Author: Jim Ellwanger

Lots of zing, lots to sing, everything’s gonna swing, so get ready, here I go

I’m almost all packed. This is because tomorrow I have to get a haircut, visit an ATM, and go to a They Might Be Giants concert, although probably not in that order. In fact, the less money I have at the concert, the less likely I am to buy a bunch of T-shirts. Come to think of it, I should probably show up at my job tomorrow also.

Hey, remember this post from way back in June? I’ve got all that stuff, and more, including a mini pencil sharpener that was mentioned here a few days ago, and my Kroger brand nail clippers (safely ensconced in the suitcase that will be checked, of course). The coins are neatly rolled up, and may confound the security at Bob Hope Airport. I’ve got Tigers and Brewers tickets now, too, and those will be kept very close to me at all times (i.e., they’re safely ensconced in the small carry-on bag). I even have a very important accessory I forgot about in that post: the USB cable to connect my digital camera to a computer. I’m hoping we can figure things out to put a few pictures up here as we go along.

I even got a working VCR since I wrote that post, and I have two videotapes, which include a baseball-related programming item and some game shows.

I’m not bringing a jacket, but I am bringing a sweatshirt, just in case. I hear it was only in the 20s in Toronto today! (That’s a bad Fahrenheit/Celsius joke.)

I think that’s it, unless someone can come up with something we haven’t thought of. Obviously, if we have forgotten something, it should be fairly easy to buy any number of items in Chicago, or in many of the cities we’ll be visiting.

Original comments…

Levi: You’re bringing a videotape of Tiger Town? Or is it Rookie of the Year?

thatbob: Ooh, I hope you have _The Life and Times of Pansy The Wuss-Wuss Fish Who Couldn’t Keep It Up_. Bob Costas narrates.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

The time of the Cardinals-Pirates game on Saturday, August 28, being changed from 7:05 to 1:20? What force could possibly make that happen?

Thanks to Maura’s co-worker Allison for giving us the heads-up, via Maura passing the information along to us. Levi and I consulted via phone, and we’ll still be able to make all the games on the schedule, but now we won’t be able to spend the night with my aunt and uncle in beautiful Yardley, Pennsylvania (actually, they live in Lower Makefield Township but have a Yardley mailing address). We’ll still see them at the Phillies game, though, of course. Instead, we’ll be spending the night in Harrisburg, and Maura has promised us breakfast at Waffle House.

P.S. to Levi: Yes, I’ll be arriving on Thursday.

I don’t know what I was worried about

A scan of a ticket is worth a thousand words:

Also in the envelope was the promised $20 in concession vouchers, in the convenient form of four $5 vouchers. That should make it easier for the people who want to eat sausages with Secret Stadium Sauce to purchase them, and if anyone wants to search the catacombs of Miller Park for the stand that reluctantly sells veggie dogs, well, Levi can go off by himself and try to find it.

In other news, I discovered that the necessary files to operate an iTrip are freely available for download, so I will have no reason to connect my iPod to Levi’s computer.

And finally, here’s a quote from a Usenet newsgroup that I felt desperately needed to be posted here: “One of the funnier stories on ESPN radio was Rob Dibble talking about how he checked into a hotel and misunderstood the instructions on the TV screen — he thought he was ordering a block of adult films. The only thing more embarrassing than having the adult films show up on your bill is having to call down and ask the nice girl to please take the block off so you can watch some.”

Original comments…

Toby: Just don’t go to the concession stand during the 7th inning stretch while they’re having the sausage race. Randall Simon is back with the Pirates, you know… There could be another incident…

maura: actually, he was released over the weekend, shortly after he found his SUV riddled with bullets.

Levi: Now, I don’t get releasing Simon right now. You don’t save anything on his salary at this point. You don’t really save an important roster space, because in two weeks you can call up everybody and his grandma. And you lose the fun of having Randall Simon on your team.

I could have understood releasing him the minute you signed him–coming to your senses and just getting rid of him so somebody else, anybody else, could play first base for you. But now that you’ve carried him all this way, why not hold onto him the rest of the year?

Toby: What kind of season is his grandma having in A ball, anyway?

thatbob: When I was freeloading with Angie in San Diego for the librarian convention, we made the same mistake with the “Adult Block” feature. Except we weren’t actually trying to order the adult block, we just wanted to look at the funny movie titles. Really!

