Bet you weren’t expecting this at this late date! Courtesy of Mrs. Levi, we have some late additions to the pool of photographs of the 2004 trip. In Cleveland, here are Maura, Jim, Dan, and Dianne, and you may notice that Dan is eagerly showing off a Hostess Baseball:
And eight days before that, in St. Louis, standing in a location that doesn’t exist anymore, here are The Flash, Trainman, Cap’n Slap, and Bicycle Repairman (in their not-so-secret identities as Tony, Jim, Levi, and Luke):
Future hanger-on Luke Seemann pointed out a photo in the Chicago Tribune yesterday, store taken at the Tokyo Dome at the Yankees/Devil Rays game. Luke characterizes it as the best sign ever. I think I might have to agree. It said, pilule “Hi, Derek. I hope you achieve more and more!”
Hanger-on Luke wanted to make sure I had explored all possible rental car options, including in-town locations of the various rental car agencies, especially the Enterprise location on Sheridan Road that’s fairly close to Levi and Stacey’s place.
Yes, I did, and the problems are that, as far as I can tell, Enterprise’s “unlimited mileage” is only good in the five states nearest Chicago; various others, including Dollar, Thrifty, and National, prohibit taking their cars into Canada (and they don’t seem to have any convenient city locations in Chicago anyway); and, believe it or not, Hertz and Avis are more expensive at their in-town locations than at O’Hare…but less expensive than Midway. Seriously, someone needs to investigate the Midway rental car situation.
Luke also wondered about perhaps picking up the car on the 20th and dropping it off on the 31st to possibly save some money. Also as far as I can tell, there wouldn’t be much price difference between that and the current plan of picking it up on the 19th and dropping it off on the 1st.
And, importantly for me, by getting the car on the 19th, I’ll get a chance to spend the day of the 20th at the Illinois Railway Museum, which I’ve never been to before and which is supposed to be a very nice place. (Yes, a non-baseball activity. I’m sorry, but I like trains, too.) And then on the 31st I can go play pinball at one of the semi-secret locations in the suburbs where Stern puts their new pinball machines out for testing, to see if they need to do any last-minute tweaks. Or Levi and Stacey can go buy stuff at Ikea in Schaumburg. Whatever.
In conclusion, I think we’re getting a pretty good rate from Hertz, considering how many miles we’re going to be putting on one of their cars.
(P.S.: If Southwest really was charging negative $100 for Burbank-to-Chicago round trips, I would be there for breakfast and baseball tomorrow morning, and maybe every morning. But no such luck.)
mr. troll: Yes, we’re all sorry that you like trains, too.
Jim: Shame on you, leaving this comment on the date of Amtrak’s 33rd anniversary.
I don’t think AAA would approve of staying in a hotel that has chunks of plaster all over the floor and pigeons roosting inside. But maybe I’m wrong. Their 2004 Tourbooks come out in April, so I’ll pick up the one for Michigan when I have the Triptik made and see how many “diamonds” they give the ol’ Book Cadillac.
While we’re on the subject of Detroit, just the other night, I watched an HBO documentary called “A City on Fire: The Story of the ’68 Detroit Tigers.” The part about the World Series might make Levi depressed and morose, but I enjoyed it. Our next baseball trip after this one needs to involve time travel.
It actually contained some content relevant to our National Anthem discussion: Mickey Lolich complaining about how long it took Jose Feliciano to get through “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the beginning of Game 5, and several other interviewees, including Ernie Harwell, talking about all the complaints received about this unique take on the anthem. It sounded fine to me, although they didn’t play the whole thing uninterrupted in the documentary, so I couldn’t tell exactly how long it went on for.
The birth of this blog prodded a couple of people to put their names into consideration as official hangers-on. Luke wants to go to Davenport and St. Louis, and Maura wants to join us in Pittsburgh in addition to Philadelphia, so I certainly hope she enjoys the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I have updated the itinerary with details of their attendance.
