The Red Green Show

Continuing the theme of transit and baseball, we see here some Chicago Transit Authority workers changing the signs at the Harrison station on Thursday afternoon. The sign on the left that says "Ashland/63rd" is new, replacing one that said "95th."

Who cares? White Sox fans, that's who. Until sometime in October—and, let's face it, there will be no baseball on the South Side this October—the Red Line station at 35th Street will be closed (along with every other station south of Roosevelt). Red Line trains will stop a few blocks to the east, at what is normally the Green Line station at 35th and State, but it's less convenient and the platforms are notably narrower. Then again, to judge from the desperate weekly emails I get from the Sox, it doesn't seem like much of anyone is going down that way anyway this year.

On a side note, why is the Sox stop called "Sox/35th" but the Cubs stop just called "Addison"? Does everyone already know where Wrigley is? To judge from the hordes of nervously laughing suburbanites and uncomfortable tourists on northbound Red Line trains around game times, I'd wager not.

"Number Two" Gets Number One

Some prospects we remember; most we forget.  Melvin and I remember Corban Joseph because of the endless heckling he took at the April 8, 2011 game between the New Hampshire Fisher Cats and his visiting Trenton Thunder.

"Number Two! Number Twooo! Num-ber Twoo-oo!," brayed the ass in the suite above us at frigid Northeast Delta Dental Stadium, in Manchester.  "Nice cut!  Looking real good there, Number Two."  From the time he entered the on-deck circle until the end of each at-bat, Joseph withstood non-stop verbal abuse.

Stones in My Transitway

Meet me in center field, I'm a little boulder there.
Photo: Scott Gleine, Could You Be More Pacific

It is not that I ever thought that there was some underlying natural order to Angel Stadium. It is, after all, in Los Angeles Anaheim, home to the most influential assemblage of faux environments ever constructed. Nevertheless, having watched only a handful of Angels games in my life, I did have the idea that the giant rocks beyond center field there were somehow rooted in the experience of the place—that there were, say, more such rocks outside the stadium, or that the stadium sat more or less in an at least somewhat landscaped environment, as does Dodger Stadium, with its sculpted terraces.

Sadly, this illusion, too, has now been shattered. I took the train from San Diego to Los Angeles last week, and from the stop at Anaheim, its now clear to me that those rocks probably are fiberglass, and that any grass, trees, or water in the vicinity are there purely by accident or inattention. I now don't know why I thought otherwise.

Concrete Reveries

O.co Coliseum, with "Mount Davis" dominating the background;
for a sense of what this looked like in happier times, see here.

As Rob mentioned recently, I have a new job. This job involves a lot of work with historians. This is my excuse for why I have taken more than a week to write up my visit to the April 12 A's / Tigers game in Oakland. What is the import of a more than week-old baseball game? As Zhou Enlai may have said of the significance of the French Revolution, "It is too soon to tell."

It seemed only appropriate to visit a relic of the 1960s and the era of cement domes in the same week that the concrete-crazy architect of Arcosanti transcended the bounds of mere flesh. And indeed, I learned of Paolo Soleri's death via an email from Watson while at the mysteriously named O.co Coliseum. It turns out that O.co does not stand, somewhat redundantly, for "Oakland Coliseum," as I had thought but to Overstock.com. The irony of this aging stadium—the last one still in use from the multipurpose era?—having that name I'm sure has been addressed elsewhere.

Along the Ohio

The 2013 Season Preview

Melvin started a new job last week, which is a good thing.  Please join me in sending him your congratulations.  However, he starts the job with an annual leave balance of 0:00 and a restriction against taking time off during his first three months.

Working within these limitations, Melvin devised a mid-season itinerary that will have us see five games in four days, but for him only two days vacation.  It is a trip we discuss every winter, a trip I always think of as "Along the Ohio" in tribute to the series of photographs of that name by Andrew Borowiec.

Jeffersonville, Indiana, towards Louisville, Kentucky

In contrast with Melvin, I have too much vacation.  In fact, starting this year I will "earn" ten percent more.  It takes a fair amount of planning for me to use all of my annual leave and to do so, I will be taking a couple baseball trips independent of Melvin.

Nine, Net of 500 Ballparks

I am hard to buy gifts for.  I am not much of a materialist and if I don't love a thing, I won't have much enthusiasm for it.  I read a lot and nothing has brought me as much post-divorce happiness as Melvin's and my baseball road trips.  People know this.  It's a conservative approach, but a book about baseball can seem like a good idea.

