Sarasota

An Introduction:

After spending the last few years bouncing around and getting to all the places I could "comfortably" drive from my home and slowly trying to conquer the north-east while never quite being able to plan or commit to a trip to Australia, I decided to use my backed-up, soon-to-time-out vacation days from the previous year. The few options available involved Spring Training. I decided to start in the closer environs of Florida with the Grapefruit League, which had the added benefit of not having to worry about hotel rooms so much since I could spend a lot of the trip at my parents' winter condo. A lot of this reasoning, however, would get called into question during the course of the trip.

The thing to know about the Grapefruit League is that it is not nearly as buttoned up location-wise as its sister league out in Arizona. The Cactus League was centrally planned and controlled and managed to consolidate all its teams within an hour's drive of each other by this time, which makes things a bunch easier. The more historic Grapefruit League was... less so.

There were pockets of teams huddled around each other in the corners of the state (not counting the panhandle, which no one really does, anyway). There are a group of teams in the south-east, a group of teams in the southwest, a group of teams in the north-east, and a group of teams in the north-west. Now, those groupings are all well and good, but the fact remains that some of these groups are four hours away from each other. Proper planning is important to keep travel to a minimum, and I failed at that pretty hard. I screwed up my Orioles booking and had to swap them to first on my list to fix the problem, and that led to a lot more driving than there should have been from the very start.

This was also going to be the first time I would be going to a game a day for two weeks straight. I'm as big a baseball fan as I know, but even I was worried that a game a day, plus all that travel was going to break me. But, as it turned out, I even snuck in a double-header while I was down there.

As far as what I learned, there were a number of things:

- There are generally three types of Grapefruit League Parks:
  - Historic parks that had suburbs spring up around them in the intervening years
  - Somewhat newer parks that aren't old but aren't the newest anymore, but still have full, "modern" Spring training facilities
  - The newest Spring Training palaces built in recent years, with cutting-edge everything and an existence as much as an entertainment center as they are a ballpark
 - Nearly all the parks have a reservoir or lake of some kind. All of them have warning signs about alligators. Some even have resident gators that care so little about people that they hang out in full view.
- If there is anything hotter than watching a Grapefruit League afternoon game with no shade, I don't want to know it.
- It is interesting to try and dissect what portion of the crowds at each game are fans who made a special trip to come down to visit, fans that have permanently moved down to be near the Spring Training facility, and locals that are boosters of the team by proximity.
- The between-inning and pitch clocks started this year, so it was impossible to know if the relative dearth of between-inning entertainment as opposed to MLB or minor league games was because that is how it always was in Spring Training, or if it was because of the new rules they imposed.
- There is a lot of nothing in Florida. I mean, a lot of nothing. Especially in the middle. You really don't get that until you drive through it and across it a lot over a short period of time, coincidentally, just like I did.
- I knew that Spring Training worked under different rules, but I was witness to some of the most ungodly communist perversions of the sport that I ever saw.

With that in mind, let's get started, shall we?

On Getting Gone

Newark Liberty Bald-Eagle Apple Pie Baseball America International Airport

Friday, March 6, 2015

Punta Gorda, FL


Outside the Game:
As I once again teetered on the precipice of quitting my job, my vacation loomed large in my future. I had stayed the night previously at work until very late to get as much done as possible, but on Friday, frankly, I was halfway out the door most of the day.

My day began packing and returning the portable heater to my landlord (an unfortunate pipe-warming necessity from several weeks ago), and then dragging my luggage to work with me, sadly missing another "mandatory" training session that would have eaten up half of my last morning on the job before vacation.

I was mostly in back-to-back meetings all day, and I was sleep-walking through most of it. My entire day pivoted around 4:30 PM and leaving for the airport. So most of the day glided by amicably until that point, and eventually, off I went.

To say that there was stress about traveling that week would have been the greatest of understatements. Forecasts oscillated fiercely between a snow shower or two and another round of the Snowpocalpyse that had been plaguing the Northeast all winter. It eventually decided on a round of mild snow on Tuesday, rain and ice on Wednesday, and then six inches of packed winter goodness on Thursday.

But the snow stopped on schedule at 7 PM on Thursday, giving me a glimmer of hope for my 7:30 PM flight on Friday. I managed to get my boarding pass with no problem, and Friday went on without an urgent email informing me of a delay, although there was a point when the wireless connection at work died. When my iPad reconnected, I waited in terror for four or five flight updates that never quite did come pouring through.

So off to Penn Station I went, arriving just before a train to Newark Airport left at 5:03 PM. A concerned-looking French couple were on the tiny elevator down to the NJ Transit train tracks with me. They wanted to know if they were going to the right train, which I assured them they were. They were trying to catch a 6:30 PM flight, and I also assured them they were probably okay. And then I thought to ask if it was International or not, and they said it was, and then I tried to give them as much false hope as I could muster and tell them again that they would probably be "okay."

A half hour later, we were disgorged onto the monorail station, and a packed-car trip later had us in the terminal. As I arrived, they decided that peak of rush hour was a great time to close one of the three security stations at the airport, somehow doubling the lines at both the other checkpoints. As I had premier access, I got in the shorter one and waited as the central Asian businessman behind me spent the entire line wait bitching to someone on his cell phone about how New York was a "second-rate city" because his flight was cancelled yesterday, and New York can't "deal with snow." I can only wonder what his opinion would be if he was on the LaGuardia flight that went off the runway recently trying to fly in similar weather. "Here is a first-rate city willing to risk people's lives for travel itineraries." Jagoff.

