Alex described himself to me as a lone wolf. The thing about a lone wolf, though, is that he's always happy when he thinks he's found a friend. That’s the way I felt when I met Vince on the way to the day game at Miller Park. He had flown in from L.A. just to see the Dodgers play the Brewers. He’s not even a Dodger fan. He just wanted to cross another park off his list.
He hears about your trip and tells you you’re as crazy as he is. You hope that’s half true. You’re also pretty sure you’ll be able to get him to go to Chicago with you. In order to do this double-header, you’ll have to leave Milwaukee at 4, and hope to get to Chicago by the 4th inning. Vince loves this plan, but he’s not sure. You’re sure all it will take is a little persuasion.
In the meantime, a Brewers fan has overheard and wants in. A self-described fun-loving party girl who had already scored, and offered you, free tickets to a game this weekend. A Brewers fan who buys you a beer (The 9th time this has happened on this trip. Oddly, you're keeping track) and tries to get you to buy her a shirt. You don’t bite, but you drink and you joke and you don’t imagine there is any way she will really go to Chicago with you. Although, it would be a hell of a story if you start out the day as a lone wolf and end it by taking a whole pack across state lines.
So by the time you realize that she’s serious, it’s gone too far for you to turn back. She bought beer. She offered Packers tickets. She is serious. You can already tell that it’s not going to go anywhere good, but you think if you can convince Vince, it will become a group thing, an epic tale, and not just a desperate girl and a man on the run.
Vince confesses that he can change his flight, but that he has to be back for a fantasy football draft. You can‘t argue with that. And you don’t want the Milwaukee mess to get the wrong idea. “Do you want me to go to Chicago with you?” she asks bluntly. My answer isn’t quite as clear. A clear, true answer at that point would have been, “No,” but that doesn’t seem to be in the spirit of double-header day. “okay,” I say. “I have to tell you some things before you really decide to do this. 1. Your friend is mad at you and I don’t to be the reason for that.” She starts to protest but I force her to listen to my whole list. “2. You need to go to work tomorrow and I can’t guarantee you’ll get back in time. 3. I can’t buy you anything. 4. I have a girlfriend, so nothing is going to happen between us, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
It was, but she said it wasn’t, and there it was. I had the chance to ditch her before her friends left, but I didn’t. There is a point at which doing something that is not so nice might turn out, in the end, to be the nicest thng you can do. A sort of a mercy killing might have done us both good. By the time we got the public transportation to the greyhound station, she had begun to complain about her feet hurting. Again, I thought about mercy killing.
Three hours later, we were outside of the White Sox’ stadium, and she was asking too many questions. “I’ve been here as long as you have, so I don’t know how you expect me to answer that,” Was the nicest thing I could come up with. I would get increasingly less nice when she asked where the bathrooms were, what teams were playing, and why we were headed to the wrong section, and whether we should ask someone who could show us to our real seats. When we got to some great seats, she started talking to the fun people in front of us about the Brewers in the middle of a RISP situation, and I wasn’t surprised when they didn’t come back from the bathroom.
She noticed it too and asked, “On the scale of 1 to 10, how sorry are you that you met me?”
“Before you asked that question, or after?”
“Well, you can’t leave me, because my bus ticket and my purse are in the locker and only you have the combination. So until the bus leaves, it’s like I’m a puppy and you have a pork chop tied to your ankle.”
Yeah. I’m getting that. I’m feeling the weight of unwanted responsibility and company that wants too much from me. I’m stuck and I’m going to make the best of it and I’m glad I’ve never told her about my blog because by that point I already knew what I would be writing. That if there comes another time on the trip that I wish I were with someone, I know where that wishing will get me. It’s a blessing to be able to do things on one’s own. It takes strength, independence and confidence.
I’ve always felt sad for people who stay in bad relationships. I think most of those people lack the skill of being alone. They’re afraid of it, and so they stay, and some of them wind up more lonely when they’re with that person than I am when I’m writing this blog on this bus. Like the daughter of the other New Jerseyan I met at the game, Maryann, I won’t stay with someone who isn’t worth me. Maryann’s daughter is going to be just fine, and so am I.
But in the meantime, I still have a puppy and a pork chop. I put her on as my personal photographer, and got some of the shots I wanted. Fewer than half as many as the other ballparks, but this one was about half as nice, and we were there for about half a game. So I guess it worked out. I would have gotten more pictures if Alex Rios hadn’t have hit that home run into the section in front of us. I walked closer to see who had caught it, and that‘s how we met Will, a short man from Omaha who had flown into town for three Sox games. Will was a lone wolf.
