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Week Nine

Many of you have already heard about the 10-yr-old girl who has now sang the National Anthem in all 30 ballparks. We were afraid she had beaten us to "the record," but upon reading the St. Louis Post-Dispatch article, we discovered that she had started during the 1997 baseball season, thereby taking two seasons to complete her task. We watched our thirtieth game on Wednesday, August 26 -- the same night Jamie Lynn Bence sang her thirtieth Star-Spangled Banner -- and did it all in one season!

To say the least, our final week was chock-full of baseball surprises and rarities. We started in Minneapolis by staying with some airline pilots who know Jason's cousin. Jim Hinz, Jeff Larson and Christina Gartner took us out on the town, then joined us the next evening for the Boston-Minnesota game. Prior to the contest, Twins' media relations spokesman Reed Varner gave us a tour of the Metrodome which concluded with a live viewing of batting practice right on the field! Wow, here we were just steps away from superstars like Mo Vaughn, Nomar Garciaparra, and Paul Molitor! We stuck our pregame press passes into our Twins media guides and gave thanks to Reed as the game got under way.

Unfortunately, the Metrodome is the worst ballpark in the Major Leagues, designed to accommodate the Minnesota Vikings NFL club rather than the Twins. Unlike other dual-sport domes, the seats were arranged in a rectangular, rather than circular, manner, which made it a literal pain-in-the-neck to watch the game from our first-baseline outfield seats. To make things worse, the game was slow and uneventful until the bottom of the ninth, with the score tied, two outs, and a man on third. Paul Molitor stepped up to the plate and Dennis Eckersley was called in to pitch to him. While we were musing at the notion of two future Hall of Famers facing off so late in their careers, Molitor suddenly laid down a bunt! It caught Eckersley by surprise and Molitor was called safe at first while the winning run crossed the plate. A previously unresponsive crowd suddenly went berserk, and we were able to go home happy.

Halfway between Minneapolis and Milwaukee lies the little country town of Iola, Wisconsin, home to Mike's grandparents, Bob and Ruth Faux. We spent our off day there, and were greeted with a tremendous meat-and-potatoes supper (and Ruth's homemade apple pie). The next afternoon, Bob took us up in his plane and flew us over the serene countryside. Then it was on to Milwaukee and the Brewers.

You could tell that County Stadium used to be a cool place to watch a ballgame. But with the emergence of new parks like Camden, Jacobs and the BOB, ole County is being retired and the retractable-roofed Miller Park will be opened next door in the year 2000. But there will still be the mosquitoes. That's right; Milwaukee should rename their team to the Skeeters. We couldn't concentrate on the game from our left field bleacher seats since we were constantly policing any exposed skin for those pesky bloodsuckers. In the end, it was The Fellas 16, Mosquitos 2 (Calvin got a couple stings but killed his fair share of bugs). Another shock was the home crowd heckling their own players -- that never happens! Left-fielding rookie Geoff Jenkins was steadily hearing jeers throughout the game, and going hitless for the night didn't help his cause. Oh yeah: the Padres beat the Brewers 7-2.

Another off day was well-spent in tranquil Beloit, Wisconsin, home of the Beloit Snappers Baseball Club. Our high school classmate, Bucky Jacobsen, is having an All-Star year (.285-25-94) for the Brewer's low-A farm team, and we pulled into Telmer Field just in time to watch him in the evening game. In his first at-bat, Bucky hit his league-leading 25th home run to help the Snappers to a 7-1 lead; too bad they lost the game 12-8. We crashed with Jacobsen and his four single-A prospect roommates, learning about the Dominican challenge (these guys will play for pennies and are taking many of the roster spots from better players), facing extraordinary young pitchers, and dealing with the day-to-day pressures of trying to make it to The Big Show.

Our final stop: St. Louis, Missouri. Busch Stadium, the Cardinals and Big Mac McGwire. A few thousand were on hand to watch McGwire take batting practice, and each homer was answered with applause and cheers. As we watched the living legend, we wondered, could this be a sign of what was to come during the game? And sure enough, it was! McGwire's 54th home run was a gargantuan 509-foot blast to the centerfield upper deck seats. The place went NUTS! It really got everyone's adrenaline flowing, and the ovation did not end until Mark came out of the dugout to tip his hat.

With the Cardinals winning 6-0 in the eighth, the fans got what they wanted to see and began piling out of the stadium. What they missed was the most amazing, most unlikely comeback that we've witnessed this trip. The Marlins rallied with back-to-back-to-back homeruns in the ninth, and later hit their fourth blast all in the same inning. Florida pulled it out 7-6!