Those who know me are aware that my personal phone technology is, grudgingly, at an early aughts level of flip phone. I am required to have something that makes and receives calls. Unfortunately, my current flip phone is aged, and it has a bunch of undocumented features. Sometimes I will accidentally turn on speaker phone, but there is literally no named command on the phone that will let you do that, just a series of arcane button presses in a specific order while vocalizing dark incantations. In a similar manner, I managed to unearth the command that just allows audio to come through the earphone jack. The phone worked perfectly, but it just won't play audio through the regular earpiece. Work keeping me occupied most of the day, I was not successful in tracking down a solution to the issue in the limited time I had, and I did not have time to go buy an earbud.

Having that time at the airport, I went to the gadget store and was next in line to a befuddled Britt who was considering buying an iPad on the spur of the moment, you know, just to have for the flight. He asked and had answered about five separate times of the availability of stock, and then kept disbelieving the sales staff, asking if this display box or that display box had a unit in it and being less politely told each time that they were, in fact, display boxes. After about ten minutes, he literally wandered off mid-sentence, which makes me wonder about people rich enough to by iPads on a whim at the airport.

The guy behind the counter was clearly eager to talk to anyone besides that guy, so when I confronted him with my technology problem from 2003, he was quite eager to comply. He went to his tiny storeroom and found a compatible headset, apologizing for not having an earbud, and then gave me a 50% discount on it. I walked away with a ridiculous-looking headset, but the ability to use my phone, so it was a win-win all around, more or less.

It was eventually time for boarding, and it went uneventfully. There were many moments of concern for me during the boarding, but thankfully nothing panned out. I was in front of a row of kids, but they were all well-behaved. I was next to some vapid sorority chicks, but they immediately went to sleep for the entire flight. The guy in front of me immediately reclined back into my knees, but quickly apologized and put the seat most of the way up. My yang was getting yinged all over the place.

My only real complaint is that I couldn't stay awake until takeoff and so was awakened as we left the ground and remained awake for most of the flight. I was so bored that I even bought on-board Internet and spend most of the trip skimming Reddit.

We touched down about ten minutes late, and the off-loading went without incident. I got to the rental counter just as they were shutting down and was directed to take the shuttle to the "main station." I caught the shuttle just before it left, spent a productive ten minutes getting my car set-up at the rental station, and then went out to retrieve a car. In this case, it was one of three remaining Chevy Sparks, which was a tiny thing that I can only imagine they named that particular way to try and trick people into thinking it was a hybrid or something. It was just a little box with wheels, and I threw my gear in the trunk and set off.

Spring steed

The car came with a navigation system, which was unexpected. So used to that being an extra charge, I had brought my GPS unit from home as I normally do. I was planning to head from the airport across Florida and stay at a hotel somewhere so I would not have a 3.5 hour drive before the game the next day. Central Florida is at best barren, and at worst filled with alligators and perhaps swamp people. One important feature on the car's GPS that I would learn the next day was "use freeways," because the "objectively" quickest away across central Florida is apparently the biggest stretch of backroad, state road nightmares you ever did see.

A clever feature of said roads is that they quickly go from 65 MPH speed limit to 35 MPH speed limit when you get into towns along the way. As I was seeing this for the first time, I was trying to pull around a car so I could see where the speed limit sign was when flashing lights illuminated behind me. I pulled over and was greeted by a deputy who said he had me at 65 passing cars. I explained I couldn't have been going that fast because I was already slowing down to look for the signs, and I was passing the guy to see where the sign was. The officer clearly wasn't expecting to see a middle-aged white guy and asked me a bunch of questions about what I was doing. I told him I had just gotten the rental car within the hour and was trying to get to Sarasota. After taking my license for a walk back to his car (where he no doubt found out my completely clean driving record), he let me go with a warning and told me to watch out for the city speed limits along these kinds of roads. I thanked him for his time and went off again into the night.

The never-ending night. After two hours of driving, I was looking for someplace to pull over, but I was definitely not finding any on these stretch of murder roads. After another half hour, the car's GPS finally put me a major interstate, and I dove off about forty minutes south of my destination the next day into a clutch of hotels. I had a free pass for La Quinta, so I went there first and was told that every hotel in the area was sold out except for an expensive place ten minutes away. It being after 2 AM in the morning, I wasn't interested in price anymore and headed out with due haste.

I arrived at the aforementioned place while the teenaged counter boy was on the phone with another suitor for the room. He hung up, and I told him I wanted a room, and he shrugged and checked me in. I blearily signed papers, parked, and dragged my bags up.

After a cursory set-up for the next day, I fell onto the bed for, at best, six or so hours of sleep.


The Accommodations:

PG Waterfront Hotel

My incredible overpriced--especially considering how briefly I would be in it--room for that night was at the PG Waterfront Hotel in Punta Gorda. Under normal circumstances, I probably would have liked the hotel, but seeing as I overpaid by double for a room I'd be using for 6-7 hours at most, I was a little less than impressed.

It was a nice enough room. The large bathroom was just off the entrance to the right, with a small vanity and toilet and tub. A short hallway led to the bedroom, with a giant king-sized bed with ornamental headboard flanked by end tables and a reading chair and table on one side of the room and a wooden desk and dresser with TV on the other side. There was a sliding door to the balcony that overlooked the nice pool that I would never use.