It draws ever closer

(I’m referring to the trip, not Hurricane Charley, in the headline.)

Posted in advance of the weekend: Levi, can you think of any preparations you think I may have forgotten about, some items you want me to bring that I need to dig up in my apartment, or at a store? Things are going to be pretty busy in my life for the next few days, up until the time I leave for the trip on Thursday, so I’m hoping something doesn’t slip my mind.

Original comments…

Levi: Only this: I’m considering replacing my iPod radio adaptor because it’s an aftermarket model that chews through AAA batteries like the Devil Rays chew through AAA players. Your iPod and mine, I think, are the same model now, or at least the same time period, so the Apple one ought to work with both, right?

And you don’t already have a transmitter, right?

Jim: If your iPod has the rectangular “dock connector” on the bottom (which means it would also have the “touch wheel” and the four buttons in a line above it), then any accessories should work equally well with both.

Apple doesn’t make an FM radio transmitter for the iPod, so they’re all aftermarket. Here’s what’s available, although I don’t know which of these are most readily available (i.e., they’d have them at the Apple Store, Best Buy, or someplace like that). Although I’ve heard good things about the Griffin iTrip, it would be problematic to use with both our iPods because of the bizarre way in which works, but it looks like any of the others should work fine. If it were me, I might look at the Belkin TuneCast II, plus their Mobile Power Cord to run it off car DC power, but that might be a little pricey for you.

If we’re lucky, the rental car will have a cassette deck, and all we’ll need is the cassette adaptor I’m going to be bringing (it’s what I use in my car, which is why I don’t have a transmitter already).

Levi: The Griffin iTrip is what Tony has, now that I see the photo. It’s so well-designed that I thought it was an Apple accessory.

I’ll probably try to pick one up next week, if only because lately my luck with rental cars and tape decks has only been about fifty-fifty. And they look at you really funny when you request a tape deck instead of a CD player.

Jim: To use the iTrip, you put audio files onto your iPod representing the various FM frequencies, and play one of them whenever you want to change stations. I’d be a little bit reluctant to attempt to download the files to my iPod from your computer, because of the ever-present danger of accidentally telling your computer to sync my iPod with your music library, thus wiping out all of my music for the rest of the trip.

Levi: Nah, my computer is never set up to automatically synch. That has always seemed like a really useless feature to me–my home computer is always going to have far more songs on it than my iPod can hold, and if I can’t take ten minutes to put what I want on there, I must be a heartless CEO or something, and then wouldn’t I only want, like the Chariots of Fire theme?

Jim: I do auto-sync because 33 gigs of music on the computer plus a 30-gig iPod (actually 27-point-something gigs of actual space) would equal me spending me all my time micromanaging my music collection if I didn’t auto-sync. Besides, it’s fun coming up with the various playlists and smart playlists to populate the iPod with exactly what I want.

It looks like I’m going to have only about 15 MB (yes, megabytes) of space left on the iPod, and now I’m wondering if that’s enough space for the iTrip audio files.

thatbob: Some other things for Jim to bring along:

-reference works on popular culture (to make a point or settle a bet)
-fresh milk (to wash down the Hostess Baseballs)
-live cow (source of fresh milk)
-life savings converted into cash

That’s all I can think of right now.

Toby: How about several sharpened pencils for keeping score at games…

Jim: Keeping score is Levi’s department, although I do have a mini-pencil sharpener I might contribute to the cause. I just have to remember not to put it in my carry-on luggage…its metal edge is sharp enough to shave a thin piece of wood!

maura: jim, do you think you could burn some of your baseball songs to cd? i’m not sure if i’ll be able to plug your ipod into the wprb board. (i’ll do some sleuthing about this, though, this week.)

Jim: I already had the “Baseball’s Greatest Hits” CDs set aside to bring with me in case of emergency. Let me know if there’s anything on the list that’s not on those two CDs that you definitely want to play on your show.

Does the WPRB board have line-level RCA inputs? I’ll bring the dock and the appropriate cable.

Jim: It turns out that everything not on the “Baseball’s Greatest Hits” CDs fits onto two CDs, so I now have the entire baseball song list in CD format.

