Category: Uncategorized

The road trip: an introduction

What is it about “baseball” and “road trip” that seem to go together? The first “improved” roads in the United States (for bicyclists) go back to the beginnings of organized baseball. The Model T goes back to when the World Series was first getting started. Numbered U.S. highways go back to Babe Ruth’s home run record. The Interstate highway system goes back to Roger Maris’s home run record. The first oil embargo goes back to the Oakland A’s dynasty of the early 1970s. And certainly it’s no coincidence that, in 1998, Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs to match Interstate 70, which runs through St. Louis, while Sammy Sosa hit 66 home runs to match U.S. 66, which used to start (or end) in Chicago. (Unfortunately, Barry Bonds ruined everything by only hitting 73 in 2001, a number which has nothing to do with any highways in the Bay Area. If only he’d hit 80, or 101…but that would have required some serious steroid usage.)

Levi and I are doing a road trip this year. The basic plan: I will fly to Chicago to meet up with Levi. Then, since he doesn’t own a car, we will rent a vehicle. The “ground rules” for this trip are that it will involve a Red Sox home game (at Levi’s request), an Expos home game (could be their last season in Montreal), and a Pirates home game (I lived in Pittsburgh during what turned out to be the waning days of Three Rivers Stadium, and I want to see their new home).

But we’re also going to see as many other games as possible in a short period of time. Thus, once the preliminary schedules came out, I went through the schedules of the possible teams involved, drawing lines on graph paper to show when each team would be home (dates on the X axis, teams on the Y axis), and managed to come up with four potential itineraries to present to Levi. And they are…

Itinerary #1 (9 games in 10 days, 15 different teams)


Saturday May 22     Astros at Reds (night)
Sunday May 23       Brewers at Pirates (day)
Monday May 24       Angels at Blue Jays (night)
Tuesday May 25      Braves at Expos (night)
Wednesday May 26    A's at Red Sox (night)
Thursday May 27     (DAY OFF)
Friday May 28       Braves at Phillies (night)
Saturday May 29     A's at Indians (night)
Sunday May 30       Orioles at Tigers (day)
Monday May 31       Astros at Cubs (probably day)

Itinerary #2 (10 games in 10 days, 15 different teams)


Saturday July 17    Brewers at Cubs (probably day)
Sunday July 18      Yankees at Tigers (day)
Monday July 19      Expos at Pirates (night)
Tuesday July 20     Marlins at Mets (night)
Wednesday July 21   Blue Jays at Yankees (night)
Thursday July 22    Twins at Red Sox (day)
Friday July 23      Marlins at Expos (night)
Saturday July 24    Devil Rays at Blue Jays (late day)
Sunday July 25      Royals at Indians (probably day)
Monday July 26      Cubs at Brewers (night)

Itinerary #3 (9 games in 9 days, 12 different teams)


Sunday August 22    Pirates at Cardinals (day)
Monday August 23    White Sox at Tigers (night)
Tuesday August 24   Red Sox at Blue Jays (night)
Wednesday August 25 Dodgers at Expos (night)
Thursday August 26  Tigers at Red Sox (night)
Friday August 27    Brewers at Phillies (night)
Saturday August 28  Cardinals at Pirates (night)
Sunday August 29    White Sox at Indians (probably day)
Monday August 30    Pirates at Brewers (night)

Itinerary #4 (9 or 10 games in 9 or 10 days, 16 or 18 different teams)


Monday August 30    Astros at Reds (night)
Tuesday August 31   Mariners at Blue Jays (night)
Wednesday Sept. 1   Cubs at Expos (night)
Thursday Sept. 2    Angels at Red Sox (night)
Friday Sept. 3      Orioles at Yankees (night)
Saturday Sept. 4    Mets at Phillies (night)
Sunday Sept. 5      Frederick Keys at Wilmington Blue Rocks
Monday Sept. 6      Twins at Orioles (probably day)
                       OR Brewers at Pirates (late day)
Tuesday Sept. 7     Brewers at Pirates (night)
                       OR Royals at Tigers (night)
Wednesday Sept. 8   Royals at Tigers (night)

And so now, the ball is in Levi’s court (whoops, wrong sport there with that metaphor) to pick one of these. Since his favorite team is the Cardinals, I’ve got a feeling he’ll go for #3, but maybe he’ll surprise me. Obviously, it partly depends on the amount of vacation time involved, and #1 and #4 both include holidays while #2 and #3 do not. I actually have reasons for liking all four of these itineraries, so I don’t really care which one eventually gets chosen.

Just as long as Levi hurries up and picks, since tickets for some teams go on sale in February (except for the Yankees, which are already on sale).

Original comments…

thatbob:“I actually have reasons for liking all four of these itineraries.”

I wish you would share those reasons.