He loved the story of how we met. Despite my irritation with my extra baggage, I knew it was a great story. I was still convinced that the story would make the juice worth the squeeze. I’m writing this, so I guess I can’t argue that it wasn’t.
The game ended and our wolf pack went out to hunt for food. At the bar, Will told our story. He had become part of it, and wanted others to become part of it too. The waiter became more interested the closer it got to closing time. He asked us where we were from.
“Wisconsin” “Omaha, Nebraska” “New York.”
What part of New York?
“Manhattan.”
“He’s from New Jersey,” said the puppy, nipping at the pork chop.
“I know where the fuck I’m from, and I know I told you where I’m from. I like New Jersey and I’m proud of it, but I don’t want to have to defend it with every person that asks, because I know they’re going to ask me about Snooki and the Jersey shore, just like you did when I told you the truth and now I can see that that was a mistake.”
“Well, I guess I’m not getting any.”
Bitch, I told you.
One bar later, Will asked where the bathroom was. Will, the nice guy from Omaha, who was about peace, love, and the story of how we came together. Will who had offered us beers in his hotel room until we had to catch our busses. Will went to the bathroom, and he never came back.
“Do you think he’s dead? He doesn’t seem the type to just ditch us.”
Yes, he does, I thought. Will’s a lone wolf. Will knows when the story is supposed to end. Will, the mercy killer.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Leave Land
Cleveland deserves everything it gets. LeBron James is a wise upstanding gentleman who has just become revered in my eyes not just as a martyr but as an instrument of justice and righteousness.
I almost skipped this city due to the fact that my trip has taken me through here twice, and never without frustration. I’m glad that I decided to make the trip because now I know that for the rest of my life if I ever feel that life has dealt me a bad blow, a raw deal, a short straw, I will be able to say to myself, “At least I’m not in Cleveland.”
The baseball stadium is a monument to unoriginality and fan-unfriendliness. In this toilet of a ball park, there is never less than three feet of concrete between the fan and the field. Unless you happen to be in one of the irritatingly distracting seats that is located behind the chicken wire behind home plate. The seats that put the fan, or personnel, or douche bag, at eye level with the umpire’s ass. It isn’t built with baseball or with fans in mind. It’s built to funnel money from this city’s hardworking douche bags into the pocket’s of this city’s lazy, unfeeling douchebags. Fuck you Cleveland. The best thing I can say about this stadium is that its bathrooms are clean. Check that. Were clean. I went on the floor just to give the midges another pool in which to reproduce.
I wish I could say that the fans deserve better than to have their talented team dismantled or disabled. But they don’t. They have one bad season, and there aren’t 10,000 people that will come to support them, or to even make fun of them. There are nine people that paid for $10 tickets and didn’t even bother to move to any of the 30,000 empty seats in front of them. I even heard one crosseyed cracker complain about all the stairs, and that was on the way down.
I once thought of the Indians as a storied franchise which deserved to be better than it currently is. Now I see that it has never been anything but a money grab, a franchise that sold off two Cy Young winners like it sold off the name of its ugly boring stadium like it sold its soul long ago. I think that the United States of America should give Cleveland to the actual Indians in a gesture of reparation. Native Americans should be given the entire city with the stipulation that they take their revenge and take out their frustrations on the city for defiling their good name and image for so long by forcing it to be associated with an embarrassing and apologetically insensitive baseball club for so many classless years. They would get their due while simultaneously destroying America’s most embarrassing city. The move would be a diplomatic win-win.
I almost skipped this city due to the fact that my trip has taken me through here twice, and never without frustration. I’m glad that I decided to make the trip because now I know that for the rest of my life if I ever feel that life has dealt me a bad blow, a raw deal, a short straw, I will be able to say to myself, “At least I’m not in Cleveland.”
The baseball stadium is a monument to unoriginality and fan-unfriendliness. In this toilet of a ball park, there is never less than three feet of concrete between the fan and the field. Unless you happen to be in one of the irritatingly distracting seats that is located behind the chicken wire behind home plate. The seats that put the fan, or personnel, or douche bag, at eye level with the umpire’s ass. It isn’t built with baseball or with fans in mind. It’s built to funnel money from this city’s hardworking douche bags into the pocket’s of this city’s lazy, unfeeling douchebags. Fuck you Cleveland. The best thing I can say about this stadium is that its bathrooms are clean. Check that. Were clean. I went on the floor just to give the midges another pool in which to reproduce.