Though not a modern ballpark, Busch Stadium was attractive, clean, and housed some of the rowdiest fans in the big leagues. Only the Yankees fans could compare to the mayhem we witnessed in the bleacher seats that game. McGwire fever has taken ahold of the citizens of St. Louis! The only cure is for Mark to break the record. The stadium itself is basically the same as the ones in Philly, Cincinnati, etc. except that the Cardinals try to make it a fun place to watch a game. They have flowers along the outfield fence and a huge shrine to all the championships and great players the Cards have had throughout the years.

We are sticking around St. Louis for a couple of extra days, in order to watch the best pitcher on the planet, Greg Maddux, face the best slugger on the planet. That gave us a chance to check out Union Station, a hot spot for live entertainment with bands, comedy shows, and a small amusement park. We moved on to dance the night away at the Landing, which is a string of numerous bars and clubs in the downtown area.

St. Louis was our last stop on this wild nine-week road trip around the country. We've had a great time all the way to the end. All the people we have met along the way made the trip so much better than we could've dreamed. We would like to thank all the people who helped us out by housing us for a night or finding us a place to stay in a distant city. After two months we've only had to get a hotel room four times. That's amazing. Plus, Mike's parents have been extremely generous in letting us put almost 20,000 miles on their minivan.

In the end, the best parks were the old parks. However, Arizona's BOB and the Ballpark at Arlington were nice surprises. All the new ballparks were really nice, but they were still so big. The older parks like Detroit, Fenway, Yankee Stadium, and Wrigley were so neat because you were so close to the action. That's how baseball should be watched.

That's all folks! Hope you enjoyed following us around the country. And to our friends and family in Oregon: see you in a few days!

Week Eight

Our stop in Cincinnati is a perfect example of how lucky we have been on this trip. Way back in San Diego we spent the Fourth of July with the parents of Maureen Arnn, who we were staying with at the time. The Arnn's were big baseball fans and when we mentioned that we needed a place in Cincinnati they made a few calls and hooked us up with a place. The family we stayed with, the Flottman's, provided us with great conversation and sweet tickets. They rustled up four tickets fourteen rows behind home plate.

Cincinnati 3, Montreal 2. Cinergy field is a lot like Veterans Stadium or the Kingdome without the dome. Basically, it's a huge park with a lot of bad seats. Luckily, we had four good seats. One nice thing about Cinergy is that the ticket prices are really low and some of the concessions are pretty cheap, too. Our seats were listed at $14 and the upper deck seats were only $3. After all of the problems with Marge Schott many fans stay away from the park. So the place was pretty quiet all night. However, the fans that did show up saw a great game. Dustin Hermanson and Dennis Reyes were locked in a pitching duel all game and it ended up tied at two in the bottom of the ninth. That's when Roberto Petagine hit a pinch-hit, game winning single to win it for the Reds.

After talking to the Flottman's for an afternoon, it was on to Chicago to see what a Saturday night is like in the third biggest city in the U.S. The verdict? Start at the Navy Pier, then go to Rush and Division Streets, and you'll have a great time.

Chicago White Sox 5, Seattle 3. Ahhh, the new Comisky Park. It's a big park, but there's nothing too exceptional about it except for the large amount of luxury boxes. They have the huge scoreboard in center field with lights and fireworks that go off for home runs, but that's about it. The ticket prices are a little high since Albert Belle was signed two years ago. In my opinion, Comisky was built a couple of years too early. It was built before the wave of new, old-style parks became popular. Too bad. Anyway, it was kids' day that day so the crowd was pretty quiet. Half the kids were rooting for Griffey in the first place. We saw home runs from Jay Buhner and Ray Durham and Bill Simas struck out the side for an easy save.

There aren't too many must-see tourist spots, but I do recommend trying the local cuisine. The stuffed pizza with sauce on top and cheese inside is delicious, Papagus is the place to go for Greek food, and at Ed Debevec's you can get insulted and bad service yet still have a good time. Unfortunately, when we went to Ed Debevec's we got better service than in Philadelphia! The place to go to really get insulted is The Wiener's Circle. It's a lot like Seinfeld's Soup Nazi where you had better get your order out right or prepare to be insulted like never before. Even though it's just a little hot dog stand, you'd better get that tip ready. For example, I refused to give this lady a tip so she took a paper fry basket and hit me with it a few times and cussed at me until I coughed up a buck.

