Tag: Baseball

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Five Nights in May

When I was 18 my cousin Mike and I had plans to see every major league baseball stadium in America.  There were 28 teams at the time – the Rockies and Marlins were added when I was a senior in college – and we were going to borrow a motor home and spend our summer driving across the country.  We didn’t make the trip, of course, to my regret (another trip I regret not taking: floating, with my cousin Joey, the Walker River from its source in the Sierra Nevada Mountains to its terminus at the base of the Wassuk Range near Hawthorne, Nevada.  Still time for that one).

Whatever stopped us?  I don’t remember.  I suspect money, bravery, lack of a motor home.  Perhaps a girl or two.  But I have, in those twenty years since 1989, slowly ticked America’s baseball stadiums off my list.  I remember them all: the cavernous Metrodome, its awful gymnasium-feel compensated for by Raul Mondesi, cannon tattooed on his right arm, roving right field; Yankee Stadium, her welcoming denizens telling the Twins fans – a pastoral family of four – to “sit the f**k down you corn-eating f**cks,”; Turner Field in Atlanta where my friend Jeff and I were able to sell tickets for the seats next to us to two lovely coeds who later beat the snot out of us at pop-a-shot; Citizen’s Bank Park in Philadelphia against the rival Mets, the stadium electric everywhere except right next to me, my girlfriend at the time knowing this is it; the hallowed ground of Wrigley Field, in my outfield seats early enough to get a little buzz going and to cheer Sammy Sosa as he sprinted to centerfield and back, finding pure joy in the sunshine and ivied walls and  camaraderie of the bleachers (the same fans would constantly remind Sammy – no brain surgeon – of how many outs there were).

Nothing reflects American cities, and her citizens, like a baseball stadium.  The NFL may be the biggest money-maker, but the stadiums are generic affairs, interchangeable monstrosities housing interchangeable 120 x 53 yard fields treaded upon by superhumans unlike you and me and occupied, for most of the league’s cities, just eight days a year.  Sometimes they host soccer games.  Blech.

But baseball stadiums are different.  They are personal, revered.  They are America’s churches, our young nation’s versions of Westminster Abbey and the Arc de Triomphe and the Parthenon.  Fenway Park in Boston was built in 1912, Wrigley in 1914.  And it’s no coincidence all the new stadiums are built to look old, classic, rustic.  Even the field dimensions are personal, and no two in America are the same.  I have seen twenty-two of them since that failed summer plan, and because I have been blessed with canceled classes for the next four days, this week I will see three more as I visit five stadiums in five nights: Kansas City, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Chicago, and Des Moines (so it’s not a major league team, but it is between Chicago and home).

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Albert Pujols, the Poverty Line, and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Being excited about Major League Baseball in the first week of May is equivalent to being excited about your one boring friend’s New Year’s resolution to “really spice things up this year.”  But what if he really meant it?  What if he did something to prove it?  What if he jumped out of an airplane, or decided to walk across Utah, or invented heelies for adults and then cruised around the mall?  Forget the creepy factor – would you stay and watch?  Would you congratulate him for his bravery?

You would if you were Kansas City and your boring friend was the Royals.  For game one – a Monday night in KC (a school night!) – 22,000 fans not only stayed the duration to watch Zach Grienke pitch a 6 hit, 10 strikeout, complete-game shutout against the White Sox, but gave him a standing ovation both after the 8th inning and before the ninth and didn’t sit down until he finished getting hugs and high-fives from his teammates after the game.  Grienke threw his second-to-last pitch 95 miles an hour, prompting the crowd to erupt once again and putting a smile on my face that didn’t leave until I headed for my car.