I wish I could say that the fans deserve better than to have their talented team dismantled or disabled. But they don’t. They have one bad season, and there aren’t 10,000 people that will come to support them, or to even make fun of them. There are nine people that paid for $10 tickets and didn’t even bother to move to any of the 30,000 empty seats in front of them. I even heard one crosseyed cracker complain about all the stairs, and that was on the way down.
I once thought of the Indians as a storied franchise which deserved to be better than it currently is. Now I see that it has never been anything but a money grab, a franchise that sold off two Cy Young winners like it sold off the name of its ugly boring stadium like it sold its soul long ago. I think that the United States of America should give Cleveland to the actual Indians in a gesture of reparation. Native Americans should be given the entire city with the stipulation that they take their revenge and take out their frustrations on the city for defiling their good name and image for so long by forcing it to be associated with an embarrassing and apologetically insensitive baseball club for so many classless years. They would get their due while simultaneously destroying America’s most embarrassing city. The move would be a diplomatic win-win.
You Can't See Me
I’ve done well, so far, as far as sticking to my own rules. I’ve kept up with the reading, having so far completed Outliers, Tree Girl, A Mercy, The Poetry of Robert Penn Warren, and Brave New World. Three of those titles were read as audio books, but one of the books that I brought in hardcover, and have read sporadically throughout the trip, is Invisible Man. In addition to being absorbing and living up to its reputation in every way, it is the perfect size for tucking bus tickets into. For this reason I’ve made sure to have it handy at all times while traveling, whether I’ve been reading it or not.
It lives up to its reputation thus far, but more than that, it’s provided an unexpected parallel to my own identity in some of my stops on this trip. Much of what I’ve been doing has required that I become invisible.
I've always been able to blend. In order to live by my own rule number one, I must act and cheer as any other average fan in the stadium. This has proven to be easy and gratifying, whether the home team wins or loses. (My record is 3-3 at this point) We love sports as much for the communal celebration as we do for the commiseration, and grumbling about the Pirates losing another one was not as exciting as rejoicing over the Twins’ walk-off win, but it certainly led to better conversations.
Even outside of the parks, I’ve tried to remain invisible. A man who looks like he knows where he is going is rarely stopped, by either beggars or security guards. I’ve slipped into a forbidden ballroom at the top of the Walker Museum in Minneapolis to get my best view of that city (without a camera, unfortunately). In my unplanned stop in Des Moines, I slipped into what turned out to be a Masonic Temple on the top floor of the building occupied by Starbucks on the ground floor, and a theater on the third. I’ve got pictures of that, but I’m not sure what the Masons will do to me if I post them.
Invisibility has allowed me to see more. In Detroit, I poked past a curtain at the back of a the coffee shop at 1515 Broadway to find an empty theater. As it turns out, I would have been allowed to go there if I had asked. Usually, it’s better to just not ask, so that you’ve never told no. So I didn’t bother asking whether it would be okay for me to slip into a seat behind home plate at the start of last night’s Tigers game. I didn’t plan it ahead of time, I just saw that an usher was away from his post and went for it. While with my cousins in Pittsburgh, we tried something similar but were tossed right away. Four drew too many eyes, but one invisible man was able to stay in the ninth row for five innings. The seats’ owners never even came to claim them. I finally left, only out of curiosity about the rest of the park.
Before I left on the trip, my cousin Adam, a former military man, lent me his camouflage backpack. I liked it for being the perfect size and having the right number of compartments in which I could hide my travel essentials. Like a chameleon, I’ve taken on the characteristics of the backpack. I’ve learned to be camouflaged, as a Twin, as a Pirate, as a man who knows where he’s going, and as a man who belongs.
________________________________________________________
I wrote this post from the bus station in Detroit. It’s more pleasant than you would think, but it clearly wasn’t pleasant at all for Hope, a girl who asked to borrow my phone while I was writing. I let her, then let her try again when she didn’t get an answer at her halfway house. I asked a few more questions to find out that she had just been let out after a 15-month sentence in West Virginia for using counterfeit money in Battle Creek.