Not that much would have stopped me at that point, but it was a quiet enough room that lasted me for whatever little sleep I got.

On Getting Started in Here

Ed Smith Stadium, 2015

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Boston Red Sox vs Baltimore Orioles
Grapefruit League (Spring Training)
Ed Smith Stadium
Sarasota, FL
1:05 PM


Outside the Game:
I woke up far too early the next day, but in time to grab the weekend breakfast. Groggy and bitter, I started contemplating how many of my fellow breakfast-goers I'd be willing to kill for some more sleep as I half-heartedly shoveled food into my mouth.

I had until around 9:30 AM to leave to make it to the stadium to get outside photos before the gates opened, so I went back to my room, showered, packed up, and then set the alarm for 9:30 AM and lay back down to try and get some more sleep. I'm unsure if I succeeded, but I passed in and out of luciudity enough to count for a little more rest. I gathered my stuff, checked out, and bundled into the car.

I put in the Orioles' stadium into my GPS, and playing around with the controls some, I discovered the option to "keep to main roads" as a preference, which I checked on with great satisfaction, and then followed it up 75 to the stadium.

I got to the park and paid for my parking, and did my pre-game photography business under cloudy skies before lining up in a short line to get into the stadium as the gates opened.

After the game, I got back into the car, pulled myself together as much as possible, and then set off on the three-hour drive to my parents' condo in the old-age complex on the other side of the state, cursing my inability to properly schedule things all the way there. Even though I managed to drive through rush hour, most of it was spent on 70 crossing the state in the middle of nowhere, so I was able to complete the drive in just over three hours, with just a touch of backup upon reaching Boynton Beach proper.

I was greeted by my parents as I showed up, but I just needed to take a nap. I went into my parents' bedroom and passed out until dinner. Then I spent some time unpacking and finishing up my scorecard. My trip the next day was a no-brainer drive, so I at least didn't have to worry about that.

I watched some TV, and eventually kicked my parents' out of the living room so I could go to sleep on the pullout couch, and I was dead to the world until morning.


The Stadium & Fans:

Home plate to center field, Ed Smith Stadium

Ed Smith Stadium was my first stop on the Grapefruit League trip this year, but not my first Spring Training complex, having visited the Metropolitans in Port St. Lucie and the Marlins in Jupiter in previous years. Ed Smith Stadium is named for the local baseball luminary who helped get the park built when it was the home of the White Sox way back when, though it underwent extensive renovations in 2011. It was decked in Spanish Colonial, like many of the buildings and other Spring Training parks in Florida, with tile roofs, arched porticoes, extensive windows and turrets, and white walls ending in geometric gates and arches. The park was surrounded with sidewalks, with the minor league and training fields just beyond center field. The main entrance and facade was behind home plate, with smaller entrances in left and right fields near the parking lots.

The entrances all emptied out into an outer walkway that wrapped around the park from outfield to outfield. This walkway held most of the stores, concessions, and other stands in the park. At regular intervals, there were ramps into the main seating area from the outer walkway. There was a smaller walkway that ran in between the seating area, splitting the two rows of seats into the lower box seats and the upper seats. The grandstands, all with sun covers extending over most of the upper seats, ran from short outfield to short outfield, ending at the home and away bullpens in left and right field. The area behind home plate had the press box, along with some luxury boxes, and were the only areas of seats without a cover. A smaller walkway extended from the end of the seat walkway to circle the outfield. There was also a walkway at the top of the seating area that ran its length, with standing room tables and chairs along the top, the suite entrances behind the center building, and a lounge area overlooking the field at the top of third base.

The only seating in the outfield was a special deck in left field with chairs and small tables that ran into center field. In the base of the tower behind home plate were most of the amenities, including Fan Assistance, special concession Cafe 54, and the team store. There was a patio on the first base side with concessions and a picnic area in right field. The digital scoreboard sat in right-center, above a digital ball-and-strikes board and right next to the batter's eye, with mostly blue sky and palm trees providing the backdrop to the outfield. The new pitch-clocks for this season were installed on the TV tower.

The Orioles did the place up right. The main entrance had a pennant mobile for the big club, as well as being decorated with quotes from great Orioles. Retired numbers adorned the press box, and in addition to the stadium dedication plaques, the press box was dedicated to Red Ermish. The entrances to the suites had posters of great moments in Orioles history, and all the porticoes around the stadium were dedicated to evolution of Orioles' logos over the year, including Spring Training, the mascot, and the team logo. And the requisite sign-post to all the other Orioles' affiliates was to be found, as well.

The Bird is the word

The Oriole Bird made the trip down for the Spring, and he brought a crap-ton of fans with him. The place was packed for this afternoon game, and while some Boston fans did show up, they were grotesquely outnumbered by Bird-backers, who were quite into the game. There was not a lot of between-inning entertainment, but the staff did provide some levity. One beer guy went around the entire game in a day-glo orange wig, for example. There was also the usual crush for autographs before and after the game, which is one of the main appeals of Spring Training for most fans.


At the Game With Oogie:

Sunny Spring Scoring

I got in as the gates opened, and did my regular tour of the park, along with my picture parade, hitting the shops, and scoping out the food options. Still groggy from my lack of sleep, I grabbed an early hot dog and souvenir soda while I was still walking around, and later grabbed a brat before settling into the game.

