Month: September 2004

And speaking of music

To give you a sample of the famous “Baseball-Related” iPod playlist, I’ve uploaded MP3 files of some of the radio station jingles included on it. There are links to them within the list on the Baseball Songs page. You probably haven’t heard these unless you were in the car with us (we didn’t play any of them on Maura’s show, because they mention — gasp — other radio stations).

If you only listen to one of them, make sure it’s “The Pirates Are What We’re All About” (from KDKA, Pittsburgh, 1980).

Original comments…

Toby: Awesome!!!

It’s like I’m 9 years old again, watching “Pops,” “The Cobra,” Omar Moreno, Tim Foli, “Scrap Iron,” Lee Lacy, Bill Madlock, Mike Easler, Ed Ott and Kent Tekulve all over again.

Thanks for the pleasant blast from the past.

Can’t get enough music?

Surprisingly (because I didn’t think we got quite enough traffic for Apple to care about us), baseballrelated.com is now an iTunes affiliate. So if you’re going to buy and download some songs, why not first click on the link at the bottom of this page, or the one at the top of the Baseball Songs page? Unfortunately, they don’t seem to have a way to link to specific tracks and get the affiliate credit (at least not yet), or I would have done that on the songs page. The other problem is that iTunes doesn’t have the two “Baseball’s Greatest Hits” CDs.

If we actually make any money from this, rest assured it will go towards retroactively paying for all those Hostess Baseballs we ate.

Original comments…

maura: the radio show playlist is here: http://www.wprb.com/printplaylist.php?show_id=1822