According to her story, she had missed her bus to Grand Rapids, and if she didn’t make it there on time, she would likely be sent back to prison. She tried the house again, and there was no answer. I don’t believe that she had a ticket for the morning bus and missed it, but she wasn‘t high, and she hadn‘t asked for anything but a phone call I realized that I hadn’t done anything nice for anyone in Detroit yet.
I decided to test my abilities as the invisible man. Although I had already bought my ticket to Cleveland, I went up to the counter and asked for one ticket to Grand Rapids on my Discovery Pass. No questions asked. Ticket granted by the same man who had given me a ticket to Cleveland twenty minutes earlier. I am the invisible man.
It lives up to its reputation thus far, but more than that, it’s provided an unexpected parallel to my own identity in some of my stops on this trip. Much of what I’ve been doing has required that I become invisible.
I've always been able to blend. In order to live by my own rule number one, I must act and cheer as any other average fan in the stadium. This has proven to be easy and gratifying, whether the home team wins or loses. (My record is 3-3 at this point) We love sports as much for the communal celebration as we do for the commiseration, and grumbling about the Pirates losing another one was not as exciting as rejoicing over the Twins’ walk-off win, but it certainly led to better conversations.
Even outside of the parks, I’ve tried to remain invisible. A man who looks like he knows where he is going is rarely stopped, by either beggars or security guards. I’ve slipped into a forbidden ballroom at the top of the Walker Museum in Minneapolis to get my best view of that city (without a camera, unfortunately). In my unplanned stop in Des Moines, I slipped into what turned out to be a Masonic Temple on the top floor of the building occupied by Starbucks on the ground floor, and a theater on the third. I’ve got pictures of that, but I’m not sure what the Masons will do to me if I post them.
Invisibility has allowed me to see more. In Detroit, I poked past a curtain at the back of a the coffee shop at 1515 Broadway to find an empty theater. As it turns out, I would have been allowed to go there if I had asked. Usually, it’s better to just not ask, so that you’ve never told no. So I didn’t bother asking whether it would be okay for me to slip into a seat behind home plate at the start of last night’s Tigers game. I didn’t plan it ahead of time, I just saw that an usher was away from his post and went for it. While with my cousins in Pittsburgh, we tried something similar but were tossed right away. Four drew too many eyes, but one invisible man was able to stay in the ninth row for five innings. The seats’ owners never even came to claim them. I finally left, only out of curiosity about the rest of the park.
Before I left on the trip, my cousin Adam, a former military man, lent me his camouflage backpack. I liked it for being the perfect size and having the right number of compartments in which I could hide my travel essentials. Like a chameleon, I’ve taken on the characteristics of the backpack. I’ve learned to be camouflaged, as a Twin, as a Pirate, as a man who knows where he’s going, and as a man who belongs.
________________________________________________________
I wrote this post from the bus station in Detroit. It’s more pleasant than you would think, but it clearly wasn’t pleasant at all for Hope, a girl who asked to borrow my phone while I was writing. I let her, then let her try again when she didn’t get an answer at her halfway house. I asked a few more questions to find out that she had just been let out after a 15-month sentence in West Virginia for using counterfeit money in Battle Creek.
According to her story, she had missed her bus to Grand Rapids, and if she didn’t make it there on time, she would likely be sent back to prison. She tried the house again, and there was no answer. I don’t believe that she had a ticket for the morning bus and missed it, but she wasn‘t high, and she hadn‘t asked for anything but a phone call I realized that I hadn’t done anything nice for anyone in Detroit yet.
I decided to test my abilities as the invisible man. Although I had already bought my ticket to Cleveland, I went up to the counter and asked for one ticket to Grand Rapids on my Discovery Pass. No questions asked. Ticket granted by the same man who had given me a ticket to Cleveland twenty minutes earlier. I am the invisible man.
Monday, August 23, 2010
E-10
I had my chance. Behind home plate, slightly toward the first base side. Lefty pitcher, righty batter. The foul came back towards us, and I was on the aisle. I stepped into the aisle, got my hands low to match the end of the ball’s trajectory, poised to snag my first major league foul ball.
You’ve been to this many games, and this has been your only shot. You may only ever get one. You see the ball get tipped off the hands of a girl a few rows in front of you. You see it happen, and you see it change paths. Instead of looking it into the hands, you see it of you in the arm. Your hands aren’t quick enough to get there, but when the ball skitters to the seats on the other side of the aisle, quick hands pick it up, and there you are. No ball. You missed it. And while it happened to you, it happens that there were a ton of TV cameras watching, with two east coast markets judging, I woulda-coulding. Alex, dutifully keeping a scorecard of the game, marked the play, E-10.
