Someone at the Dallas Morning News web site had a little too much time on his hands.
thatbob: Five of those six graphics should have been framed in the big red circle/slash element which signifies to “DON’T” do something. I hope these unadorned graphics don’t find their way into stadia nationwide and wreak havoc with foul ball etiquette. (I couldn’t notice that title, “Foul Ball Etiquette.” Apparently all rules are off when you’re trying to catch a Barry Bonds homer.)
Things keep happening to thwart me from going to the AAA office on Monday, my day off, so today I went after work to get the Triptik and the various ancillary items, which I can’t get from the AAA web site because this trip has too many destinations for it to work correctly.
They’re going to mail me the Triptik, but I had, at one point, two AAA employees rummaging through filing cabinets looking for maps and Tourbooks for me. So now I have two plastic bags stuffed full of materials, including a map of Chicago and vicinity, just in case you don’t know your way around in a car, Levi. In fact, it may annoy you to discover that the AAA cartographers titled one of the inset maps, with Lawrence and Ashland at the upper left, “Lincoln Park.”
Jason: They might have been more helpful if you were going to any AAA parks, like Memphis or Albuquerque.
thatbob: And everyone knows that baseball-related Chase Park is actually at the corner of Lawrence and Ashland.
From www.chicagoparkdistrict.com:
“In 1920, the Lincoln Park Commission converted a deserted semi-professional baseball field into Chase Park. Known as Gunther Park, the ball field was home to the Niesen-Gunther team beginning in 1905. The facility went out of business in 1913, during the construction of Chicago’s north side professional baseball field, Wrigley Field. A community member suggested the conversion of the old ball field into a park in 1914, and several years later the Ravenswood Improvement Association and some local officials petitioned for the park. The Lincoln Park Commission finally began land acquisition in 1920. Within the next two years, tennis courts, a playground, an athletic field, a wading pool, and a fieldhouse were constructed in Chase Park. In 1934, the Lincoln park commission was consolidated into the Chicago park district. The Park district demolished chase Park’s original fieldhouse and replaced it with a new building in 1976.”
So far, I’ve only found one other baseball trip similar to ours going on this year, and Andrew and Ben’s trip starts tonight in L.A. They’re doing 9 games in 6 cities in 11 days, including — and here’s where Levi starts drooling — all three Cardinals-Royals games in Kansas City from June 25-27. Also, their web site looks nicer than this one, and they even have an actual logo. So, Levi, if you’d rather go on their trip than the one we have planned, I guess I’ll understand.
Jason: They seem like a couple of Normal guys.
But on their web site, it looks like fog is rolling into Bank One Ballpark. Or maybe it’s smoke from all the peyote Arizona folks do.
thatbob: There site *looks* good, but is lacking in content. And, more importantly, places for me to comment. So far they are no threat to you for my readership/commentship.
Man #1: So that’s your new TiVo?
Man #2: By jumping past pitching changes and the commercial blocks between innings, you can watch a whole game and save almost an hour.
Man #1: What would I do with another hour? Look, I have these unwanted periods of consciousness. I use TV sports to get rid of them.
In other news, the Devil Rays have won a franchise record seven straight games, so clearly, Levi needs to go on vacation more often. Alternately, perhaps the Rays could be switched from the AL to the NL.
thatbob: What is a Tank McNamara? Is it related to the Simon and Garfunkel song?
Jim: There’s a Simon and Garfunkel song called “Tank McNamara”?
“Tank McNamara” is a sports-themed comic strip. The title character is a football player turned sportscaster, although many of the strips don’t include him at all, such as today’s. Many newspapers run it in the sports section instead of on the comics page, including the Tampa Tribune during the 1980s, which is where I first became aware of its existence.
thatbob: “Many newspapers run it in the sports section instead of on the comics page,”
In the sacred space customarily accorded to Gil Thorpe?!? For shame!
Epacris: That particular day’s strip is one of my top favourites.