Vital statistics from the trip

Lowest price we paid for gas: $1.789 per gallon, at a Sunoco on the Ohio Turnpike.
Highest price we paid for gas: 85.9 Canadian cents per liter, at a Shell on Highway 401 in Ontario. ($2.498 U.S. per gallon, if I did the conversions correctly.)
Highest price we paid for gas in the U.S.: $2.259 per gallon, at an Exxon off I-287 just north of the New Jersey border. We were pretty close to “E,” which is why we didn’t try to make it all the way to New Jersey before filling up, and worried about making it to Princeton on time for Maura’s radio show, which is why we didn’t want to stop twice, to get a little gas in New York and then fill up in New Jersey.
Number of blisters I ended up with: 2 (heel of left foot and middle toe of right foot)
Things Levi said every time a song came up on my iPod: “Nice” or “This is on my iPod, too.”
Most exciting unexpected treat: Free Blue Bunny Bomb Pops at the game in Davenport.
Second most exciting unexpected treat: Free Nestlé Crunch With Peanut Butter candy bar for buying a 20-ounce Vanilla Coke at an Ohio Turnpike service plaza.
Most expensive hotel: Hilton Pittsburgh ($109 plus $24 parking).
Least expensive hotel: Travelodge Montreal Centre ($89 plus $13 parking, or about $78.50 U.S.).
Least expensive hotel, honorable mention: Travelodge Harrisburg ($72 plus $10 rollaway bed charge).
Strangest hotel room configuration: Travelodge Montreal Centre, with the two beds turned 90 degrees from each other and the TV hanging from the ceiling.
Last sign along the road in Ontario: “Construction 1.5km”
First sign along the road in Quebec: “Travaux 1km”
Most pleasant surprise involving an A&W restaurant: The A&W at the Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois, is a full-fledged restaurant, not just a stand in the food court, which means they use actual frosty mugs for root beer floats.
Best pinball performance: The Addams Family at Novelty Golf in Lincolnwood, Illinois (three games on one quarter).
Most unexpected safety message on the back of a truck: “A rolling ball is followed by a running child.”
Thing I found hardest to believe: Princeton University’s free visitor parking.
Cause of only wrong turn we made: The driving directions on Princeton’s web site don’t clearly indicate that Nassau Street is also New Jersey state highway 27.
Most crowded public transit vehicle: The outbound Green Line trolley in Boston, after it changed from a 2-car train to a 1-car train.
Thing that happened to Levi that I’m most glad didn’t happen to me: Booth clerks in both the Toronto and Montreal subways angrily tapping on the glass at him.
Best ticket disclaimer: “The Illinois Railway Museum is not a common carrier. Its rail operations are for demonstration purposes only.”
Best seats we had to pay for: Davenport.
Best seats we didn’t have to pay for: Pittsburgh and Cleveland, because just about any free ticket is a great seat.
Most annoying service charge: Toronto, which charged an extra $2.50 for tickets purchased at the Skydome ticket windows.
Places where good and pure Coca-Cola was served: St. Louis, Toronto, Montreal, Boston, Philadelphia.
Honorable mention for serving Dr Pepper along with Pepsi: Cleveland.
Special honorable mention for egalitarianism unusual despite having a captive audience: American Airlines, which serves Coke, Pepsi, and Dr Pepper.
Number of times we heard “God Bless America” during a 7th-inning stretch: 1 (in Cleveland, and the game still lasted only 1 hour and 56 minutes!)
Thing I wished I’d heard during a 7th-inning stretch: “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” in French, but it was only played in English at Olympic Stadium.
Most boring drive: Detroit to Toronto.
Only advantage to the most boring drive: Because of the use of kilometers instead of miles, the exit numbers seemed like they were increasing really, really fast!
Best doughnut: The Krispy Kreme raspberry-filled my co-worker Joe brought when he picked me up at the Burbank airport at the end of the trip. (Sorry, Tim Horton’s.)
Best use of a logo: The Indians’ “I,” which shows up on ballpark signs and other places; e.g., the ushers’ buttons say “How may ‘I’ help you?”, and the tickets read “‘I’ am a true fan!”
Only ballpark still ripping tickets instead of scanning them: Busch Stadium, St. Louis (presumably, they’ve already got the scanners ordered for the new Busch Stadium).
Team and stadium taking the theme a little too far: The Swing of the Quad Cities and John O’Donnell Stadium, where the restrooms are labeled “guys” and “dolls” and the ushers are called “stagehands.”
Team and stadium not taking the theme far enough: The Swing of the Quad Cities and John O’Donnell Stadium, where the mascots have nothing whatsoever to do with the theme, as far as we could tell.
Greatest Canadian TV moment: Flipping channels in Toronto, I happened upon Stephanie D’Abruzzo of “Avenue Q,” in a rerun of one of her “Pyramid” episodes. (It may have been on a Buffalo station, actually.)
Second-greatest Canadian TV moment: Flipping channels in Montreal, I happened upon a “Simpsons” episode dubbed in French. I quickly realized that it was the episode where Bart answers Mrs. Krabappel’s personal ad, and then realized that this episode is probably on all the time in Canada, since Gordie Howe is in it (or at least his picture).
Best newspaper subhead relating to a game we attended: “Batista entertains crowd,” (Montreal Gazette, August 26) relating to Tony Batista dashing to first base shortly after being hit in the helmet by a pitch.
Best comics page seen on the road: The Boston Globe.
Notable records from games we saw: Jeremy Bonderman, Detroit, 14 strikeouts (most K’s by a Tiger in 32 years); Frank Robinson, Montreal, 900th win as a major league manager; Joe Borchard, Chicago, 504-foot home run (longest HR in history of New Comiskey Park/U.S. Cellular Field); Indians vs. White Sox, game time 1 hour 56 minutes (shortest game in history of Jacobs Field).
Tightest-assed ushers: Miller Park (surprisingly).
Most unexpected item found in a rest area: Working music box, to promote a music box museum in Vermont.
Second-most unexpected item found in a rest area: New Hampshire state liquor store.
Biggest problem I had while driving: The cruise control buttons being in different places than on my car.
Biggest problem I had while Levi was driving: His bare feet.
Biggest pleasant driving surprise: Boston drivers didn’t live up to their reputation.
Biggest unpleasant driving surprise: Near-blinding thunderstorms in Michigan (which really shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise, since it was August).
Highest announced attendance: Brewers vs. Phillies, 40,367.
Highest proportional attendance: Tigers vs. Red Sox, 35,153 (the only sellout on our trip).
Lowest announced attendance: Wisconsin vs. Quad Cities, 3,349.
Second-lowest announced attendance: Phillies vs. White Sox, 5,747 (which apparently didn’t count people who got in on rain checks from the originally scheduled date, so there were more people in the stands than that).
Montreal announced attendance, which we were expecting to be lowest: 7,570.
Average attendance: 20,634.
Warmest game: Brewers vs. Phillies, 84 degrees.
Coldest game: Red Sox vs. Blue Jays, 68 degrees.
Average game temperature: 75 degrees.
Total number of home runs we saw: 26
Players we saw hit two home runs: Jason Bay, Pirates; Casey Blake, Indians.
Longest game: Red Sox vs. Blue Jays, 3:17.
Second-longest game: Dodgers vs. Expos, 2:58.
Shortest game: White Sox vs. Indians, 1:56.
Second-shortest game: White Sox vs. Tigers, 2:26.
Average game length: 2:42.
Number of states I passed through for the first time: 3 (Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts).
Number of stadiums I visited for the first time: 10 (only New Comiskey Park/U.S. Cellular Field was a repeat).
Number of big sandwiches I ate: 4 (turkey club at St. Louis Bread Company in downtown St. Louis; Schmitter at Citizens Bank Park; Primanti Brothers sandwich at PNC Park; meatball sub at Jacobs Field)
Number of hot dogs I ate: 5 (John O’Donnell Stadium; Olympic Stadium; Fenway Park; two at Miller Park)
Best hot dog: Miller Park, with mustard (the Secret Stadium Sauce is a little bit sweeter than I’d like)
Number of other sausages I ate: 2 (kielbasa at Comerica Park; cheddarwurst at U.S. Cellular Field)
Number of iced coffees Levi drank: a lot
Number of Hostess Baseballs we ate: a lot