Hot dog and souvenir soda

As I had ordered early and screwed everything up, I still managed to get a seat on the first-base side several rows up from the dugout in the crowded house.

Alternate scoring

There was nothing particularly interesting in the stands except for one older lady a row or so ahead of me on the aisle. She was keeping score, but without a scorecard. She seemed to be keeping it long form in a notebook. After each play, she wrote out a sentence or two about it, and then watched the game some more. It was the most interesting scoring method I think I ever saw. The place was a madhouse right after the last out, so I didn't get a chance to talk to her about it, but I would have liked to. Besides, I had a long drive ahead of me, too.


The Game:

First pitch, Red Sox vs. Orioles

My first completely meaningless Spring Training game pitted AL East rivals Boston Red Sox versus the home Baltimore Orioles, and a last-ditch rally fell short for the birds, giving the Sox their pointless victory.

The Red Sox jumped out early, getting four runs in the top of the first on a single, triple, walk, and homer to right, staking them to a 4-0 margin. Baltimore got one back in their half, with a leadoff two-base error by the third-baseman getting driven in with a subsequent single, cutting the early lead to 4-1. Both sides went in order in the second and third, the Red Sox doing so in the third despite a leadoff single thanks to a double-play that erased the runner.

Boston struck again in the top of the fourth with a one-out homer to center to increase the lead to 5-1, while the Orioles went in order. The Sox only had a walk to show for the top of the fifth, while Baltimore sat down in order again. The top of sixth saw Boston waste a single and a walk, while the Orioles finally got some more scoring together, with two runs based on a hit batsman and a walk, a double steal, a ground out, and a sacrifice fly to right, cutting the lead to 5-3.

The Red Sox got those runs back in the top of the seventh with a walk, double, and single, increasing their lead back to 7-3. Baltimore just had two walks in the bottom of the seventh to show for it. Boston went in order in the top of the eighth, while the Orioles stranded a single and walk in the bottom of the frame. The Red Sox again went in order in the ninth, but Baltimore staged their improbable last-licks almost comeback. A one-out walk was followed by a double, and a homer to left brought all three runs in. A walk and a single put the winning run on-base with two outs, but a new pitcher got a fly-out to right, ending the rally and securing Boston's unimportant 7-6 victory.


The Scorecard:

Red Sox vs. Orioles, 03/07/15. Red Sox "win," 7-6.

The scorecard was a separate $1 item from the program, a bi-fold cardstock number with the scorecard on the right side of inside spread, with the rosters on the left side, and the back taken up by an advertisement. Although on only one page, the scorecard took up the entirety of that page, and was a good enough size to be comfortable. Game stats were at the top of the card, and then visitors and home team on top of one another. Each batter line had space for a replacement (undesignated), each batting line ended with summary stats, and each inning column ended with inning stats. The pitching lines were under the batting lines for both teams, and to the left of the pitching lines were the team totals. The scoring boxes were plain white, but a little small, but it was okay to score. The background of the scorecard was a light gray, so there were still legible for notes. Overall, it was quite nice, except that the printing sometimes smudged with erasures or friction.

It was a pretty conventional game. The first batter in the bottom of the first originally was scored a double, but it was changed to a two-base E5 on review, which got a note. Otherwise, both teams swapped out most of their players between the seventh and eighth innings. Only the DH for the Orioles and the DH and the first baseman for the Red Sox played the entire game.


The Accommodations:
I was staying at my parents' condo in the over 50 community that they rented for the winter. It was only a one-bedroom, but the large living room had a pull-out couch, and that was where I was going to be resting my head for a good part of the trip.

The pull-out couch wasn't exactly comfortable, but I don't imagine any of them are particularly designed to be such. The real problem that I would find is that my father was as quiet as a drunk elephant in the morning when he left to go golfing, and inevitably woke me up super-early every day. Not surprisingly, this would begin to wear after a while...

Click here to see all the photos from this trip.

2015 Grapefruit League

Bronx

On the House that Jeter Built

New Yankee Stadium, 2009

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Baltimore Orioles vs. New York Yankees
Yankee Stadium
Major League Baseball, American League East
Bronx NY
1:05 PM


Outside of the Game:
This was just a day trip from home. Travel on the subways is always more of a chore on Sundays, when the trains run at what can only be called a leisurely pace. By leaving a half hour or so early, I managed to get the the stadium to pick up my tickets about fifteen minutes before the gates opened.

After the game, I got to the subway just as a D was coming in. On the ride back to Manhattan, I was only almost killed twice by dance groups performing in the subway car. Threats to my life on the second leg of the trip home on the PATH were minimal, due to the lack of street dancers performing on them.


The Stadium & Fans:

Home plate to center field, New Yankee Stadium

How can you replace a legend? Especially when said legend still lies, veiled like an old Italian lady in mourning, right across the street?

Nonno passed.

To be fair, the new Yankee Stadium is as nice as any new park I've been to, and completely blows Not Shea out of the water. It is what Not Shea should have been, wants to be, but isn't. The history of the franchise infuses the place, but for all the historical references, it is very clearly a modern ballpark.

The main entrance "Grand Hall" puts the Robinson Rotunda at Not Shea to shame. And the park still has the gravitas (and pedestrain ramps) of the old place. The Yankees claim the dimension of the field is the same, but something about it looks a little off, though it seems correct in general dimensions.

