The Great Ball Park Road Trip

As a sixtieth birthday present, my son Alex suggested that we take baseball road trip together. We just got back. The itinerary was New York (Mets), Baltimore, Bowie (AA baseball), Washington DC, Pittsburgh, Hagerstown (A baseball), and Philadelphia. It was a lot of fun if a bit exhausting (and too much beer and fattening food). Some highlights (and they are not all about baseball):

The Games: The first five games were exciting and featured two walk-off home runs. The first, a Mets against the Royals, ended in the 12th inning on a home run by Eric Young Jr. (of all players), a great way to start the trip. (But a costly win for my beloved Metsies, who lost David Wright to a popped hamstring for up to a month!) Later in the trip, the Pirates capped a comeback against a pretty miserable Miami Marlins team with a pinch-hit, 9th inning home run by Josh Harrison (of all players). That game also featured an incredible performance by Andrew McCutchen, who showed that he can do it all, as he beat out a hit, smashed two-run double and had a run-saving catch. Earlier in the trip, the Orioles managed to lose to a Mariners team that did everything they could to hand them the game, including making several base-running blunders that would be shocking in a high school game. Two nights later, the Braves played good enough to beat a really moribund Nationals team (on an 8th inning home run by Justin Upton). The Brave solidified their hold on first place with the win and the Nationals wasted a good effort by Steven Strasburg. The Nationals look dead (and played that way). The Mets might catch them for second, which would be a disgrace with the disparity in talent. The final major league game we saw was a 12-1 blowout, as the Phillies (who have been in free fall since the All-Star break) walked all over the Cubs on a really hot and humid Thursday afternoon. Sloppy fielding sped the Cubs demise. They looked like they just wanted to get out of town once they fell way behind in the fourth. I’ll talk about the minor league games later.

The Stadiums: All the games we saw were in the new generation of stadiums that began with Camden Yards in Baltimore. My two favorites were Camden Yards and PNC Park in Pittsburgh, with a slight edge to Pittsburgh, which is really an updated version of the original in Baltimore. Both Stadiums are in their cities and we could walk to both from where we stayed. That is so much nicer than a stadium as an island in the middle of parking lots and highways (the big drawback of both Citifield and the Phillies’ stadiums). PNC Park is a across the river from downtown Pittsburgh, which you can see over the outfield wall, along with the Roberto Clemente Bridge that many fans walk over to reach the game. It is set on the river and has its own river walk behind the bleachers where you can buy food and sit at picnic tables and otherwise take in the view. This is clearly based on Camden Yards, where Eutaw Street is closed between the stadium and the Camden Yards Warehouse, forming a ballpark area where you can shop and go to bars in the bottom of the warehouse, buy food and team stuff and picnic at tables that are everywhere. A key to both designs is that the playing field below grade, so that you can walk directly in to everything and then either down or up to your seats. This makes it easy to expand the concourses and create picnic areas, etc. (I am guessing that it was impossible to have the field lower than ground level at Citifield for some reason, which mean that most things are up a level, diminishing the possibilities for extra amenities. The Phillies’ stadium is very much like Citifield. Interesting food choices, comfortable, lots of nice amenities. It really is a modern version of the old Walter O’Malley vs. Robert Moses fight that sent the Dodgers west. Do you build your new ballpark in a neighborhood, where fans can walk to games and take mass transit (O’Malley) or do you build it so that it is accessible by lots of cars? Moses won that fight, but the other model seems to be in ascendancy. The Washington Nationals’ stadium is the newest of the ones we visited and, while it was perfectly nice, it was our least favorite. It is on the outskirts of DC and, while there is some development going on, it still feels like you are nowhere. It may have been that I was put off by the awful videos, screeching announcers and a general refusal to provide much actual baseball information on all of the scoreboards. It just felt big and impersonal. (In contrast, the Pirates did their videos great. Their lineup introduction was a takeoff on the beginning of Saturday Night Live, using iconic scenes of Pittsburgh, which sent the clear message “we are a cool team playing in a hip city”.) See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDKYaIwequ8.

Ballpark food: This is something that new stadiums have improved upon. It is one area that I think Citifield wins out, for sheer variety of offerings. In Baltimore, we were tempted by Boog’s Barbecue (which is the classic spot there and operated by Boog Powell) but went for a crab cake sandwich (quite good) and a softshell crab sandwich (too greasy) and later tried the Korean tacos (good kimchee topping, but greasy). “Natty Bo” (National Bohemiam) is the standard beer in Baltimore (Bud like) and has a cute logo. We got to the Nationals park so early (you can get there very quickly by Metro) that much of the Stadium food offerings, including the Danny Meyer spots like Shake Shack, weren’t open yet. So we ended up eating at a nice outdoor bar in centerfield while batting practice was going on. It was pretty easy to get into and you didn’t need a special ticket and the food was good. We were eating our pizza and a one of the Braves hit the table next to ours with an impressive blast, nearly killing one of us. Other than that, walking around, the food there didn’t seem all that compelling. In Pittsburgh, we had pierogis (great) and later had chicken wings. We thought about Manny’s (Sanguillen) Barbecue, but the line was enormous. One of the specials there is a barbecue sandwich with pierogies on top. There were also lots of sausage spots. There is also a famous sandwich which is something like hamburger with french fries and a salad on a roll. We didn’t have the stomach to try it. In Phildelphia, we had cheese steaks, whiz with (which I learned means with cheese whiz and onions). There were a number of other good food offerings (the fried chicken got good reviews and I was curious about the “Schmitter”, a classic Philly steak sandwich with salami and cheese) and I might have tried something else, but it was so hot that it was hard to eat or move (at least until the rainstorm arrived).

