York

On Chasing Ghosts

Sovereign Bank Stadium, 2013

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Long Island Ducks vs. York Revolution
Sovereign Bank Stadium
Atlantic League (Independent)
2:00 PM


Outside the Game:
This game was an early afternoon Sunday contest, as opposed to the night matches the previous two days, so I had to make a relatively early start of it.

I got up an availed myself of the free breakfast buffet coupon for the restaurant in the motel. It was actually quite a nice spread that included many things, such as biscuits and hot gravy, which is frankly all it really needed. I ate my fill while staring out at the motel pool before going back to the room to finish up packing.

I did some research and selected a hotel for that evening, booked it on the iPad, and then called up the ticket office to get a seat for the game. Although their phone message clearly said that they were open at 10 AM, they weren't there at 10 AM. Given that I had to get going to make it for the game, I decided to start driving and pull off at a rest stop to call again when I was about half way there.

My route took me on the PA Turnpike, which was an immediate failure in and of itself, and the journey of about an hour for that leg of the trip cost me $10 to drive on the barely adequate road it presented. I did manage to dump off at the last rest area before I turned off to order my ticket successfully, so there was that.

Once I got on the road to York, it was a short drive to the park from the city limits. Parking became an issue, because after my first circuit of the stadium, I couldn't find any lots that weren't VIP only. I eventually asked the attendant of the next lot I passed, and he gave me directions to the general acces lot that was across a bridge from the stadium, but he also helpfully pointed out that there was cheaper parking just down the street at a shipping company that rents out its lot for games. Suitably informed, I parked there and went about my business.

After the game, hot, sweaty, and unkempt, I retrieved my car headed to my hotel. I drove down state route 30, the road connecting York and Lancaster, and got to my hotel to dump off my stuff, take a shower, and head back out.

My destination was the past, but I lacked the necessary DeLorean or police box. Since I started to venture out into central PA on these trips, I was avoiding a thing that needed facing, namely my alma mater, which was nestled in the center of Amish country. While not directly visiting the team in the town, York was close enough to stop beating around the bush. I had picked a hotel in Lancaster for this reason.

But I literally had no idea how this was going to go. Just driving on the roads that were so circumstantially familiar to me these last months were triggering things that I wasn't quite sure about, and I had no idea where it would lead. Especially with the stresses at work, we were opening a box of... things.

So I decided to start at someplace undeniably positive. There was an axiomatic giant mini-golf course at which I spent far too much time when I was in college. It had been there a long time when I was in college, and now it was nearly twenty years after that. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was still there. So visit it I must.

Freshman year, the place was nicknamed "Zen Golf," because of its many appealing characteristics. Aside from having 23 holes instead of the normal 18 was the fact that it was a beautifully landscaped facility with many water features, and flowers, and whatnot, which made it very peaceful to play, especially when you are a stressed-out college student, perhaps or perhaps not on other mind-altering substances. After a while, our group stopped keeping score, partly because we were getting so good at it, and partly because keeping score was holding us back, from a spiritual perspective.

As soon as I pulled in, I found the place largely unchanged, and laden with ghosts. It was not helped by the fact that I was still driving the same car that I was driving my senior year of college. When I got out of the car, I was immediately looking over at the passenger side for friends long gone to exit with me. It was at this point that I was losing my grip on reality and probably should have just headed back to the hotel for some sleep, but emotional competency has never been my strong suit.

At the booth, I was waited on by a woman who was not alive the last time I was at this place. I talked to her about my amazement that the course was still open, and she said that her aunt worked here when she was in school, and all of a sudden I was wondering if this aunt had ever taken my money when I was at school. Was this two generations of a family providing me a green golf ball and putter? Run, Oogie. Go home. Is what I didn't do.

And so I went down the walkway to the first tee, and I didn't make it past the putting practice green before I was remembering things that happened here with people whose mortal state I'm no longer sure of. Everything was more or less that. That's the hole where I fell over the railing and down the hill. That's the hole where Gillman hit the ball off the course and it bounced in for a hole in one on the next hole. That's where... It all became non-linear quickly.

Zen Golf

But it was still fun. I had several groups let me play through because I was only a single golfer, so I outpaced the crowds fairly soon and was out there with my memories and a green golf ball. At least I still have muscle memory, as I managed to shoot -8 on the toughest mini-golf place I've ever played. And I missed winning a free game by a quarter inch on the last hole.

It is here that any sane person would have packed up and gone back to the hotel. But I decided I wanted to go into the belly of the beast, so I programmed the soothing British voice to take me to my old college. I didn't need the TomTom, really. Much like the mini-golf course, once I started the ride to school from the mini-golf course, it was like a day hadn't passed.