Three years ago, friends of ours named Luke and Sandy went on a baseball road trip and kept a joint blog about it. So I figured we should either rip them off, or pay homage to them, depending on whether or not Luke and Sandy are going to be reading this.
This is actually the replacement for some “manual” blogging I had been doing about this trip on my own web site, so I’ve copied all those entries over to here. The advantages are that Levi can easily make entries here as well, and we can both make entries from anywhere…including while we’re on the trip, if we can beg, borrow, or steal a computer capable of connecting to the Internet at some point.
It has also been rumored that Luke may be joining us for the first portion of our road trip. I hope he can make it, even if I disagree in part with his opinions on National Anthem etiquette. While I will happily sing along to an instrumental version (especially if it’s being played live by an organist), I will remain silent if someone is out on the field performing, because I actually want to listen to their performance. But I do agree that the cheering shouldn’t start until the end of the song, no matter how good the singer is at hitting the high note.
Therefore, in case they do instrumental versions of “O Canada” in Toronto and/or Montreal, I want to be sure I have the lyrics down.
On another note, my mother tells me that my cousin is getting married in Connecticut in July. Depending on the exact wedding plans (and the exact wedding location), I may attempt to come up with a scheme to visit New York for a day, a city which is a noticeable gap on the road trip itinerary. The Yankees will be in town that weekend, right before the All-Star break, playing my hometown Devil Rays.
This morning, we bageled up at the Stahl household, then left my parents–as well as two cats, the stinky dog, some fish, a hummingbird, and an owl that went “whoo-oo-oo†all night long–behind and hit the road bright and early, counting on Jim’s playlist of #1 hits to carry us through. And carry us through an uneventful morning they did. We dropped Stacey and Luke at the University Park Metra station a full ten minutes before their standing train was due to depart. They left us with good wishes and the remaining dozen Hostess Baseballs.
We passed through the Slough of Despond, or northern Indiana. We crossed into Michigan, where, like the welcome center in Florida that gives travelers free orange juice, they were giving out paper cups of motor oil. In Michigan, a pattern developed: road construction followed by light rain followed by heavy rain followed by traffic being slowed to a crawl by a wreck ahead. Like a driver’s ed class following a Troy McClure film, we took heed and drove with caution.
Yet we arrived in Detroit right on time. Jim took us into the city on Michigan Avenue, so that we would go by Tiger Stadium. The old ballpark looks a bit run down, but it’s still impressive–huge and boxy and white. A ticket booth remains right on the corner, but there are no tickets to be had.
Detroit itself, meanwhile, is as depressing and hard to believe as I imagined. Street after street is deserted, storefronts are boarded up, windows are broken. A few businesses here and there are hanging on–the Refrigerator King, a few liquor stores, a surprising number of antique-looking antique stores–but even the extant businesses appear to be holding on only by cutting costs to the bone, deferring even the most basic maintenance, from painting to repairing broken signs. (Side note: one thing that was odd for me, simply because Chicago’s truly poor neighborhoods are so segregated: the people on the street were about an even mix of white, black, and Latino.) Once we entered downtown, the picture went from sad to surreal, as abandoned storefronts were replaced by abandoned deco skyscrapers. Across from our hotel is a derelict twenty-story building with detailed stonework and statues of knights at about the tenth floor. And downtown seems to be like that just about everywhere; I saw a sign on a building that said, “Building available,†and I thought it was awfully optimistic.
