Baseball-Related Program Activities

As I realized while I was out today getting my watch fixed and playing pinball (not at the same time, unfortunately), we actually had seventeen hangers-on: Luke, Stacey, Tony, Geoff, Clara, Tom, Patti, Matt, Jill, Jay, Maura, Jim, Nancy, Allison, Dan, Dianne, and Bob. Sorry to the one of you who I forgot when I made the post earlier today.

And now, to try to figure out how much money Levi owes me for the rental car and the hotel stays, which were on my credit card...

Original comments...

Luke, hanger-on: It's OK.

Labels: brpa, road trip

11 games, 11 cities, 10 days, 3,489 miles, 9 White Sox runs, 5 hot dogs, 1 Schmitter, 1 Primanti sandwich, 16 official hangers-on and who knows how many honorary hangers-on...

It's been great! Thanks to everyone who followed the trip, in person or in spirit, and thanks to Levi for suggesting it in the first place and then putting up with me the whole way through.

I know it may sound like we're closing up shop, but this blog is going to stay operational at least through the World Series, and we've still got plenty of photos from the trip to post! They should be up within the next week or so, so stay tuned. I've also got scores from Alternate Itinerary #4 to post, since that's going on this week, but the first post of those is going to have to wait until I get back in front of my fast Internet connection at home (because I don't feel like doing a lot of research on the dialup connection I'm currently using).

Original comments...

sandor: Congratulations, fellas. That beats us by, what, 4 games, 5 cities, 2 days, 1000+ miles, and a dozen or so hangers-on. Touché. Probably the only stat in which we dominated was number of hot dogs. And kisses from the Phillie Phanatic.

It's been a treat following along. Here's to doing it again next year. You still have more than half the major league ballparks to go...

stacey: sorry about that slow dialup connection, jim. someday we'll advance to modern times.

this trip has been a joy. i'm so glad i got to be the bookend hanger-on!

Jim's mom: How about number of hours of sleep lost, pounds gained, t-shirts purchased? And a commentary on gas prices. Glad you had fun!

Levi: We saw 29 hours and 45 minutes of baseball. The short game in Cleveland (1:56) kept us just under the 30-hour mark. Something to shoot for next time!

Labels: brpa, road trip, statistics

I'm probably going to be too busy at work today to wrap up yesterday's two-city doubleheader until tomorrow. But to keep you busy, here's a limerick Bob wrote about Pirates outfielder Tike Redman. We were at Miller Park watching Redman bat when one of us--I forget who--thought Redman would make a good subject for a limerick. With remarkable quickness, Bob came up with this:

There was an outfielder named Tike
Who took the first pitch for a strike.
But the very next pitch,
The son of a bitch,
And the one after that were alike.

Original comments:

thatbob: The edited-for-improvement version simply inverts the interior couplet, thus:

But, son of a bitch!
The very next pitch
And the one after that were alike!

Levi: The ten-year-old boy in the seats in front of us visibly enjoyed the "son-of-a-bitch" in Bob's poem.

If only Andrew "Dice" Clay were still popular--this kid wouldn't know what hit him!

Toby: There once was a boy named Levi
From a magical place called Carmi
We went up to NU, got culture there, too
But he's "Gideon" still in my eye

Labels: bob conrad, brpa, poetry, road trip, tike redman

The view from our seats...



The "I" logo is cleverly worked into a lot of Indians-related text, from "'I' am a true fan" on the tickets to "How may 'I' help you?" on buttons being worn by the ushers...



The Indians' mascot, some sort of purple thing that's more politically correct than, you know, an Indian would be...



Scott Elarton quickly pitching to Joe Borchard...



Levi keeping score, as always...



The final line (1 hour 56 minutes!)...

Labels: brpa, cleveland, indians, jacobs field, photos, road trip, white sox

Sunday morning dawned gray and muggy, and it looked like maybe our luck would finally run out and leave us rain-delayed on getaway day. Maura used the Internet to find an hour-by-hour forecast for Cleveland, and it didn’t look good, alternating between storms, showers, and drizzle all day.

Undeterred, we crossed the bridge, left Pittsburgh, and made our way in the direction of America’s poorest city, Cleveland, where we met Cleveland residents Dan and Dianne. The two MLB employees in our party could get two others of us into the game free, but that left one unaccounted for, so we headed to the ticket window. But our good fortune continued, as a man who was heading a group of 37 people but had 40 tickets gave us ticket 38, gratis.

Jacobs Field, right in downtown Cleveland, is a definite improvement on Municipal Stadium. I liked Municipal the one time I was there, for a fireworks night in 1993, because it was huge and squareish and old, but the odd configuration of the stands, built for multiple sports, meant the sight lines ranged from okay to crick-in-the-neck lousy. The Jake, one of the earliest of the throwback stadiums, is similar to all the new parks we have been to: huge concourses, lots of food stands, comfy seats. But it’s got cozy dimensions, a high left-field wall, and, even for a meaningless game in August, a good, attentive crowd. The field itself seemed extra-pretty and green, though it might have just appeared that way in contrast to the threatening skies.

My search for vegetarian food today took me to the garlic fries booth (The garlic fries were good, but not quite as good as San Francisco’s.), then to a burrito place, where I asked if I could get a burrito without meat. The concessionaire a) looked at me as if he had never heard that question, b) looked at me as if he couldn’t imagine why anyone would ask that question, c) looked at me as if maybe the burritos were just meat wrapped in a tortilla, and he was imagining a tortilla full of air, then d) said he guessed I could. I decided to press on, and press on I did, until I found a sushi booth. The vegetarian sushi combo was better and consisted of more, and more varied, pieces than the one at Skydome. But perhaps I should have kept searching, because later, Maura returned to our seats from a food run with a chocolate-ice-cream-covered crepe that, as Dan said, made everyone around her stare as if she’d just walked by topless.

Having decided, due to our Clevelandite hangers-on, to root for the Indians and reserve our Sox rooting for tomorrow’s game, we settled down in our seats along the first-base line to await what we expected would be a high-scoring affair. Neither the Indians starter, Scott Elarton, nor Jon Garland for the White Sox has been particularly distinguished this season, but apparently the full confidence of the BRPA 2004 team had a powerful effect on Elarton, who pitched brilliantly. He gave up a walk in the third,and a scratch hit on the infield in the fourth, but due to double plays, he faced the minimum all the way through the first eight innings.

Meanwhile, Jon Garland was giving up home run after home run after home run, as the Indians put up nine unanswered runs despite hitting into the best double play we’d ever seen. In the secondd inning,with Ben Broussard at second base, Ronnie Belliard grounded a ball back to Garland on the mound. He whirled and threw to shortstop Jose Valentin, catching Broussard too far off second. Broussard, knowing they had him dead to rights, headed for third, his only thought being to keep in the rundown long enough for Belliard to sneak up to second base safely. But third baseman Joe Crede forced Broussard back towards second, and, seeing that he had to stay alive a moment longer, Broussard headed that way; Crede hesitated a bit too long with the ball, and it looked as if Broussard might just make it back to second.

It was at that point that everyone in the stands and on the field realized that something extremely unusual might be about to happen. Broussard was sliding back into second, while Ronnie Belliard, running at top speed was dropping into his slide on the other side of second base. Shortstop Valentin, crouching on the third-base side of second, took the throw, slapped down a tag on Broussard, then swung his glove around and laid a tag on Belliard. The umpire, appearing to be as surprised as the rest of us, pointed to the left side of the bag and threw up a thumb, then pointed to the right side and threw it up again. The crowd erupted in a mix of surprise, awe, and laughter.

But it didn’t matter. Elarton just kept cruising along in the best start of his career. In the ninth, having faced the minimum, he hit a batter intentionally as payback for a beaning of Ben Broussard the previous inning, then gave up a sharp single, the second hit of the game for the Sox, but then he shut the door. His final line: 9 innings pitched, 2 hits, 1 walk, 1 hit batsman, 0 runs, 6 strikeouts, 101 pitches. And it was all over in 1:56, the fastest game I think I’ve ever seen, and too fast for the promised storms ever to make an appearance.

Oh, and the Cleveland scoreboard needs a quick mention. Between innings early in the game, it showed the shell game with a ball and caps, but rather than show an animated version like at most ballparks, the Indians sent an employee into the stands to play with a kid and real caps and ball. All that was lacking was a shill to lay down $20 and show the kid how easy the game was. Later, they featured a Slurpee-drinking contest among three young girls, each slurping a different flavor. The winner, drinking the red Slurpee, bleary-eyed and staggered from her sudden ice-cream headache, walked away with a DVD set of the Kubrick Collection, or something like that. It was hard to see from far away.

Now we’re on the road back home, about to hit I-94, the first doubling back of the trip. Tomorrow, we put our 9-0 record to the test, first at Comiskey, then at Milwaukee.

Original comments...

Dan: You forgot to mention the seventh-inning vocal chord stretch featuring William Hung.

Levi: And I forgot to mention the scabrous mascot of the Indians, some pink fuzzy nasty thing that looked like it had crawled out of the Cuyahoga back in its fiery days.

Labels: brpa, cleveland, Dan Rivkin, dianne ketler, game report, indians, jacobs field, maura johnston, road trip, scott elarton, white sox

Levi forgot to mention one of the best features of Saturday's Pirates-Cardinals game. During an inning break near the end of the game, the scoreboard had a question for us to vote on: what would you like to hear during the next half-inning?

1. "Old Time Rock 'n' Roll." A Pittsburgh favorite! Cheers and applause.

2. "Bad to the Bone." Another Pittsburgh favorite! Cheers and applause.

3. Video of a water-skiing squirrel. The crowd went wild!

As advertised, during the next break between half-innings, there was video of Nutty the Water-Skiing Squirrel water-skiing on the scoreboard.

On another note, initially, I had planned our entrance into Pittsburgh on Saturday to be from the south, via state route 88. It’s the way I always drove in when I lived in the town of Library, in the south suburbs, right on 88. It’s a fairly scenic drive that goes through some small western Pennsylvania towns, and I thought Levi and Maura might enjoy it.

That went out the window when Fox ordered the time of the game changed, which meant we had to get into town as quickly as possible, which meant the boring old entrance on I-376.

However, we did get a substitute Western Pennsylvania experience. After the game, for dinner, I suggested we go to Station Square, a development across the river from downtown Pittsburgh, since I knew how to get there via the subway and I knew there was a fairly good selection of restaurants. Levi, Maura, Allison, and I opted not to eat at Hooters, but instead went to a concept restaurant called the Red Star Tavern. Although it was technically a barbecue restaurant, Levi saw beer-cheddar soup on the menu and was happy.

Full of barbecue and $7.00 beers (cost, not value), we wandered out into the courtyard, where there was a fountain that had a bunch of different nozzles spraying in various combinations. Suddenly, the water stopped. Suddenly, the lights went out. And then it started: a synchronized water and light show, featuring various KDKA radio personalities talking about the history of Pittsburgh, interspersed with various Pittsburgh-related songs, including “We Are Family.” Almost as if it had been planned, during the fountain display, two freight trains went by on the tracks between Station Square and the Monongahela River. Levi later said it was the best fountain in the history of fountains, even better than the General Motors Fountain at Comerica Park (which didn’t teach us about the history of the automobile, or about Detroit, or about much of anything). However, there were no squirrels water-skiing in it.

Then we walked over the Smithfield Street bridge and continued for the 12 blocks or so back to the Hilton, some of us marveling at the fact that downtown Pittsburgh doesn’t have anywhere near as many abandoned buildings as downtown Detroit.

Original comments...

Allison: Thanks for adding the fountain story; that definitely was worth the trip over to Station Square. And an odd note. I was back in NYC on Monday night, and ordered a draft 20 oz beer of the same brand that cost seven dollars for a 12 oz bottle in Pittsburgh. The cost? $6.50. Go figure.

Levi: What is the world coming to? Beer more expensive in Pittsburgh than NYC?

Labels: beer, brpa, fountain, pittsburgh, road trip, squirrel

PNC Park seen from across the Allegheny River...



The Roberto Clemente (6th Street) bridge, conveniently enough leading straight to the stadium...



A beautiful sight, the tarp being taken off the field...



The Pittsburgh skyline...



A building with an interesting-looking courtyard space...



The Pirate Parrot...



Craig Wilson, in Warhol style...



The eyes of Jason Kendall are upon you...



The final line (washed out by the sun)...

Labels: brpa, Cardinals, photos, pirates, pittsburgh, pnc park, road trip

What could be sadder than a boarded-up Waffle House?



Fortunately, the non-boarded-up Eat 'n Park next door is able to lift Levi's spirits with their Pancake Smile...



Seen on the Pennsylvania Turnpike: "Pay Stop Toll?" What does that mean?

Labels: brpa, eat 'n park, pennsylvania turnpike, photos, road trip

The day began inauspiciously, with the Waffle House that had been used as bait to get Maura out of bed at 6:15 turning out to be a boarded-up derelict. But after that, everything looked up. We reset our breakfast sights on an Eat 'n Park, a Pennsylvania favorite, then hit the road for Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh is a beautiful city these days, at the confluence of three rivers and surrounded by high hills. We rolled into the swank Hilton--with wireless Internet in all rooms!--and within minutes, rain was pouring down. But our luck held out, the rain cleared off, and we had another beautiful, sunny day for a ballgame. We met up with Maura’s friend Alison from work, who besides being a Cardinals fan is good company. She had flown out for the series and was staying at our hotel, which seemed to be about half full of Cardinals fans. Being with two MLB employees meant that we got great seats without the hassle of pulling out or opening our wallets.

PNC Park is located just down the street from the old Three Rivers Stadium, but that’s about as close to the old ballpark as this one gets in any way. The old ballpark was the worst of the cookie-cutter dual-use 1960s stadiums, big and impersonal and mostly empty. PNC, like all the new parks we’ve been to on this trip, is very open, with lots of views from the outside of the inside and vice-versa. We were on the third-base side, just past the bag, about thirty-five rows up in the lower deck, and from there we had a view of the Roberto Clemente bridge and a bit of the Pittsburgh skyline. The out-of-town scoreboard is similar to the one in Philly, but in this case, I didn’t much care what was going on out of town, because the Cardinals were busy delivering yet another defeat to the Pirates. Albert Pujols sat out, which led to this conversation one row behind me. As I listened in, I couldn’t decide whether it was an ad for MLB, an ad for, say, “Spend time with your kids. A message from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,” or, “Kids are counting on you. Don’t let them down. A message from the [see above].” You make the call:

Dad: Is that Albert Pujols?
Son: No, dad. That’s Scott Rolen.
Dad: I don’t think Pujols is even playing today.
Son: Yeah, I don’t think he is.
Dad: And he’s the main reason you wanted to come today.
Son: Yeah.
Dad: He was all you could talk about in the car on the way here.
Son: Yeah. . . . . But Scott Rolen’s pretty good, too.
Dad: Yeah. He sure is.

