Went to the home opener of the
Chicago Fire in Bridgeview on Sunday. They played the New York Red Bulls. The stadium, Toyota Park, is brand new and pretty amazing. It holds 25000 which is small but it is MLS soccer so they are not drawing huge numbers, this size though is really nice because anywhere you sit you are right next to the field. I went with the 1610 crew. It was a lot farther than I thought it was going to be, it ended up being an hour from the apartment. Bridgeview is about as far west and south as you would ever want to go. The atmosphere in the stadium when we entered was awesome, The people in the crowd were going nuts and the game had not even started.
Our seats were in the general admission seating ($20) also known as the "Fire Pit", it is in the stands behind the goal. This section was full when we arrived, which is crazy because we were not even late. It made sense though because the people who were in the section were not messin around, jerseys, flags, face paint, drums, chants and cheers. We came to the conclusion you need to have the cheer book memorized before you can truly be aloud in the middle of this section because there were about 50 complicated cheers going on. Also once the goalie from the other team came to our side after half, stuff started getting really interesting. People were throwing beer bottles (luckily plastic) at the goalie, streamers were flying on the field along with confetti and paper airplanes and twice during the game smoke bombs were thrown into the goalie box. There was nothing the security could do about the "Fire Pit", no matter what they tried and they did tried.
Anyways the Fire beat the Red Bulls 2-0 in the first ever game at Toyota Park and I had a great time I plan on seriously looking into 2 or three more games with the possibility of season tickets for next year.
Oh and I had to buy this Jersey which is amazing.
The third annual Patriot Games go off tomorrow starting at 11. The Patriot Games started three years ago when Al Asak Blair Ellie and I decided we should have a softball tournament drink some beers eat some food and have some fun. The first year was almost a complete disaster because it downpoured right at game time for an hour but we waited it out in a bar. In the bar we held a live draft and passed out the team jerseys, once we did that and had a couple of drinks we were off to the soaking wet field, to play in the first ever Patriot Games. The games started of with three teams, red white and blue and had a total of about 37-40 participants. THis year we are prepared for any where between 100-150, my how it has grown. We also now have three fields and 8 teams.