The ballpark, on the other hand, is surprisingly pleasant. Sitting in the 18th row just on the first-base side of home, we were a bit spoiled. The upper deck–my usual haunt at a ballpark–does look like it might be all the way back in the Central Time Zone, so I can’t fully vouch for the ballpark, but it was a great place to watch a game from the high-roller area. The stadium is very open, with a view of downtown and a lot of sky, a silly fountain (The General Motors Fountain) beyond center field, and statues of Tiger Hall-of-Famers on the concourse in left. I was even able to get a reasonably good vegetarian pita with rice pudding for dinner, which saved me from the wrath of Little Caesar’s, the house pizza. Jim supped on a Kowalski kielbasa–and, as we learned later, “Kowalski means Ko-wality!â€
Oh, and the game! I had decided beforehand that since the Sox are doomed, I was free to root, root, root for the home team. It was a good night for it, as Jeremy Bonderman, apparently leaving his 6.07 E.R.A. at home with the wife and kids, absolutely baffled the Sox. He threw mostly inside curves and slowwwwwwwww changeups. Then, when the hitters would start looking for the slowwwwwwwww changeup, he’d throw an even slower one. I don’t know when I’ve ever seen this many major league hitters look this foolish. Paul Konerko in the 9th was so far out in front of strike three that the ump nearly called it against the next batter. The Tigers, meanwhile, kept drawing walks after walk after walk off Jose Contreras, and the game wasn’t in doubt for long. Jeremy Bonderman struck out Joe Borchard for his personal-best 14th strikeout to end the game, and the Tigers won, 7-0.
Now I will wrap this up and get to bed. Jim’s somehow managed to get our TV stuck while he tried to order the Garfield movie.
Dan: Old Tiger Stadium was awesome. Just had to share.
Jason: ‘Slough of Despond’? I would be offended if it wasn’t true.
First of all, yes, the trip is going as scheduled so far. Even though it’s going to say this was posted by Jim, this is actually a collaborative post, more or less, because for the first time both of us are sitting next to the same computer. This may be how we do things for the rest of the trip, or maybe not — we’ll have to see. We’re at Levi’s parents’ house in Carmi, Illinois, right now, using their computer, and we have to get up early to get on the road, but we wanted to get a little something down.
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.)
On to the games. 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. Bright and early Sunday, we got up and Levi spilled tea on his feet, which meant it was time to leave for St. Louis. We met up with hanger-on Tony for lunch before the game, and then met up with the various other hangers-on at the Stan Musial statue outside Busch Stadium. Inside, Jim met the final hanger-on of this busy hanger-on day, Jay, of “Jeopardy!” message board fame, who managed to get a seat right behind the main group.
Levi nearly used up a whole pencil filling in the boxes on the Cardinals’ side of the scorecard today, after he finally figured out which side was supposed to be the Cardinals’ side of the scorecard. He had to fill in box after box after box as the Cards scored run after run after run, as usual this season. Luke, in his Cubs shirt and cap, looked awestruck. Behind him, the fans wearing Cardinal red looked on with pity. Particularly noteworthy plays were Edgar Renteria’s 13-pitch first-inning at-bat that ended in a 3-run homer; Larry Walker’s grand slam; and, best of all (only best because the Cardinals were already leading by nearly a touchdown at this point), Reggie Sanders leaping high against the wall, coming down with his glove closed to cheers from the audience, and the scoreboard operator immediately putting up “HR RBI.” The scoreboard operator was the only one in the stadium not fooled by Reggie’s act — well, we guess the umpires weren’t fooled either; there was no joy in Gloveville, the ball had gone right out.
Immediately after the game, we found the ramp to I-64 East that hadn’t been torn down for new Cardinals ballpark construction and hightailed it to Levi’s hometown, Carmi, Illinois. At Levi’s parents’ house, we were visited by frequent baseballrelated.com commentator Toby, as well as Levi’s grandparents (non-commentators).
The title quote for this post was said to Jim by the desk clerk at the Country Inn and Suites in Galesburg, explaining how he could qualify for the rate he was quoted on the AAA web site. No one asked.
All right, now we’re going to bed, probably two hours later than we should have. See you in Detroit, assuming we can find an abandoned building that still has an Internet connection up and running.
sandor: When those buildings were abandoned, it was still callled DARPAnet, which means you’re going to have to enter in your post using punchcards. I think they still sell blank ones down at the A&P.