This is baseball.  I can admit that it might not be a sport (if you can smoke and play it, it’s probably a recreation.  Plus it’s a haven for professional athletes possessing that rare combination of fat and weak – google Bartolo Colon, Matt Stairs, Sidney Ponson, David Wells, Antonio Alfonseca, John Kruk), but watching the game being played correctly – seeing a diving grab up the middle, a back handed flip for a double play, a hitter absolutely baffled by a change up, a ball hit so hard you know, you just know, it’s gone as soon as it comes off the bat, well that’s a beautiful thing.  A thing so beautiful it brings me together with Emo teens sporting awful forward swept hair dos and wearing spandex-laced denim jeans and converse All Stars; young couples wearing matching Royals jerseys, “Soria” scrawled across the back; old women using walkers with punctured tennis balls cushioning the supports; that girl wearing the “shuck me, suck me, eat me raw” t-shirt; and kids, kids everywhere – that is a beautiful thing.  A necessary thing.

On the way out of town, driving I-70 East on a straight shot towards St. Louis I listened to a man call in to the Kansas City am radio sports station and share how he listened to the game with his son, them sitting in his truck outside his house because his “line of work keeps us right above the poverty line” and am radio was the only way he could experience a game; sharing that moment with his son and explaining to him what it meant for Zach Grienke to pitch a complete game shut-out, what it meant for 22,000 fans to not leave their seats on a Monday night – a school night! – in the first week of May, what it meant to him to have that moment of serendipity, bliss, and nostalgia because that’s what he did with his own dad, sit on the tool box in the back of his dad’s truck on his boyhood farm and listen to George Brett or Hal McRae hit bombs, listen to a crowd roar when Dan Quisenberry came in to finish the game.  This is baseball.

There is a man in St. Louis named Albert Pujols, and aside from the unfortunate pronunciation of his last name, he is revered by Cardinals fans as, perhaps, the second coming.  There are not many like him in the sport – Derek Jeter in New York probably; Barry Bonds a few years ago in San Francisco maybe – who command the respect and adoration of an entire city.  Albert Pujols, because of what he can do to a baseball, because he can spot the rotation of the threads on a ball less than three inches in diameter coming at him from 60 feet away at 90 miles an hour and can not only tell exactly where that ball is going to cross the plate but can hit it, absolutely murder it, sending it over the outfield fence and causing thousands upon thousands of people to leap from their seats in synonymous joy.  What is this?  What void does Albert Pujols fill in those lives, what is this thing he possesses that brings together people, old and young, bad clothes and good?  What is this thing that causes Bob from St. Louis to give me, unsolicited, $90 tickets along the third base line so I too can hang around for three and a half hours in order to share in this thing, watching Albert Pujols crush a baseball 370 feet in the bottom of the ninth inning, game out of reach but no one leaving just so they – we – can talk about him on the way back to our cars or busses or trains?

In the early 1940’s Abraham Maslow posed a theory that human beings have stratified needs, psychological needs causing you to first meet the necessities of life, air and food and water and sex and sleep, and not until these were met could you move onward and upward to things like security and health and friendship and intimacy, confidence and self-esteem, and not until you met these needs could you move to the top, to spiritualization and religion and morality.  But I disagree.  I don’t think it’s a pyramid, I don’t think it’s a scale.  There is something to Albert Pujols, to baseball, to watching Zach Grienke pitch a complete game shutout the first week of May, to sharing the roar of a crowd and the success of your home team as you sit in your old truck on your dirt farm with your son at your side, school night be damned, there is something fundamental to this feeling, this necessity, on par with the very necessities of life.  This is baseball.

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The High Life

The Gateway Arch rises from the banks of the Mississippi River in St. Louis, implausible and angled and silver and alien, instantly evoking in me memories of The White Mountains, a favorite childhood book about extraterrestrials come to subjugate Earth’s youth.  Designed in 1947 by Eero Saarinen (he of the TWA terminal at JFK; Washington Dulles Airport; and the “Tulip Chair.” Like on Star Trek.  You know the one) and built from 1963 to 1965, it is as wide at the base as it is tall, and it’s the tallest monument in America – at 630 feet about 80 feet taller than the Washington Monument and almost twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty.  Here I met a days-old college grad, on his way from Pennsylvania to California to be a back country guide at Yosemite; spied a cigarette smoking and Diet Coke drinking Amish couple; and chatted (listened, mostly) to a uniformly khaki and polo-dressed couple from St. George, Utah, returning to the Arch twenty years after their honeymoon (“the trees have grown so big!”).