The main promenade houses concessions and walkways that give access to the lower deck seating and the specialty restaurants in center field and by first base. Also in center field is the bunker entrance to the new Monument Park (and even though I got there right when the gates opened, the line was already an hour or so long). The middle deck houses the new Yankee Museum (also over an hour line) and the area in center field has a special section with tables on which to eat concessions. It also gives access to the new bleacher seats on either side of the center field restaurant. Having sat in some of the seats next to the wall, I can safely say you can at best see half the field. The upper decks (or whatever the euphemism is) only goes from left field to right field, holding the seats under the restored bunting around the edge of the roof.

The stadium was all well laid-out, convenient, clean, and personable -- and those are all adjectives that I would never apply to Yankee Stadium. And I think that may be its biggest problem. It is a very well-designed park, with many interesting details, and heavy thought clearly went into its production, but it was those rough edges and supposed "inconveniences" that made the real Yankee Stadium what it was. There is something just missing that you can't quite put your finger on.

From the upper deck

Even though it was the opening weekend of the football season and the Yankee's opponent was the last place team in the division, the stadium was nearly full, and the crowd was in the doors as soon as the gates opened. The crowd was loud and expressive as always, and a handful of Orioles fans scattered throughout the crowd made no impact between one or two continuing their "special" practice of shouting the "O" in the Star Spangled Banner.


At the Game with Oogie:

New scoring

I got a seat in the 200s right behind first base. The view was excellent, and the seats not as claustrophobic as the real Yankee Stadium. A group of the most vapid women in the world were seated right behind me, but it turns out they were sitting there because two groups of people had the same tickets. In a slight smile from the powers that be, they were escorted away when the rightful owners of their seats showed up, and it turned out they had counterfeit tickets.


The Game:

First pitch, Orioles vs. Yankees

The term "brutal beating" gets bandied about so much these days, that it has lost its impact.

While the game ended up a casual slaughter the likes of which you'd expect from someone with "Khan" somewhere in their name, it was a close-fought thing for the first half.

The Yankees jumped out to an early lead, with Jeter scoring in the top of the first, but with the Yankees leaving two in scoring position at the end of the inning. Sabathia got sloppy in the second, giving up two runs and then eventually stopping the bleeding there. The Yankees managed to strand two more on base in the third before the O's jumped ahead with a run in the top of the fourth.

Then the tide turned. The Yankees plated two in the bottom of the fourth to tie it, but A-Rod looked at strike three with the bases loaded to end the inning. He was apparently so upset that he continued arguing about the call in the bottom of next inning, and got tossed, along with Girardi who went as insane as I've ever seen him get. The Yankees scored two in the bottom of the sixth, but again ended the inning with the bases loaded, adding a shadow of missed opportunities to the game.

That shadow was completely dispelled in he bottom of the eigth, where the Yankees got eight runs on eight hits, and blew through three pitchers (including one with the uneviable pitching line of nill innings pitched [no outs recorded], with four earned runs on four hit and a walk.)


The Scorecard:

Orioles vs. Yankees, 09/13/09. Yankees win, 13-3.

The scorecard is only part of the $10(!) program, making it the most expensive scorecard in the majors. The card itself is the same one-pager the Yankees have been using for at least the last several years. The entire page is devoted to the scorecard, Yankees lineups, and the list of AL umpires.

While the scorecard is sufficient for most AL games, its limits are stressed by games with a lot of changes, as was the case today. Also, the ink used in the printing is easily smudged by erasing or sweat.

There were a couple of events of note, including Jeter scoring his 100th run of the season and the aforementioned A-Rod and Girardi ejections. The most interesting scoring note was the two-base sacrifice fly in the third. The Oriole center fielder field out to deep left, and the runner on second advanced on the throw. Yankee's left fielder Johnny Damon forgot how many out there were and airmailed in a throw to the infield that allowed the run to score from second. Oops.

Click here to see all the photos from this trip.

2009 Stand-Alone Trip

Baltimore

On The Glory of The Real

Oriole Park at Camden Yards, 2009

Monday, May 25th, 2009

Toronto Blue Jays vs. Baltimore Orioles
Oriole Ball Park at Camden Yards
Major League Baseball, American League East
Baltimore, MD
1:35 PM


Outside of the Game:
My friend headed home in the morning, so I was on my own for the day. I had breakfast at the hotel again, and then headed out to the game.

Sunset on the Pike

My trip home after the game was surprisingly uneventful. Although traveling on the NJ Turnpike on the last day of Memorial Day weekend, it was smooth sailing all the way home outside of some congestion right after the shore exits.


The Stadium & Fans:

Home plate to Center field, Oriole Park at Camden Yards

For those of you not up on your contemporary ballpark history, Oriole Park at Camden Yards was the first in the line of the "next generation" of ballparks. Previous to Oriole Park, the trend in baseball venues for last two decades or so had been towards multi-purpose, suburban stadiums. Because they were multi-purpose stadiums, they were non-optimal for watching a baseball game, as the cavernous seating was remote from the field of play and they tended to look half-full due to the incredibly high seating capacity. Also, because they were suburban and dumped in the middle of nowhere, they were mostly car-only affairs, with people arriving just before the game and leaving right after as there was nothing else to do surrounding the suburban stadium.

