I'm sure royhobbs, shown above rocking his awesome Failcouer shirt, will have a writeup of his own, and I in no way mean to steal any of his thunder with my post. Personally, I love reading his writeups and have no doubt his take on thing will be completely different from my own.

So, this past Saturday night, the Braves played the O's in Baltimore, Kenshin Kawakami vs. Rich Hill, but, more importantly, it was Talking Chop Meetup Day. As you've probably already seen from royhobb's fanshot, those in attendance included myself, the infamous bigjoe, the incourrigable Smoltz's Beard, the indefensible royhobbs, and the iglooish mvandonsel.

The night got off to a fun start as bigjoe, Smoltz's Beard, and I did a little pregaming at the hotel before heading over to O'Shea's Irish Pub and drinking more. The boys gave me a hard time for the fact that I dont' drink, but gave it to me a little worse after I got into an involved conversation with the bartender about books. "Are you talking about Twilight?" a happily buzzed Beard shouted at me. Whatever, if Baltimore wasn't such a pisshole I'd move there and marry that bartender. She was super cute, reheaded, and appreciated Chuck Palahniuk.

During our mile long walk to Camden Yards, an incredibly well educated Orioles fan noticed Smoltz's Beard's Chipper Jones shirt and said, quite intelligently, "Chipper Jones? What, is he playing from a retirement home? How old is he?" I have, of course, cleared up his stuttering and stammering to make his remarks easier to read. The Beard quickly replied that Chipper only won the batting title last season and was 2nd in OPS in all of baseball to the Almight Pujols. I went a step further and added that Chipper is already better than Cal Ripken Jr. ever was. I know, it's sacriligious to suggest that in Baltimore, but screw 'em, check the numbers.

Cal Ripken Jr.: 20+ seasons, .276 AVG, .340 OBP, .447 SLG, .787 OPS, 431 HR, 1695 RBI, 1647 R, 3001 games played.

Chipper Jones: 14+ seasons, .310 AVG, .408 OPB, .547 SLG, .955 OPS, 416 HR, 1405 RBI, 1406 R, 2076 games played.

Sorry Cal, Chipper's not going to play as long, but his counting stats will probably be better and his percentage stats are so much better it's ridiculous. Of course, the big dummy countered that Cal was The Iron Man, causing me to reply, "It's easy to play every day when you're on steroids." Even Chipper asked me to pump the brakes on that one:

I also added that it was easy to look good when you were playing next to guy like Chris Hoiles. So, ironically enough, after about five minutes inside the park, this guy walked by:

What the hell? Members of Chris Hoiles' family don't have a jersey with his name on it!

The game was going great; we met up with royhobbs and his friends and hung out behind the right field wall, even though I was really the only one tall enough to see over it. The boys took great joy in yelling obsenities and scathing commentaries over the wall at #7, the barbs ranging from the hilarious to the inappropriate. But trust me, you don't really know the proper way to say "Fuck You Francoeur" until you hear Smotlz's Beard yell it.

Of course, Monseiur Franz ended up getting the better of us, finishing with three hits, including a two run double off the base of the centerfield wall. Nobody really minded though; in fact, we all agreed that if it takes harrassing FYF to get him to play well, then so be it. 

Through the first three innings an increasingly happy bigjoe kept screaming "Where's my Eskimo?" in anticipation of mvandonsel's arrival. I told him to be patient; it takes a while to hook the dogs up to the sled and it's hard to navigate the streets of Baltimore on skis. mvandonsel did finally show up, wearing a pullover jacket off all things. He quickly discovered that he was overdressed, asking, "Is it always this humid on the East Coast?" as he took off the pullover.

Not long after our erstwhile Eskimo's arrival, we were joined by another, less welcome fan, a man who we either referred to as Lt. Dan, or, my personal preference, Sgt. Leopard. Think of Shipwreck from G.I. Joe mashed with the gay sailor from The Village People, mixed with a leopard. And he says "cocksucker" a lot. The guy was brutal; he's the dude at the party who doesn't get the hint that you don't want to talk to him, even though you walk away every time he comes near you.

So with all our TCers, and even a straggling weirdo, we settled in to watch some Braves baseball, and, in true TC fashion, we were rowdy enough that several completely ineffective ushers were forced to ask us to settle down. But, all was not well in the TC nation, as the Braves managed to work together as a team to blow the lead and get drubbed by the third worst team in baseball. One Talking Chop member was so disgusted with this turn of events that he decided to vomit in several sections of Camden Yards as a form of passive protest:

The game on Sunday was certainly bad enough to make us want to vomit, as only Cody Ross seemed to have shown up to play that day. Fortunately for royhobbs (driving back home) and Smoltz's Beard (beer coma), they didn't have to witness it, but bigjoe, mavandonsel, and I did. Since the game was a stinker, I just tried to focus on getting some nice pictures of the players, and I think I got some decent ones:

Since we were just hanging out and having some fun (and since Major League games are the suck for autographs) I didn't really make a point of trying to get any autographs or talk to any of the guys, but I did get to catch up with Tommy Hanson for a minute:

When I turned back to bigjoe, he was just kind of staring at me. Finally, he asked, "Did you just have a conversation with Tommy Hanson?" Sure, why not? Remember, we might love them for what they can do on a ballfield, but they're just folks. The first time I met Tommy, he was just another player on the Danville team, and still a couple of years from really even being thought of as a prospect. Always take a chance to go see one of our Minor League affiliates play, and if you do, make sure to talk with some of the guys. They're all good dudes, and it's an amazing feeling to see them in a Big League stadium.

Another guy I met for the first time that same day in Danville was Kris Medlen. He didn't pitch that great on Sunday, but nobody did, and it was still awesome to see him pitching in the bigs:

One of our hopes for the weekend was to see Barbaro Canizares hit his first ML homer. It didn't happen, but I did get this sweet picture of him rosining up his bat:

Another picture I really loved was this one of Diory Hernandez:

Not only is it cool cause he pretty much put himself in a perfect position for me to take the picture while he was running in to the dugout, but check out the name on the glove: Eric Campbell! I guess he did make it to the majors.

 I had a blast this weekend and if you can ever make it to a Talking Chip Meetup, I'd suggest you do. What's not to love about Braves baseball and good people? And sure, we lost both games, but it's not about how you perform, it's about how professional you are doing it: