Saturday, August 21, 2004

John O'Donnell Stadium, Davenport, Iowa
Swing of the Quad Cities 1, Wisconsin Timber Rattlers 0

Jim and Levi collaborating: 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.)

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, where the desk clerk said to Jim as he was checking in, "If anyone asks, you're two adults and two children." (Apparently, the rate quoted by the AAA web site was actually a family rate.)

Pictures

The John O'Donnell Stadium 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")...



Trip report: Ahead to Part 3; Back to Part 1
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