that could've easliy been triples if he had hustled.

Flames reliever Ian Lewandowski showed a decent curveball for a few strikeouts. He missed up a few times though.