Oriole Park was the first new baseball venue to buck that trend. It was a baseball-only park, designed for optimum intimacy and sight lines for baseball, with a commiserate loss in total seating capacity. It was also specifically designed to fit into an urban area, as most ballparks used to be. The resulting success was nothing less than a revolution in ballpark design that has affected the design of nearly every new ballpark since then, touching almost every team in the major leagues.

I had the unfortunate scheduling of seeing most of the copy-cat parks first before seeing the original article, so despite all the raves I had heard about Oriole Park, I was a bit skeptical after seeing the pale imitations. I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised.

There are many things that set the real McCoy apart from its pale imitators. It was very interesting to see the features that were endlessly copied at ballparks across the country in their original, and quite superior, form. The most noticeable of these is the location. The decision to put it downtown in an available urban space feels a lot more natural than it does in its antecedents. The park was wedged into an existing space, and a street and abandoned warehouses were incorporated into the design. Adapting the shape and layout of the park to an existing urban environment feels organic, as opposed to a park such as San Diego, where the incorporation of old industrial buildings seems spurious given the sprawling grounds they clearly had available with which to work.

A street between the old buildings and the new park was closed to car traffic, and becomes the early-entrance gate for the park. A number of shops and concessions line the road, and there are often autograph sessions with current and ex-players also held in the alley. Home runs that made it to the road from ballpark are memorialized with brass markers where they fell, with a special marker on a warehouse wall where Ken Griffey Jr. became the only person to hit a ball that crossed all the way over the street and hit the warehouse wall on the fly.

The closed-off street provides entrance to the center field area for batting practice, while keeping the entrances to the other area of the park closed. The center field porch houses all the team's pennant flags and provides an area for people to watch batting practice. The other wings of the outfield seats are often packed during BP to catch flies or provide an area for kids to beg for balls from the outfielders taking fielding practice. After batting practice, the gates to the other areas of the stadium are opened, allowing fans to get to their seats.

The park is well laid-out, and there doesn't seem to be a bad seat in the house. The seats are all as close as possible to the field, so even the upper-deck seats are relatively proximate to the field. The layout of the stadium just looks and feels correct, and it is this level of symmetry is missing from later imitators. From the detail on the decorative seat grills to the overall layout of the park, it is clear that a lot of actual thought and planning went into the park, and the result is simply excellent.

Also especially nice was the fact that while there was a kids area, with park equipment and the like, there was no area for kids to play video games (baseball or otherwise), nor was their the seemingly ever-present "tiny Wiffle-ball field of the stadium," which I can appreciate in concept, but gets boring in its repetition in nearly every baseball stadium these days.

The only noticeable feature absent from Oriole Park was the "promenade" level, which gives a constant view of the field to people walking to their seats or from the concessions stands. While I can appreciate the idea behind the innovation, I can honestly say that Oriole Park does not suffer in the least by its absence. Also notably missing is the locked-down, upper-class only areas behind home plate that most of the newer parks are implementing. While there is a special air-conditioned section for box seats and the club level, it is easy to circumvent, and does not prevent access directly behind home plate as is the case at Not Shea, for example.

Baltimore fans have gained a reputation as die-hards, and that seems a fairly earned designation. Although the stadium wasn't full, it was a holiday when many people are out of town. And the fans in attendance didn't let something like constant rain from about the fourth inning on dampen their enthusiasm. At most parks, when the rain starts, usually about half of the fans will depart, with progressively more leaving as the game goes on and the rain continues. The Orioles fans retreated to under overhangs, but for the most part, the fans that showed up at the start of the game remained until the end of the game. Much as was the case at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, I can see how fans can keep packing this park even when the product on the field is not quite up to snuff in recent years.


At The Game With Oogie:

Delays

I again had selected mid-level seats to keep me out of the sun, but again, it served the actual purpose to protect me from the rain that fell through the last two-thirds of the game. I once again inadvertently bought tickets in the air-conditioned "premium" area, and outside of being on the third-base side, it was almost the exact seats as the ones we had at Nationals Park the day before.


The Game:

First pitch, Blue Jays vs. Orioles

The Blue Jays were in first place the day before, but a continued losing streak had dropped them to third in a day, and their woes continued against even the sad-sack Orioles. The Jays jumped out to a lead in the top of the first, but gave it away in the bottom of the inning. The Orioles took the lead in the third against the listless play of the Jays and would put the game out of reach with two runs in the 7th, winning 4-1.


The Scorecard:

Blue Jays vs. Orioles, 05/25/09. Orioles win, 4-1.

The separate scorecard was $1, or included in the $5 full program. It was relatively roomy cardstock fold-out, but the black background made it impossible to write any marginal notes. They also demanded the inclusion of information (in this case, the team records) that they did not provide on the scoreboard, so negative points for that.

Because the Blue Jays used an overshift on the Orioles' Huff (for non-baseball fans, an overshift is moving the infielders from their regular positions to locations stacked on one side of the infield to defend against good hitters who generally cannot hit to the opposite field), I had to come up with some new scoring terminology to record the overshifted position of the 2nd baseman. (I settled on an "o.")


The Accommodations:
I was at home sweet home this night, and ready to dread the workday Tuesday.

Click here to see all the photos from this trip.

2009 The Beltway

Washington, DC

On True Love

Room service at the Holiday Inn

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009
Baltimore, MD


Outside The Game:
I am in love with TomTom. There, I said it, and I'm proud to have said it.