The sights had changed a lot in twenty years, but Lancaster hadn't. They finally fixed the traffic issue in the center of town, there were so many old buildings gone and new ones up along the way, but it was all the same roads.

I made the short drive and parked my car across from campus, and then completely disconnected with reality for about a half hour. The last time I experienced anything similar to this was when I went back to the city in England I had stayed when I was studying abroad, ironically from this school. The places were all there, but the context was missing. There were all these places that had deep, meaningful connections to me, but the people were gone. My flat wasn't my flat anymore. The people I knew in that flat wouldn't be there waiting for me, or go to the places I remembered with me. It was just this husk of a connection that was only real for me, but ultimately meaningless. Because the context no longer existed.

And so I walked onto campus for the first time in nearly twenty years. There were new buildings that changed the landscape of campus, and buildings I remembered that underwent facelifts in the interim, but the shape of it was there. And it was all the same reactions as the golf course, or England, but much stronger to the point it was real again.

I could almost see the people I expected in the places I expected them. The shapes of them were still there. The buildings, the places... it wasn't just, "There's Ben-in-a-Box where you can watch the first walk of shame of the freshman women the first weekend back on campus." I was there again, with those people, watching those things happening. It was first hazy shapes, but as I let it go, it became more real. Memories, reality, whatever.

Despite all the changes, the shapes were still there. It was all functional until I went to up the pathway to the student center. My college radio station was located in the top left window when walking up this path, with its dinky neon sign in the window of the broadcast booth.

And what is no doubt that same sign was still there, weakly lit and flickering in that window after twenty more years. And I was no longer seeing individual instances of walking up to that studio -- I was seeing all of them at once, from the first time I saw that sign in the window, to the time Rich mooned me (and the entire campus) because he felt like it, to the moment now, and that was it.

It was the same place, but the people I knew weren't there, and there were just these impossibly young people walking around instead of who I expected. There were monuments to things that hadn't happened yet when I was there. It was also a useful lesson on the uselessness of commemorative history, as the hapless college president who incompetently managed during my tenure there (and apparently another decade afterwards) was unabashedly praised in the plaque dedicating a statuary garden by the student center. The current inhabitants, who had no idea of his failures, receive no other inputs but that plaque and make entirely the wrong conclusions.

And I stood there before the student center, and I could see in, and it had changed a bit, but the stairs to go to the second floor were still there -- the stairs that I had gone up hundreds of thousands of times. And my mind was already weak, but it suddenly became clear to me that if I just went in and went up those stairs again... something would happen. Maybe I would go up there, and go to the station, and Dave would be up front cursing about something, and Dan would be in the back trying to get a free single from some label, and it would be time to check records out of the library for my show that night, as long as that damn Apple II was working right. That maybe I was really just an old man in a young man's body again.

And I was just standing there, not sure I should be more worried about the fact that this was making perfect sense to me, or that since it was making perfect sense to me, I wasn't moving. I could even hear what was going on in the studio now. I could hear it, and I was standing there. I'm pretty sure I saw Bobo waving to me from the darkened booth. Standing there...

I had to go. I got myself pointed towards my car and went in and drove off, because I had to. I had to, if for nothing else the disappointment of going up might kill me if I believed it enough.

Sirens

And I went back to my hotel, and watched Breaking Bad, and got some of this onto virtual paper, and went the hell to sleep to dream of god knows what.


The Stadium & Fans:

Home plate to center field, Sovereign Bank Stadium

Sovereign Bank Stadium immediately dredges up Venture Brothers references, and that's more an indictment of me than anything else. Like it's sister stadium over in Lancaster, it is a renovation project on old railyard territory, and the park is generously littered with historical markers for historic locations at or replaced by the stadium.

The main entrance to the park is at the Brooks Robinson Plaza, which is adorned with a statue of the titular individual signing autographs for some young fans. The entrance filters you into the promenade right behind home plate. That walkway extends around the entirety of the field, with slight diversions in the outfield. A single section of seating extends down from this walkway from about left field to right field around home plate, and a second deck of luxury boxes extends from first to third base. The section of the promenade under the cover of the luxury boxes houses most of the concessions, facilities, and the team store.

A massive picnic deck for events sits in left field. Just beyond is Bricker's Famous French Fries and a big picnic hill in left center. Some graffiti celebrating an Eastern League championship is on the wall of the berm, right by where the canon sets up. You read that right. A man dressed in full colonial regalia mans a small canon that fires at the start of the game and when the Revolution take the lead. It is quite loud and smoky.

In center field is the extensive "Downtown's Playground" kids area, which has a row of seats right behind the center field wall in front of it. And right next door to that is the large manual scoreboard in left field. On the walkway behind the scoreboard, you can watch it being operated by a man looking through a hole to follow the action.

