What You’ve All Been Waiting For: Two Johnny Damon Poems!

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?

Update on the apocalyptic aspects of the trip

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 😀

Detroit pictures

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…

Watch the watch

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?

Tiger Town

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.

St. Louis pictures

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…

Davenport pictures

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”)…

"If anyone asks, you’re two adults and two children."

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.

Bonus pictures from prior to the official start of the trip

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.

Mike Shannon, the Moon Man

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.”