I eventually went to the centerfield barbeque stand. This one, Manny’s BBQ, is either owned or just promoted by Manny Sanguillen, a one time catcher of whom I had never heard. My cousins, though all younger than myself, had heard of him. They possess an encyclopedic knowledge of pre-1973 baseball players due to so many hours spent playing a baseball dice game, manufactured in 1974, featuring realistic probabilities related to actual player skill levels. Manny Sanguillen fielded with a 3, and ran with a 0, fairly typical for a catcher. On this date he was at the barbeque stand in person, signing autographs. I declined to get one, considering it near hypocritical to ask for an autograph from someone of whom I had never heard.
They had all had him sign their hats and ticket stubs earlier in the day. We weren’t sure if he signed them “God Bless, Manny Sanguillen,” or “God Bless Manny Sanguillen.”
I was far more interested in his pulled pork sandwich, and upon approaching the stand, I saw that Manny Sanguillen was still there, still signing autographs for fans even younger than my cousins. Who knows if or how they knew who he was, but god bless Manny Sanguillen for staying through the sixth inning. I was about to ask for his autograph on that basis alone when he stood up, took a bag that an employee had packed with pulled pork sliders, shook out his pockets and moved to leave.
“Heading out, Manny?” “Yeah” his response was brusque, he clearly feared that I would try to hook him in to signing one more god blessed autograph. An employee offered that he never stays as late as the sixth inning. “Thanks for the memories, Manny.”
I got the employee to give me one of the pens he used to sign his autographs. I then asked her to sign my receipt, pretending that I wouldn’t leave the booth until I got some autograph from someone.
After the game, I visited my dear old friend Gena, with whom I had become acquainted twelve years earlier when we were both starting out in New York City. She was a party girl fresh from Puerto Rico. Now she has dreadlocks and a daughter, both of which are beautiful. The five year old announced to me immediately that her name, Inaru, originated as the word for “girl” given by the Indio, the Indian tribe in Puerto Rico.
She said we could do whatever I wanted to do, but in the end we went where she wanted to take me. In this case it was the Hard Rock Café to see the band started by the son of her friends. The mother had been a singer for Rusted Root, the father a professional skateboarder. Their son is 14, and regaled his audience with tales of band camp and appreciative words for how special the night was, and how good the next song would be. Immediately upon walking in, we were accosted by several baby groupies asking us to buy Lighting Box T-shirts. It was surprisingly easy to refuse.
One of the groupies turned out to be, in truth, eleven years old and a boy. Furthermore, he was a member of the band, and according to the lead singer, it was impossible to look away from his drum solo. What was impressive about the drum solo was how self indulgent one can apparently become by the age of eleven. The solo, played to silence from the crowd, sounded remarkably like drum exercises assigned to students in their third year of playing a set. I’m not saying he was bad, I’m just saying I was surprised to see him throw his drumsticks into the crowd to punctuate the end of his roll. Diva.
He also threw his sticks at the end of the set. At this point, I was focused on both the drink in my hand and the sight of Inaru manipulating her Barbie dolls. In truth, about half the people were watching the band bow, and half were watching her. She was pulling focus. Diva. Good girl.
He threw a second pair of sticks. One went to the person I assume to be his mother. The other bounced off the hands of the person in front of me, ticked on our table, and hit me on the arm before skittering off to the next table. I continued to sip my drink. At least this time I hadn’t tried. At least this time no one was watching.
I had finished my drink, closed my tab, and was waiting at the table with Inaru while her mother and fat Man Dee, our ride and tour guide, said goodbyes. The eleven year old Pete Best appeared at the side of our table. His photo ops had ended, and he was offering his services. He had a fistful of Lightning Box stickers in one hand, and a sharpie in the other. “Do you want anything signed?”
I heard what he said but I asked him to repeat the question. “No. I’m good. You‘re supposed to let them come to you.” Yes, he’s eleven. No, I’m not sorry.
If I wasn’t going to beg an autograph from Manny Sanguillen, I sure as hell wasn’t going to indulge a boy begging to give me an autograph. The boy needs to learn that it’s better to leave in the sixth inning. The boy needs to learn that you can run with a 0 if you can learn to catch with a 3. The boy could learn a thing or two from Manny Sanguillen. So could we all.
God Bless Manny Sanguillen.
You’ve been to this many games, and this has been your only shot. You may only ever get one. You see the ball get tipped off the hands of a girl a few rows in front of you. You see it happen, and you see it change paths. Instead of looking it into the hands, you see it of you in the arm. Your hands aren’t quick enough to get there, but when the ball skitters to the seats on the other side of the aisle, quick hands pick it up, and there you are. No ball. You missed it. And while it happened to you, it happens that there were a ton of TV cameras watching, with two east coast markets judging, I woulda-coulding. Alex, dutifully keeping a scorecard of the game, marked the play, E-10.
I eventually went to the centerfield barbeque stand. This one, Manny’s BBQ, is either owned or just promoted by Manny Sanguillen, a one time catcher of whom I had never heard. My cousins, though all younger than myself, had heard of him. They possess an encyclopedic knowledge of pre-1973 baseball players due to so many hours spent playing a baseball dice game, manufactured in 1974, featuring realistic probabilities related to actual player skill levels. Manny Sanguillen fielded with a 3, and ran with a 0, fairly typical for a catcher. On this date he was at the barbeque stand in person, signing autographs. I declined to get one, considering it near hypocritical to ask for an autograph from someone of whom I had never heard.
They had all had him sign their hats and ticket stubs earlier in the day. We weren’t sure if he signed them “God Bless, Manny Sanguillen,” or “God Bless Manny Sanguillen.”
I was far more interested in his pulled pork sandwich, and upon approaching the stand, I saw that Manny Sanguillen was still there, still signing autographs for fans even younger than my cousins. Who knows if or how they knew who he was, but god bless Manny Sanguillen for staying through the sixth inning. I was about to ask for his autograph on that basis alone when he stood up, took a bag that an employee had packed with pulled pork sliders, shook out his pockets and moved to leave.
“Heading out, Manny?” “Yeah” his response was brusque, he clearly feared that I would try to hook him in to signing one more god blessed autograph. An employee offered that he never stays as late as the sixth inning. “Thanks for the memories, Manny.”
I got the employee to give me one of the pens he used to sign his autographs. I then asked her to sign my receipt, pretending that I wouldn’t leave the booth until I got some autograph from someone.
After the game, I visited my dear old friend Gena, with whom I had become acquainted twelve years earlier when we were both starting out in New York City. She was a party girl fresh from Puerto Rico. Now she has dreadlocks and a daughter, both of which are beautiful. The five year old announced to me immediately that her name, Inaru, originated as the word for “girl” given by the Indio, the Indian tribe in Puerto Rico.
She said we could do whatever I wanted to do, but in the end we went where she wanted to take me. In this case it was the Hard Rock Café to see the band started by the son of her friends. The mother had been a singer for Rusted Root, the father a professional skateboarder. Their son is 14, and regaled his audience with tales of band camp and appreciative words for how special the night was, and how good the next song would be. Immediately upon walking in, we were accosted by several baby groupies asking us to buy Lighting Box T-shirts. It was surprisingly easy to refuse.
One of the groupies turned out to be, in truth, eleven years old and a boy. Furthermore, he was a member of the band, and according to the lead singer, it was impossible to look away from his drum solo. What was impressive about the drum solo was how self indulgent one can apparently become by the age of eleven. The solo, played to silence from the crowd, sounded remarkably like drum exercises assigned to students in their third year of playing a set. I’m not saying he was bad, I’m just saying I was surprised to see him throw his drumsticks into the crowd to punctuate the end of his roll. Diva.
He also threw his sticks at the end of the set. At this point, I was focused on both the drink in my hand and the sight of Inaru manipulating her Barbie dolls. In truth, about half the people were watching the band bow, and half were watching her. She was pulling focus. Diva. Good girl.
He threw a second pair of sticks. One went to the person I assume to be his mother. The other bounced off the hands of the person in front of me, ticked on our table, and hit me on the arm before skittering off to the next table. I continued to sip my drink. At least this time I hadn’t tried. At least this time no one was watching.
I had finished my drink, closed my tab, and was waiting at the table with Inaru while her mother and fat Man Dee, our ride and tour guide, said goodbyes. The eleven year old Pete Best appeared at the side of our table. His photo ops had ended, and he was offering his services. He had a fistful of Lightning Box stickers in one hand, and a sharpie in the other. “Do you want anything signed?”
I heard what he said but I asked him to repeat the question. “No. I’m good. You‘re supposed to let them come to you.” Yes, he’s eleven. No, I’m not sorry.