Jon Solomon: You should be able to run the iPod into the board with an iPod to RCA adapter. I can rig this to go into the mixer. I’ll also pull several baseball 45s to play, and bring some of my sports records if someone reminds me. Get Metsmerized!

Levi: Awesome!

maura: yeah, get metsmerized is awesome!

Jason: Hey! ‘Awesome!’ is Dan’s line.

Stan Lee: Excelsior!

J.J.: Dino-mite!

Richard Nixon: Sock it to me?

GW Bush: America is more safer.

How’s the weather, whether or not we’re together?

Highs in the 60s in Chicago and St. Louis in August? I didn’t think I was going to have to bring a jacket on this trip!

P.S.: I think the Devil Rays should call do-over on their 6-0 loss to the Red Sox today in Boston; clearly, they were distracted by the hurricane approaching their hometown. Actually, I wonder if they’re secretly hoping Tropicana Field suffers damage serious enough that they’ll have to have a new stadium built for them.

Original comments…

Levi: I don’t think FEMA builds stadiums.

I remembered last night that the weather was unseasonably chilly ten years ago this week, when my parents, Pete Bodensteiner, Bob Hanscum, my brother, and I saw what turned out to be the last game of the season at Wrigley Field. The strike started the next day. It was so chilly at Wrigley that everyone wore jackets, but even that wasn’t enough to keep my parents from huddling under the grandstand much of the game.

Man, the strike sure sucked. Fortunately, so did the Cardinals that year. I still feel like apologizing to Expos fans on behalf of human (and corporate) intransigence and greed.

Jim: I have quite a few episodes of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” that I taped in the summer of 1994, with Comedy Central ID bumpers where they’re calling themselves “Official Network of the 1994 Players’ Strike.”

Unfortunately, Tropicana Field is quite a bit further inland than — and probably much more solidly built than — Al Lang Stadium, former spring training home of the Cardinals, and a very nice place to spend a spring afternoon.

The baseball team that made Milwaukee slightly more famous

I’m pretty sure that when one has called to order the Mastercard Grand Slam Ticket Pack, which is supposed to only be available for purchase with a Mastercard, the Brewers ticket office should not be asking the question, “American Express, Discover, Mastercard, or Visa?” at any point. I guess Mastercard hasn’t been able to cure them of their Midwestern hospitality.

Something else to worry about, if one is the worrying type: they’re mailing the tickets and concession voucher to me, and they claim they’ll show up “within a week.” Any longer than that, and I won’t get them before I leave for the trip, so I’ll have to leave careful instructions for honorary hanger-on Jason (who has a key to my mailbox) to mail or FedEx them to Chicago.

Original comments…

Levi: It’s Wisconsin. I’m sure that if we show up and explain why we don’t have our tickets, they’ll let us in.

Jim: But it’s Bud Selig’s Wisconsin, which is different than Wisconsin as you or I understand it.

stacey: even bud selig has been unable to corrupt the goodness of the city of lovely leinie’s. we’ve gotten great seats to a sold-out game (“they just opened up a new section,” the ticket man said, while eyeing bob’s county stadium floppy hat) AND had free tickets handed to us by some sweet fellow whose friends couldn’t show up at the last minute.

golly, i love milwaukee!

Jim: I forgot to mention that, when I first tried calling the Brewers’ ticket office 800 number this morning, I got an “all circuits busy” message. Five minutes later, I got right through. Either there was a sudden run on Brewers tickets at about 8:10 Pacific time this morning, or my office is using some crappy long-distance company that doesn’t have enough circuits running between L.A. and the Midwest.

thatbob: I will wear my County Stadium floppy hat AND bring my Miller Park beer bottle cozy. Might even splurge on a Fontini Sausage Race tee, hee hee.

Keep this in mind, potential hangers-on

Monday, August 30th happens to be one of the dates on which Brewers are offering their “Mastercard Grand Slam Ticket Pack,” which is four $28 tickets and a $20 concession voucher for $75 total. So it would be nice, and money-saving, if Levi and I could find two people to join us for the 7:05 game. (It’s a little unclear whether or not you can get that deal at the stadium, or if you have to buy them in advance…”seats are limited,” they say, but how many people are going to show up for a non-pivotal Brewers vs. Pirates battle on a Monday night? Nevertheless, let us know as soon as possible if you want to go.)