Original comments:

maura: i now have the meth lab ‘mary worth’ on my fridge, btw.

Levi: Later this week, if I’m on the ball, I’ll get the ERA, BA, OBP, SLG, etc. for the teams we were rooting for and against and the combined figures.

‘Cause I know y’all are wondering.

sandor: Highest price we paid for gas in the U.S.: $2.259 per gallon, at an Exxon off I-287 just north of the New Jersey border.

This is a good thing. If you had filled up in Jersey, you would have likely forgotten about their “no one touches the pumps but us” rule and tried to put gas in your car ON YOUR OWN, God forbid. That’s what we did, thus earning the ire of all within scowling distance. We almost ended up in the nearest river because of it. Moral: best to fill up in Pennsylvania and drive right through.

Jim: I’ve got relatives in New Jersey, so I’ve filled up there before (or, rather, other people have filled my car up there before). Even with mandatory full-service, gas there is cheaper than the surrounding states.

Jason: But what about the poutine?!?!?!?

Jim: The poutine was delicious!

Eric J. Ritter: $1.79 is the best you could do for gas?

I just got off the phone with my parents, and they apparently pay $1.60 for gas in Alexandria, Minnesota, home of the Kensington Runestone.

Of course, Alexandria is nowhere near a major league stadium. So I’m not sure what my point is here.

If you’re ever in Alexandria, go to the Runestone Museum! Because it’s the only thing to do there! And it’s kind of amusing.

The price of gas in San Fransisco is currently, like, $5 a gallon. I joke. Because I do not honestly know. I take muni.

Jason: When in Alexandria, make sure to check out the Alexandria Beetles of the Northwoods League!

A certain something in the air

I apologize for being a couple of days late with this, but here you go:

Did you notice on Wednesday morning that the world was a bit brighter? The sky a bit more blue? The normally sad-eyed businessmen downtown walking with a bit of life in their step?

Maybe the pretty girl you see every day on the train raised her eyes over the top of her RedEye and flashed you a conspiratorial smile? Maybe a group of schoolkids on a field trip walked by your office window singing “Kumbaya“? Maybe the sweet strains of “Morning in Cartoonland” drifted your way across a meadow?

Ah, yes. For at least one day, America was a happier, sunnier, more hopeful place. The Yankees had lost, 22-0 the night before, the worst defeat in Yankee history. And to paraphrase Ernest L. Thayer, “Oh, everywhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright. The band is playing everywhere, and everywhere hearts are light.
And, everywhere men are laughing, and little children shout.”

Such wonderful times come so rarely, one must savor them. So raise a glass, baseball fans, Americans, humans. To home, to country, to Johnny Damon’s beard, to history!

The baseball-related coda

I’m home in North Hollywood.

On the flight from Dallas to Burbank, I was sitting in front of Lancaster Jethawks manager Wally Backman. I only knew this because he had a conversation with the 10-year-old unaccompanied minor sitting next to him, which included this exchange.

Wally: I had to go to Florida because I got in trouble.
Boy: What did you do?
Wally: I bumped an umpire.

The lesson here is that when you’re the manager of a Class A team, you have to fly coach to your disciplinary hearings.

More about the trip to come.

Original comments…

Dan: No. 6! Nice! Best drag bunter of the ’80s.