St. Louis 8, at Chicago Cubs 6 (10 innings). Well, this is kind of the symbolic last leg of the trip because it's the last park we have looked forward to seeing. Fortunately, it lived up to all our expectations. The game was amazing, but first a little about Wrigley. All the walls from behind home plate to in the outfield are all brick. The ivy in the outfield gives it a high class feel, but we couldn't see all the ivy from our seats in the center field bleacher seats. However, the seats were still very good and we had a great view of the Chicago skyline over right field. The bleacher seats are the way to go at Wrigley. Throughout the game, the atmosphere around the stadium was amazing. We had the left field bleacher bums chanting "right field sucks!" while the right field bums yelled "left field sucks!". The fans were pretty rowdy, but not as much as at Yankee stadium. This could have been due to the large number of Cardinals fans in the crowd, or maybe because Ticketmaster was selling bleacher tickets for $40 up to a month before the game.

Regardless of ticket prices, the place was packed. Not an empty slab of concrete in the place. This was a huge match-up. McGwire and Sosa both had 47 home runs and the Cubbies were fighting for a wildcard spot. The Cubs grabbed an early lead 6-2 including a Sammy Sosa two-run dong in the fifth. After that big fly, the bleachers chanted "Sammy! Sammy!" and "M, V, P!" for the next two innings. The Cards clawed back to within one when Big Mac stepped to the plate in the top of the eighth and WHAM! He nailed one out to Waveland Avenue behind left field. It was a beautiful thing. No one could score in the ninth so in the tenth inning McGwire stepped up to the plate again and slammed one right below where we were sitting in dead center. That was the game winner. Wow, games like that are the reason people watch baseball. Seven home runs, twenty seven hits, and extra innings. All on a Wednesday afternoon at Wrigley.

Matt has been a Cubs fan since junior high, so that game was a good ending to his trip. That's right, our little group has been reduced to three. Matt has one semester left at the University of Idaho and school starts on Monday. We left him with our host family in Chicago, Patrick and Stacie Vanderpool, and headed south towards Kansas City.

Kansas City 8, Boston 2. Kauffman Stadium is an older stadium that we didn't really know too much about. It was a pleasant surprise. The game was in the afternoon so we got some field level seats right behind home plate for only $12. In fact, most of the ticket prices were fairly low. Not only did these seats give us a close look at the game, but we also had a great view of the waterfalls that lined the outfield. With the natural grass and the greenery around the scoreboard the view was very nice. Plus, there was a Royals hall of fame that had each American League trophy and their 1985 World Series trophy on display. The K is actually a pretty decent park to catch a game at. Except for the fact that the Royals aren't good. They beat up the Red Sox good this game by holding them to five hits and pounding out eight runs with eleven singles and one home run.

Join us next week as we finish up our trip by hitting Minnesota, Milwaukee, and St. Louis. If McGwire keeps crushing the ball, we may be able to stick around for a record breaking performance!

Week Seven

CINCINNATI - -- This is the seventh installment of a weekly series charting the cross-country journey of four baseball enthusiasts as they attempt the become the first group to watch games in each of thirty Major League Baseball parks. This week we follow Mike, Calvin, Jason and Matt through Detroit, Toronto (eh?), Montreal, Boston, and Cleveland.

Seven weeks and still going strong! And you know what? It seems to just keep getting better along the way. This past week was jam packed with games, culture shock, a phat stay at a $3 million dollar home... so read on.

After getting rained out in Detroit, we had to fudge the schedule a little to stay an extra day to catch the first half of a double header. Since it was a weekday afternoon game, we were able to successfully upgrade our outfield seats to box seats on the first base line right behind the Mariner dugout. With nobody in the stands, we got up close and personal with the ball players, shouting cheers and jeers when the occasion called for it.

Tiger stadium was truly one the most beautiful parks so far. The field is unique in that it is actually raised a few feet, so from ground level seating you can get a different perspective by looking up at the players. Looking at the outfield stands, it amazes me to think that players like Cecil Fielder and Mark McGwire can take the ball out of there! I mean, the park is DEEP, 440 feet to center field for crying out loud.

We crossed the border, getting a little hassle from the border patrol. Oh well, guess those guys have to live for that sort of thing. We were a little uncertain about showing up in the wee morning at our Toronto hookup, the Swann family. But they were more than gracious.

Toronto is an amazing city! It's a definitely a walkers city. We took our time strolling down the streets, surrounded by beautiful architecture, a mix of traditional and innovative skyscrapers.