Where are the links? I assumed Levi would gladly trade in sleep for the chance to hyperlink all possible words in this post. I was particularly looking forward to the interpretation of the words “Banana Man” as well as “Levi’s grandparents.”
You are playing the license plate game, right? Who’s winning?
Congrats on keeping up your schedule. Keep the posts coming!
stacey: i think the lack of links was due to the late hour, combined with the fact that the internet connection at the stahl chalet is VERY slow. this is more than made up for by their amazing hospitality, though. i’m still full of delicious pasta, fresh fruit, and great company. the commute from carmi to chicago is a drag, though.
Luke, hanger-on: To flesh out the image of how this post came to be, I should note that Jim and Levi wrote together at the family computer in Levi’s brother’s room. Jim did the typing, employing his closed-captioning skills to take dictation from Levi, who reclined on a bean bag with a cigar and glass of port, pausing now and then to re-read that Sunday’s Post-Dispatch story about the Cardinals and the clubhouse iPod.
I, meanwhile, dosed a few doors down in Levi’s old bedroom, which I found impressively well-preserved. The Smithsonian should scoop it up for its exhibit on “Halcyon Childhoods of America: 1980-1989.” Not surprisingly, the room betrays fascinations with Star Wars, classic rock and mullets. I could have stayed forever.
Jim: Yes, we will go back after the trip and add links, additional stuff we may have forgotten to write about, and especially photos. Or at least I will. Levi may choose to wash his hands of the whole thing, for all I know.
Hanger-on Luke e-mailed earlier tonight to point out that the Red Sox were playing the White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field on Friday night, and wondered why we didn’t start the trip with this game. I think it’s a moot point now, because the game is sold out and I don’t particularly want to pay premium prices for a game, given all the other games we still have to buy tickets to (we’re planning on getting tickets at the gate for 6 of the 11 games, and I owe Levi money for the Cardinals game…although he owes me money for the other four games). Also, I’m told that Levi and Stacey are planning a farewell dinner, or something like that, at their place on Friday night.
But it’s a valid question. I think what happened is that I just didn’t see back in January, on the graph I made of when various teams were at home, that the White Sox were going to be home this weekend. So when I originally came up with this itinerary, as depicted in this post, I started with the Cardinals game on Sunday. Then, soon afterwards, I realized that it was stupid to start an itinerary on Sunday when, I assumed, I could easily add a minor-league game on Saturday. It turned out I could, so I didn’t have any reason to go back over the major league schedules. And then when I made my flight reservations, I added a day on either side of the trip itinerary, just in case of delays somewhere, and came up with arriving Chicago on Thursday and leaving Chicago on September 1st. Then I sat back, relaxed, and made hundreds of posts to this blog over the next five months. Honorary hanger-on Jason asked me about going to a minor-league game in the Chicago area on Friday night at one point, but I decided it would be too hard to make it out to a suburb in time for a game after people had gotten off work Friday evening. I don’t think I even checked the schedules for any of the local teams until just now (to save you the trouble, only the Joliet Jackhammers are at home Friday night).
I don’t know what my point is, except that I really need to get to bed now. (For those of you who have just stumbled across this blog, it’s not quite as bad as it looks, because the time stamps on the posts are in Central time, but I’m running on Pacific time right now.)
Says Hanger-on Luke, referring to yesterday’s Cubs/Dodgers game:
If I had a baseball blog I’d write about the fan I sat in front oftoday. He was a real piece of work, a young man clearly mentally disabled but both in love with and enraged by his Cubs, sort of a Rain Man with amean streak and Cubby-blue blood.
When I got to my seat he was already ranting–to nobody in particular–about Corey Patterson and how he’s not a lead-off batter. Then he was going off on how Aramis Ramirez should be starting: “Dusty, you are nota doctor! Aramis is not hurt!” Once the umps took the field, he started yelling at them, reciting from memory the rule book’s description ofthe strike zone.
All this from Aisle 534.