(My all-time favourite is Calvin & Hobbes, 2nd June, 1983 aka ‘The Big Picture’)
I have TMcN on “My Yahoo” front page. Since I’m from Australia & (somewhat unusually) quite uninterested in sport, a lot of the strip doesn’t make much sense, but it can be quite fun about universal sporting foibles.
If we’re going to go after foul balls on the trip, we’d better make sure there aren’t any kids in the way, unless we know for a fact that the kid has a lifelong dream of being on “Good Morning America.” Personally, I’ve always preferred the “Today” show.
Steve: Whatever…It’s not like the kid even got trampled. Who among us hasn’t pushed a four year old out of the way. They often show up at the most inopportune places. At least its nice to see that baseball is falling all over itself to make amends. For what I don’t know but it’s pretty clear that the media in this country is dying for some “feel-good” stores. Well, off to rescue some puppies and kittens.
Eric: Let’s not idealize 4-year-olds. A lot of 4-year-olds are selfish little jerks. A 4-year-old’s mom tried to take my seat on an airplane, as the stewardess explained, “because they want to sit together.” “Tough shit!” I told the stewardess. “I want to have sex with Jennifer Connelly, so I guess that makes two of us aren’t going to get what we want.” I mean, come on. A 4-year-old can’t sit quietly on his own for a two-hour flight? They have to push me out of my comfortable, front-of-the-plane aisle seat into a middle seat at the back of the plane? What bullshit. Being 4 years old is no excuse for anything.
They didn’t even ask if I would voluntarily give up my seat. The stewardess just put them there and told me I had to move. United, man. “Fly the airline where all the employees hate you.”
Luke: If a foul ball comes our way at Busch, feel free to trample all over me, if it might send some swag our way.
Dr. Octopus: I push 4-year-olds out of the way all the time! Even when I’m not at the ballpark! And with all my tentacles, I can push down numerous 4-year-olds simultaneously! Ha ha ha ha!
I now know what I’m going to be doing the night before leaving on this trip: seeing They Might Be Giants at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip. I only wish this had more to do with baseball; unless I’m forgetting a track, I don’t think they’ve got a baseball-related song as a group. With his solo side project Mono Puff, John Flansburgh has a song called “What Bothers the Spaceman?” about Bill “Spaceman” Lee, which I may or may not have mentioned here. (Yes, it’s in the baseball song collection on my iPod.)
By the way, Jason Kaifesh suggests that some kind of “farewell dinner” get-together should be held in Chicago before the trip, on the evening of Friday, August 20th. Sounds like a good idea to me, especially if I don’t have to plan it from afar. What do you think, Levi (or others)?
Jim: Thought of a semi-baseball-related lyric, from “Purple Toupee,” off the “Lincoln” album: “I shouted out, ‘Free the Expo 67!'” The Montreal Expos were named after Expo 67. I can already predict that they are not going to play that song at the House of Blues.
thatbob: Are you taking odds?
As it turned out, find the Angels decided to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the game I wrote about yesterday by playing a 15-inning game with the Cubs.
They used five pitchers. The Cubs used eight.
There is an article in today’s L.A. Times about the 15-inning Red Sox-Angels game on June 14, 1974. The winning pitcher was Barry Raziano of the Angels, who threw two perfect innings in relief; it was his only major league victory.
But more importantly: Luis Tiant was the Sox’s sole pitcher, going 14.1 innings until he gave up the winning run. Nolan Ryan started for the Angels, and went 13 innings, making 235 pitches. But then, in 1974, he averaged 160-180 pitches a game. The Times reporter asked Bill James about it: “It obviously ruined his arm because he had to retire 19 years later.”
Toby: Ah yes… back when baseball was played by men and ruled by an impartial commissioner, not played by ridiculously overpaid prima donnas and ruled by agents and accountants.
Back when baseball players were your heroes, not celebrities.