If you wanted to also join us for the 1:05 game in Chicago involving the White Sox and Phillies, so much the better, although the Sox don’t seem to have any promotions happening that day to make their tickets cheaper. I think our plan as of now is to head straight to Milwaukee immediately upon the conclusion of that game; however, if you can’t make it to the Sox game but can make the Brewers, we’ll work something out.

Original comments…

Levi: I’m sure my wife, for one, will attend the second game, and a second person (especially at less than $20 for a seat and some food!) will be easy to find. So go for it!

stacey: levi’s right. i Would like to attend the second game. i probably can’t get off work for the day game, sadly.

Jim: Does it ruin the road trip magic if we take the ‘L’ to the Sox game? I guess it shouldn’t, since it’s an “extra” game anyway.

Steve: as far as special promotions, that’s a half price monday.

stacey: if you’re going to take the ‘L’ to the sox game, i could drive the rental car to work (in hyde park) and then pick you guys up after the game at comiskey and we could shoot up to the city that beer made famous. anyone else who wanted to go could either get picked up along the way or meet us at sox park.

Jim: Thanks, Steve! I missed that. Hooray for cheap tickets! Stacey: Sounds like a good plan. I won’t tell Hertz if you won’t.

thatbob: Count me in for both games. BOTH games. Levi will just have to wait a couple more weeks for that money I owe him.

Jim: Yeah, you can give your money to ME instead. I have to say, we got two hangers-on faster than I thought we would. I’ll go ahead and order the Brewers tickets.

Levi: I assume we’ll pick up Sox tickets at the window?

The only caveat is that back before they began their current stretch of Oreck XL-quality sucking, the crowds at the walkup windows were impressive enough to cost those (like me) unprepared for their size a view of the first inning.

Jim: Even for a 1:05 P.M. game on a Monday? If Lee Elia taught us anything, it’s that it’s Cubs fans who don’t go to work, not Sox fans.

Fear not, because I can already predict that one of the themes of this trip is going to be me attempting to get us to games ridiculously early.

Levi: Is that why I’m posting this from the Wireless Intenet kiosk in front of the Davenport Swing ballpark?

Luke, hanger-on: Have you ever had a post get to 12 comments?

Levi: I would leave Jim to answer that, if you hadn’t just done so.

More trip preparations

1. I used the L.A. Times web site to stop my subscription for the two weeks I’m going to be out of town. As Levi might have expected, I’m fully intending to buy a local paper every day of the trip, except perhaps when we’re at my aunt and uncle’s house (because I think they get the Philadelphia Inquirer) and when we’re at his parents’ house (because they get the Carmi Times).

2. I finally remembered to call the Hilton Pittsburgh to request a rollaway bed, so that Levi doesn’t have to sleep in the bathtub, or curled up in a dresser drawer. Up to this point, I had been a little worried about the ability of the AAA web site hotel booking interface to actually communicate successfully with the various hotels’ computer reservation systems, but the Hilton did have my reservation in their system, so I guess we’re all set. “See you August 28th,” said the woman on the phone. Maybe I should have requested a room facing PNC Park, too, but I’m not sure they even have such a thing. (I think this is the only hotel on the trip within possible sight distance of a ballpark…I think the Holiday Inn Express in Detroit is a little too far from Comerica Park, with too many tall buildings in between.)

Original comments…

Toby: That’s the first time in the history of the U.S. that The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Carmi Times have been mentioned in the same paragraph.

thatbob: Actually, Jim, there is an ordinance that allows you to burn down tall buildings in Detroit if they obstruct a view and haven’t been used for anything in 50 years, so, you know, bring some matches.

Levi: Knowing Jim, I expect him any time we travel together, to have exact change for any tolls.

I’ll be more impressed if he also has exact change for any newspaper honor boxes he needs to use along the way.

And Toby, if you can schedule the pull-out section of the Times about Baseball Related Program Activities for the Monday, August 23rd edition, that would be great.