You can stand on the ground, immediately under the Arch and staring upwards with your head rocked back so far it’s impossible to keep your mouth closed, or you can ride to the top in surreal, miniature and plastic sterile pods, folded up in a windowless egg with a man about my age wearing a flannel shirt, too-tight jeans and a Donald Duck wristwatch.  It truly is a marvel, and standing in the 17’ wide top of the Arch, looking down on the flooded river and surprisingly sleepy downtown, provides the proper motivation to think bigger than you really are, or should be.

So on my way east, in the beginnings of an off-and-on three day rainstorm and mulling over my doctor friend’s posit that “veterans and heroin addicts are impossible to kill,” I called the Cincinnati Reds office and asked them for a press pass for that night’s game.  I am a writer, no?  No, no, not a “blogger.”  A writer.  A reporter on life, just taking a little baseball and hotdogs and apple pie (and Guantanamo, and bailouts, and the False Reports of the Secularization of America! and right-to-life and Iowa Negotiated Hog Report and the Fairness Doctrine – the Midwest has a lot of a.m. radio) middle-of-America trip and thought I’d stop by your nice little stadium and then write a story about it. I have, like, 60 readers. Or so.

An optimist would assume the worst one could say is “no,” but Josh from the Reds, he no optimist, offered a much, much more thorough response.  “We don’t credential bloggers.  And you’re coming tonight?  You wouldn’t just show up at someone’s house and expect to be let in, would you.”  Not a “would you?” less Josh indicate an interrogative and an opportunity to respond, but would you as in who do you think you are and who do you think you’re talking to? And we don’t credential BLOGGERS.

Not credentialing bloggers is good policy, no doubt, but advance warning is necessary?  Seriously?  Are there no Mormons in Cincinnati?  No Jehovah’s?  No Girl Scouts, no Little League, no Amway?  I would – do – expect to be let in if I just showed up at someone’s house, and most people I know would probably let you in.  But lesson learned: prior to watching Bronson Arroyo give up 9 runs in three outs (that’s called karma, Josh from the Reds), I emailed the White Sox and changed my approach.  Not a blogger, but a writer for a website, and here’s my link, and I’m seeing five games in five nights, the last night in Des Moines (Des Moines!), and I don’t want access to players but maybe hang out with real writers and see what they do and how they do it and it would make a good story and there’s a war on, don’t you know?

I did not, in fact, invoke the “war clause,” but it was unnecessary, as Ray Garcia and Scott Reifert are not only optimists but are also Major League Baseball’s finest Vice President of Communications/Coordinator of Media Services and Champions of the Little Man and . . . they gave me a ticket.  And a media package, and access to batting practice where I could size up Carlos Quentin (he’s big) and A.J. Pierzynski (bigger) and even stand next to Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of both the White Sox and the Chicago Bulls and the 52nd richest man in America.  And I paid them back by ruining Mark Buehrle’s Perfect Game.

Not “perfect game,” as in the sun is shining but it’s not too hot and it’s not crowded so we can hang our feet over the seat in front of us and the beerman knows us by name and we can see perfectly Ichiro’s laser throw to third holding the runner at second and there’s a beautiful human being at your side and we just can’t stop smiling but perfect game as in Perfect Game.  As in

 

scorecard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and no walks and no errors and not even a sniff of Detroit’s batters figuring out Buehrle’s speed and timing and location.

Athletes in general are a superstitious lot, baseball players particularly so, and a Perfect Game is an untouchable, an unspeakable.  It has happened just 17 times in the 132 years of the sport; they are magical and to see one, to be in the presence of greatness, of such infinitesimal rarity would feel like that first time you were twelve was it? maybe eleven and jumped off a cliff, it seemed so high and you were so scared but you jumped anyway and plunged into the water, kicking like a madman to get to the top but doing your best to appear nonchalant, so nonchalant when you yelled at your buddy still on the cliff it’s easy don’t be a baby – just like that but better and I know I shouldn’t but I had to send a text to a friend anyway to let him know i’m in chic watching a perf game thru 6 and he rightly, rightly responded you just effed it up go get a beer.