The Pirates scoreboard opened the game with a lengthy animation in which the Pirates' ship sank the ships of the other NL Central teams. Later, it featured the animated beginning to what turned into an on-field Pierogi race. In this race, the Pittsburgh Parrot mascot, taking his cue from Randall Simon, decked three of the pierogi in order to assist the female pierogi, Hannah Jalapeno, who had fallen at the finish line. The Parrot carried her over, to much applause.

Pierogi without legs or gender were available at the concession stands, and they came in a close second to the Comerica Park veggie pita in the vegetarian ballpark food rankings. The reason they didn't rank more highly was that, as I think Bob can vouch, you can either eat not enough pierogi--the problem with a serving at PNC--or way too many pierogi--the problem if you eat them at home. There's no middle ground, and PNC, perhaps sensibly, chose to go with too few rather than have groaning patrons unable to leave their seats at game's end.

The Cardinals got a three-run homer in the second from Reggie Sanders and a solo homer the next inning from Jim Edmonds, his third of the weekend, to give them a 5-0 lead. In the third inning, Larry Walker threw out Jose Castillo at the plate as he tried to score on a single to right. Yadier Molina took the throw and just had time to turn towards Castillo when Castillo, traveling about 75 mph, knocked him into about the twelfth row. But Yadier held on, got his brain put back in the right direction, and stayed in the game. That was a good thing, because the next inning also ended, following a patented Matt Morris semi-meltdown, with the tying run thrown out at the plate trying to score on a single to Jim Edmonds. Edmonds makes that play several times a year, running in hard to field a single and coming up throwing a strike to the plate. A few times a year, he overruns the ball and looks extremely silly, but the outs at the plate more than make up for that.

The Cardinals held on, matching their win total from all of last year and running us to 8-0 on the trip. Tomorrow, we’re on to Cleveland, where we meet up with Dan (and, presumably, get in for free again) and, I think, root for the Indians. As far as the trip goes, despite the threat of thunderstorms today, we’re into the home stretch; it feels kind of like it’s the 9th, we’re Eric Gagne, and we’re about to face Rey Ordonez, Neifi Perez, and Tom Goodwin. Our perfect record, however, is in more danger than ever: none of the remaining three games presents us with a clear favorite team to root for, and any one seems as likely to win as any other one. I have faith. 11-0, here we come.

Oh, and there are two newspaper notes. First,a demonstration of my political commitment: Despite the lead story--accompanied by a photo--being about how bunnies are thriving in Pittsburgh this year because of the wet weather, I did not buy the right-wing rag the Tribune-Review. And the Post-Gazette, which Jim did buy, included today the phrase "a throbbing mass of roaches."

Original comments...

Nancy Boland: Glad you saw a great game and advanced to an 8-0 record! Enjoyed having you for your short stay in Philly!

Toby: It was actually Ty Wigginton on the collision.

Did you guys go over the bridge where the opening scene in "Flashdance" was shot? I visited Pittsburgh with Levi's sister and some other friends in January 2003 and we went over it. How nostalgic...

thatbob: What a feeling!

Hey, I don't understand why Jim was rooting for the Cardinals over Pittsburgh this game. I'm going to consider his record to be at 7-1 until he explains himself.

thatbob: I imagine it would be very easy, but really, really mean, for a pirate ship to sink a ship full of bear cubs. And it would seem against a pirate's own interests to sink a ship full of brewers. That doesn't even make sense.

Toby: Neither do most of the personnel moves the Pirates have made the past 12 years.

Labels: brpa, Cardinals, eat 'n park, game report, maura johnston, pirates, pittsburgh, pnc park, rabbit, road trip

The view from our seats in the upper deck. It's not that apparent from the photo, but if I had any complaint about Citizens Bank Park, it's that there was too much stuff to look at during the game, although I guess that has a lot to do with how high up our seats were...



The Philadelphia skyline, due north of the stadium...



The Philly Phanatic...



Maura thought this was a cute sign...



Jim buying The Schmitter...



Jim eating the Schmitter, and his Uncle Jim, who perhaps wisely opted for a hot dog...



Levi eating a salad, and Maura and Jim not eating anything...



Levi, Maura, Jim, and Jim after the game...



The final line...



The "Liberty Bell" ringing to celebrate the Phillies win...

Labels: bolands, brewers, brpa, citizens bank park, maura johnston, phillies, photos, road trip

Levi, in a hotel room, doing what he did a third of the time, writing an entry for this site...



Levi, in a hotel room, doing what he did another third of the time, reading Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy (sorry, I don't have any pictures of Levi drinking iced coffee, which is what he did the third third of the time)...



Princeton University (free!) parking pass...



Levi and Maura in the WPRB studio, talking baseball...

Original comments...

maura: as the 9-year-old me would have said to the 29-year-old me, 'nice face!'

Labels: brpa, maura johnston, photos, princeton, radio, road trip

Today’s headline is a statement made by Maura as Brewers pitcher Victor Santos issued an intentional walk to Jim Thome, eliciting boos from the 40,000-strong Citizen Bank Ballpark crowd. Maura joined us midafternoon, meeting us at WPRB’s fancy new studios--complete with functional headphones--in a fancy new dorm on the campus of Princeton University. Maura graciously allowed us to take over her weekly radio show for a couple of hours, playing songs and clips from Jim’s baseball playlist and talking about some of the things we’ve seen on the trip. Three different callers who had never before heard Steve Goodman’s “A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request” called to find out what it was.

Following the radio show, we met Jim’s aunt and uncle and followed them to the ballpark. Their presence--combined with Maura’s Phillyphilia and everyone’s hatred of Bud Selig--overrode my regional loyalties and caused us to choose to root for the Phillies. It was a good choice, too, because it allowed us to spiritually join the Padilla Flotilla that was out with their banner in deep right. Vicente Padilla did them proud, throwing 8 shutout innings. Victor Santos of the Brewers fared less well, starting strong but absolutely falling apart in a 6-run fifth inning that forced me, for the first time in two years of keeping score, to shift my inning over a column as the Phillies sent twelve men to the plate. Walks will haunt, indeed. The Padilla Flotilla was ecstatic.

Citizens Bank Ballpark was surprisingly pleasant, especially if contrasted with what I’ve heard about Veterans Stadium, recollections of which tend to not be suitable for a family publication like BRPA 2004. It’s a big, new ballpark kind of like all the others, but I like the angularity of its design: the upper decks all have sharp edges and clean breaks between angled sections; the outfield walls run at odd angles to each other rather than curves, and access to the upper decks is via squared-off staircases rather than ramps. Like seemingly all the new parks, the upper deck--where we sat, right behind home--is too far from the plate, but because each of the four decks is only about twenty-five rows high, you’re able to avoid Comiskey-style vertigo.

Citizens Bank Ballpark definitely the biggest footprint of any non-Skydome park we’ve been to, and unlike Skydome, it doesn’t have a hotel inside. Land in way-south Philly must not have been in great demand, because what the team has done (with much, much public money) is build a fairly normal-sized ballpark, then put a large shell around it of wide concourses, staircases, escalators, food stands, a walk of fame, games and such for the easily distracted younger set, and more food stands. Spoiled by Wrigley, I dislike any park where you have to walk a Harold-Washington-library’s-inside-length distance to get to the entrance, but this ballpark didn’t bother me that much, maybe because the concourses felt, perhaps unintentionally, almost separate from the grandstand and field.

There were two other great things in the ballpark that I’d never seen before. On the brick façade just inside the gate, they post the home team’s starting lineup in ten-foot high baseball card photos. And the out of town scoreboard along the low right-field wall was the best I’ve ever seen. It was an old-style (which is the new style) light-bulb scoreboard. The wonderful innovation the Phils feature is to display for each out-of-town game, the current on-base situation (represented by tiny lights on a diamond) and the number of outs in the current inning. For someone like me who spends half the game tracking, say, the Cardinals game, it’s a source of alternating joy and worry.

Following the game, we drove with Maura to a dinky motel off the interstate in Harrisburg to stay the night. Soon after we’d gone to bed, Marvin’s sister-in-law called, twice. First she called and asked for Marvin without identifying herself. Confident that we were Marvin-less, Jim told her she had the wrong number. Minutes later, she called back, at which point Jim politely convinced her that the number Marvin had given her two days ago was the number of a hotel room, and that we, not Marvin, were its rightful occupants. Sleep followed.

We’re 7-0 now and heading to Pittsburgh to see the Cardinals attempt to match last season’s victory total, with 32 games still to go.

Original comments...

Jon Solomon: I was only able to hijack the first 90 minutes of Maura's show before RealPlayer lost the feed, but I can turn this file into an edited mp3 and upload it somewhere. If FTP codes can be provided, I can even put it on baseballrelated.com! Let me know. Go Cats.

Labels: bolands, brewers, brpa, citizens bank park, game report, maura johnston, philadelphia, phillies, radio, road trip

The Fenway Park grandstands and the .406 Club (behind the glass)...



There's a monstrous wall in left field, mostly painted green...



Home team batting order, with Johnny Damon at the top...



Johnny Damon in the field in front of us...



The right field foul pole, just kind of in the middle of the stands, which are at a very shallow angle at that point...



Moon rising over Fenway Park...



I can't get away from Amtrak...



The final line...



I assume the headline would make more sense if I'd spent more time in Boston...

Labels: boston, brpa, Fenway Park, johnny damon, photos, red sox, road trip, tigers

Two notes on 1980s baseball:

1) In thanks for my participation in his wedding, my brother got me a copy of the October 25, 1982 Sports Illustrated, which featured the Cardinals/Brewers World Series on its cover. The issue went to press after the Brewers took a 3 games to 2 Series lead. Whitey Herzog come across as pretty grouchy, even petty, making excuse for his team’s sloppy play and attempting to lower expectations. Herzog was without a doubt a good manager for that team, but I think I prefer LaRussa’s straightforwardness, combativeness, and arrogance, at least when it comes to talking about losses.

There’s a photo from the end of game 5 in Milwaukee showing County Stadium’s scoreboard reminding fans, “Last week, Ben Oglivie was injured because fans were on the field. Pleast stay off the field.” The bottom half of the photo is of the field covered with happy fans.

In the article, Gorman Thomas, talking of the Brewers being down two games to one, is quoted, “We were in the same boat in Baltimore at the end of the regular season, the same boat when we went to California in the playoffs, the same boat when we went to St. Louis to play on their rug. We’re still riding the same boat whether it’s PT-109 or the Love Boat or whatever. When the ship is in the harbor, they try to bomb it. And the submarines are always out there waiting for us.” After the Brewers tied up the series at 2, Thomas said, “The submarines have drawn back, submerged. They’ve been struck by our depth charges.”

And one last thing about the article. Sports Illustrated style in 1982, apparently, called for fielding positions to be capitalized. So you get Shortstop Robin Yount and Center Fielder Willie McGee. Might as well hyphenate “base-ball” while you’re at it.

2) At Fenway Park, the scoreboard showed a baseball blooper reel . . . from the late 80s. I assume they've been showing the same reel for nearly twenty years. Surprisingly enough, Bill Buckner does not make the blooper reel. I guess the traagedy+time=comedy equation is still a little short on the time side.

Labels: bill buckner, brewers, Cardinals, gorman thomas, sports illustrated, whitey herzog

Some thoughts on Fenway Park and the 3-1 Red Sox win we saw.

1) It’s wonderful when something you’ve heard about all your life fully lives up to its billing. Fenway did. It’s a nearly perfect ballpark. Really, there’s not a lot I could say about Fenway that’s not already been said elsewhere. Everything you’ve heard is true. It’s cozy enough that even from our seats 13 rows up in dead center, we felt close to the action. The long rows and tight spaces discourage the sort of incessant milling around that the crowds at, say, Wrigley Field are prone to. And while the high walls and blocky upper deck block any view of the neighborhood, that means that once you’re in Fenway, everything is centered around the game. The ballpark maintains an enclosed, insular feeling such that even the drunk fans gave the impression of being at least somewhat attentive, and most fans were concentrating on every pitch. It was a wonderful place to see a ballgame.

2) The current ownership of the Red Sox, having decided that, rather than attempt to extort a replacement for Fenway from the city like the previous owners attempted to do, they would take advantage of having one of the best ballparks in baseball while still taking every chance they could to squeeze more money out of it. To that end, they’ve made some changes that I suppose might bother longtime Sox fans, but that I thought were actually pretty good. They added seats to the top of the Green Monster. They added some seats to the roof of the upper deck. They added (I think) another section of upper deck just past the end of the grandstand in right. And, to me the most surprising: they seem to have talked the city into letting them more or less take over Yawkey Way on game day. Turnstiles are set up in the middle of the street, and once you’re past them, you’re in the park. Towards the back of the outfield grandstands, it appears that they’ve actually moved the exterior walls of the park out onto what would have been the sidewalk, allowing the Sox to open up what had formerly been a cramped concourse under the stands. They’ve used the space to make navigating the park easier and to put up more of the things the contemporary fan is said to want: food stands, urinals, and more food stands. It’s a successful alteration, one that I think I wouldn’t even have noticed had I not been there on a non-game-day tour in 1993.

3) If I didn’t know that Paul Harvey is a Midwesterner, I would have thought he was working as the Red Sox public address announcer last night. The announcer had Harvey’s voice, inflections, tone, and cadences. Jim and I both expected him to end his announcements with “Good day.” Regardless, he was without a doubt the best PA announcer we’ve heard on the trip. Late in the game, with the crowd absolutely ecstatic singing along to “Sweet Caroline” between innings, he began to announce a pitching change for the Tigers. Noticing that the crowd was still shouting “Bump-ba-dah,” he paused, let the last notes of the song pass, and completed his announcement.

4) The guys behind us, four early twenty-somethings down from New York for their first Fenway game, were the sort of drunkies who tend to bug me a lot at Wrigley, in part because they’re always up and down and milling around. But these guys just didn’t bug me that much. They were loud, but a lot of their talk was about the game, and much of the time, when it was off-topic, it was fairly entertaining. Like when one guy was talking about Emeril, and another guy had never heard of Emeril, and the first guy spent ten minutes explaining who Emeril is, complete with a lot of: “You know--Bam! Bam! That guy--Bam!”

5) I do have one suggestion for PA operators at stadiums nationwide: just because a band records a song about your team/ballpark, you shouldn’t play it unless it also doesn’t suck. The only dissonant note in the whole night was the four minutes, pre-game, we had to spend listening to a terrible country (Country? In New England? Why?) song called “Having a Ball at Fenway.” It sucked more than the Blue Jays song; the only reason it wasn’t worse overall was that it wasn’t like spreading throw-up all over the seventh-inning stretch with a butter knife the way the Blue Jays song was.