I am legendarily bad at navigation while driving. On foot, I am steady and sure, and in Great Britain, for whatever reason, I am a human compass, but in the car, I generally just get lost. But all of that will change now, because of the tiny little navigation robot with the soothing female voice. My father let me borrow his TomTom navigation system for the trip down to Baltimore/DC, and it is the single most useful invention related to driving since the internal combustion engine.

Under normal circumstances, I somehow manage to haphazardly navigate while sneaking glances at now primitive-seeming printouts of Google Maps directions. No more! Now I have a calm female voice calmly tell me what to do, calmly. And if despite this calm help you still miss a turn, it automatically adjusts calmly, and calmly tells you how to fix it. Genius. Whoever developed this system deserves every last penny that they make.

On the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, I began my trip down to Baltimore. I stopped to drop off tickets and Neolithic paper directions to a friend joining me for the game. I stayed for a bit at the graduation party he was attending in Central Jersey, and then went straight down the rest of the way to Baltimore in the late afternoon. Outside of some mild congestion, there were no impediments, and I managed to get to my destination in about three uneventful hours, serenaded by the calming TomTom voice at every juncture that required a turn or merge.


The Accommodations:

Holiday Inn BWI

In some preliminary research, I found that the BMI airport hotels in Baltimore are relatively equidistant between Nationals Park and Camden Yards, which made them the perfect place to stay for this endeavor. At BMI, there is a little community of hotels in a special area just outside of the airport, and I stayed at the Holiday Inn in this strange little gated hotel community. It was a nice business hotel undergoing some pre-Summer renovations, so I was able to get an Executive Suite on the cheap. It was also housing many of the teams and families for what appeared to be a junior high school women's soccer tournament, so the halls were filled with "tween" girls, doing whatever it is "tween" girls do. I beat a hasty retreat to my room, ordered up some room service, and then went to bed to get an early start on the next day.

On Bad Associations

Nationals Park, 2009

Sunday, May 24th, 2009
Baltimore Orioles vs. Washington Nationals
Nationals Park
Major League Baseball, Interleague Play
Washington, DC
1:35 PM


Outside of the Game:
The drive to the game from the hotel was smooth sailing with the TomTom. My last adventure to DC early on at the start of the whole ballpark tour was a lot more haphazard and eventful, but even blowing a turn was no impediment as the TomTom adjusted seamlessly to my stupidity, and got us to the ballpark with time to spare.

After the game, we had an afternoon with no agenda. Since the lot where we were parked was right next door to a subway stop, we took the train down to the Mall to walk around for a while. I've got to say that the DC metro system could not be any more depressing if it tried. The magnetic-strip pay-pass system was state-of-the-art when I last used it in the early eighties on a trip with my family, but outside of the addition of a picture of Obama on the transit cards, they are looking very dated. And the stations look like Bomb Shelters of the Future, as designed in 1967.

In addition to all of this, I had recently completed Fallout 3. It is the deceptively-named fourth title in a series of alternate history, post-apocalyptic PC RPGs, and this last installment took place in post-war Washington DC and its environs. (Frankly, outside of the lack of radioactive ghouls and hulking Supermutants running around, it wasn't all that different. There were even sandbags in some places.) But because of this recent game experience where the runied subway tunnels were a common mode of travel, I found myself reaching for my plasma rifle and a frag grenade to clear out any lurking monsters in the dark below as I went down the transit escalator.

After some mild walking around the largely deserted Sunday-evening Mall, we headed back to the hotel, guided by the dulcet tones of the TomTom, whom we had figured out how to change to a female British accent. We stopped off at a Ruby Tuesdays in the hotel complex for diner and then hit the racks.


At The Game With Oogie:
The aforementioned friend of mine drove down and met me early in the morning, and we headed to the game together. We knew we had seats in the middle level right behind first base, but it turned out we were in one of the "premium" areas that you could only enter with tickets in that section. It had its own air-conditioned hallway and exclusive eating options. The seats were as good as you'd expect, and the shade kept us out of the direct heat in the early afternoon and the light rain that fell towards the end of the game.


The Stadium & Fans:

Center Field to Home Plate at Nationals Park

Nationals Park couldn't help but be an improvement over RFK stadium, which is how I imagined what baseball would be like in Hell (or at least where baseball fans in Hell would be forced to watch games). This being another of the "next generation" parks, it copied a good deal of the standard elements, with an idiosyncratic entrance in center field, a special fan area, bizarre baseball sculpture, "quirky" trash cans, and a play area for the kids that included non-baseball video games for absolutely no discernible reason. An area at the homeplate entrance celebrated the history of baseball in Washington, which is odd, as the team's ownership did everything it could to distance themselves from the history of the Washington Senators during the movement of the club from Montreal. There are also statues of great Senators players at the main center field entrance.

(The stadium is also located right by where an abandoned aircraft carrier would become Rivet City in Fallout 3, in case you're interested.)

No, seriously. That's Rivet City.

I can't help but think that the stadium's marketing people should have run all their naming ideas past a 12 year-old boy. The main fan-centric feature of the park is an area in center field with the unfortunate name of the "Red Porch." It may just be me, but it sounds like an unfortunate euphemism for female complaints. "Now, Scooter, give your mom a wide berth for the next couple of days. She's sitting on the Red Porch." And, in a city full of legislators, and especially given certain recent scandals, one would think they would have reconsidered the name "Senators Sausages" for a vendor.