Favorite Museum: Not an easy choice since we spent a day wandering around the Smithsonian and the Baltimore Museum is pretty nice, but the American Visionary Art Museum in the Federal Hill section of Baltimore was amazing. It is a museum for artists without formal training and they are often obsessives or complete nut jobs. It is not like a museum you have been to before and it is a lot of fun. There was one powerful exhibit that was a series of embroidered panel by Esther Niesenthal Krinitz, describing her life and survival as a Polish jew during World War II. There was art made of toothpicks and other of matchsticks and a series of sculptures using only telephone wire. It goes on and on and is spectacular. There was one series of wonderful drawings where the note about the artist said that most of his work was thrown away each day as part of the policy of the insane asylum he was in. In some ways, the stories about the artist was as amazing as the art they created. The gift shop is really fun too and the restaurant looked very cool. This place is definitely worth a detour if you are even near Baltimore.

Fallingwater: This classic piece of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture is place I’d always meant to go to and, since it was roughly on the way from Baltimore to Pittsburgh, we did. It is wonderful and is presented tremendously well by the conservancy which runs it. The fact that it was donated with the original furniture and fittings from the 30s is incredible. It is architecture as art, housing as sculpture and man as a part of nature. It may have helped that it was a lovely summer day. It was just a great experience.

Pittsburgh: We didn’t have much time to spend it Pittsburgh and I really need to go back. We stayed at a wonderful place called the Inn on the Mexican War Streets that was in this wonderful old mansion in a very cool neighborhood. We walked around downtown Pittsburgh a little, and then took the Duquesne Incline, a funicular that goes to the top of a hill overlooking the city. The views were spectacular and we had a great lunch at the Monterey Bay Fish Grotto. The food/view combination really would be hard to match anywhere. (For a pure food experience, our lunch at the Thames Oyster House in Fells Point in Baltimore may have beaten it.) A bizarre highlight of the trip to Pittsburgh:

Judie asked us to go by the house that her mother had lived in and that she had visited as a girl. It was in the Carrick section, which is outside of town. So we found it on the GPS and drove over. We pulled up and there was a police car stopped across the street and they were giving us the evil eye as we stopped. But we got out and started to take a photo when a woman came up the street yelling “What are you doing taking a picture of my house?” So I explained about Judie and Joan and when I mentioned the name Bazis, she relaxed. It turned out that she had bought the house from Judie’s grandmother in 1977 and recalled the military gentleman (Judie’s father, no doubt) who was involved in the sale and in moving her to California. We chatted about how she had fixed up the house and had to knock down the garage and how it was still a nice neighborhood with  a lot of the old families even though the police were just arresting that woman in the house across the street for drugs. Alex took pictures.

Minor League Baseball: The two minor league games we went to were fun, but it is a completely different experience from going to a major league game. In some ways they were more fun. Bowie is the AA affiliate of the Orioles. AA baseball is where the real separation takes place in the minor leagues. Up until this level the good players have had little trouble shining, but now they are seeing pitchers who throw more than fast balls effectively, etc. So the teams seemed to be made up of hot shot prospects on their way up, guys who seemed to be repeating the level and may have plateaued and guys who were on their way down or recovering from an injury. There was obvious talent but inconsistent play as the Bowie Baysox beat the Portland Sea Dogs (Red Sox) 6-4. Denny McClain was at the game signing autographs. He was supposed to be on a book tour, but his publisher had screwed up so there were no books. I got a signed baseball. My favorite on-field event of the night (they had one every half inning) was sponsored by the area Plumbing Contractors, who had a billboard in left field with two toilet sets on the top. The contestant had to throw a football through the toilet seat to win a prize. They had free programs and game notes. We sat in the second row behind the catcher and there were scouts sitting around us with radar guns. The ballpark was nice and pretty new. The food was forgettable.

The game at Hagerstown, Maryland pitted the Hagerstown Sun and the Lakewood (NJ!) Blueclaws and visitors won 6-1, pulling away late in the game. The ballpark was reminiscent of Oriole Park in Sydney, where I watched a lot of Australian Baseball League games. The level of play, A ball, was also similar. These teams were made up of mostly young guys (mostly ages 21-23) on their way up. There were a few older guys, who had to be playing for the love of the game. If you are 25 or 26 and still playing A-ball, you have no chance of a major league future, unless you are rehabbing an injury. It was all very homey. No scorecards. The video screen was slightly broken (at least they had one, I guess). There were various people cooking different foods on grills and selling it. There were lots of kids running around. The lights weren’t so hot. Most of the folks in the stands seemed to know each other.

There is more to tell, but I’ve written more than enough. All in all, it was a memorable trip.