That song aside, though, the organist and PA people were solid. The organist began the game with “Selections from Jim’s iPod,” which began with “Walk Away Renee” and went on to "Eight Days a Week” and “After the Gold Rush,” among others. Later, I--who usually am not excited all that much by stadium crowd singalongs--got a big kick out of hearing the crowd sing along to “Summer Wind,” then go absolutely brains-melting crazy over “Sweet Caroline.” It’s as big as “Hey Ya!”

It was odd for me to see Red Sox fans--who generally appear to be some of the most attentive fans in baseball--doing the wave and bouncing beach balls.

6) Everyone knows that the Red Sox are Yankee-obsessed. But Jesus, people. “Yankees suck!” chants cropped up without provocation, and anti-Yankee t-shirts were selling nearly as well as Johnny Damon shirts. It’s like the slacker kid in high school constantly writing mean things about the cool kids in his notebook. Sure, I’ve got sympathy, but at the end of the day, he keeps doing it, and he’s just using up space in his notebook he could be using to transcribe Violent Femmes lyrics.

7) The Red Sox scoreboard advertises a new service: if a fan feels his enjoyment of the game is being hindered by, say, drunk and rowdy fans nearby, he can, rather than wait for an usher to show up, call the security hotline on his phone. Not that I’m a fan of using the phone at games, but given that Wrigley Field ushers never seem to be around when drunks begin chucking peanuts at everyone in sight, I could imagine being able to phone security might be helpful. The trick would be avoiding getting a beer dumped on your head while you phoned.

8) And Johnny Damon got a couple of hits, stole a base, scored a run, made a couple of catches. And the Mike Timlin made another great appearance out of the Sox bullpen. And the Sox won, running me and Jim to 6-0 on the trip.

Labels: boston, brpa, Fenway Park, game report, johnny damon, red sox, road trip, tigers

First in line for the next trip across Lake Champlain...



The ferry...



Kind of an expensive trip...



The view from the ferry (if there was a view on the other side, it was being blocked by the aforementioned SUV)...

Labels: brpa, ferry, photos, road trip

Years ago, Standard Oil of New Jersey spent a lot of money coming up with a new name that they'd be able to use everywhere in the world. That name was Exxon. They're still using the old name in Canada (and a lot of other countries besides)...





The spaceship that is Olympic Stadium...



Youppi!...



Expos at bat...



For some reason, the top and bottom line (season stats and lineup) are in English, and the middle line (stats for "ce match") is in French, e.g. "CC" is French for "HR"...



The final line...



A milestone win...

Labels: brpa, dodgers, expos, montreal, olympic stadium, photos, road trip

O, Canada! I am so ready to stand on guard for thee. You’ve won me over, with your rolling hills, your Euro-style, your wide vistas, your old buildings, your two-dollar coins, and, yes--I mean oui--even your French.

Le Stade Olimpique, on the other hand. . . . Well, let’s just say if all baseball were played in such conditions, Jim and I might be on a trip to see 11 team handball games instead. Oh, it’s not as bad as it could be. Some good points: The Metro lets you off right under the stadium. Tickets from un homme out front were 10$, or about $.65 U.S. The seat location printed on those tickets was more a suggestion than a condition. The funny yellow seats that looked like they’d been recycled from Tomorrowland’s “Mission to Mars” were actually pretty comfortable. The poutine—which, because I do find myself on occasion eating meat gravy, at Thanksgiving, say, I decided I couldn’t quite bear to pass up—was as advertised. Youppi was slightly less annoying than your average mascot. When an Expo homered, the scoreboard flashed, “CIRCUIT!”

But there were, without a doubt, bad points. The main--all-encompassing, really--bad point was that we were watching baseball indoors. It’s just wrong and deeply unsatisfying to walk out of a pleasant, 25-degree night into an enclosed concrete bowl with a puffy roof. The turf--though more grasslike than the bright green nightmare that serves as the field at Skydome--is still far closer to carpet on the carpet/grass continuum. The outfield walls, though decorated with the retired numbers of Expo greats (Quick quiz: name three. Okay, time’s up. If you said three of Andre Dawson, Gary Carter, Rusty Staub, Tim Raines, or--and this one isn’t really fair--Jackie Robinson, you win!), is still a tall, stadium-blue vinyl cushion thing. And the foul poles, like at Skydome, aren’t poles at all, just two-foot-wide netting painted yellow and strong from the top of the wall to the upper deck--although Stade Olimpique gets bonus points for continuing the foul poles with dotted lines painted across the appropriate part of the façade to the ceiling.

Jim and I were both pleasantly surprised by the size of the crowd. The Dodgers were in town, and quite a few of those in attendance were wearing the blue, but the majority of attendees seemed to be Expos fans. The announced attendance of nearly 8,000 didn’t even seem all that inflated. Jim and I decided just before the first pitch that, being in Montreal, we would allow location to supersede Jim’s regional loyalties, so we cheered for Les Expos. As the team took the field, I learned that Expos third baseman Tony Batista (Who, you may remember from his days in Baltimore, has the silliest batting stance in baseball, sillier even than Craig Counsell. Really. Try it out yourself. Look in the mirror. Imagine the mirror is a pitcher. Take the stance that normal hitter would take, and you’ll see that your outside shoulder is faced towards the pitcher. Now, imagine you’re Tony Batista. Say “Hola, soy Tony Batista.” Take your left foot, the one closest to the pitcher, and step out of the box with it. You’ll notice that you’re now facing the pitcher. Take the bat off your shoulder and hold it with both hands directly in front of you, pointed up, like Ben Kenobi awaiting Darth Vader. Wait for your pitch.) runs out to his position at top speed just like Sammy Sosa. Only, as Batista is an infielder, he has to get moving and get stopped much more quickly. But the crowd loves it nonetheless.

The game itself was a good one for Expos fans--from the third pitch to Brad Wilkerson leading off the bottom of the first, Jose Lima had definitely set his watch to Lima Time. Only, he’d set it to Lima time circa 1999, when his propensity for the “balle de circuit!” forced him out of baseball. He threw “un balle de adios, mon ami” to Wilkerson, and later he served up “un balle de tristesse toujours san fin” to the aforementioned Tony Batista a few innings later. (Remember how silly you looked just now in the mirror? I don’t understand how it works, either.) Miixing it up a bit, Lima tossed the next batter, Juan Rivera, a “balle de Mercy!, merci.” In the sixth, Termel Sledge, who’s only mentioned here because of his great name, singled and scored when Lima threw his last pitch of the ballgame, “un balle de circuit de troix puntos.” The 6-3 lead that gave Les Expos would hold up, making the teams Jim and I are rooting for 5-0 on the trip. That in itself is almost worth our not getting to see Eric Gagne pitch in his homeland.

One last incident from the game deserves mention, and it involves the twice-mentioned Tony Batista. In the 7th, Batista dodged a wild pitch--“un mauvais balle”--that nearly hit his ankles. The next pitch was a fastball that hit him in the helmet. He went down, knocked out. The Dodgers pitcher was instantly ejected, unfairly, in my view, and the trainer and players gathered around Batista. It was scary, but within a minute or so, he was moving around. Then, within seconds of having been out cold, Batista pushed himself to his feet, turned and waved both hands at the cheering crowd, and, shrugging off assistance, sprinted to first. Though I expected him to be replaced in the game for precautionary reasons, he stayed in, and three pitches later, he stole second on the back end of a double steal. Surely he’s a fan favorite in Montreal.

Now we’re rolling up and down the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire, on our way to Boston. When I turned the computer on, I misread the wireless network symbol and thought for a second that perhaps all of Vermont was an open wireless network. Sadly, no.

The examination at the border crossing back into the U.S. was a bit more strenuous than the one we endured to enter Canada (Here is the entry one in its entirety, as a one-act play: Customs guy (bored almost to the point of rudeness: You bringing anything in? Me: Nope. Fin.). The lady looked in our trunk, asked how we knew each other--explaining CRC set us behind schedule about two hours—and asked twice if we were bringing anything in. Later, we took a pleasant ferry ride across lovely Lake Champlain, and, minutes after I had expressed to Jim my general distaste for giant Recreational Vehicles like the pink one adjacent to us on the ferry, which was towing an SUV behind it--and seconds after I expressed my fears that it would smash our car attempting to drive off the ferry--said RV, in driving off the ferry, banged its long-ass back end into our right rear panel. Fortunately for us, only the trailer carrying the SUV suffered damage, a smashed taillight. Our Chevy Impala, apparently “increveable,” was unmarked. A ways down the road, as we passed the RV, I was able to shake my fist. I doubt the driver saw me, though, from his perch forty feet above the roadway.

On to Boston. Johnny Damon, we come for thee!

Original comments...

Jim's mom: Mom says hi. Drive carefully and eat your vegetables.

Toby: Levi, If you didn't get a picture of Lima's wife, don't bother coming back! Are you trying to say the tickets were 65 cents or is there a typo somewhere?

thatbob: That's just Levi trying to make some of his patented "exchange rate" humor. It probably would have made a little more sense about 4 years ago, you know, before the US dollar went all to hell.

Eric Ritter: Poutine... mmmmm.

stacey: so what exactly is poutine?

Dan: When I went to Olympic Stadium in 1989, I thought it was a tremendous dump. Although I bet it was a terrific place to see the opening ceremonies of the '76 Games.

sandor: Poutine is something like fries swimming in meat gravy. It's much grosser than a pretty name like "poutine" would lead you to believe.

I'm curious to know if either Canadian ballpark served donairs. During our recent trip to Canadia, we were confused as all get-out to see them advertised at the same level and intesity as hamburgers and hot dogs, not having ever heard the term before. Turns out a donair is pretty much the exact same thing as a gyros. I guess they hate Greeks in Canadia, and needed to come up with something sufficiently anglo as a replacement.

stacey: It's now 3:16 here in Chicago. I've just turned off WPRB after enjoying the radio show . . . but I'm surprised there's not a new post yet. Isn't Maura a wireless zone?

stacey: sorry to keep posting about the future and the past . . . but this reminded me of the bunny at the swing of the quad cities game:

http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/news/mlb_leftfield.jsp?ymd=20040825&content_id=838421&vkey=leftfield&fext=.jsp

Jason: The big question is: Did Jim eat any poutine?

Eric Ritter: Poutine is the national food of the part of Quebec that doesn't object to it being the national food.

I loooove Poutine. But I understand the point of view of people who don't want it to be the national food. It's extremely yummy (to me, an avowed fan of fatty foods), but doesn't achieve the culinary brilliance of certain other proletarian fatty foods, such as Southern fried chicken (of which I am the grandmaster, by the way. And which is much less fatty than you think.) A francophone nation can do better.

Eric

Labels: brpa, dodgers, expos, ferry, game report, montreal, olympic stadium, road trip

Parking ticket from our hotel, once we found the parking entrance...



Pro-Red Sox signs in the windows of the Skydome Hotel...



Ace the Blue Jay leading the Jays cheerleaders...



Levi noticed that this isn't a foul pole, it's foul netting. Also, in the background, you can see some of the Skydome's neon...



Johnny Damon at the plate...



Orlando Hudson alertly pointing out Johnny Damon on second base...



Yes, there are other people in the world with Devil Rays caps, and one of them sat in front of Jim...



The final line...

Labels: blue jays, brpa, photos, red sox, road trip, skydome, toronto

Toronto feels far more like London that I would have expected. When I was here two years ago for a conference, I didn’t notice that because I didn’t get out of the immediate downtown area much. We made it into town early enough yesterday, though, for me and Jim to wander around a bit through what seemed to be kind of the Belmont area of Toronto. The businesses all keep their doors open, like in London, and the crowd--young, stylish, multi-ethnic--feels much more international than a similar crowd in, say, Chicago, would. The weather was beautiful, as it was on my previous trip, leading me to suspect that perhaps the weather is always great in Canada, but is painted otherwise by Canadians in order to keep Yankee fans from retiring there en masse. When I went for a short run this morning, I noticed another similarity to London: it’s hard to run on the sidewalks in Toronto because there are too many pedestrians. I guess it was good practice for the slow-runner-dodging required in the marathon--although this was like the marathon would be if, say, everybody but me decided to walk the race, except for a couple of people on bicycles.

But on to the game: Red Sox Nation descended on Skydome in force last night. I suppose we shouldn’t have been surprised--the combination of Fenway’s astronomical prices and limited seating must make an eight-hour drive to Toronto seem reasonable. So when Jim and I reached the ballpark, delivered by the TTC subway, there were a couple thousand Sox fans waiting outside the gates. Various psychologists and counselors were making a fortune wandering the line and taking appointments from long-suffering Sox fans. Every once in a while, a Blue Jays fan would wander by, seeming out of place. The atmosphere wasn’t quite as overwhelmingly Sox-positive as the pro-Cubs crowd at Milwaukee creates, but I have no doubt the audience was more than half Sox fans.

From the outside, Skydome looks less like a ballpark than a convention center or hotel or parking garage, its utterly nondescript concrete exterior looking out of place topped by the retractable roof, which was rolled back for the game last night. Inside, the décor—concrete, neon, pastel railings, futuristic logos on the food stands--reminded us a bit of EPCOT Center, which I posit is the most-quickly out-of-date design in the history of the universe. The only way Skydome could have seemed more mid-80s would have been if the ushers had been decked out in Members Only windbreakers.

Our seats, way down the right-field line, 21 rows up, are seats that are pushed back out of service when Toronto’s Argonauts play arena football, which I hear resembles hockey or curling or something. Remembering the worshipful articles about the glories of Skydome that appeared in every U.S. newspaper when the Jays were good in the early 90s, I went in search of interesting vegetarian food, and I found some. There was sushi stand, advertising sushi “Made while you wait.” In Canada, “Made while you wait,” must mean, “Taken from a stack of containers of pre-made vegetarian sushi while you wait.” It wasn’t the best sushi I’ve ever had, but it was, hands-down, the best sushi I’ve ever had at a ballpark. I followed it up with a vegetarian burger, which, like most of its ilk, was predictably bland. Jim had pizza and a bag of popcorn so large that the usher made him go buy it a ticket.

