Posted By Jeff Fletcher on November 3, 2009 2:27 pm

Woke up this morning and took the Amtrak (there’s a plug) back from Philadelphia to New York. Once again, it was super easy and convenient. Then jumped in a cab and it was about a $12 ride to my hotel.

I have decided that this is the most compact hotel I’ve ever been in. It’s as if there was a little crack between two buildings, so they poured a hotel into there. The entire building is probably 50 feet wide. The lobby is tiny. The elevators are tiny. The rooms are really tiny. I have never stayed in a smaller hotel room in my life.

That said, it’s still a pretty nice hotel. Everything is first class, just small. I also like the area around the hotel better than the one I stayed at last week. It’s only two blocks from the subway line that goes direct to Yankee Stadium, as opposed to nine blocks. There are also a lot more nice restaurants and stuff in the immediate vicinity. At least, it seems that way at first glance.

Another New York observation: I had figured that the New York cab drivers were the craziest people on earth, the way they dart around each other and make their own lanes, but now I found another group that is even more crazy.

The bike riders.

I can’t imagine trying to ride a bike through the streets of New York while these drivers are zig zagging around. Talk about a death wish.

Now I’m at the ballpark for another workout day. Only the Phillies aren’t working out. The manager and tomorrow’s pitcher will be at press conferences later, and that’s it. It does make it tough to get much of a story, but in some ways it’s better than the madhouse I just witnessed in the Yankees clubhouse. As opposed to a postgame situation, when the media is split between the two clubhouses, now everyone was in the Yankees clubhouse. Pretty chaotic. Impossible to get anything good out of anyone.