Jim: I didn’t realize he was a former Met at the time, because I didn’t recognize the name, and he didn’t go into his whole playing career with the kid (but he did say he had played with Barry Bonds in Pittsburgh in 1990). They talked more about the current state of the Diamondbacks — since the Jethawks are the D-Backs’ Class A team — and the kid’s Little League team.

Now, if he had been sitting next to me, I probably would never have known who he was, because he probably wouldn’t have tried to strike up a conversation with a 29-year-old who was listening to an iPod and reading the in-flight magazine article where Bernie Mac names a bunch of expensive restaurants in Chicago.

Milwaukee pictures

Hey, we were just at this game!…

Bernie Brewer’s slide into oblivion…

Visible at the lower left of the glass wall is a structure that we’re assuming is Bud Selig’s lair…

Brewers at bat…

Clock with neon bats for hands…

Racing sausages; on this night, the hot dog led wire to wire…

The final line…

Later, back in Chicago, Levi and Jim are still smiling about baseball…

And the last game

Stacey, illegally driving the rental car, met us at the Garfield stop on the Red Line, and within minutes, we were bound for Milwaukee. We had about two-and-a-half hours to make a one-and-a-half-hour drive, and, as they had been all along, the driving fates were with us, as we made Miller Park in plenty of time, navigating through the alluring commingled scents of sausage, beer, and cheese that are the City that Schlitz Made Famous.

To a one, the baseball fans I know–the low-rent, lovers of the run-down and worn that they are–loved Milwaukee’s former ballpark, County Stadium. It was, compared to the new Miller Park, small and homey, and the corrugated iron sheeting that composed its facade gave it a seemingly appropriate resemblance to a factory. Miller Park, on the other hand, is a new-style ballpark through and through. Wide concourses, lots of different stands selling lots of types of sausage, giant parking lots a marathon away from the gate, countless thousands of luxury boxes, and a tower where Bud Selig can sit and stroke his white Persian while sniggering and contemplating whether he should have his contract extended another decade. Even Bernie Brewer moved to a new, upscale home in Miller Park–against his will, I like to assume–his chateau with its front-door slide into the beer stein replaced by a high-end condo and a slide onto . . . a platform. Meanwhile, thee vegetarian food selections at Miller Park, are, as anyone with a passing knowledge of non-Madison Wisconsin would expect, not particularly distinguished or diverse. I had pizza, only discovering as we left that the Gorman Thomas stand would have sold me a Soy Dog, on which I could have put the famous–and mysterious–Stadium Sauce.

At least the sausage race continues, the Brewers still have the feel of a small-town team trying–and, usually, failing–to make good, and with the roof open, I have to admit that Miller Park isn’t that bad. We had great seats on the 8th row down the right field line, from which we had a wonderful view of plays on the infield, and a not-so-wonderful view of Craig Wilson’s shimmering golden locks in the outfield.

But, as Bart Giammatti said, though not meaning it quite so literally as it, sadly, turned out for him, the game is designed to break your heart, and the Brewers–with the able help of Daryle Ward–set about breaking ours with an efficiency any beer factory would envy. Their rookie starter, Ben Hendrickson, threw a good game, but a long home run by Daryle Ward in the second, and a second, longer home run by Ward in the seventh off a reliever gave the Pirates a 5-0 lead that the Brewers’ sadly slumbering offense couldn’t even begin to overcome. In the ninth, the Brewers scored a run off Jose Mesa, the Rungiver, on a triple and a sacrifice fly. The crowd erupted in joy, causing all four of us to look again at the scoreboard to reinforce our suspicions that, yes, that run did leave the Brewers still four back. But no one has ever said Wisconsinites don’t know how to celebrate the finer things in life, and a run is a run is a run, I suppose. I’d have raised it in solidarity, but there wasn’t time, as the Pirates quickly rang down the curtain on BRPA 2004’s winning streak.

But in this life, one savors the little victories, right? So as we drove back to our beloved Chicago, nearly running out of gas on the way, I thought of the ten games we did win, and of the exchange I overheard in the row in front of us. With one out in the Brewer ninth, a man who was at the game with another man and the other man’s ten-year-old son, said to his friend, “You want to go ahead and head out?” The friend replied, “Sure. It doesn’t matter to me.” “What about him?” asked the first man, indicating the child. “I’ll ask him.” Ask he did, and the boy said, “I’d like to stay. But do you want to go?” The man, seeing that he had raised his child in the ways of righteousness, said, “No, let’s stay.”