From the start of the game, the Sox fans dominated the proceedings with their cheering. Even the many children seemed to pay attention to the game. Tim Wakefield threw his “balle de papillon” past several Blue Jays early on, although one pitch which failed to knuckle—making it a 120-kilometre-per-hour fastball—was deposited by Orlando Hudson in the right-field seats. But an inning later, Doug Mirabelli knocked a “balle de c’est la vie” from Miguel Batista into the second deck in left to give the Red Sox a 3-2 lead. Chants of “Let’s go Red Sox!” swept the park. The game remained close, with Tim Wakefield, hoping to keep the crowd in the game, managed to load the bases with no one out in the 6th, forcing a reliever, former Blue Jay Mike Timlin--who wears a camouflage t-shirt under his jersey--to strike out the next two Blue Jays and get a groundout to preserve the lead.

When the seventh-inning stretch rolled around, the mostly-annoying P.A. announcer---who seemed to take his vocal stylings and enthusiasm from former “Double Dare” host Marc Summers—shouted to the assembled, “It’s seventh-inning stretch time, and you all know what that means!” Fool that I am, I thought I did. Instead of one of the two acceptable songs for this moment (I allow “Roll out the Barrel”), the Jays began playing some hideous song that mixed loud guitars and processed drums and banal lyrics about the Jays, the Skydome, the baseball, and how we’re all going to enjoy a day at the ballgame. It even referred to “the umpire’s call” as an element we might have been looking forward to, which I suppose we might, in the same sense in which we might look forward to hearing that our cancer is benign. It was a nasty little song--but I was given pause when I looked around and saw that the audience was kind of into it. They were making some kind of lazy gestures that were being encouraged by the Jays’ cheerleaders (yes, that’s another abomination that we won’t discuss) atop the dugouts. Maybe I was wrong? Maybe this was a good song, beloved by Jays fans? But then I remembered that half the audience were Red Sox fans, and we all know that Red Sox fans prefer pain and suffering to pleasure and happiness. They probably play the long version of “Feels So Good” at Fenway in the seventh. “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” was played following “Sucky Jays Baseball Song” so I guess no permanent harm was done. But the whole thing did nothing to lessen my feeling of being stuck back in the 1988-1991 period, a dark era if ever there was one.
The game was the longest we’ve seen on the trip so far, but it stayed close--5-4 Sox--to the end, so we didn’t mind. And, unlike the Sox fans who left--rushing back to their hotels to catch the latest medal count update?--in the 8th, we didn’t have anywhere we needed to be. When Keith Foulke struck out Eric Hinske to deliver the W for the Sox, a rousing cheer went up from the Hub fans, and, for one night at least, all was well in Red Sox Nation—though the situation among the Sox fans still didn’t feel quite healthy. After all, midway through the game, apropos of nothing, a chant of “Yankees suck!” made the rounds. Obsession is an ugly thing, as are festering inferiority complexes.

Oh, and Johnny Damon? He played a solid centre field, though one ball went over his head. Walk, groundout, single (complete with a stolen base and an advancement to third on a throwing error), strikeout. Sadly for everyone involved, neither his helmet or his cap ever left his head. If I assume that that’s Bud Selig’s fault (Maybe Selig ordered Damon to get some toques that fit?), is that a sign that my Selig hatred is becoming unhealthy?

Oh, well, on to Montreal! Oui, Monsieur!

Original comments...

thatbob: I was going to say that Marc Summers might be Canadian, but a little research shows that he's a Hoosier. Still, there's no reason the announcer couldn't have been Marc Summers. What else is he doing?

Speaking of parallel universe song choices, did you sing along with "O! Canada! before the game at the top of your lungs? That's *my* favorite thing about Blue Jays games. You have no idea how loudly I can sing "O! Canada!" No idea.

stacey: 1. marc summers is hosting a show on the food network. it only occasionally involves slime.

2. the version of "o, canada!" i hear most often is the hidden track on the end of cub's "mauler" - and the words go, "o, canada! what's wrong with you?" this is problematic for singing along at the ballpark.

Labels: blue jays, brpa, game report, red sox, road trip, skydome, toronto

Johnny Damon, MVP

Johnny Damon, MVP
Who could e’er compete with thee?
Thy tresses steal the hearts of fans,
Thy beard surpasses any man’s.
Though sportswriters may disagree,
The cognoscenti are with me,
And ladies coast to coast can see:
You’re super-cute—you’re MVP!

The Hirsute Hero

Oh, Johnny Damon, when you walked,
Why did you not steal second?
And having stolen second, chalked
Up an easy steal of third--
With each advance your helmet flying
Off behind you in the dirt?
I worry that you’re just not trying,
Perhaps you fail to understand
Just why it is we show you love.
Here in this distant foreign land
We like your play, but way above
All else we love your beard and hair
Unfettered by your helm or hat,
Free-flowing, lovely, everywhere.
So, in the field, remember that
We want to see you run and dive
Your cap fly off, your hair set free
Its flowing tresses so alive.
And on the bases, don’t forget
Your fans are waiting patiently.
Whene’er the pitcher comes to set,
For you to take off instantly.
Steal second, third, and even home.
Run, run--that’s what we love you for!
We even promise not to moan,
If you’re thrown out--we’ll love you more!

Original comments...

stacey: levi, you've never written any poetry for me . . . is it because i don't have a beard?

Johnny Damon's Beard: Thank you very much.

Johnny Damon's Earlobes: Hey, what about me?

Labels: johnny damon, poetry

We’ve already had floods (the heavy rain along I-94 through Michigan) and cats and dogs lying together (at Levi’s parents’ house), so what was next?

The fire alarm went off in our hotel here in Detroit at 1:15 A.M. Actually, it was a recorded voice telling us to assemble near a fire exit. After the announcement had gone through a couple times, it started going into a mode where it would play part of the announcement every 30 or 45 seconds. “Attention! There has been – “ “ – not use elevators – “ “ – await further – “

Levi and I decided that since we were only being told to assemble, we could make it to the stairs pretty quickly if need be, so we stayed in bed. Levi eventually put on a shirt and looked out the window, but presumably he didn’t see any fire trucks or other emergency vehicles. At 1:30, they finally figured out how to turn the alarm off, just as Levi was calling the front desk to see if we’d ever be able to get back to sleep. It was probably dust from an abandoned building getting into a smoke detector somewhere.

Tonight: the great Toronto earthquake. Tomorrow in Montreal: frogs!

Original comments:

Patti Stahl: I still don't understand why you didn't take me with you!

Tom: What's the deal, there are no updates since yesterday am?

Jason: The Toronto earthquake must have disrupted service. Or they're stuck in line at Tim Horton's.

Jason: Heh. Montreal. Frogs. I get it :D

Labels: brpa, detroit, fire alarm, road trip

SARS Turtle, Levi's favorite graffiti ever...



The Colonial statues on the abandoned building across the street from our hotel...



Outside Comerica Park, an old-school sign, as if someone's going to be driving by and decide to stop in for the game...



Look out! These people are about to be pounced upon by a tiger!



Entrance to the park...



General Motors Fountain, complete with two cars way up there...



This batting tiger is on the seats at the end of each row...



A real Tiger batting...



Jeremy Bonderman pitching, most likely throwing a strike...



Levi was amused by the fact that Big Boy is one of the Tigers' sponsors...



The final line...

Labels: brpa, comerica park, detroit, photos, road trip, tigers, white sox

Probably because it didn’t affect him personally, Levi didn’t mention that I broke the band off my watch on a vending machine at the aforementioned Michigan welcome center while I was getting my 15-cent change from a bag of Fritos I bought. See, I dropped the change on the floor, and then somehow managed to catch my watch on the edge of the bottom of the machine. If we get to Toronto quickly enough, I may try to find a jeweler or watch repairman who can fix it while I wait. Levi will probably have to drive, because I’m tired from taking our lives into my hands all day today.

Our mileage to this point is 1,171 miles. I haven’t been calculating miles per gallon as I should, and unfortunately, we’re about to enter Canada where they calculate kilometers per 100 liters, or something like that.

Original comments...

sandor: You are so going to get pulled over by a mountie as you forget to convert the speed limit signs from KM/hr to mph. "100 mph speed limit?" you'll say to yourself. "I love it here!" When Sarah and I went to Canadia last month, not only did we get a car that had the speedometer in KM, but it also had a switch that woud let us move it back and forth between KM and miles. Ours was a Malibu, also by Chevy, so maybe your Impala has the same feature. I recommend using it. Otherwise, you'll find yourself wondering why all the Canadian drivers go so slow... one moment before you get your asses thrown in jail. I think they have a special cell there reserved for Americans.

In other Canadia news, be sure to ask the locals why they call it a twonie.

weathergirl: weather update:

tuesday: toronto: scattered clouds, 77/53
wednesday: montreal: scattered clouds, 75/57
thursday: boston: clear, 78/62
friday: philadelphia: scattered clouds, 86/68
saturday: pittsburgh: chance of thunderstorms, 83/65

thatbob: Jim, I can't believe you didn't pack any extra watch bands! Why weren't you thinking?

Labels: brpa, road trip, tragedy

This morning, we bageled up at the Stahl household, then left my parents--as well as two cats, the stinky dog, some fish, a hummingbird, and an owl that went “whoo-oo-oo” all night long--behind and hit the road bright and early, counting on Jim’s playlist of #1 hits to carry us through. And carry us through an uneventful morning they did. We dropped Stacey and Luke at the University Park Metra station a full ten minutes before their standing train was due to depart. They left us with good wishes and the remaining dozen Hostess Baseballs.

We passed through the Slough of Despond, or northern Indiana. We crossed into Michigan, where, like the welcome center in Florida that gives travelers free orange juice, they were giving out paper cups of motor oil. In Michigan, a pattern developed: road construction followed by light rain followed by heavy rain followed by traffic being slowed to a crawl by a wreck ahead. Like a driver’s ed class following a Troy McClure film, we took heed and drove with caution.

Yet we arrived in Detroit right on time. Jim took us into the city on Michigan Avenue, so that we would go by Tiger Stadium. The old ballpark looks a bit run down, but it’s still impressive--huge and boxy and white. A ticket booth remains right on the corner, but there are no tickets to be had.

Detroit itself, meanwhile, is as depressing and hard to believe as I imagined. Street after street is deserted, storefronts are boarded up, windows are broken. A few businesses here and there are hanging on--the Refrigerator King, a few liquor stores, a surprising number of antique-looking antique stores--but even the extant businesses appear to be holding on only by cutting costs to the bone, deferring even the most basic maintenance, from painting to repairing broken signs. (Side note: one thing that was odd for me, simply because Chicago’s truly poor neighborhoods are so segregated: the people on the street were about an even mix of white, black, and Latino.) Once we entered downtown, the picture went from sad to surreal, as abandoned storefronts were replaced by abandoned deco skyscrapers. Across from our hotel is a derelict twenty-story building with detailed stonework and statues of knights at about the tenth floor. And downtown seems to be like that just about everywhere; I saw a sign on a building that said, “Building available,” and I thought it was awfully optimistic.

The ballpark, on the other hand, is surprisingly pleasant. Sitting in the 18th row just on the first-base side of home, we were a bit spoiled. The upper deck--my usual haunt at a ballpark--does look like it might be all the way back in the Central Time Zone, so I can’t fully vouch for the ballpark, but it was a great place to watch a game from the high-roller area. The stadium is very open, with a view of downtown and a lot of sky, a silly fountain (The General Motors Fountain) beyond center field, and statues of Tiger Hall-of-Famers on the concourse in left. I was even able to get a reasonably good vegetarian pita with rice pudding for dinner, which saved me from the wrath of Little Caesar’s, the house pizza. Jim supped on a Kowalski kielbasa--and, as we learned later, “Kowalski means Ko-wality!”

Oh, and the game! I had decided beforehand that since the Sox are doomed, I was free to root, root, root for the home team. It was a good night for it, as Jeremy Bonderman, apparently leaving his 6.07 E.R.A. at home with the wife and kids, absolutely baffled the Sox. He threw mostly inside curves and slowwwwwwwww changeups. Then, when the hitters would start looking for the slowwwwwwwww changeup, he’d throw an even slower one. I don’t know when I’ve ever seen this many major league hitters look this foolish. Paul Konerko in the 9th was so far out in front of strike three that the ump nearly called it against the next batter. The Tigers, meanwhile, kept drawing walks after walk after walk off Jose Contreras, and the game wasn’t in doubt for long. Jeremy Bonderman struck out Joe Borchard for his personal-best 14th strikeout to end the game, and the Tigers won, 7-0.

Now I will wrap this up and get to bed. Jim’s somehow managed to get our TV stuck while he tried to order the Garfield movie.

Original comments...

Dan: Old Tiger Stadium was awesome. Just had to share.

Jason: 'Slough of Despond'? I would be offended if it wasn't true.

Labels: brpa, detroit, game report, jeremy bonderman, road trip, tigers, white sox

A view of the Gateway Arch you hardly ever get to see: the back...



Levi and Stacey in front of a fountain in downtown St. Louis...



Busch Stadium, supposedly with only two years left to live (the construction site for the new stadium is on the other side of the stadium from this view)...



The Stan Musial statue ("Here stands baseball's perfect warrior; here stand's baseball's perfect knight")...



The view from our upper-deck seats...



Fredbird...



Cardinals up to bat...



Just some of the hangers-on who joined us for the game; from left, Tony, Jim, Stacey, Levi, Luke...



Jim and Jay, another hanger-on...



The final line...

Labels: brpa, busch stadium, Cardinals, photos, pirates, road trip, st. louis

The playing field, with the Centennial Bridge over the Mississippi in the background...



Picnic area...



Wisconsin Timber Rattlers up to bat...



Banana Man helps out with the dizzy bat race...



After night falls, lights on the Centennial Bridge...



The final line (they didn't put up the "0" for the top of the 9th for the Timber Rattlers, a.k.a. "Rattler")...

Labels: brpa, davenport, photos, road trip, swing of the quad cities, wisconsin timber rattlers

First of all, yes, the trip is going as scheduled so far. Even though it's going to say this was posted by Jim, this is actually a collaborative post, more or less, because for the first time both of us are sitting next to the same computer. This may be how we do things for the rest of the trip, or maybe not -- we'll have to see. We're at Levi's parents' house in Carmi, Illinois, right now, using their computer, and we have to get up early to get on the road, but we wanted to get a little something down.

The car we ended up with from Hertz is a 2005 Chevrolet Impala. It has a CD player but no tape deck, so we're using Vince's iTrip, which is working okay so far. Everyone in the car seemed to enjoy Jim's baseball song playlist and Luke's baseball song-and-Red-Barber-recollection playlist. Now we're working our way through Jim's "Number Ones" playlist, which is every song he owns that hit #1 on the Billboard playlist. (Playing it was Levi's request; Jim probably would have chosen something with more radio station jingles.)

On to the games. Saturday's game at John O'Donnell Stadium in Davenport is the only minor-league game on the trip. That meant it was the only game at which we could walk up and get box seats and still get change from a $20 after buying two. We bought four, so we got change from a $40. We sat 10 rows up, right behind home, in front of a row of screaming children. (You know how you hear sometimes how great the laughter of children sounds? In reality, it's shrill.)