Toby: OK, but I’m going to need you to proofread it. In my last section (on the local summer baseball and softball teams), I forgot to mention the names of two of the businesses that sponsor the 40-some-odd teams in their respective cutlines and got a call from one of the omitted businesses, during which I was reminded (in a threatening manner) how much advertising that business buys with our paper.

I’m sure the same thing’s happened a million times at The Philadelphia Inquirer, don’t you think?

Jim: What the Philadelphia Inquirer has is the CEO of Citizens Bank calling the CEO of Knight-Ridder every time they don’t use the full name of the Phillies’ ballpark, I’m sure. But then it takes a while to trickle down to the people who actually work at the newspaper.

Willie and Bob (not Mays and Gibson)

I didn’t realize Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan were doing shows at minor-league ballparks this summer until I read an article about it in the L.A. Times this morning. (I can’t link to that article because it’s for subscribers only.) Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we can fit one of their concerts into our itinerary.

Original comments…

Levi: I’ll take this chance to repeat my two favorite Willie Nelson stories.

1) This one you may all know. In the mid-90s, Willie was asleep in his car on a Texas roadside. A cop decided to roust him out and search his car for pot. Pot was discovered, Willie was booked. Later, a judge threw out the possession conviction based on lack of probable cause for the search. According to the judge, the mere fact of being Willie Nelson does not give law enforcement probable cause to search you for pot.

2) The coworker of a friend of mine is from Arkansas. On a recent visit there, he went to his usual pot dealer to get some Arkansas pot, which he claims to be the best in the world. His dealer apologetically explained that he had no pot to offer. “Willie came through last week, and he bought all the pot.” All the pot.

Maddux: CCC

I TiVoed the Cubs-Giants game today, because they’re still inconveniently scheduling baseball games for hours while I’m working. This would not have been a bad choice for a national Game of the Week, but I guess Fox and MLB are still firmly committed to the “regional” concept for the Saturday afternoon Fox coverage. Too bad it’s nearly impossible to see any Saturday afternoon game other than the one being shown in your local area (they’re not carried on the MLB Extra Innings pay-per-view package).

I am really, really tired of people in the front row leaning way over to try to get foul balls, or worse, fair balls that have rolled foul and are still in play. During this game, someone went all the way over the rail to try to get a foul ball, but jumped right back over. Fox practically made him into a folk hero, to the point of including him in the “play of the game” poll…and his play was, of course, the choice of a majority of the cell-phone-using people who bothered to vote. I contend he should have been thrown out of the stadium.

Maybe I’m slightly jealous of people who get to sit that close, but I’d still like to see the year-by-year numbers of fan interference calls…although I guess they’d have to be adjusted for the fact that most of these new stadiums have more seats closer to the action than the stadiums they replaced.

Anyway, speaking of people who get to sit close, the one celebrity Fox could find in the stands was Jim Belushi (and he was sitting in an upper deck anyway). Didn’t any Fox stars want to go to this game? If I were a cast member on a Fox show, I would have demanded tickets for me and Caroline Dhavernas, late of “Wonderfalls,” who I believe still technically counts as a Fox star. (Wait a minute, by that same logic, I could also go to the game with Paget Brewster of “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” and Sarah Silverman of “Greg the Bunny”! All right, enough of my rich fantasy life.)

In conclusion, if Levi were near a computer this weekend, he’d probably be saying something about Larry Walker.

Original comments…

Levi: Does Jim Belushi even count as a celebrity? Even for Fox?

Jim: Jim Belushi is the star of a surprisingly popular sitcom on ABC. He’s got his name in the title of the show and everything! A lot more people have heard of him than have heard of Caroline Dhavernas, that’s for sure.

Toby: Is Paget Brewster related to Punky Brewster? Or is that a whole separate family of Brewsters?

Levi: When I returned from the rehearsal dinner at midnight (Stacey had fled earlier with the niece and nephew, because she was worn out from, well, being around the niece and nephew.), I turned on the highlights and almost passed out. Larry Walker? I wanted to call my brother or bang on his hotel room door or something. But then I thought more sensibly, decided he needed a good night’s sleep on his wedding weekend, and went to bed instead.

But I did wake Stacey to tell her.

Jason: Why would Fox be pointing out an ABC ‘star’? Couldn’t they find a shot of Calista Flockhart eating a hot dog?