The park was something of a disappointment. We were in the 500's, WAY far from the action that looked miles away. The fans were appreciative of their `Jays, though, especially with former Cy Young winner Pat Hentgen on the mound. The Canucks cracked us up, what with all the Eh?'s, and subtle differences in vocabulary. Get yer sweet, sweet candy floss (instead of cotton candy)!

Late in the game, Jason and I decided to check out the Hard Rock cafe. It turns out, you don't even have to buy a ticket to get into the cafe, and the seats there were ten times better than our nose bleeders! So remember if you visit Toronto, show up early, grab a table and have a nice meal while you catch the game.

As if our legs on the road weren't tough enough, every once in awhile we make it tougher on ourselves. The Whisky Saigon was a happening club (yeah-ee-yeah-yea), and we be clubbin till 5 in the morn, giving us a full two-hours night's rest before motoring to Montreal.

And before you know it, you're transported to another world! The road signs become illegible, and that radio station you were groovin' to is suddenly flooded with French tunes and D.J.'s that say a lot of juhs and puhs and don't make too much sense.

Upon entering the park (Stade Olympique), Jason noticed something out of place. "Whoa! Look at those DOGS." And yes, there did indeed be dogs in the stadium. Scores of them! Dog day had brought out Montreal's canine friendly, and it was NUTS! Dogs were in the stands, barking, fighting, or just plain drooling.

How much cheaper can a ballpark get? Tickets for the outfield were five bucks Canadian, or $3.25 American. We would have chowed down on the concessions too, if only we hadn't spent all our Canadian cash at the Whiskey Saigon.

I think the only English I heard that day was "Pepsi", if you can call that English. It felt kind of lonely there for a second, until the fans start cheering and screaming for strikeouts, stolen bases, and home runs, and you know that baseball fans are the same everywhere. The clack-clack-clack of the bleacher seats echoed throughout the stadium. Hey, Mike Thurman was the starting pitcher for Montreal, an O.S.U. alumni! Ol' Mikey pulled in the win, then it was time get back across the border so we could spend American money and EAT.

Beantown, baby, Beantown! Boston is a city that Oregonians can love. It's just as green, and downtown has all the big city attractions with a small city feel to it.

Our hosts in Boston were again friends of friends, this time John and Shirley Vitello, parents to Corvallis local Chris. Arriving at the Vitello's residence, our jaws dropped in awe. They occupy a colonial house built in 1734, complete with four original bedrooms, servants quarters, library, wine cellar, and more. The Vitello's have added a modern touch to this traditional house, with the addition of indoor pool and spa and outdoor tennis courts. It was a great place to unwind. John and Shirley kept us entertained, and we were treated to a beautiful home-cooked Italian dinner.

Fenway has to be the best ballpark on this trip. Like Yankee Stadium, it's a hitters ballpark, with only a foot or two of foul territory room. You're right on top of the action! And get this: there is no upper deck, so every seat is a good one. This very thing that makes games at Fenway exciting to watch is unfortunately the one that is bringing the stadium to close in the near future. Seating barely over 30,000, ticket sales aren't enough to support the demanding salaries of today's players.

The fans aren't very rowdy when it comes to heckling, but watch out when sluggers like Mo Vaughn stride to the plate with a purpose. And the fans are pretty knowledgeable of the game, when they clapped for a sacrifice bunt. Kids were out in full force for "Beanie Babie" day, and they Ooohed! and Ahhhhed! at lightning strikes some miles away. The oooohs and ahhhhs quickly turned to moans as the flood gates opened, soaking fans to the bone. We decided to stick the rain out, and two hours later were rewarded with seats behind home plate! But due to the delay, we had to leave the game in the middle of the 10th as the subway's last ride was at midnight. Turns out it ended with a game winning shot by Nomar Garciapparra, his second homer of the game, in the bottom of the tenth.

On to Cleveland! People have asked, "How did you get tickets to Jacobs Field?" And now we know why. That place packs in over 40,000 each game, even weekdays. It's a newer park, extremely clean and smart looking. It's really the fans that make Jacobs worth visiting. You've got the drummer guy in the outfield pounding away, people shouting at the players from the fifth deck as if they could be heard...

Our game was televised for ESPN's Wednesday Night Baseball, and we were prepared with sign in hand. Now this was a pretty big sign, and we held it up and danced each half inning, and did the fans get upset with us blocking their view? No! It was like, "Congratulations, guys! Good luck on your trip! Can I come with you?" A really supporting city.

That's about it for this week. -WHEW-. Oh, and if you want to dig the nightlife in Cleveland, be sure and head to The Flats. A great district that is jam packed with people ready to have a good time. Peace! Till next time.