Levi tried both vegetarian food options at the ballpark. Neither the nachos nor the fries were particularly distinguished.

The mascots, on the other hand, were almost the Famous Chicken level. The Swing's actual mascot is a man in a monkey suit who, when he's wearing the monkey suit, is known as Clyde. Clyde has a sidekick, a 4'10" man in a green-and-yellow superhero costume, complete with cape, named, of course, Banana Man. He runs around, occasionally stopping to stand heroically with arms akimbo, and occasionally stopping to throw bananas into the crowd. No explanation is offered.

The game itself was a brisk affair. The Swing center and right fielders should possibly have been players of the game due to the following incident late in the game with the Swing up by 1: with the tying run at first, a ball was hit to the wall in center. We couldn't quite see if the Swing center fielder bobbled it or not, but whatever was going on out there, it eventually ended with the outfielders' arms upraised in the universal symbol of "where the hell is the ball," most commonly seen in the major leagues at Wrigley Field when a ball gets lost in the ivy. We, being cynical city folk, doubted their story, but the umpire bought it hook, line, and sinker, the hook being the tying run being sent back to third. You can guess what the line is -- the go-ahead run being stuck at second. The sinker: a 1-0 Swing win.

Distracting everyone late in the game was a rabbit that had somehow wandered onto the field. First he was out in left field minding his own business, but somehow in all the commotion, he ended up in foul territory near home. He would sit around for a few minutes, then scamper off about 30 feet. At one point, perhaps thinking he had been called in to pitch, he sat between home and the pitcher's mound between innings. The umpire appeared to be consulting his mental rule book, but surprisingly, the Midwest League doesn't seem to have an official policy on rabbits taking up residence in the infield, so he decided it was somebody else's problem and ignored the little guy. No, not Banana Man, the rabbit. Banana Man was clearly the umpire's problem.

Eventually, the rabbit took off for parts unknown. Meanwhile, it seems that whenever a rabbit gets loose on the field, Section 5 gets handed free Blue Bunny bomb pops, or whatever they're called now that you can't say "bomb." Perhaps Tom Ridge pops. Anyway, we got to enjoy our tri-color quiescently frozen confections for the last couple of innings, with no real explanation as to how we got them.

After some interesting wandering on two-lane roads in Illinois, through Saturday night rodeo traffic, we spent a too-short night at the Country Inn and Suites in Galesburg. Bright and early Sunday, we got up and Levi spilled tea on his feet, which meant it was time to leave for St. Louis. We met up with hanger-on Tony for lunch before the game, and then met up with the various other hangers-on at the Stan Musial statue outside Busch Stadium. Inside, Jim met the final hanger-on of this busy hanger-on day, Jay, of "Jeopardy!" message board fame, who managed to get a seat right behind the main group.

Levi nearly used up a whole pencil filling in the boxes on the Cardinals' side of the scorecard today, after he finally figured out which side was supposed to be the Cardinals' side of the scorecard. He had to fill in box after box after box as the Cards scored run after run after run, as usual this season. Luke, in his Cubs shirt and cap, looked awestruck. Behind him, the fans wearing Cardinal red looked on with pity. Particularly noteworthy plays were Edgar Renteria's 13-pitch first-inning at-bat that ended in a 3-run homer; Larry Walker's grand slam; and, best of all (only best because the Cardinals were already leading by nearly a touchdown at this point), Reggie Sanders leaping high against the wall, coming down with his glove closed to cheers from the audience, and the scoreboard operator immediately putting up "HR RBI." The scoreboard operator was the only one in the stadium not fooled by Reggie's act -- well, we guess the umpires weren't fooled either; there was no joy in Gloveville, the ball had gone right out.

Immediately after the game, we found the ramp to I-64 East that hadn't been torn down for new Cardinals ballpark construction and hightailed it to Levi's hometown, Carmi, Illinois. At Levi's parents' house, we were visited by frequent baseballrelated.com commentator Toby, as well as Levi's grandparents (non-commentators).

The title quote for this post was said to Jim by the desk clerk at the Country Inn and Suites in Galesburg, explaining how he could qualify for the rate he was quoted on the AAA web site. No one asked.

All right, now we're going to bed, probably two hours later than we should have. See you in Detroit, assuming we can find an abandoned building that still has an Internet connection up and running.

Original comments...

sandor: When those buildings were abandoned, it was still callled DARPAnet, which means you're going to have to enter in your post using punchcards. I think they still sell blank ones down at the A&P.

Where are the links? I assumed Levi would gladly trade in sleep for the chance to hyperlink all possible words in this post. I was particularly looking forward to the interpretation of the words "Banana Man" as well as "Levi's grandparents."

You are playing the license plate game, right? Who's winning?

Congrats on keeping up your schedule. Keep the posts coming!

stacey: i think the lack of links was due to the late hour, combined with the fact that the internet connection at the stahl chalet is VERY slow. this is more than made up for by their amazing hospitality, though. i'm still full of delicious pasta, fresh fruit, and great company. the commute from carmi to chicago is a drag, though.

Luke, hanger-on: To flesh out the image of how this post came to be, I should note that Jim and Levi wrote together at the family computer in Levi's brother's room. Jim did the typing, employing his closed-captioning skills to take dictation from Levi, who reclined on a bean bag with a cigar and glass of port, pausing now and then to re-read that Sunday's Post-Dispatch story about the Cardinals and the clubhouse iPod.

I, meanwhile, dosed a few doors down in Levi's old bedroom, which I found impressively well-preserved. The Smithsonian should scoop it up for its exhibit on "Halcyon Childhoods of America: 1980-1989." Not surprisingly, the room betrays fascinations with Star Wars, classic rock and mullets. I could have stayed forever.

Jim: Yes, we will go back after the trip and add links, additional stuff we may have forgotten to write about, and especially photos. Or at least I will. Levi may choose to wash his hands of the whole thing, for all I know.

Labels: brpa, Cardinals, carmi, game report, jay temple, luke seemann, pirates, rabbit, road trip, stacey shintani, stahls, swing of the quad cities, tony becker, wisconsin timber rattlers

Since I never scanned it before, this is (part of) the chart I used to plan the trip. Possible teams are on the left and dates are across the top (starting with April 30, with an "M" indicating Mondays). Home games for each team are indicated by blue (night game), red (day game), or gray (unknown, because some teams didn't have game times posted in January, when I made the chart). The teams are numbered so I could follow them all the way across.



They Might Be Giants ticket stub from the night before I left for the trip. And I wish I'd known my flight was going to be delayed two hours, so I could have gotten two extra hours of sleep!



Why my flight was delayed two hours: a rainy Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport (and it had been a lot worse earlier in the day, I heard)...



A 2:30 P.M. boarding time was wildly optimistic. I think this flight ended up boarding at about 4:40 P.M.



Illinois Railway Museum ticket. For an extra $4.00, I could have ridden on the Thomas the Tank Engine train with a bunch of screaming kids. I chose not to pay extra.

Labels: brpa, photos, planning, road trip

There'll be one final pre-trip post later today, if all goes well, but here's a quick one for y'all of some Mike Shannon saying I've come across lately.

It all started with Shannon's reaction to Scott Rolen being hit by a pitch with two on the other night. Instantly, Shannon said, "Oh, that's all right, that's all right," glad to have another Cardinals baserunner, regardless of Rolen's bruises.

Then, online the past two days, I've read a couple of perfect Mike Shannon statements. The key to a Shannonism is that, while what he actually says might not make sense directly, its meaning is somehow very clear, despite.

#1: "Scott Rolen's got hands like sewer lids down there at third."
#2: "Scott Rolen's got a 3-0 count. He just needs to make sure not to step on the dog on the porch now."

Labels: Cardinals, Mike Shannon, scott rolen

One of the headlines on my Yahoo! home page earlier today was "Goofy Double Play Helps Expos Beat Giants." That's the kind of thing I want to see on the trip!

Earlier tonight, John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants started describing "The Wave," and then chastised someone in the audience who was wearing a baseball cap (no, not me) who had a blank look on his face, as if he'd never heard of The Wave before. ("He's never been to a sporting event in his life, ladies and gentlemen -- a true They Might Be Giants fan.") Eventually, following some ridiculously complicated directions, the audience at the House of Blues did a surprisingly good wave, which makes sense, since a lot of the folks in the crowd have probably been to a Dodgers game or two. If the Johns Flansburgh and Linnell had tossed beach balls out into the crowd, there no doubt would have been some excellent beach ball batting.

I have to get up in less than seven hours now to catch my flight.

Original comments:

Steve: Did they form a circle in the crowd or at least a semi circle? Me thinks a critical element of the wave is having some sort of stadia type setting for the wave to crash around.

Jon Solomon: What was the goofy double play, anyway?

Levi: I just got a message from Jim: an inauspicious start to the trip--his flight is delayed already.

Jason: Next time, take the train.

weathergirl: at least the weather looks auspicious:

saturday: davenport: clear, 74/54
sunday: st. louis: scattered clouds, 86/65
monday: detroit: scattered clouds, 81/64
tuesday: toronto: partly cloudy, 75/60
wednesday: montreal: scattered clouds, 78/53

levi, don't forget to bring socks.

Levi: 75 in Toronto, 78 in Montreal?

That's in Canada, so it must be Celsius! We're gonna fry!

Jim: Finally, I remembered to respond to Steve's comment above: there was a semicircle around the upper level, and then the wave proceeded to the main level and went row by row front to back, then back to front, then the other way around the upper-level semicircle. Told you it was complicated.

Labels: brpa, planning, road trip, they might be giants

This is a short post, because I'm busy at work and probably will be right up until Friday.

Apropos of an earlier discussion about Bud Selig's tipping habits, here's a commercial about George W. Bush's tipping habits at the ballpark. They're not so good.

Beer prices in themselves seem to more or less set the value of tips at Wrigley Field. When they end in $.50, the vendors seem to get more tips, if only because they are very good at the little "You're not really going to ask me to pass your two quarters all the way down the row?" pantomime. I have to admit that when the quarters hit my hand on their way to their drunken owner, I'm frequently tempted to send them back the other way, just to see what would happen.

Labels: tipping, Wrigley Field

So, Levi, what are you doing after work tomorrow? If you're planning on doing anything other than meeting me at O'Hare Terminal 3 baggage claim, most likely American Airlines carousel #6, perhaps you should change those plans. Bring your driver's license.

Original comments...

Levi: Who's Jim?

Labels: brpa, planning, road trip

Hanger-on Luke e-mailed earlier tonight to point out that the Red Sox were playing the White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field on Friday night, and wondered why we didn't start the trip with this game. I think it's a moot point now, because the game is sold out and I don't particularly want to pay premium prices for a game, given all the other games we still have to buy tickets to (we're planning on getting tickets at the gate for 6 of the 11 games, and I owe Levi money for the Cardinals game...although he owes me money for the other four games). Also, I'm told that Levi and Stacey are planning a farewell dinner, or something like that, at their place on Friday night.

But it's a valid question. I think what happened is that I just didn't see back in January, on the graph I made of when various teams were at home, that the White Sox were going to be home this weekend. So when I originally came up with this itinerary, as depicted in this post, I started with the Cardinals game on Sunday. Then, soon afterwards, I realized that it was stupid to start an itinerary on Sunday when, I assumed, I could easily add a minor-league game on Saturday. It turned out I could, so I didn't have any reason to go back over the major league schedules. And then when I made my flight reservations, I added a day on either side of the trip itinerary, just in case of delays somewhere, and came up with arriving Chicago on Thursday and leaving Chicago on September 1st. Then I sat back, relaxed, and made hundreds of posts to this blog over the next five months. Honorary hanger-on Jason asked me about going to a minor-league game in the Chicago area on Friday night at one point, but I decided it would be too hard to make it out to a suburb in time for a game after people had gotten off work Friday evening. I don't think I even checked the schedules for any of the local teams until just now (to save you the trouble, only the Joliet Jackhammers are at home Friday night).

I don't know what my point is, except that I really need to get to bed now. (For those of you who have just stumbled across this blog, it's not quite as bad as it looks, because the time stamps on the posts are in Central time, but I'm running on Pacific time right now.)

Labels: brpa, luke seemann, planning, red sox, road trip, white sox

I'm almost all packed. This is because tomorrow I have to get a haircut, visit an ATM, and go to a They Might Be Giants concert, although probably not in that order. In fact, the less money I have at the concert, the less likely I am to buy a bunch of T-shirts. Come to think of it, I should probably show up at my job tomorrow also.

Hey, remember this post from way back in June? I've got all that stuff, and more, including a mini pencil sharpener that was mentioned here a few days ago, and my Kroger brand nail clippers (safely ensconced in the suitcase that will be checked, of course). The coins are neatly rolled up, and may confound the security at Bob Hope Airport. I've got Tigers and Brewers tickets now, too, and those will be kept very close to me at all times (i.e., they're safely ensconced in the small carry-on bag). I even have a very important accessory I forgot about in that post: the USB cable to connect my digital camera to a computer. I'm hoping we can figure things out to put a few pictures up here as we go along.

I even got a working VCR since I wrote that post, and I have two videotapes, which include a baseball-related programming item and some game shows.

I'm not bringing a jacket, but I am bringing a sweatshirt, just in case. I hear it was only in the 20s in Toronto today! (That's a bad Fahrenheit/Celsius joke.)

I think that's it, unless someone can come up with something we haven't thought of. Obviously, if we have forgotten something, it should be fairly easy to buy any number of items in Chicago, or in many of the cities we'll be visiting.

Original comments...

Levi: You're bringing a videotape of Tiger Town? Or is it Rookie of the Year?

thatbob: Ooh, I hope you have _The Life and Times of Pansy The Wuss-Wuss Fish Who Couldn't Keep It Up_. Bob Costas narrates.

Labels: brpa, planning, road trip, security theater, they might be giants

The time of the Cardinals-Pirates game on Saturday, August 28, being changed from 7:05 to 1:20? What force could possibly make that happen?

Thanks to Maura's co-worker Allison for giving us the heads-up, via Maura passing the information along to us. Levi and I consulted via phone, and we'll still be able to make all the games on the schedule, but now we won't be able to spend the night with my aunt and uncle in beautiful Yardley, Pennsylvania (actually, they live in Lower Makefield Township but have a Yardley mailing address). We'll still see them at the Phillies game, though, of course. Instead, we'll be spending the night in Harrisburg, and Maura has promised us breakfast at Waffle House.

P.S. to Levi: Yes, I'll be arriving on Thursday.