But it’s a text! A text is not spoken, a text should not violate the rule, but the very next hitter hit the ball on a rope to the first baseman – he caught it for an out – and the next batter hit a double into the gap and then Buehrle walked two batters and the bases were loaded.  And I ruined Mark Buehrle’s perfect game.

Major League baseball stadiums are cathedrals and Perfect Games are unspeakables and Jerry Reinsdorf is the 52nd richest man in the United States but if it’s Middle America that you seek, you need go no further than the High Life Lounge in Des Moines, Iowa.  There are decent chain restaurants in just about every city in America, chain restaurants with good service, and good food, and a good atmosphere, places like The Rock Bottom Brewery or Old Chicago’s, but chains are, after all, by nature impersonal.

But there are also pseudo-chain, shadow-chain back-alley, dark corner, cracked sidewalk establishments in every town, disconnected commercially but a veritable network emotionally, spiritually, celestially, where it’s not that you don’t want to be seen, but rather don’t want it to seem like you want to be seen yet relish that moment when you can just let it slip out that you’re in the know: let’s meet at _____ and it’s that much richer if the invitee needs directions.  Bob Dobb’s in Tucson and the Cap Lounge in DC and the Beach Tavern in Tacoma and – you know the one in your own town.

The High Life sits on the corner of 2nd and Market in Des Moines and the $2 PBRs taste like holy water after shelling out $8 for keep the change beers at Kauffman, Busch, Great American, and US Cellular stadiums.  There is shag carpet on the floor and dirty brown formica covering the bar and black naugahyde stools pushed up to it.  It has eight taps visible, one each Old Style and Pabst Blue Ribbon, two Lite, three Miller High Life and one Guinness, off by itself at the end of the bar like an accountant at a teamster’s party.  The décor is late 70’s and the clientele not much later, and I wish I could tell you it’s been a Des Moines staple for that long, but it’s been around since . . . 2005.

Yet, it was a good beginning to the Iowa Cubs, because if the Cubby Bear on Addison puts you in the proper mindset for Wrigley, the High Life Lounge puts you in the proper mindset for AAA baseball.  Though just one step down from the bigs, and for many organizations just an hour or two down an interstate, the atmosphere at AAA baseball is closer kin to your kid’s little league game.

This is truly a family affair.  I heard a little girl in line next to me tell her mommy that man is wearing a purse (it’s a man-purse, honey, and don’t point at the man); bought a $12 ticket that let me sit anywhere in the park (even the cheapest $4 tickets are within foul ball souvenir territory); envied old couples bundled up in shared blankets; and watched eleven – eleven – First Pitches: two small children, a local congressman, three people appearing on behalf of the local ALS, a local boy-makes good with the World Champion Pittsburgh Steelers, and four others who threw out their First Pitches so quickly and anemically I failed to either hear their names or write them down.

And all of them, every last one, even the little girl who took a full two minutes and the announcer’s public encouragement to just throw it to the man in blue standing behind the plate, everyone of them was applauded roundly.  Is this baseball?  Or is this Iowa or anywhere else in the Midwest or America for that matter?  Every half inning had a contest, a throw-it-through the tires or musical chairs in the oversized blow-up baseball gloves or a scholarship raffle or little kids racing wearing huge, baggy clothes and both t-shirts and hotdogs shot out of a compressed air gun – hot dogs, and more hot dogs and more hot dogs and this is America.

All American sporting events start with the Anthem, but it is endemic to baseball.  It is usually performed well, sometimes especially so.  But occasionally, I think, it is superlative, and if done correctly it can do to you what that Perfect Game does to you, what that first post-cliff dive gulp of air or that random where did that come from? memory of that first really, really good kiss can do to you.  On this day, a cloudy, windy, slightly cold night in Des Moines, Iowa, a young fellow – challenged, I think; touched, exceptional, mentally retarded – played the American anthem on his Casio keyboard.  And it was beautiful.  And no one, not a soul, not a breeze, not a flap of flag or drop of cup or cough or awkward laugh escaped during this mistake-ridden rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, and I, after five days of baseball, and America, and occasional loneliness,            just             felt             good.