PDX & PHX

At the end of September, I visited my father outside of Portland, Oregon, where many people refer to the city by its airport code as if coming and going by air was the Number One recreational activity. (I already know their favorite pastime isn't going to see professional baseball.) Maybe it's the "iconic" carpet.

"The iconic PDX Carpet in December 2014," by Travis Thurston, used through Creative Commons license.

As Dad gets older, the visits get shorter, too short now to justify the indignities and cost of cross-country travel. I invited Melvin to meet me in Phoenix to round out the trip with some Arizona Fall League action. And while I am making music for airports, there is no harbor in the sky or anywhere else at PHX, which is of course in a desert.

The Word Is Not "Playoffs"

Well, it came to an end for the Mets today, eliminated from the hunt in the last week of the season—which really is not a shameful condition, all told. It reminded me of the more positive (albeit somewhat generic) prognosis that we got from a Mets semi-legend back in July. While he was here, he also helped us explore the wonderful regions of Port Said.... As the man says, peace out, Flushing!

Are You ... Dick Kryhoski?

Looking out the window of a B41 bus, I spotted a car* with a New York Yankees custom license plate personalized with, "23 1B." It reminded me of Melvin's post, "Are you ... Tony Campana?"

$91.25 initially if personalized, $62.50 annually on renewal.

According to Baseball Almanac, five Yankee first basemen wore number 23. Oddly, two of them did so in the same season, 1949, when the Yankees won the final two games of the season against the Red Sox to become the American League Champions. The team then beat the Dodgers in five games to win the World Series.

Wild West Virginia

Who—or what—exactly is buried here? (Wytheville, Va.)

Happy belated birthday, Murica! Rob and I celebrated the occasion by observing the many contradictory qualities of this alternately great and appalling nation, at least to the extent they were evident in Virginia, North Carolina, and West Virginia. On our earlier trip to Florida, Rob had posited that it isn't possible today for someone to say "Murica" without some kind of ironic self-consciousness. I disagreed, saying that lack of ironic self-consciousness is precisely what's being revealed. Did our trip to Greater Appalachia resolve or illuminate this question in any way? Greater minds than ours—i.e., yours—will have to decide.

Now, come on in and let's have some real fun again!

Frog Stomp

"What the hell is that? Burn it with fire!" said Watson, when she saw this picture. Nothing against Roberto Clemente, but the hybrid-lizard look is inherently unflattering.

So we headed to Florida to nominally wrap up the Florida State League—at least for the moment. Since neither of us cares much for the state in general, our plan was to see six games in an efficient four days. The last time we were there, we faced rainout after rainout; this time it was the opposite: rainouts before we got there manifested in doubleheaders while we were. In the event, we wound up seeing a perhaps record EIGHT games in four days. Let's run it down:

As North and as West as It's Going to Get

It's a rhetorical question, I think. Daniel Klennert can probably tell you more.

With this year's first trip looming rather alarmingly—in two days we'll be back in Port Charlotte, hoping to actually see a game this time—it's time for a photo essay on the rest of Northwest adventures. If this is insufficient, well....

Top-notch customer service at Safeco Field

Top-notch customer service at Safeco Field

Counting Down (2019 edition)

Burn, baseball, burn!
(Not an Alan Smithee film)

I interrupt the already extremely belated coverage of the August 2018 Northwest trip to answer the timeless question, "Hey, where are you guys going this year?" I'm so glad you asked. 

Odd Is My Copilot

Foliage at twelve o'clock

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if a stranger tells you that you "might" encounter "incidental nudity" at his house, you will, in fact, see him naked from the very first moment you meet. This holds true even if—perhaps especially if—the house in question is a decommissioned 727 in the Oregon woods. We went to such a house en route to a Hillsboro Hoops Hops game last August. It's taken me a while to write this, because, as we well know, it is possible to overthink a thing. To be fair, though, it is also possible to badly, badly underthink a situation and find yourself constantly risking powerful electric shocks or engulfment by bees, when all you wanted was to live a quiet life in a stratofortress.

Third Triennial Jackie Robinson Museum Report

In 2013, my friend Kate Briquelet wrote a story for the New York Post that didn't bury the lede.

"A TriBeCa museum dedicated to Jackie Robinson is three years overdue — and may never open despite spending a fortune on rent. The Jackie Robinson Foundation has raised only a fraction of the $42 million it says is needed to honor the Brooklyn Dodger who shattered Major League Baseball’s color barrier."

Three years later, I posted Million Dollar Questions, in which I concluded, "It seems little has changed."

Another three years have passed and as the Jackie Robinson Foundation (JRF) kicks off its year-long centennial celebration of its namesake, there appears to be good news.