New York City vs. the Second City

When planning a sports vacation many decisions need to be made. First and most important are the city to travel to and the sporting events taking place in that metropolitan area. This weekend the Ultimate Sports Wife and I had planned to fly to New York City to see Big Brown race for the Triple Crown at the Belmont Stakes, the US Men’s National Team host Argentina at the Meadowlands and watch the Yankees play in their last season at Yankee Stadium. (I must admit these were the sporting events on “my agenda.” Nicole may have had other priorities when visiting New York City.)

Two months ago, I wrote that I decided to book our airline tickets to New York on Southwest Airlines. The number one reason being that you can cancel the flight if you choose not to go. That decision is benefiting us now as we have decided not to travel to NYC for a myriad of reasons.

Of course, I already knew of the competing sporting events in Chicago for the weekend. The NHRA is in Joliet, IL, the Mexican Men’s National Team is playing Peru at Soldier Field on Sunday night and the White Sox are home. I would argue that the events in Chicago are fairly equal to the events in New York City (except for the Belmont Stakes vs. NHRA) for the following reasons:

1) The Belmont Stakes and NHRA only occur once per year in their respective cities. However, the Belmont Stakes should be a higher priority than the NHRA on anyone’s list because the Belmont Stakes occurs only one time per year and nowhere other than New York City. While the NHRA only visits Chicago once per year, they have 23 other events for the season.

2) An international “friendly” soccer game is equal to any other international “friendly” soccer game. One may prefer one team to another but, in the end, the games are the same.

3) Same goes for MLB. Although some regular season games have higher prestige, each game is still one game. One may argue going to a game at Yankee Stadium should have higher precedence than US Cellular Field, but that only applies if you have never been to Yankee Stadium. Otherwise a game is a game.

If you were considering a trip to New York City or Chicago this weekend, I would choose New York City because of my argument for the Belmont Stakes. Although I will not be going this year, I plan to go to the Belmont Stakes in the near future.