Labels: bolands, brpa, Cardinals, maura johnston, pirates, planning, road trip

Says Hanger-on Luke, referring to yesterday's Cubs/Dodgers game

If I had a baseball blog I'd write about the fan I sat in front of
today. He was a real piece of work, a young man clearly mentally disabled but
both in love with and enraged by his Cubs, sort of a Rain Man with a
mean streak and Cubby-blue blood.

When I got to my seat he was already ranting--to nobody in particular
--about Corey Patterson and how he's not a lead-off batter. Then he was
going off on how Aramis Ramirez should be starting: "Dusty, you are not
a doctor! Aramis is not hurt!" Once the umps took the field, he started
yelling at them, reciting from memory the rule book's description of
the strike zone.

All this from Aisle 534.

He kept a tally of questionable balls and strikes. With each one --
more than 20 of them -- he'd explode: "This is ridiculous! We're going to
replace you with a computer! With QuesTec, Fox Box AND! OR! a fifth
umpire in the booth AND! OR! instant replay! And we're sending you to the eye
doctor! And we're sending you back to umpiring school. AND WE'RE GOING
TO CALL THE COMMISSIONER! 1414! 225! 3900!"

Every. Single. Time. After the fifth time the entire section could
mouth along with him, as not a single word -- nor his intense volume -- would
deviate over the course of the game.

He also was very displeased that the Commissioner was not there as
scheduled for Greg Maddux Day, as he had a few things he needed to tell
Bud. He expressed dismay that Jim Hendry never wants to talk to him.

Another screed: "Dusty is the stupidest manager ever. Why doesn't he
want to win? I have an IQ of 120 -- I am smarter than Dusty! We will always
hate you, Dusty! WE WILL ALWAYS HATE YOU!"

And you should have seen him go nuts when Farnsworth came in and
proceeded to implode.

Since he wasn't swearing or threatening fans, there wasn't really
anything security could do, other than try to get him to calm down. He would
not.

It gets better: When he wasn't yelling at the umps or Dusty, he was
calling up ESPN radio and other sports media on his cell phone and
leaving long messages calmly describing Dusty's many felonies -- occasionally
pausing to scream toward the field. It seemed, however, that every time
he did this, the Cubs would proceed to do something good. Thus, Monday
morning some schlub at ESPN is going to have to listen to all these
messages, and as he listens to this fan moan about Corey Patterson, he
will hear in the background Corey Patterson rapping a single to center.
As he listens to a rant about the bullpen, he will hear in the background
Kent Mercker getting a strikeout to end the inning.

It was nothing short of amazing. I think I was the only one in my
section who appreciated him, even though he was yelling right into my ear. I
had to concede he was one of the best-informed fans in the stadium. Much
better him than some drunk frat boy yelling "You suck, Pujols!"

IT WAS RIDICULOUS!

Original comments...

Jim: Much better than the guy Matt Bailey and I encountered on L.A.'s Red Line on Sunday who heard us comparing the L.A. subway system with the Chicago 'L', the D.C. Metro, and Atlanta's MARTA, and proceeded to semi-coherently mumble something about taking the subway to other countries. He was speaking quietly, though, and ended up getting off the train at Vermont & Sunset.

Later, a friend of Matt's who was in Chicago called him, and told a tale of woe about his companions who bought tickets to the Cubs game from a scalper for $80...and soon discovered the tickets to be counterfeit.

Levi: According to a couple of reverse directories online, the phone number the guy was shouting doesn't exist. Or if it does, it doesn't turn up a listing.

I suppose I could test by calling it, but Bud Selig might answer the phone, and I wouldn't like to have to be responsible for my behavior in that situation.

Luke, hanger-on: Whoops, I misremembered the phone number, which is remarkable considering how many times it was bellowed into my ear: It's in fact (414) 225-8900.

Steve: Quien es mas retarded? The guy described in the above post or the dudes who bought $80 counterfit tickets?

Levi: Mas retarded? Kyle Farnsworth. Hands down.

Or is that mas estoned?

Labels: aramis ramirez, bud selig, corey patterson, cubs, dodgers, dusty baker, greg maddux, jim hendry, kent mercker, kyle farnsworth, radio

A scan of a ticket is worth a thousand words:



Also in the envelope was the promised $20 in concession vouchers, in the convenient form of four $5 vouchers. That should make it easier for the people who want to eat sausages with Secret Stadium Sauce to purchase them, and if anyone wants to search the catacombs of Miller Park for the stand that reluctantly sells veggie dogs, well, Levi can go off by himself and try to find it.

In other news, I discovered that the necessary files to operate an iTrip are freely available for download, so I will have no reason to connect my iPod to Levi's computer.

And finally, here's a quote from a Usenet newsgroup that I felt desperately needed to be posted here: "One of the funnier stories on ESPN radio was Rob Dibble talking about how he checked into a hotel and misunderstood the instructions on the TV screen -- he thought he was ordering a block of adult films. The only thing more embarrassing than having the adult films show up on your bill is having to call down and ask the nice girl to please take the block off so you can watch some."

Original comments...

Toby: Just don't go to the concession stand during the 7th inning stretch while they're having the sausage race. Randall Simon is back with the Pirates, you know... There could be another incident...

maura: actually, he was released over the weekend, shortly after he found his SUV riddled with bullets.

Levi: Now, I don't get releasing Simon right now. You don't save anything on his salary at this point. You don't really save an important roster space, because in two weeks you can call up everybody and his grandma. And you lose the fun of having Randall Simon on your team.

I could have understood releasing him the minute you signed him--coming to your senses and just getting rid of him so somebody else, anybody else, could play first base for you. But now that you've carried him all this way, why not hold onto him the rest of the year?

Toby: What kind of season is his grandma having in A ball, anyway?

thatbob: When I was freeloading with Angie in San Diego for the librarian convention, we made the same mistake with the "Adult Block" feature. Except we weren't actually trying to order the adult block, we just wanted to look at the funny movie titles. Really!

Labels: brpa, planning, road trip, rob dibble, tickets

(I'm referring to the trip, not Hurricane Charley, in the headline.)

Posted in advance of the weekend: Levi, can you think of any preparations you think I may have forgotten about, some items you want me to bring that I need to dig up in my apartment, or at a store? Things are going to be pretty busy in my life for the next few days, up until the time I leave for the trip on Thursday, so I'm hoping something doesn't slip my mind.

Original comments...

Levi: Only this: I'm considering replacing my iPod radio adaptor because it's an aftermarket model that chews through AAA batteries like the Devil Rays chew through AAA players. Your iPod and mine, I think, are the same model now, or at least the same time period, so the Apple one ought to work with both, right?

And you don't already have a transmitter, right?

Jim: If your iPod has the rectangular "dock connector" on the bottom (which means it would also have the "touch wheel" and the four buttons in a line above it), then any accessories should work equally well with both.

Apple doesn't make an FM radio transmitter for the iPod, so they're all aftermarket. Here's what's available, although I don't know which of these are most readily available (i.e., they'd have them at the Apple Store, Best Buy, or someplace like that). Although I've heard good things about the Griffin iTrip, it would be problematic to use with both our iPods because of the bizarre way in which works, but it looks like any of the others should work fine. If it were me, I might look at the Belkin TuneCast II, plus their Mobile Power Cord to run it off car DC power, but that might be a little pricey for you.

If we're lucky, the rental car will have a cassette deck, and all we'll need is the cassette adaptor I'm going to be bringing (it's what I use in my car, which is why I don't have a transmitter already).

Levi: The Griffin iTrip is what Tony has, now that I see the photo. It's so well-designed that I thought it was an Apple accessory.

I'll probably try to pick one up next week, if only because lately my luck with rental cars and tape decks has only been about fifty-fifty. And they look at you really funny when you request a tape deck instead of a CD player.

Jim: To use the iTrip, you put audio files onto your iPod representing the various FM frequencies, and play one of them whenever you want to change stations. I'd be a little bit reluctant to attempt to download the files to my iPod from your computer, because of the ever-present danger of accidentally telling your computer to sync my iPod with your music library, thus wiping out all of my music for the rest of the trip.

Levi: Nah, my computer is never set up to automatically synch. That has always seemed like a really useless feature to me--my home computer is always going to have far more songs on it than my iPod can hold, and if I can't take ten minutes to put what I want on there, I must be a heartless CEO or something, and then wouldn't I only want, like the Chariots of Fire theme?

Jim: I do auto-sync because 33 gigs of music on the computer plus a 30-gig iPod (actually 27-point-something gigs of actual space) would equal me spending me all my time micromanaging my music collection if I didn't auto-sync. Besides, it's fun coming up with the various playlists and smart playlists to populate the iPod with exactly what I want.

It looks like I'm going to have only about 15 MB (yes, megabytes) of space left on the iPod, and now I'm wondering if that's enough space for the iTrip audio files.

thatbob: Some other things for Jim to bring along:

-reference works on popular culture (to make a point or settle a bet)
-fresh milk (to wash down the Hostess Baseballs)
-live cow (source of fresh milk)
-life savings converted into cash

That's all I can think of right now.

Toby: How about several sharpened pencils for keeping score at games...

Jim: Keeping score is Levi's department, although I do have a mini-pencil sharpener I might contribute to the cause. I just have to remember not to put it in my carry-on luggage...its metal edge is sharp enough to shave a thin piece of wood!

maura: jim, do you think you could burn some of your baseball songs to cd? i'm not sure if i'll be able to plug your ipod into the wprb board. (i'll do some sleuthing about this, though, this week.)

Jim: I already had the "Baseball's Greatest Hits" CDs set aside to bring with me in case of emergency. Let me know if there's anything on the list that's not on those two CDs that you definitely want to play on your show.

Does the WPRB board have line-level RCA inputs? I'll bring the dock and the appropriate cable.

Jim: It turns out that everything not on the "Baseball's Greatest Hits" CDs fits onto two CDs, so I now have the entire baseball song list in CD format.

Jon Solomon: You should be able to run the iPod into the board with an iPod to RCA adapter. I can rig this to go into the mixer. I'll also pull several baseball 45s to play, and bring some of my sports records if someone reminds me. Get Metsmerized!

Levi: Awesome!

maura: yeah, get metsmerized is awesome!

Jason: Hey! 'Awesome!' is Dan's line.

Stan Lee: Excelsior!

J.J.: Dino-mite!

Richard Nixon: Sock it to me?

GW Bush: America is more safer.

Labels: brpa, planning, road trip

Highs in the 60s in Chicago and St. Louis in August? I didn't think I was going to have to bring a jacket on this trip!

P.S.: I think the Devil Rays should call do-over on their 6-0 loss to the Red Sox today in Boston; clearly, they were distracted by the hurricane approaching their hometown. Actually, I wonder if they're secretly hoping Tropicana Field suffers damage serious enough that they'll have to have a new stadium built for them.

Original comments...

Levi: I don't think FEMA builds stadiums.

I remembered last night that the weather was unseasonably chilly ten years ago this week, when my parents, Pete Bodensteiner, Bob Hanscum, my brother, and I saw what turned out to be the last game of the season at Wrigley Field. The strike started the next day. It was so chilly at Wrigley that everyone wore jackets, but even that wasn't enough to keep my parents from huddling under the grandstand much of the game.

Man, the strike sure sucked. Fortunately, so did the Cardinals that year. I still feel like apologizing to Expos fans on behalf of human (and corporate) intransigence and greed.

Jim: I have quite a few episodes of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" that I taped in the summer of 1994, with Comedy Central ID bumpers where they're calling themselves "Official Network of the 1994 Players' Strike."

Unfortunately, Tropicana Field is quite a bit further inland than -- and probably much more solidly built than -- Al Lang Stadium, former spring training home of the Cardinals, and a very nice place to spend a spring afternoon.

Labels: devil rays, red sox, tropicana field

Warning: Don't click through this link if you think your hatred of the Commissioner of Baseball is sufficient unto the day, or if you like to avoid anonymous, gossipy allegations, or if you're easily grossed out by images of this guy, well, doing stuff. Again, let me say: this is alleged behavior. Please, Mr. Commissioner, don't contract BRPA 2004.

Now that you've been warned, click through. Thanks (I guess?) to Luke for passing this tidbit along. I don't know that it's raised the level of discourse on this site, but, well, a little yickiness never hurt a workday.

Original comments...

Charlie Comiskey: Bud Selig talking dirty? I find that kinda hot.

stacey: why, luke? why!?

Jim: I am shocked, SHOCKED to hear that an old man would talk about sex. Next we'll find out that Bud got drunk, put $5 in the jukebox, and played "Hang On Sloopy" over and over because he found the lyrics hilarious.

Levi: My objection isn't so much to the image it conjures up of Selig's mouth moving and things coming out of it as it is to his apparent belief that a 20% tip is sufficiently above the norm as to entitle him to make explicit his desire that the waitress be quiet. A classy nasty rich guy would leave a C-note to speak for itself.

thatbob: Yeah, "The Chairman" would have "duked" her - on top of the 20%, which is merely standard. What an alleged jerk!

Luke, hanger-on: I believe his exact words were, "I'd sure like to have baseball relations with that woman!"

Or perhaps, "Once we're done screwing baseball, let's do the same to her! Awoogah! E-uh! E-uh! E-uh!"

Levi: My coworker Jim, upon hearing my complaint about this story, says, "Yeah, but no one over fifty tips adequately."

Discuss.

Luke, hanger-on: It's true. I often have to swing back into a restaurant to cover for my beloved father, a shade on the dark side of 50, who when in doubt will round down, usually to around 10 percent.

He's not a lech like Selig but he does have his off-color side, and I often also have to pay the "Dad Tax," which is a few extra dollars for a waitress who's been subjected to his corny jokes. On his latest trip to town his favorite was to hold up two fingers in a "V" and ask, "What's this?" (Answer: A Roman soldier's high five.) No cab driver, valet parker or waitress was spared. It was an expensive visit for the Dad Tax.

Levi: What you need is a hanger-on to whom you can call, "Duke 'im!" every time your dad makes the joke. The assistant would then peel off a crisp hundred and lay it on the waiter.

Labels: bud selig

I'm pretty sure that when one has called to order the Mastercard Grand Slam Ticket Pack, which is supposed to only be available for purchase with a Mastercard, the Brewers ticket office should not be asking the question, "American Express, Discover, Mastercard, or Visa?" at any point. I guess Mastercard hasn't been able to cure them of their Midwestern hospitality.

Something else to worry about, if one is the worrying type: they're mailing the tickets and concession voucher to me, and they claim they'll show up "within a week." Any longer than that, and I won't get them before I leave for the trip, so I'll have to leave careful instructions for honorary hanger-on Jason (who has a key to my mailbox) to mail or FedEx them to Chicago.

Original comments...