He kept a tally of questionable balls and strikes. With each one –more than 20 of them — he’d explode: “This is ridiculous! We’re going toreplace you with a computer! With QuesTec, Fox Box AND! OR! a fifthumpire in the booth AND! OR! instant replay! And we’re sending you to the eyedoctor! And we’re sending you back to umpiring school. AND WE’RE GOING TO CALL THE COMMISSIONER! 1414! 225! 3900!”
Every. Single. Time. After the fifth time the entire section could mouth along with him, as not a single word — nor his intense volume — would deviate over the course of the game.
He also was very displeased that the Commissioner was not there asscheduled for Greg Maddux Day, as he had a few things he needed to tell Bud. He expressed dismay that Jim Hendry never wants to talk to him.
Another screed: “Dusty is the stupidest manager ever. Why doesn’t he want to win? I have an IQ of 120 — I am smarter than Dusty! We will always hate you, Dusty! WE WILL ALWAYS HATE YOU!”
And you should have seen him go nuts when Farnsworth came in and proceeded to implode.
Since he wasn’t swearing or threatening fans, there wasn’t really anything security could do, other than try to get him to calm down. He would not.
It gets better: When he wasn’t yelling at the umps or Dusty, he was calling up ESPN radio and other sports media on his cell phone and leaving long messages calmly describing Dusty’s many felonies — occasionally pausing to scream toward the field. It seemed, however, that every time he did this, the Cubs would proceed to do something good. Thus, Monday morning some schlub at ESPN is going to have to listen to all these messages, and as he listens to this fan moan about Corey Patterson, he will hear in the background Corey Patterson rapping a single to center. As he listens to a rant about the bullpen, he will hear in the backgroundKent Mercker getting a strikeout to end the inning.
It was nothing short of amazing. I think I was the only one in my section who appreciated him, even though he was yelling right into my ear. I had to concede he was one of the best-informed fans in the stadium. Much better him than some drunk frat boy yelling “You suck, Pujols!”
IT WAS RIDICULOUS!
Jim: Much better than the guy Matt Bailey and I encountered on L.A.’s Red Line on Sunday who heard us comparing the L.A. subway system with the Chicago ‘L’, the D.C. Metro, and Atlanta’s MARTA, and proceeded to semi-coherently mumble something about taking the subway to other countries. He was speaking quietly, though, and ended up getting off the train at Vermont & Sunset.
Later, a friend of Matt’s who was in Chicago called him, and told a tale of woe about his companions who bought tickets to the Cubs game from a scalper for $80…and soon discovered the tickets to be counterfeit.
Levi: According to a couple of reverse directories online, the phone number the guy was shouting doesn’t exist. Or if it does, it doesn’t turn up a listing.
I suppose I could test by calling it, but Bud Selig might answer the phone, and I wouldn’t like to have to be responsible for my behavior in that situation.
Luke, hanger-on: Whoops, I misremembered the phone number, which is remarkable considering how many times it was bellowed into my ear: It’s in fact (414) 225-8900.
Steve: Quien es mas retarded? The guy described in the above post or the dudes who bought $80 counterfit tickets?
Levi: Mas retarded? Kyle Farnsworth. Hands down.
Or is that mas estoned?
I’m going to order tickets for game 2 of our trip tomorrow, once I know whether my brother is joining us. That’s the game in St. Louis on August 22nd versus the Pirates.
So it’s your last chance, potential hangers-on. We’ve got a group of 9 so far (Me, Jim, Stacey, Luke, my parents, Tony, Geoff Goldman and his fiancee). Want to join us?
Luke: Is our group big enough to get a group rate and get welcomed on the DiamondVision? Maybe the nine of us can be waiting out on the field when the Cu^^Cardinals come out to start the game!
Luke: Oh, and I sure hope Matt Morris is pitching that day and does as well as he is doing today. Hee-hee!
Luke: Umm, nevermind. I expect that by the time of our trip I’ll be rooting for the Cards to keep the Pirates out of the wild-card race.
