This is not a joke.

Our BaseCrawl's very own Daren Many (pictured above with citation) was apprehended by undercover cops Friday outside of U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago and nearly hauled off to jail (or so they threatened).

The game featured the White Sox vs. the Cubs -- storied crosstown rivals who created a hot ticket. We've been to 14 Major League Baseball stadiums so far, and everywhere we've gone we've noticed scores of so-called "scalpers" day-trading tickets and reaping the margins.

So we decided the subject of our storytelling here should be ticket scalping. We decided to partake in emersion journalism to accomplish this task, and when Daren attempted to sell extra tickets we had been gouged on through StubHub, he was accosted by four cops who were none to happy.

Daren was wearing a wireless mic, and the whole confrontation was caught on tape, including all the F-bombs and foul language the cops felt necessary to spew upon Daren. You can read Daren's detailed account of the confrontation in his latest blog: An Idiot's Guide to Scalping Tickets.

In the end, Daren was just fined and released, but the officers took his two tickets and replaced them with another kind of ticket -- one that might cost several hundred dollars.

We'd love to mention more about the actual game, but right now we're too busy trying to figure out how to pay for this mess ...

We have had a great time in Chicago so far. First off, Troy's father (pictured above) is here. He decided to get in on the action and flew out from Portland, Oregon to join us for two games, including the Cubs-White Sox game we'll be seeing Friday (June 27) on the Southside. Eldon Foster is a life-long Cubs fan who lived near Wrigley Field when he was attending DeVry Univeristy in the 1960s.

The subject of our journalism here is baseball superstitions. Before the Cubs game, we spent Wednesday exploring downtown Chicago, talking to baseball fans about curses and seeing what they're all about at the famous Billy Goat Tavern.

Tavern owner Sam Sainis and son Bill were incredibly gracious hosts to us at their incredibly famous bar. They met with us -- once again -- on relatively short notice and served up a few of their trademarked "Cheezborgers," which were made famous by a certain Saturday Night Live sketch from the 1970s.

Like we mentioned in our previous update, this two-person BaseCrawl crew has been feeling a little fatigued lately because of our intense travel itinerary. Yet we found some time Wednesday to relax on the streets of Chicago, where we soaked our feet in Lake Michigan, took a stroll to the top of the Sears Tower and generally contemplated how good it is to be doing what we love.

Unfortunately, the hometown Cubs had to ruin everything by losing like the Cubbies of old by a score of 10-3 to Baltimore. But we met some great fans at the game, who were celebrating their 100-year anniversary. And afterward we headed down to Harry Caray's.

We're not sure we believe in curses, but after we realized our stop at Wrigley Field was the 13th game on our BaseCrawl, it made us wonder.

We're still very, very busy shooting footage for our forthcoming video pods and a possible long-form documentary when this BaseCrawl is all over. But lately the two of us have begun to feel a little fatigue from traveling.

Our Detroit experience underscores this. We were in and out in a blink of an eye, bagging our 12th game but feeling like we didn't get to soak up Detroit like we had the past 11 cities. We didn't even get to try the famous chili cheese fries two friendly Tigers fans recommended to us (see picture above).

Neither of us have blogged in days, either. But for now you can check out a few new pictures here and here. Don't miss the picture of the relatively well-known actor sitting just a few seats away from us in the nosebleeds.

We focused our Detroit video pod on the carnival-like atmosphere that accompanies some of Major League Baseball's newer stadiums. But this was also a time for us to take a moment of personal reflection, and we spent some time on film going over the trials and tribulations of doing a BaseCrawl. We discussed finances, traveling fatigue, gas prices and everything in between.

Oh, and the cuse of the BaseCrawl raised its ugly head as the home team lost AGAIN.

We hope to find some time over the next few days to write about some of the crazy things we've seen over the past few days, so stay tuned.

For now, it's time to head back to the windy city we blew through just the other day. Here we come Chicago.

Brewers fans sure know how to party. We spent a good portion of our Sunday hangin' with them in the parking lot of Miller Park, tailgating at a level we had not seen since the crazy Nebraskans we met at the College World Series. Then the party moved inside where Karli and Blair (pictured above) asked: Who's your Brewer?

It was a sold-out game in Miller Park. We watched the Brewers belt four homeruns and snag five double-plays on their way to dispatching the Orioles 7-3. Then we headed outside and spent some time shadowing autograph seekers for our forthcoming video pod. Shannon and Katy gave us tips on how to score autographs, but we failed miserably.

Nolan continues to rear his ugly head at these baseball games. Even though he left our journey two weeks ago, he posted a new blog today on his experience in Denver before he wussed out and went home. The pictures associated with this blog speak louder than any words this math professor could come up with. Amazingly, Nolan also posted a second blog on his efforts to get our MySpace page up to speed. Now if we could just get that guy to work on our Facebook site ... oh, but he's too busy doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for the rest of the summer.

Nolan, we know you can take the ribbing, and you know we still love you.

Troy has posted a few new photos from our day in Miller Park and the incredibly awesome motel in Slinger, Wisconsin we stayed at the past two nights. Daren has done the same here.

We're off to Detroit tomorrow. We'll be back soon with another update.