Levi: It's Wisconsin. I'm sure that if we show up and explain why we don't have our tickets, they'll let us in.

Jim: But it's Bud Selig's Wisconsin, which is different than Wisconsin as you or I understand it.

stacey: even bud selig has been unable to corrupt the goodness of the city of lovely leinie's. we've gotten great seats to a sold-out game ("they just opened up a new section," the ticket man said, while eyeing bob's county stadium floppy hat) AND had free tickets handed to us by some sweet fellow whose friends couldn't show up at the last minute.

golly, i love milwaukee!

Jim: I forgot to mention that, when I first tried calling the Brewers' ticket office 800 number this morning, I got an "all circuits busy" message. Five minutes later, I got right through. Either there was a sudden run on Brewers tickets at about 8:10 Pacific time this morning, or my office is using some crappy long-distance company that doesn't have enough circuits running between L.A. and the Midwest.

thatbob: I will wear my County Stadium floppy hat AND bring my Miller Park beer bottle cozy. Might even splurge on a Fontini Sausage Race tee, hee hee.

Sunday night, we were watching the baseball highlights. During the highlights of the Twins' 18-inning loss to Oakland, Stacey made me pause the TiVo. The Twins had just pulled to within one run on a two-run homer by Justin Morneau in the bottom of the 18th, and the camera panned across the crowd. In the foreground of the shot, a boy with a ball glove and a Twins cap was leaping up and down in front of his seat, pumping his arms in the air and screaming.

What had caught Stacey's eye, though, wasn't the cheering boy, but his mom, visible over his shoulder. She was leaning forward, chin resting on a hand, gazing a bit bleary-eyed at the field. The full weight of 18 innings of baseball and nearly five hours of stale Metrodome air was clearly visible.

But tired or not, she was there. And so was her son. She was the heroic opposite of that mom I saw at Comiskey in July. I bet if the Twins had tied the game, she would have sighed, ordered a beer, and smiled indulgently as impish little Dakota continued to scream his lungs out. I bet she wouldn't even use her cell phone to tell her husband how long to microwave the tuna casserole, since she'd be having dinner--and maybe breakfast--at the ballpark. Or if she felt she had to call in, she'd do it discreetly, between innings.

Given that my own mother is out of the running, because that wouldn't be fair, I hereby nominate that mom for mom of the year.

Original comments...

thatbob: Maybe you ought to write letters to the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, Catholic Spirit, Prensa Minnesota, and several other area papers. Some recognition is probably just what she needs.

Monday, August 30th happens to be one of the dates on which Brewers are offering their "Mastercard Grand Slam Ticket Pack," which is four $28 tickets and a $20 concession voucher for $75 total. So it would be nice, and money-saving, if Levi and I could find two people to join us for the 7:05 game. (It's a little unclear whether or not you can get that deal at the stadium, or if you have to buy them in advance..."seats are limited," they say, but how many people are going to show up for a non-pivotal Brewers vs. Pirates battle on a Monday night? Nevertheless, let us know as soon as possible if you want to go.)

If you wanted to also join us for the 1:05 game in Chicago involving the White Sox and Phillies, so much the better, although the Sox don't seem to have any promotions happening that day to make their tickets cheaper. I think our plan as of now is to head straight to Milwaukee immediately upon the conclusion of that game; however, if you can't make it to the Sox game but can make the Brewers, we'll work something out.

Original comments...

Levi: I'm sure my wife, for one, will attend the second game, and a second person (especially at less than $20 for a seat and some food!) will be easy to find. So go for it!

stacey: levi's right. i Would like to attend the second game. i probably can't get off work for the day game, sadly.

Jim: Does it ruin the road trip magic if we take the 'L' to the Sox game? I guess it shouldn't, since it's an "extra" game anyway.

Steve: as far as special promotions, that's a half price monday.

stacey: if you're going to take the 'L' to the sox game, i could drive the rental car to work (in hyde park) and then pick you guys up after the game at comiskey and we could shoot up to the city that beer made famous. anyone else who wanted to go could either get picked up along the way or meet us at sox park.

Jim: Thanks, Steve! I missed that. Hooray for cheap tickets! Stacey: Sounds like a good plan. I won't tell Hertz if you won't.

thatbob: Count me in for both games. BOTH games. Levi will just have to wait a couple more weeks for that money I owe him.

Jim: Yeah, you can give your money to ME instead. I have to say, we got two hangers-on faster than I thought we would. I'll go ahead and order the Brewers tickets.

Levi: I assume we'll pick up Sox tickets at the window?

The only caveat is that back before they began their current stretch of Oreck XL-quality sucking, the crowds at the walkup windows were impressive enough to cost those (like me) unprepared for their size a view of the first inning.

Jim: Even for a 1:05 P.M. game on a Monday? If Lee Elia taught us anything, it's that it's Cubs fans who don't go to work, not Sox fans.

Fear not, because I can already predict that one of the themes of this trip is going to be me attempting to get us to games ridiculously early.

Levi: Is that why I'm posting this from the Wireless Intenet kiosk in front of the Davenport Swing ballpark?

Luke, hanger-on: Have you ever had a post get to 12 comments?

Levi: I would leave Jim to answer that, if you hadn't just done so.

Labels: brewers, brpa, phillies, pirates, planning, road trip, tickets, white sox

1. I used the L.A. Times web site to stop my subscription for the two weeks I'm going to be out of town. As Levi might have expected, I'm fully intending to buy a local paper every day of the trip, except perhaps when we're at my aunt and uncle's house (because I think they get the Philadelphia Inquirer) and when we're at his parents' house (because they get the Carmi Times).

2. I finally remembered to call the Hilton Pittsburgh to request a rollaway bed, so that Levi doesn't have to sleep in the bathtub, or curled up in a dresser drawer. Up to this point, I had been a little worried about the ability of the AAA web site hotel booking interface to actually communicate successfully with the various hotels' computer reservation systems, but the Hilton did have my reservation in their system, so I guess we're all set. "See you August 28th," said the woman on the phone. Maybe I should have requested a room facing PNC Park, too, but I'm not sure they even have such a thing. (I think this is the only hotel on the trip within possible sight distance of a ballpark...I think the Holiday Inn Express in Detroit is a little too far from Comerica Park, with too many tall buildings in between.)

Original comments...

Toby: That's the first time in the history of the U.S. that The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Carmi Times have been mentioned in the same paragraph.

thatbob: Actually, Jim, there is an ordinance that allows you to burn down tall buildings in Detroit if they obstruct a view and haven't been used for anything in 50 years, so, you know, bring some matches.

Levi: Knowing Jim, I expect him any time we travel together, to have exact change for any tolls.

I'll be more impressed if he also has exact change for any newspaper honor boxes he needs to use along the way.

And Toby, if you can schedule the pull-out section of the Times about Baseball Related Program Activities for the Monday, August 23rd edition, that would be great.

Toby: OK, but I'm going to need you to proofread it. In my last section (on the local summer baseball and softball teams), I forgot to mention the names of two of the businesses that sponsor the 40-some-odd teams in their respective cutlines and got a call from one of the omitted businesses, during which I was reminded (in a threatening manner) how much advertising that business buys with our paper.

I'm sure the same thing's happened a million times at The Philadelphia Inquirer, don't you think?

Jim: What the Philadelphia Inquirer has is the CEO of Citizens Bank calling the CEO of Knight-Ridder every time they don't use the full name of the Phillies' ballpark, I'm sure. But then it takes a while to trickle down to the people who actually work at the newspaper.

Labels: brpa, carmi times, los angeles times, philadelphia inquirer, planning, road trip

My brother got married last weekend in Indianapolis. Stacey and I and all the family had a great time dancing and making fun of Matt and generally enjoying welcoming a great new sister-in-law.

I had the honor of being the best man. While the groomsmen were locked away in a room in the bowels of the church away from the ladies, we got to watch the Cubs/Giants game. Despite the interest in the game displayed by most of the groomsmen, the wedding was not delayed, and I had to sneak back during picture-taking afterwards to see whether Greg Maddux had moved up a notch on this list.

The weekend was a good reminder of how useful a knowledge of sports can be in social situations. Say what you will about alcohol as a social lubricant; give me a little bit of knowledge of recent developments in sports over an Old Fashioned any day when I'm going to be hanging around a group of people I don't know very well.

P.S. Derek Zumsteg at USS Mariner has a good post about the bizarre obstruction call on Jose Lopez that handed the Devil Rays the game. (The archive link doesn't work, so scroll down to Saturday's posts.) There's also a good, if lengthy and inconclusive, discussion at Baseball Primer. My understanding of the rules on obstruction is that obstruction of a baserunner is necessarily a physical act, and that, as no one (Including the umpires!) has a right to a clear view of the field, obstructing a base runner's view can't be obstruction. Maura, is there an official D-Rays company position you'd like to share?

Original comments...

Jim: Thanks for the link to the Baseball Think Factory comments. Seems like a fun group there, if they can come up with both a reference to the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players and the phrase "Vince Naimoli's daughter is crying like a baby."

Levi: Do you agree with me that, though some evidence is introduced to bolster both sides of the argument, the "That call [stunk]!" side is stronger?

Levi: Oh, and Toby, something you'll appreciate: Sunday morning I went for a run with Thys Bax. Thys humored me by allowing me to set the pace for our 12-mile run, but I still ended up really pushing myself because, well, I didn't want Thys to get completely bored. Then when we were mostly done, Brandon showed up on the trail and ran part of the way with us. I was, of course, way outclassed.

Toby: Thys, by the way, folks, is 59 years old. Brandon is his son (graduated a year after Matt if memory serves me correct).

thatbob: A little bit of knowledge of recent developments in sports in unfamiliar social situations is just not as likely to lead to spontaneous making out with cute girls as a few Old Fashioneds are. But I guess if it's also less likely to lead to throwing up all over everyone, then it has its place.

Labels: cubs, devil rays, giants, jose lopez, stacey shintani, stahls

I didn't realize Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan were doing shows at minor-league ballparks this summer until I read an article about it in the L.A. Times this morning. (I can't link to that article because it's for subscribers only.) Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we can fit one of their concerts into our itinerary.

Original comments...

Levi: I'll take this chance to repeat my two favorite Willie Nelson stories.

1) This one you may all know. In the mid-90s, Willie was asleep in his car on a Texas roadside. A cop decided to roust him out and search his car for pot. Pot was discovered, Willie was booked. Later, a judge threw out the possession conviction based on lack of probable cause for the search. According to the judge, the mere fact of being Willie Nelson does not give law enforcement probable cause to search you for pot.

2) The coworker of a friend of mine is from Arkansas. On a recent visit there, he went to his usual pot dealer to get some Arkansas pot, which he claims to be the best in the world. His dealer apologetically explained that he had no pot to offer. "Willie came through last week, and he bought all the pot." All the pot.

Labels: bob dylan, willie nelson

I TiVoed the Cubs-Giants game today, because they're still inconveniently scheduling baseball games for hours while I'm working. This would not have been a bad choice for a national Game of the Week, but I guess Fox and MLB are still firmly committed to the "regional" concept for the Saturday afternoon Fox coverage. Too bad it's nearly impossible to see any Saturday afternoon game other than the one being shown in your local area (they're not carried on the MLB Extra Innings pay-per-view package).

I am really, really tired of people in the front row leaning way over to try to get foul balls, or worse, fair balls that have rolled foul and are still in play. During this game, someone went all the way over the rail to try to get a foul ball, but jumped right back over. Fox practically made him into a folk hero, to the point of including him in the "play of the game" poll...and his play was, of course, the choice of a majority of the cell-phone-using people who bothered to vote. I contend he should have been thrown out of the stadium.

Maybe I'm slightly jealous of people who get to sit that close, but I'd still like to see the year-by-year numbers of fan interference calls...although I guess they'd have to be adjusted for the fact that most of these new stadiums have more seats closer to the action than the stadiums they replaced.

Anyway, speaking of people who get to sit close, the one celebrity Fox could find in the stands was Jim Belushi (and he was sitting in an upper deck anyway). Didn't any Fox stars want to go to this game? If I were a cast member on a Fox show, I would have demanded tickets for me and Caroline Dhavernas, late of "Wonderfalls," who I believe still technically counts as a Fox star. (Wait a minute, by that same logic, I could also go to the game with Paget Brewster of "Andy Richter Controls the Universe" and Sarah Silverman of "Greg the Bunny"! All right, enough of my rich fantasy life.)

In conclusion, if Levi were near a computer this weekend, he'd probably be saying something about Larry Walker.

Original comments...

Levi: Does Jim Belushi even count as a celebrity? Even for Fox?

Jim: Jim Belushi is the star of a surprisingly popular sitcom on ABC. He's got his name in the title of the show and everything! A lot more people have heard of him than have heard of Caroline Dhavernas, that's for sure.

Toby: Is Paget Brewster related to Punky Brewster? Or is that a whole separate family of Brewsters?

Levi: When I returned from the rehearsal dinner at midnight (Stacey had fled earlier with the niece and nephew, because she was worn out from, well, being around the niece and nephew.), I turned on the highlights and almost passed out. Larry Walker? I wanted to call my brother or bang on his hotel room door or something. But then I thought more sensibly, decided he needed a good night's sleep on his wedding weekend, and went to bed instead.

But I did wake Stacey to tell her.

Jason: Why would Fox be pointing out an ABC 'star'? Couldn't they find a shot of Calista Flockhart eating a hot dog?

Labels: caroline dhavernas, cubs, foul balls, giants, jim belushi, larry walker, paget brewster, sarah silverman

With all the excitement over the songs earlier today, I forgot to post something else that's related to the trip. Today, I bought a rain poncho. Sorry, Levi, it's blue, not red, so if it rains at the Cardinals game, I will stick out like a sore thumb, or perhaps I should say a bruised thumb. But I'm all set for rain at the Expos game.

I also bought a new set of luggage. My former luggage was a high school graduation present, and if you remember luggage technology from 1992, this will sound familiar to you: the two big suitcases from the old set have tiny little wheels on the bottom, and I've never been able to adequately roll them along when loaded because they have a tendency to tip sideways, and the attached straps you're supposed to lead them with are way too short. So I pretty much ignored the wheels after a while.

But thanks to the great strides in luggage technology over the last 12 years, the new set is of the type with the big wheels and the telescoping handle, and from trying them out on the way to the cash register at Target, and then through the parking lot to my car, they seem to be working great. However, we'll see what happens after American Airlines gets their grubby hands, and their grubby conveyor belts, all over them.