My mother gave me for Christmas, among other gifts, 500 Ballparks: From Wooden Seats to Retro Classics (San Diego: Thunder Bay Press, 2011).  Eric Pastore, the author, expresses gratitude in the acknowledgements to people who seemingly played various editorial roles and yet, I have to wonder after reading the other almost 400 pages, did anyone edit this book?

Are you... Tony Campana?

I spotted this license plate in my neighborhood recently. Seeing as said neighborhood is immediately west of Wrigleyville, one might be forgiven for thinking that the vowel-deprived message here is "I, the driver or owner of this automobile, am a diehard partisan of the northside professional baseball team, and I would like you to know it." It could arguably even mean, "I really like Harry Caray's beer commercials."

But then I realized it was a cry for help. A plea for attention. A desperate act by a person relegated to the margins of sports history. For this license plate does not say, I[']M A CUB[S] FAN but rather the much more plaintive, I'M A CUBS FOOTNOTE.

But who can it be?

Uncompensated Endorsement

 

L-R: The 2007, 2010 and 2005 editions
of the Baseball Travel Map

Hedberg Map's Baseball Travel Map is an indispensable tool for planning baseball road trips, or finding baseball when traveling for other reasons.  Sure, Minor League Baseball has a Google Map on its website, but it's not remotely the same.

Speaking practically, the Google Map is too small to allow a viewer to scan the breadth of the country, from the San Francisco Giants to the Portland (Maine) Sea Dogs.  (Not to mention, who wants to balance a laptop on their knees while they're on the crapper.)

Less practically, the online map lacks magic.  When I unfold the five panels of the Baseball Travel Map, I see the trips Melvin and I have taken in the past, and I project us into the future, imagining the trips we might take.

So, I was understandably saddened when I learned Hedberg does not plan to publish a 2013 edition of the map, justifiably billed as "Essential information for the roving fan."

Ti-GRRRS!

In memoriam: Louis the Cat

I often go through withdrawal in early-November, missing the baseball that has been a part of my life for the previous six months.  Not this year, however, I think for two reasons.
First, I saw a lot of ball, 29 games, and they were nicely spread out over the course of the season.  Secondly, I saw four play-off games in person, which seemed after the fact to provide a sense of closure.  Those games also made me a Tigers fan, at least for the month of October.

In the span of nine days I saw a pair of games at Comerica Park (above) and a couple more at Yankee Stadium.  I didn't really know what I was doing.  I just bought tickets because I could and it all (for the most part) worked out.  It almost felt like circumstances were being guided by an outside force, but that doesn't happen, does it?

We Saw What We Came to See

My old—as in long-time, although we did discuss being middle-aged—college buddy Lee and I went out to Citi Field with hopes of seeing R.A. Dickey win his 20th game for the New York Mets.  The knuckleballer succeeded in his attempt, despite Jon Rauch giving up a ninth inning, two-run homer that cut the lead to a single run.
Box Score

Thursday's game was the first that Lee had seen at Citi Field, although he once worked on a Dunkin' Donuts television spot there, even getting the opportunity to shag flies in the outfield.  Mets manager Terry Collins says the 15-second commercial took five hours to shoot, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Romney Trails President in Swing States

Still Ahead of Baseball in Local Poll

I stopped by a bar in my neighborhood this evening, looking for supper and ESPN's Sunday night game, the Los Angeles Dodgers at the Cincinnati Reds.  Football was on the television at the far end and on the screen above the door was ... Mitt Romney?  Really?

I have resigned myself to the fact that baseball gets bumped off barroom walls in May and June, second and even third in popularity to the NHL and NBA playoffs.  But I could not get my head wrapped around the idea that my neighbors preferred to watch Romney with the sound off, instead of the not-quite-out-of-wild-card-contention Dodgers, up against the Reds, division champions in the National League Central.

Shame, Shame, Shame

So when Rob and I go to games, we make a point to never leave before the end of the game, no matter what. See, for example, the sad but gripping tale of our epic evening with the Indians. Hell, there was one game where we basically weren't speaking to each other, but we lasted through all of that one, too.

Yet today, because I was feeling a little under the weather and was a bit preoccupied with work, Watson and I left Wrigley in the top of the sixth, with the Cubs down 9–5. That turned out well:

Our streak of not seeing the Cubs win at Wrigley remains unbroken, through no fault of the team. Lesson learned.

Burnt

My buddy Kevin and I saw the Mets on Tuesday, the first trip to Citi Field this season for either of us.  Prior to the game, we had supper at Donovan's Pub, a Woodside, Queens landmark for 45 years that is on the real estate market.  (Photo by wallyg used through Creative Commons license.)