If I wasn’t going to beg an autograph from Manny Sanguillen, I sure as hell wasn’t going to indulge a boy begging to give me an autograph. The boy needs to learn that it’s better to leave in the sixth inning. The boy needs to learn that you can run with a 0 if you can learn to catch with a 3. The boy could learn a thing or two from Manny Sanguillen. So could we all.
God Bless Manny Sanguillen.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Don't Embrace the Past...Give it a Great Big Bear Hug
I’ve been cursed with some streak that tells me to tend toward the contrary. If everyone is betting one way, I’m likely to back house against it. If all of my buddies are ogling one woman, I’m likely to point out her flaws and talk to her mother. If everyone goes to the beach, find me in the mountains.
It is because of this streak that I was prepared to hate Wrigley Field. The nation’s second-oldest stadium, the home of the long-suffering Cubs, the Mecca to which all baseball fans must make a pilgrimage. I was prepared to hate it. After having passed the hot mess that is Soldier Field earlier in the day, I had a blog post mentally written about how Chicago is stuck in the past and needs to let it go, and to prove the point they need look no further than the south side of town, where the White Sox tore down Comiskey, and won a championship in the soulless Cellular One Park soon after.
I was prepared to hate it. It took a trip up one ramp and down a flight of stairs to change my mind. The trend in stadium construction for the past 20 years has been to build an old-time stadium. Cities hoping to revitalize a business district would construct a brick ballpark hoping to send fans’ imaginations back to a time when baseball was (supposedly) more pure. Everything but the prices resemble the turn of the century.
Everyone is trying to capture the mystique that lives in Wrigley Field. I arrived for batting practice and was surprised to see that there was still a spot at the wall where I could reach down and touch the ivy. I knew I had to sit in the bleachers, the two concrete countries where home run balls are thrown back and beer is expensive, but still cheap enough to dump on an opposing player should the opportunity present itself.
I write this fully aware of the fact that I’m in danger of losing my reader to the cliché. The sound of the ball hitting the ivy on the wall on the fly gave me chills. Stay with me: Chills literally ran up my arms when I heard the batting practice ball hit the left field wall on the fly. Even from where I stood , above right center, the induplicable sound affected me to my core. It happened three times while Jason Heyward took his batting practice swings. Each time: chills. (And those were his weak shots. His good ones reached the top of the bleachers in right and left. That kid is good.)
I should feel ashamed for having wanted to hate this place. I don’t, but I probably should. I stepped into it and immediately appreciated it for all that it is and always has been: The best baseball stadium ever built. Its architects were so forward-thinking as to create a place wherein there were not only no bad seats, but where there are enough concessions to accommodate a modern club’s merchandising, and enough space for everyone to walk around the concourse and still see the game from every angle. It was built to be flexible enough to have additions put on it, allowing for luxury boxes and even, eventually, the tradition-killing lights. Thankfully, I got to a day game.
Don’t hate this place. Hate the people that populate it. While I have a full appreciation for all of its history, its relevance in the present, and its place in the future, now and forever as a must-see baseball destination, the people inside don’t seem to be able to get over how poorly their team plays. In Pittsburgh, I would see how fans can lovingly hate their team but love their park. The North Side Chicago fans seem to be so incapacitated by so much losing, that instead of appreciating the hallowed halls of Wrigley every chance they get, they never miss an opportunity to point out the ways in which their team ruins it for them. As if the Cubs as they see them aren’t good enough for the field on which they play.
So finally I say Chicago should live more in the past. Relish the curse of the billygoat. Tell loudly the tale of Steve Bartman. Appreciate all you have, for your 104 years of not winning the World Series will never be duplicated by any team. The Red Sox didn’t have the fortitude to make it past 86 years. The south side pansies bailed out after 84. The Diamondback babies weren’t able to make it 4 years without getting good enough to win it all. What the Cubs have is something that no other fans can claim. But the bitches on the North Side are too busy crying in their 8-dollar 12 ounce beers to see that each year that the Cubs graze the basement is one more tick on a record that no one will every break, in a baseball stadium that no one will ever replicate.