Downtown

Action on the field is directed by generic monster "Downtown." The crowd is riled up with a pre-recorded announcer screaming "REVOLUTION!", followed by the sound of a baseball hitting the bat in a manner to suggest a firing gun. The crowd greets batters by chanting "Hit the ball," to which some others refrain, "Over the Wall." The crowd was very much into the game, which was impressive for an indie-league park.

It was "York College Day" when I was there, and obviously a lot of York College students and faculty were in attendance. I'm not sure if some of the contests that day were specifically tailored to the college students, but there was an apple sauce race where participants had to navigate an obstacle course without spilling apple sauce, and then chug the container, which they all did with a practiced ease. Most of the rest of the events were standard minor/indie-league races and the like.


At the Game with Oogie:

Chicken fingers

I again got seats right behind the home dugout for the game, which was right in front of a lot of the between-innings festivities. There was a nuclear family sitting right next to me, though the father and daughter showed up late because the daughter had a stomach ache. It it is amazing what you can learn about people by just sitting in their general location.

I saw a sign for the Meiji cookies in left field, but after searching the entire stadium, they weren't actually on sale there. There was a "famous fries" stand out in center field, and if they were famous, I suppose you had to try them. I got a chicken fingers meal with the fries, and, to be fair, these were some pretty exceptional fries: great texture, not soggy, good flavor. But in the end, they were just french fries.


The Game:

First pitch, Ducks vs. Revolution

This was a contest between the division-leading Ducks against the bottom-dwelling Revolution, so one might expect a certain outcome. And although it was in doubt for a bit, one would not be disappointed.

The Ducks only managed a single in the top of the first, which paced the Revolution, who went in order. The Ducks followed along in the top of the second, but the Revolution started their half of the inning with a homer to deep center, but then only managed a single for the rest of inning, leaving them with a 1-0 lead at the end of two.

The Ducks again went in order in the third, and this time, the Revolution went along. The Ducks went in order yet again in the fourth, but the Revolution had other plans. They got a one-out hit, and the baserunner stole second and was then driven in with a single to deep center. Two outs closed down the half with the Revolution improbably up, 2-0.

In the fifth, the anemic Ducks managed only a one-out double, and the Revolution only got a lead-off single (subsequently erased on a double-play). The sixth began with three back-to-back singles for the Ducks that drove in the lead run. The last single in the sequence was bungled by the left fielder to move up the two runners, but three outs in order ended the rally with the score 2-1, Revolution. The Revolution only managed a one-out single (erased on a steal attempt) in their half.

Things fell apart for the Revolution in the seventh. A leadoff single for the Ducks moved to second on a wild pitch, and that was followed by a walk. A  grounder to third sniped the lead runner, but the next batter hit one to center, and the throw came home to try and get the runner from second. The throw was late, and then the catcher threw the ball away, allowing another run to score and the remaining runners to move up. A pitching change followed, as did a walk, but two outs ended the damage at 3-2, Ducks. The Revolution was going in the other direction and only managed a walk in the bottom of the seventh.

The Ducks tacked on a two-out homer to right in the eighth, to make it 4-2. The Revolution went in order, as did the Ducks in the ninth. The Revolution only managed a two-out single in their last half, ending the game at 4-2, Ducks.


The Scorecard:

Ducks vs. Revolution, 09/01/13. Ducks win, 4-2.

The scorecard was a free tabloid newsprint giveaway. The lineups were included as an insert. The newsprint paper was adequate for the task, though when it got wet (as mine did when a Revolution player "helpfully" sprayed the hot crowd with a water gun), it held up okay.

The scorecard had only nine lines for players, but a copious amount of space for notes, which makes it even more puzzling as to why there were not totals lines for each inning. As far as the game went, it was all pretty pedestrian. The only note I made was in the bottom of the ninth inning, when the number eight man in the Ducks lineup (the K man for the evening) finally struck out and gave the grateful crowd their free breadsticks coupons.


The Accommodations:

Travelodge

The big deal for today was Breaking Bad. A new episode was airing over the holiday Sunday, and I wanted to make sure I was able to watch it.

The plan was to stay over in Lancaster, a little closer to Allentown and most of my planned post-game activities. I actually called several hotels in the area to see if they specifically had AMC on their in-room cable offerings. Literally none of the more upscale places did, when I noticed that they had AMC in my Travelodge room. So I checked with the Travelodge in Lancaster, and they indeed did have it as well, and so it was booked.

It was not as nice as the one the previous night, and I had to settle for double beds instead of a king, but it did what I needed it to do. (I actually ended up with numerically more pillows with the two beds, which I just piled onto the one bed furthest from the door.) Beds, TV, desk, table and chairs, and a little larger bathroom than the night before, though this one was a strictly shower-only affair without a tub to speak of.

It did its job.

Click here to see all the photos from this trip.

2013 Labor Day