Tuesday, May 29, 2018

It Takes a Lot to Laugh...

Above L. P. Frans Stadium, with not a fighter jet to be seen

...it takes a plane to fly. After an appetizer at Yankee Stadium (a.k.a. Where The American Century Will Never End) a couple weeks back, Rob and I met in Charlotte for a five-game swing over MemorialVeteransFlagPatriotsDay Weekend. (Not to spoil future posts, but despite the efforts of Tropical Storm Alberto, we did see four games.)

We started with the Hickory Crawdads. I've found that what I remember about our trips, generally, is not the baseball. In fact, writing this four days later, I can't even remember the visiting team. What I do remember is the weird roaring noise that accompanied the singing of the national anthem. At first, I thought it was feedback. After thinking about it further, I still thought it was feedback. Slowly, it dawned on me that we were listening to a Virtual Fly Over—there were no jets, just a recording mucking up the (tuneless) performance.

And then, as suddenly as the jets "arrived," they were "gone." It was economical, anyway, and good for a laugh.

Friday, May 11, 2018

This Season and Next and the Year After That

In his season preview last year, Melvin wrote
"If everything goes more or less as planned, 2017 could well be the antepenultimate one of Baseball Byways. That is, by the end of the 2019 season, Rob and I might be able to say that we have been to all the active MLB and MILB stadiums."


Everything did not go as planned, most notably with our decision to scuttle the "Northwest Blackout Yo-Yo." We will reprise the antepenultimate season with three trips this season, described below with a general plan for the following two years.