Perhaps the most interesting Americana blasphemy they have chosen to inflict are the "Rushmores." The Nationals mascots are cartoon versions of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt. They participate in the stadium race between innings, and "Teddy" never gets to win because he always stops to beat up the opposition's mascot. Teddy is also getting his own barbecue concession in the stadium, but sadly it was not yet open to visit, if only to identify the meat of the advertised "Rough Rider" barbecue.

All in all, the stadium was a perfectly nice place to watch a game, if a little generic.

This being a game between two nearby teams, about half the crowd was Orioles fans. They have a particular charming blasphemy of their own that they enjoy perpetrating during the National Anthem by screaming the "O" during the line "O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave..." Nearly half the crowd screamed the "O," and I swear I could hear the eyes of the other half rolling.


The Game:
Though billed as the "Beltway Showdown," any game between the luckless Orioles and the hapless Nationals is just not going to be a blockbuster adventure of baseball. Living up to the hype, such as it was, the Orioles and the Nationals both made attempts to squander opportunities more than the opposition, and when seemingly unable to keep from scoring, they then tried just as desperately to give away the lead. The Orioles stumbled out to an early lead that they built on, only to lose it to the Nationals on a two-run home run, gain the lead back, and then lose it again for good.

There were a couple notable elements to the game, however. As this was the first interleague series of the year, I got to see an American League pitcher get his first official at-bats of 2009. The Orioles' Bergesen hit a solid single, and then reached on a shortstop error, before grounding out to third in his last at-bat to end his on-base torrent. There were also a great deal of sky-high pop-ups to the infield, but perhaps the most notable element in the game was easily the stupidest managerial move I've ever seen, and I am a fan of a team that had Bobby Valentine as a manager.

In the bottom of the 7th inning, just after the Orioles regained the lead in the top of the inning, the Nationals staged a mini-rally, getting men on second and third with one out. The Orioles then decided to intentionally walk the bases loaded to pitch to the Nationals' Dunn. This was so incredibly stupid because literally the inning before, Dunn had hit a two-run home run to get the lead back for the Nationals. Dumbfounded fans in the area shared my complete mystification at this move, but before we could properly discuss it further, Dunn promptly hit a grand slam to put the game out of reach, ending in an 8-5 victory. It being one of the Nationals' few wins of the year, it was noteworthy in that regard as well.


The Scorecard:

Orioles vs. Nationals, 05/24/09. The Nationals won, 8-5.

There was a free half-size give-away at the gate that had a scorecard in it, but the $5 program had a full-size scorecard inside. The scorecard was on good stock paper, with plenty of space, but the print was placed too close to the binding that prevented notes in the margin, compounded by the dark-colored background which made other notes difficult.

The Accommodations:
I was again staying over at the Holiday Inn. I took in the breakfast buffet in the morning, arriving just after the last of the tween soccer girl families cleared out. My friend stayed over in my suite on the pull-out couch.

Click here to see all the photos from this trip.

2009 The Beltway

Chicago

Day 7:

US Cellular Field, 2007

Question: When is segregation not segregation?  
Answer: When it is done at the ballpark.
Date: Thursday, July 5, 2007, 7:11 PM
Baltimore Orioles vs. Chicago White Sox
US Cellular Field
Chicago, IL
Major League Baseball, American League
Promotion: White Sox poster and discount coupon


Stadium & Fans:
US Cellular Field was nice enough, but it was saved from being generic by its Jumbotron, a re-imaging of the Veeck-era exploding scoreboard that was among his bag of flashing tricks to get asses in the seats.

However, the stadium itself was unique in that it had completely segregated upper and lower decks. If you did not have a ticket for the lower tier (as we were not able to get), once you enter the stadium, you are shunted to completely different entrances that only allow you to go the upper decks, and angry-looking bouncers stand guard at the lower decks to keep the likes of you out.

Now, I understand that unofficial seat upgrades can be a problem, but seriously, is this your answer?


The Game:
The White Sox jumped out to an early lead and never looked back. As homers kept flying out of the stadium and setting off fireworks displays, it got to the point that we wondered exactly how many charges they had in place. The White Sox strolled over the Orioles, 11-6.


Scorecard:

Orioles vs. White Sox, 07/05/07. White Sox win, 11-6.

$1 for a cardstock fold-out. Especially for an AL scorecard, it was spacious, with plenty of slots for substitutes.


The Stadium Race:
Perhaps to make up for St. Louis, there were two races. The first was the Connie Pizza Race (won by Sausage), and the second was the McDonald's Race (won by McGriddle).


Travel & Other Non-Game Activities:
We had a lot of swapping around to do before the game, and the Chicago traffic was not helped by the fact that The Police were having a reunion concert on the North Side that night. We fought our way up to O'Hare to pick up my friend's car, then we got lost for a while trying to find where to drop off our rental. And then we had to fight our way back down to the South Side to get to the game. We ended up taking the back way in by going against the traffic and then swinging back northeast. We did manage to get to the game in time.


The Hotel:

Motel 6, Lafayette, IN

With all the scoring, the game ended later than we would have liked, and we had a ton of road to cover to get to Cincinnati. We drove as far as possible, eventually bedding down in a very nicely-appointed Motel 6 somewhere.

Click here to see all the photos from this trip.

2007 The Midwest