Hmm, Levi and I should have coordinated our vacations so we didn’t have weeks where only one of us has to carry the blog load.
Anyway, potential guideline for the baseball trip: no drinking “beer by the yard,” even if it’s really only 18 inches, because once you’ve consumed one of those things, it’s pretty hard to get up the next morning and drive somewhere. Trust me.
I meant to check out for Levi what the current odds were on the Cards winning the World Series, but I was too busy collecting my winnings on a certain non-baseball bet I placed at the sports book on Monday afternoon.
Steve: So did you drink a “yard” or a “half yard?” A yard is about equivalent to 40oz of beer. After sitting by the “beers of the world” stand at Comiskey the other night and paying $5.50 for 16oz PBR, I think the yard of beer is your most economical beer selection at the ballpark. I don’t endorse you drinking a yard of beer a day becuase I wonder what that would do to your diet of Hostess Baseballs. It could get ugly.
Jim: I drank a full yard (of Dos Equis amber, this being a Mexican restaurant, which was primarily pushing margaritas by the yard, but you could get any drink that way). It was $13.95, but that’s Vegas hotel pricing, not ballpark pricing.
Honorary hanger-on Jason Kaifesh called me Sunday afternoon and asked if I wanted to go to a minor-league game. Of course I said yes. The California League-leading Lancaster Jethawks were playing the Inland Empire 66ers (San Bernardino) in a game with a strange 6:00 start time, perhaps because the temperature can get quite high up in the Antelope Valley. First, the best of my attempts at an action shot. Note the ball seemingly frozen…
Since Lancaster is near Edwards Air Force Base, they have two space shuttles on either side of the message board, albeit space shuttles that look more like NASCAR vehicles, with the advertising. Hmm, didn’t the idea of having NASA raise money by selling advertising space come up at some point during the Reagan administration?…
Speaking of which, note the flags, and the fact that the wind was blowing very strong towards right field throughout the game, although there was only one home run hit in that direction (quite a few fly balls to the warning track, though). Is there some kind of mailing list you can subscribe to, if you have a flagpole, to let you know when you’re supposed to have your flags at half-mast?…
This being the minor leagues, they let a kid race the mascot around the bases while the game is in progress (I mean, between innings, but still…). I can provide witnesses to corroborate the fact that Kaboom the Jethawk took a dive, by the way, in case any federal prosecutors interested in a RICO case are reading this…
Lancaster Municipal Stadium, a.k.a. The Hangar, is fairly new, which means they have a manual scoreboard. Yes, that is a ridiculous contradiction, but we live in ridiculous times. At least the manual scoreboard’s numbers are readable (when they remember to put them up), unlike certain electrically-operated numbers that are hard to read when the sun is shining directly on them and a third of the light bulbs are burned out…
Final score: 66ers 7, Jethawks 3. One of the best things about the game, by the way, was the noise the crowd made when the P.A. announcer announced that the Lakers had lost Game 1 of the finals to the Detroit Pistons. It was the noise of several thousand people simultaneously making a noise that meant, “But the local media has been leading us to believe that the Lakers are the team of destiny for months now!” I know, I know, that’s not really baseball-related.
Now I’m headed to Vegas for a few days. Unfortunately, the Las Vegas 51’s won’t be in town while I’m there, so I guess I’ll have to find something to do other than watching minor-league baseball.
Levi: I’m surprised, Jim, to see you refer to the flag as being at half-staff.
As this site shows, lowered flags on ships are at half-mast, but lowered flags on land are at half-staff.
There recently was a story in the Tribune about a woman who contacted the head office of McDonald’s to inform them that they were not, by flag codes, allowed to lower the flags at their restaurants in tribute to their CEO, who had died suddenly. According to her, a government directive had to go out. She was backed up by the reporter and by a government official, whose name and position I’ve forgotten.
Anyway, it’s the first I’d heard about it. Anyone know anything more about these rules?
And were the flags down for Reagan, or for the Lakers?