Donovan's is often touted—Time Out in 2004, nymag, chowhound—as serving the best burger in New York City.  Many a Mets fan has stopped by the pub on the way to or from a game but not Kevin or me.  We decided it might be now or never.

Yakety Yak

(Won't Be Back)

With apologies to The Coasters, performers of the 1958 #1 hit, I am referring here to the Yakima Bears, who played their last ever home game last night.  Starting next June, the Northwest League franchise will play in Hillsboro, a suburb of Portland, Oregon.  The team will remain a Diamondbacks' affiliate.

Although the league approached Hillsboro in September 2011, just one year after the Portland Beavers relocated to Tucson, Arizona, I was late to the realization that this would be the Bears last season in Yakima.  I would have liked to have seen the team before they left, like last year's trip to see the Kinston Indians.  I have to start reading Ballpark Digest more regularly.

Home Away from Home

Although there was a scheduled autograph session after the
game, Spinners second baseman Mookie Betts signed everything
put in front of him before heading to the showers.  A classy kid.

The central feature of my August trip was home teams playing somewhere other than their home field.  On August 16 I watched the Scranton-Wilkes Barre Yankees play at McCoy Stadium, their sixth "home" field of a season played entirely on the road while PNC Field is reconstructed.

Two days later I attended the seventh annual "Futures at Fenway," a double-header of Red Sox affiliates.  This year the Lowell Spinners and the Pawtucket Red Sox took the stage at the parent club's historic stadium.  By the fourth day of the road trip, I realized I was more at home away from home.

An Even Less Ambitious Day

(unless you are Lynn and Dave)

 

It's about as far from Pawtucket to Lowell as it was from New London to Pawtucket, but I planned (and accomplished!) even less.  Detouring from I-95 to Brookline, I took short tours of the Museum of Bad Art and the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.

Later I caught a delightful nap and a game between the Lowell Spinners and the Aberdeen Ironbirds, where an on-field wedding was the most memorable part of the evening.

Rhode Trip

On Thursday morning, I put my mother on the train in New London and headed to Rhode Island.  I had planned a more leisurely day than Melvin and I typically do; the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum of Art—above, Gilded Frost and Jet Chandelier, 2008 by Dale Chihuly (pdf)—and a game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Scranton-Wilkes Barre Yankees, the Triple-A affiliates of the American League East rivals.

Cousins

Updated: August 25, 2012

Most simply, cousins are people who share an ancestor.  The word "cousins" generally refers to first cousins, the children of your parents siblings.  However, the relationship can get considerably more complicated than that.

My mother had two cousins who were related to each other only by marriage.  When I asked her how she was related to Dolores ("Val") Seitz née Storck, she just sighed in resignation.  However, Charles J. Seitz is mom's first cousin, the only son of her Uncle Midge and Aunt Lizzie.  That is the four of them in the picture above.

When we were all younger, my family often celebrated holidays and other events with Charles and Val and their kids.  Then we all left for college, moved around the country and the world ... you know how it goes.  We saw each other when "C.J." died but lacking another foreseeable opportunity to get together, I invited two of my cousins and their families to see Wednesday's Connecticut Tigers game with my mother and me.

How Low Can You Go?

Varying degrees of effort in the Frontier League

We've often tried to make it plain that as far as our neverending quest goes, there are baseball teams and then there are baseball teams. The latter are those that are affiliated with MLB teams, from the short-season single-A Casper Ghosts (RIP) up to the Triple-A Toledo Mudhens. The former are everyone else, from your local high school team on up to and including the teams in Japan and Korea and throughout Latin America. We just have to draw the line somewhere.

Really the only confusion comes up with nearly professional leagues like the North American League and the Frontier League. These are teams that occasionally feature once and future major leaguers, but the odds are deeply, deeply against these players, some of whom are already washouts from affiliated minor leagues. The Frontier League keeps a list of "alumni" who have made it to the majors. In had taken 18 years for the list to become 23 guys long, and the most well known of the bunch is, um, Brendan Donnelly maybe? Jason Simontacchi? Dylan Axelrod? You see the problem.

Hänsel und Vanderheiden

Cyclones starter Hansel Robles, caged in the garden (the dugout),
watches reliever Tyler Vanderheiden (in the guise of Gretel) shove
the wicked witch (aka the Vermont Lake Monsters) into the oven.
Folklore is all about archetypes.

My short trip to Connecticut and Massachusetts next week starts with a game I will see with my mother, two of her cousins (once removed) and their spouses.  As a sort of a dress rehearsal, I took mom to last night's Brooklyn Cyclones game, her first.  It was a classic visit to MCU Park.