Whetting Levi's appetite again

Here’s 50% of the items that came in the mail today (in the most nondescript envelope ever, with an indication that it contained “your requested dated material”)…

Yes, it’s vertical, which I had previously thought was an orientation reserved for football and hockey season tickets. (Bleacher section 36 is in dead center field, if anyone’s curious. Looking forward to seeing Johnny Damon’s back!)

The Phillies don't think different

Actually, as it turns out, that error message is the modern equivalent of “your telephone is not compatible with the Bell System,” or something like that. I thought the problem was that the Phillies’ web site was too busy, but the problem seems to have been that their ticketing process was incompatible with Macintosh web browsers. Everything worked perfectly on my PC at work, so we now have 12th-row upper-deck seats to see the Phillies vs. Brewers at the new Citizens Bank Park.

You know, I didn’t even mention the Fox Sports Net promo in which the burglars are ransacking a house, but stop and put all the stuff back after they spy…some Devil Rays autographed collector’s items. At the end of the spot, the burglars leave a note: “Sorry about the window.”

I’m pretty sure this is a promo used in every FSN region, with the only difference being a different team’s merchandise in the point-of-view shot. But, really, shouldn’t Fox Sports Net Florida have also re-edited it so that the note read “Sorry about the Devil Rays”?

But it’s all moot, as far as I’m concerned, now that I informed a DirecTV “entertainment consultant” of my sincere desire to not have my DirecTV bill go up by $35.00 a month after my introductory period ends. I think it’s a little creepy that they can take away channels instantly while you’re still on the phone with them (it seems to take hours, if not days, for the cable company to make changes). Kind of makes you wonder what else they can take away.

Actually, as I understand it, the MLB pay-per-view package is probably going to be free for the first week of the season, so maybe I’ll end up watching a Devil Rays regular-season game, assuming every other game being played simultaneously is in a rain delay (or snow delay) and my TiVo has failed to record any “Match Game” episodes recently.

I’ve been thinking about how I would go about promoting the Devil Rays, if that were part of my sentence for some particularly heinous crime.

It’s tough. You can’t try to convince people that you’re going to win, because they’ve been watching for six years and they know which Sandberg you have on your team.

You can’t tell them about hope for the future, because even a casual fan can see that there’s no hope in the near future of passing the Orioles, let alone the Blue Jays, Red Sox, then the Yankees.

And you can’t use the Wrigley Field approach, selling drunken fun in the sun, because you play here.

You can’t even sell the team on the nine games they play against the Yankees at home, the only games that the mostly-100-year-old retirees from New York City who comprise your market care about. After all, it’s only nine games, and the Devil Rays know they’re bound to lose seven or eight of them.

So maybe the Devil Rays do have the right idea with the silly ad Jim described of the kids discussing the merits of Tino Martinez and Aubrey Huff. You’ve got to go for the kids. But, as in most activities, the D-Rays are going about this the wrong way. Here’s the text of my radio ad, which would run on, like, Radio Disney.

“Kids. Are you stuck visiting at Grandma’s house with NOTHING to do but watch Wheel of Fortune? And you can’t go anywhere because you can’t drive and our public transit system is nonexistent? And there are no other kids in the neighborhood because the only kids in Florida are at Tomorrowland right now?

I bet your Grandma doesn’t even have any video games.

That’s right. Being at Grandma’s sucks. It might be the only thing that sucks more than . . . . YOUR TAMPA BAY DEVIL RAYS!

Get Grandma to drop you off at the ballpark today! Tropicana Field: it’s the best place in Tampa to run around like a deranged orphan!”

I suppose I should give my email in case the Devil Rays want to give me a consulting contract. Oh, and the ad should be read in a wacky, kid-friendly voice.

Oh, those poor Devil Rays. You know it’s bad when your commercial is based on a premise (two kids being Devil Rays fans) that is so unlikely that even that Cadillac ad using Led Zeppelin seems more realistic.

But maybe that’s their idea. They want to distract viewers with the only premise less likely than the Rays winning 75 games?

Because my DirecTV introductory offer is up in a few days, I’m going to be canceling their sports channel package (turns out it’s not going to be worth $12.00 a month to be able to watch “The Best Damn Sports Show Period” on 15 different channels). However, I took advantage of it one last time today to watch some spring training baseball…Tigers vs. Devil Rays, from “Progress Energy Park, home of Al Lang Field,” as the announcers were careful to say.

During one commercial break, there was a promo for Devil Rays tickets: two kids on the beach arguing about who’s better, Aubrey Huff or Tino Martinez. “Tino’s the man!” “Aubrey’s the man!” Meanwhile, there’s sand being thrown on them; eventually, the scene widens to show that Pansy the Wuss-Wuss Fish has constructed a giant replica World Series trophy out of sand. Then one of the kids yells, “We’re trying to make sandcastles here!”

Oh, yeah, Rays 11, Tigers 3, but to be fair, it seemed like the Rays were using a lot of actual players, while the Tigers were using a lot of players with uniform numbers above 70, including some 3-digit numbers.