When the Cubs were up by a run with two innings left, it became noticeably more difficult to engage anyone in any type of conversation. Everyone became very nervous at the both the prospect of winning, and the possibility that they might throw it away. When their closer enevitably gave up three runs in the ninth, the stands emptied with practiced speed. They left quietly, and they left quickly. Cubs fans, wake up and love the fact that you've thrown away another W! You’re sitting in the stands at the end of DiMaggio’s 56 games. You have a ticket to Ripken’s 2,400th game. But you’re too busy feeling sorry for yourselves to come up with a way to embrace your unique gift. Start throwing back your own team’s home run balls. That will show them to try to mess with tradition.
It is because of this streak that I was prepared to hate Wrigley Field. The nation’s second-oldest stadium, the home of the long-suffering Cubs, the Mecca to which all baseball fans must make a pilgrimage. I was prepared to hate it. After having passed the hot mess that is Soldier Field earlier in the day, I had a blog post mentally written about how Chicago is stuck in the past and needs to let it go, and to prove the point they need look no further than the south side of town, where the White Sox tore down Comiskey, and won a championship in the soulless Cellular One Park soon after.
I was prepared to hate it. It took a trip up one ramp and down a flight of stairs to change my mind. The trend in stadium construction for the past 20 years has been to build an old-time stadium. Cities hoping to revitalize a business district would construct a brick ballpark hoping to send fans’ imaginations back to a time when baseball was (supposedly) more pure. Everything but the prices resemble the turn of the century.
Everyone is trying to capture the mystique that lives in Wrigley Field. I arrived for batting practice and was surprised to see that there was still a spot at the wall where I could reach down and touch the ivy. I knew I had to sit in the bleachers, the two concrete countries where home run balls are thrown back and beer is expensive, but still cheap enough to dump on an opposing player should the opportunity present itself.
I write this fully aware of the fact that I’m in danger of losing my reader to the cliché. The sound of the ball hitting the ivy on the wall on the fly gave me chills. Stay with me: Chills literally ran up my arms when I heard the batting practice ball hit the left field wall on the fly. Even from where I stood , above right center, the induplicable sound affected me to my core. It happened three times while Jason Heyward took his batting practice swings. Each time: chills. (And those were his weak shots. His good ones reached the top of the bleachers in right and left. That kid is good.)
I should feel ashamed for having wanted to hate this place. I don’t, but I probably should. I stepped into it and immediately appreciated it for all that it is and always has been: The best baseball stadium ever built. Its architects were so forward-thinking as to create a place wherein there were not only no bad seats, but where there are enough concessions to accommodate a modern club’s merchandising, and enough space for everyone to walk around the concourse and still see the game from every angle. It was built to be flexible enough to have additions put on it, allowing for luxury boxes and even, eventually, the tradition-killing lights. Thankfully, I got to a day game.
Don’t hate this place. Hate the people that populate it. While I have a full appreciation for all of its history, its relevance in the present, and its place in the future, now and forever as a must-see baseball destination, the people inside don’t seem to be able to get over how poorly their team plays. In Pittsburgh, I would see how fans can lovingly hate their team but love their park. The North Side Chicago fans seem to be so incapacitated by so much losing, that instead of appreciating the hallowed halls of Wrigley every chance they get, they never miss an opportunity to point out the ways in which their team ruins it for them. As if the Cubs as they see them aren’t good enough for the field on which they play.
So finally I say Chicago should live more in the past. Relish the curse of the billygoat. Tell loudly the tale of Steve Bartman. Appreciate all you have, for your 104 years of not winning the World Series will never be duplicated by any team. The Red Sox didn’t have the fortitude to make it past 86 years. The south side pansies bailed out after 84. The Diamondback babies weren’t able to make it 4 years without getting good enough to win it all. What the Cubs have is something that no other fans can claim. But the bitches on the North Side are too busy crying in their 8-dollar 12 ounce beers to see that each year that the Cubs graze the basement is one more tick on a record that no one will every break, in a baseball stadium that no one will ever replicate.
When the Cubs were up by a run with two innings left, it became noticeably more difficult to engage anyone in any type of conversation. Everyone became very nervous at the both the prospect of winning, and the possibility that they might throw it away. When their closer enevitably gave up three runs in the ninth, the stands emptied with practiced speed. They left quietly, and they left quickly. Cubs fans, wake up and love the fact that you've thrown away another W! You’re sitting in the stands at the end of DiMaggio’s 56 games. You have a ticket to Ripken’s 2,400th game. But you’re too busy feeling sorry for yourselves to come up with a way to embrace your unique gift. Start throwing back your own team’s home run balls. That will show them to try to mess with tradition.
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