And stay they did. As I remember once hearing someone say, “See–everything in the world’s not made of toilet.” A fine game and a fine trip, surpassing all expectations. Thanks to everyone who came along, rooted with us, read the blog, or invented baseball all those years ago. And thanks especially to Jim, whose hard work and good company made the whole flawless trip possible. I recommend anyone who is considering any trip anywhere hire him. He’s worth the hefty price I’m sure he’d command.

Original comments…

thatbob: Last year when we went up to Miller Park, the traditional 7th inning stretch version of Beer Barrel Polka was replaced with a vote-by-applause version of some Usher or Nelly song that I couldn’t fathom because I’m some kind of old man. But this year, happily, Beer Barrel Polka was back, and I think overall the blaring, rocking stadium sound system was a little better behaved. (Of course we had spent the day being aurally assaulted at Comiskey, so my perceptions may have been skewed.)

The Brittish Rounders Society: You bloody Yanks didn’t invent anything. You stole the game from us!

The Native American Battagaway Society: You one to talk, paleface with bad teeth.

Jim: By the way, if it had been solely up to me, I would have chosen to root for the Pirates (because of my brief Pittsburgh-area residency). But I was just one out of four attendees at this game, and I didn’t want to press the issue.

It’s late, but here’s the Monday wrap-up: Game 1

After Sunday’s game, hospital we truly entered the home stretch of our trip, remedy getting back to the Rocketship in time for the late dinner Stacey had waiting for us Sunday night. In exchange, treatment we offered her the last of the Hostess Baseballs, a treat she declined. Bob ate it later, to no one’s surprise.

Monday morning dawned cloudy and gray, but who cares? We had survived eight nights in hotel beds without getting scabies or being devoured by bedbugs. We had survived nine days of road food without getting scurvy. Jim even ate all the vegetables that were put in front of him, which I hope will reassure his mother. So who cared that it looked rainy? Like Team USA Basketball, we were sure of our powers. Our luck would hold. Unlike Team USA Basketball, we were right, for the most part.

Needing to run 20 miles to keep up with my marathon training, I decided to run the sixteen miles to my office, plus a bit, then shower at the gym, go through my email for an hour, then head back north to Comiskey Park. Jim, demonstrating yet again that he’s by far the most sensible member of BRPA 2004, slept in, then he and Bob met me at the ballpark.

I suppose I should describe Comiskey Park. I’m guessing most of our legion of fans have been there, but a few words are in order in case. Those words are: sterile, boring, styleless, loud, and a right impressive ripping-off of the taxpayer. But for all that, I do think Comiskey is a bit better than the terrible reputation it has. The vertigo-inducing upper-deck seats are a bit better these days, as the team in the offseason replaced the top rows of them with a roof, and when there are 50,000 people in the park and the Sox are soul-destroyingly bad, it can be a fun place to see a ballgame or, apparently, attack a base coach.

Mondays at Comiskey Park are half-price days, and every Illinois resident should go to a couple a year, as they’re paying for them, via a shady deal the Sox signed when Illinois built the new ballpark for them whereby they only pay rent if they draw X large number of fans at full price in a season. Only about 5,000 of them decided to exercise that option Monday. Maybe they knew what Bob, Jim, and I didn’t: that the baseball on Monday would be of about half-price quality, too.

Entering this game, the White Sox were 7 for 67 with 20 strikeouts in 18 scoreless innings. Today, they fell behind early, made a couple of errors, ran the bases in extravagantly bad fashion, and just looked like a team that was determined to break BRPA 2004’s perfect rooting record. But then Joe Borchard hit a 504-foot home run, the longest in the history of New Comiskey (Bob, Jim, and I didn’t think it was that long, but we don’t have the official How-far-did-it-fly calculator, so what do we know?), the Phillies, taking their defensive cues from the Pale Hose, botched a rundown and had their pitcher and catcher trip over one another while failing to field a bunt, and suddenly, the Sox were leading 9-6. It was about the most lackadaisical and sloppy 9-6 attainment of a 9-6 lead that you’ll ever see, but a lead’s a lead.

Fan favorite Shingo Takatsu entered the game in the 9th, to the joy of the 5,000 faithful and the five camera operators, who got a chance to put their finding Asian fans in the stands skills to the test. He promptly surrendered a 2-run homer to Jim Thome, but homers by Thome are like cat barf: you never want them around, but once a while, there they are, and you just hope they don’t ruin anything. Takatsu buckled down and finished out a 9-8 Sox win, and suddenly, we were 10-0.