My only regret is that if I was going to buy a new set of luggage, I should have bought it before my trip to New York last month, where I had to schlep my possessions through such scenic locales as the stretch of 8th Avenue in Manhattan between 50th Street and 48th Street, Grand Central Terminal, and the halls of the Marriott in Trumbull, Connecticut (okay, Grand Central actually is scenic, but it's better when you don't have to carry two pieces of baggage from the subway station to Lower Level Track 107 via the men's room). There's going to be much less walking with luggage on the baseball trip, I predict, unless the car breaks down and we decide to abandon it and walk to the next baseball game, rather than waiting for Hertz to send a mechanic out.

Anyway, the new set of luggage includes one bag that's the perfect size to hold all the materials from AAA, it turns out, although it is still to be determined what exact configuration of luggage is going to accompany me on the trip. I realize I'd better leave some room for souvenirs, for one thing.

Original comments...

Levi: Jim, you mean those old suitcases weren't specifically designed to tip over? I can't imagine what else they were designed for, since they must have failed perfectly in every laboratory test.

Labels: brpa, planning, road trip

First of all, Maura passes along this awesome link from ESPN.com's Page 3, in which they list the at-bat songs for many MLB players. (Page 3? How many numbered pages does ESPN.com have now, anyway?)

And to fulfill a request by Cushie, here are the songs on the "baseball" playlist on my iPod, conveniently in one list. Levi and hangers-on, don't click on the link if you want to be surprised in the car, although many of the songs have been named on this blog in the past, in several different entries that I don't feel like going back and looking up.

Original comments...

Cushie: Awesome!

Luke, hanger-on: Here are some songs on the BRPA 2004 playlist I've been assembling since becoming a hanger-on (most of which you have already, and some of which have relationships to baseball and roadtrips that are tenuous at best):

Catfish, Bob Dylan
Two Bass Hit, Dizzy Gillespie
Bang the Drum Slowly, Emmylou Harris
Mrs. Robinson, Simon & Garfunkel
Pirate Jenny, Nina Simone
Yanqui Go Home, Camper Van Beethoven
I Could Drive Forever, Smog
On the Road Again, Bob Dylan
On the Road Again, Willie Nelson
This is Not a Song About a Train, Andrew Bird

Plus a CD's worth of Bob Edwards-Red Barber chats and Barber highlights that I've been saving for the trip.

Jim, you have iPodRip, right?

Jim: I don't have iPodRip or anything similar, mainly because I've never had a need to get music from my iPod onto my computer. Although if iPodRip can export playlists into HTML or XML, and it looks like it can, it probably would have come in handy when I was creating the song list!

thatbob: If you're doing spoken word pieces, you really need to find the famous Lee Elia rant against Cub fans. And if you can find Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly singing "O'Brien to Ryan to Goldberg" then... then... then that'll be awesome!

Dan: And if you need the Lee Elia rant, lemme know, I've got it in MP3.

Labels: music

The Cardinals announced today that their new stadium will not be called Monsanto Field or Post-Dispatch Park or Casino Queen Stadium or [Help me out here, Tony. I need some more St. Louis companies to put here.].

For at least the next twenty years, the ballpark being built next door to Busch Stadium will be called . . . . Busch Stadium.

I don't think anyone's all that surprised. And while there's no getting around the fact that it's yet another corporate name, Busch Stadium has a couple of things going for it. It's not just a corporate name, for one thing. It's also the name of a prominenet family that's been part of St. Louis for decades, and it honors August Anheuser Busch Jr. who more or less single-handedly saved the Cardinals for St. Louis in the 1950s. And it's the same name we've been using for forty years. Consistency has some value. And finally, Busch Beer isn't even Anheuser-Busch's most popular product. We could have had something hideous like Tequiza Park.

This does, however, leave an opening. Tony, you need to start putting the pennies away so that in twenty years you can outbid Anheuser-Busch, giving us Custom Insurance Field. By then, maybe we'll get to meet before games at the Pujols, Rolen, or Edmonds statues.

Original comments...

Jim: Steak 'n' Shake has always seemed like it should be a St. Louis company, although I think it's headquartered in Indianapolis.

But I'm going to assume the new park narrowly missed becoming Schnucks Stadium.

Dan: I'll meet you before the game at the Tommy Herr chapel and reading room.

Jason: I think in front of the new stadium there should be a beautiful fountain from which Natural Light should spew forth.

maura: dude, david lee roth totally tried that during the 'a little ain't enough tour,' except his fountains were flowing with jack daniels (and iced tea in sheds located in dry counties).

my seats were too crappy to get near them. plus i was 16 and probably would have spit the jack out.

Labels: busch stadium, Cardinals

When my alarm went off just now, the first three words I heard were the last three words of a news story: "...in Davenport, Iowa." My first thought was, "If KFWB was going to do a story on our road trip, why didn't they call me?" But really, I assume they were talking about the fact that both major Presidential candidates are there this morning.

The other half of this omen is that, when I went to the KFWB web site just now to verify their URL, one ad on the site read, "Arizona Office of Tourism wants to send you on a Road Trip!" Thanks, Arizona, but I'm already going on one, and you don't really need to capitalize "road trip" there!

Original comments...

Levi: What must it be like to be in Davenport today? Crazy. Are the two candidates going to accidentally meet in a local diner and have a bare-knuckle brawl? I'm picturing the scene in _The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence_ where Liberty throws a steak on the floor and Tom Donothan orders him to pick it up. But in this case, there's no Ransom Stoddard to intervene and prevent bloodshed. That's okay. Kerry can take Bush in a fistfight any day.

Labels: davenport, radio

Another eBay purchase arrived today: the S.F. Seals "Baseball Trilogy" EP, purchased for a mere $2.00 plus shipping. Add this to some heretofore undiscovered baseball-related songs that I recently purchased from the iTunes Music Store, and we're going to have quite the "baseball music" playlist. Among those songs: a 1948 Pittsburgh-centered version of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," a song about Ozzie Smith called "The Wizard of Oz" (of course), Belle & Sebastian's "Piazza, New York Catcher" (finally), and Christine Lavin's "Ballad of a Ballgame" (which is technically about softball, but it's an amusing enough song that I'll give it a pass).

Original comments...

Cushie: I don't know if you've seen Belle and Sebastian since the album with Piazza, New York Catcher came out. I saw them a few weeks ago and it turns out that song now has a call and response section.

This was in London, so you can't really assume that the crowd knew all about Piazza, but when the line "Mike Piazza, New York Catcher, are you straight or are you gay?" rang out, the synchonized response, in time to the music was "Gay!" I was highly amused.

Cushie: PS. Can you post your baseball playlist? Could either do an iTunes Mix or export it from iTunes so we can see what you've found.

Dan: Jim -- it's a capella, but Jonathan Richman has a lovely little thing about Walter Johnson (called.. "Walter Johnson") on, I think, "You Must Ask the Heart"

"All through baseball, he was loved and respected. Was there bitterness in Walter Johnson? Well, it was never expected")

Jim: I've got that Jonathan Richman song already. I can't turn down the request of someone named Cushie, so I'll post the full baseball playlist in a bit. (I can't do an iMix, because not all the items are on the iTunes Music Store.)

Labels: music

Warning: Those of you tired of reading about the Cardinals might want to skip this post. It's long. I can't imagine anyone could be tired of reading about the team with baseball's best record, but then again, I can't imagine anyone not finding Dick Cheney repulsive, and he's married. And Vice President.

Last night's Cards-Giants game was everything a nationally televised game should be: Two good pitchers with differing styles (Jason Schmidt and Woody Williams), two of the game's best sluggers (Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols), and two of the game's best teams in one of baseball's prettiest ballparks. And it lived up to it, with the Cardinals winning 6-1, their margin of victory fattened in the late innings on a Giants bullpen that's been as reliable lately as the Bridge of San Luis Rey. Most of the game was spent with the score 2-1 Cardinals, making every pitch--especially those to a certain lefty--fraught with peril.

The great moments in the game were primarily one-on-one moments, batter versus pitcher. There were no particularly great defensive plays or baserunning heroics; the fun was in watching the power of Jason Schmidt and the guile of Woody Williams matched up against the batting eyes and hitting smarts of the likes of Bonds and Pujols.

Some highlights from that:

1) In the first inning, with Edgar Renteria on base, Pujols faced Schmidt. What followed was as pure a power vs. power battle as you'll ever see. Schmidt brought the 95-mph heat just above the belt, Pujols swung as hard as humanly possible, and he swung right through it. Stacey and I actually gasped. The next pitch was a little higher, around the shoulders, and Pujols couldn't lay off. But you can't hit that pitch, even if you're Albert Pujols*. Then, in a textbook demonstration of how to pitch, Schmidt struck Pujols out on an off-speed pitch that started thigh-high, then dropped to the dirt. It was Pujols's 29th strikeout of the year, to keep pace with his 29 home runs.
The next pitch Schmidt threw, to Rolen, was deposited far beyond the wall in dead center. That's the second time in a couple of weeks that Rolen has followed a Pujols strikeout with a long first-pitch homer. Maybe catchers need to make going to the mound a regular step following a Pujols strikeout., if only to remind the pitcher not to throw a first-pitch fastball.

2) For a couple of years, statheads online have been arguing whether teams might be walking Barry Bonds too often, in a way that's counterproductive. After all, the argument goes, if you walk him every time, he makes no outs. If you pitch to him, he makes four or five outs out of ten atbats. Maybe it's worth the home runs that he hits to get those outs. The Cardinals seem to be the only people testing this theory. This post at Redbird Nation covers the last two years of the strategy. His take: Cards come out ahead, but just barely.
I don't mind the intentional walk, but last night's four Bonds at-bats did remind me of what automatically walking Barry takes away from the game. Four times Bonds batted, and four times, the Cardinals came right at him:
a) In the first, Bonds--knowing the Cardinals were going to challenge him, just barely got under the first pitch, an outside fastball, and drove it to the warning track, and John Mabry's glove.
b) In his second at-bat, Bonds swung at the first pitch again, a fastball that made his eyes light up--then cut in a bit at the last second to jam him, a beatiful pitch that became an infield popup.
c) In his third trip, Bonds fouled off two, took two, then fouled off four straight, a variety of pitches, from a couple of inside fastballs to an outside slider to a hanging curveball that he just missed crushing. Finally, on the eleventh pitch of the at-bat, he flied out to the weird angle 420 feet away in right where home runs go to die.
d) In his last at-bat, the only time in the night when Bonds didn't represent the tying or go-ahead run, round, effective lefty (and Chicago native) Ray King faced him. Bonds took a strike on a tough slider, fouled one off, took a ball low, then drove a pitch into McCovey Cove that, like a slalom skier missing a gate, went for naught because it was on the wrong side of the foul pole. Then King jammed him inside and got a grounder to Pujols.
They were four of the most fun at-bats I've seen all year. Bonds didn't swing and miss even once, and he took very few pitches, for him. It really was baseball at its best, and the Cardinals came out on top--this time.

3) And speaking of good at-bats: I love good-hitting pitchers. Woody Williams, hitting better than .260 on the year, last night had a single in the second inning, but that wasn't his best at-bat of the night. In the 7th, he worked Schmidt for ten pitches, including four fouls with two strikes, before finally being blown away by a fastball. Those ten pitches, pushing Schmidt to 118 for the night, were instrumental in getting Schmidt out of the game before the 8th inning and bringing on the Giants bullpen.

All in all, a great game. And we're less than three weeks away from our trip now!

*I'm often surprised that hitters swing at the high fastball. It must just look too good to resist, even though you know it's not good for you, like a deep-fried Twinkie. In little league, I was so short that my coach, Eugene Lindsey, instructed me to take pitches until I got a strike. I dutifully did so, and occasionally I would draw a walk. Most of the time, though, the first strike would be called and I, freed from all shackles, would blindly hack at whatever came my way. So I don't have a lot of experience trying to lay off shoulder-high fastballs. Maybe some of the more accomplished ballplayers in the audience can weigh in on the seductiveness of the high heat.

Original comments...

Timmy: You're blog is great...it's good to see dedicated baseball fans, willing to travel the country...I recently flew out to Chicago to visit Wrigley (Pujols had 3 HRs) and Boston to visit Fenway (3rd visit to Wrigley, 1st to Fenway), and it's an experience I'll never forget...good luck on your trip (too bad you can't see a Ranger's game...the Ballpark is one of the nicer ones) http://getslaughtered.blogspot.com

Jim: Thanks, Timmy! If we do another trip in 2005 (or beyond), I definitely want to try to get to the parks in Texas. The Ballpark does look nice in the pictures I've seen of it, and since I'm a railfan, I know I'll enjoy the orange-powered steam locomotive in Houston.

Jason: I've learned you can deep-fry a Twinkie, but you can't deep-fry a Hostess cupcake.

Levi: Thanks for the kind words, Timmy.

One thing I forgot to mention: last night was only the fourth time this season that Bonds hasn't reached base in a game he played.

stacey: levi pointed out the row of rubber chickens that fans have strung up at the giants' ballpark to represent the number of times barry has been walked (intentionally, i think) this season. wow, that is a lot of chickens.

stacey: here we go: http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/sf/news/sf_news.jsp?ymd=20040620&content_id=776287&vkey=news_sf&fext=.jsp

Jason: You can deep-fry a chicken. But I dunno about deep-frying a rubber chicken.

Labels: Albert Pujols, barry bonds, Cardinals, edgar renteria, giants, jason schmidt, john mabry, ray king, scott rolen, woody williams

Jason, Jenn, and Cat came over to my place today to watch Greg Maddux go for his 300th win, mainly because Cat is a big Greg Maddux fan who is bereft of WGN. In a secret ceremony involving Hostess Baseballs, I named them honorary hangers-on for the trip, especially if Cat ever remembers to visit this web site.

Now, here's what happened here in July: the most visits came on Monday, July 12th, with July 13th right behind. Clearly, everyone was very interested in my Yankee Stadium pictures. The lightest day was July 17th, a Saturday. The busiest day of the week was Friday, although that's skewed by the fact that there were five Fridays (and Thursdays) in July, and only four of the other weekdays.

The most popular hour was, once again, the hour Levi gets to work (that's what it says on the statistics page now). The most "foreign" visitors came from .au (Australia). Uchicago.edu was the domain with the most visits. Covad.net (me at home) would have beat it slightly, although it's likely that I wasn't the only visitor coming through covad.net.

Interesting searches from the past month: "mcsweeney's fantasy baseball," "dierdre pujols," "all star game burned out bulbs," "chip carey quotes," and "jeremy sumpter in foul ball."

Original comments...

maura: there weren't many mlb.com visits?

maura: maybe i'm just not aware that i now have a job where i am actually (shock horror!) BUSY AT WORK.

Jim: Does mlb.com perhaps get its Internet connectivity from Verizon? That's the only New York-looking thing that shows up as having been a frequent visitor.

Labels: admin, cathryn humphris, greg maddux, jason kaifesh, jenn carney