Dice, jacks, flipping baseball cards, slinkies, silly putty, smart phones. Evolution? Maybe. Maybe not. Stage coaches bumping dirt roads, trains over tracks, automobiles on interstates. Evolution? Maybe. Maybe not
But parking lots, we love you. Frisbee, pickle, and sip beer. Barbecue brats tailgate, and listen to old 8 tracks, The Scorpions, Frank Sinatra, or Cold Play, whatever you want. The lot is big enough for lizards with wet t-shirts too. The sky is our umbrella and first pitch is soon or when the beer runs out or the 4th inning or whatever comes first. Who’s on second. Pass me another Schlitz.
You gotta have a parking lot. Street cars are too old and trains? Forget about em! Too early for spaceships and no one walks anymore unless it’s inside and at a mall and Walter O’Malley knew this way before anyone else or he watched Lou Perini exercise some good old-fashioned guts and Go west and warm the blood of baseball and become the first team to relocate and change baseball forever?
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Bushville Milwaukee changed baseball forever? Dear Casey Stengel! Ok, maybe it was more Perini than Milwaukee, but it takes two to tango and what great dance partners they turned out to be. And when Milwaukee with its new County Stadium and massive parking lot got those turnstiles spinning and runners scoring on the diamond and Spahn and Sain and pray for rain, well, you bet your Howling Hilda Chester that Mr Walter O’Malley took notice.
But I don’t have the impression that he really wanted to leave Brooklyn. O’Malley really tried to stay and according to a little snippet in the book Lords of the Realm, he even considered a dome long before anyone else even knew what the hell a dome was.
And even the vilified master builder Robert Moses proposed a stadium in Brooklyn, but in the end, it was the Braves in Milwaukee and Calvin Griffith of the Twinkies visiting Los Angeles and apparently discussing his team’s potential move from Minnesota to L.A. Gave O’Malley itchy feet I guess. He wanted in on LA and not no second fiddle so so he packed up some Perini guts and road his coattails out west, way out west to Beverleeee and Stoneham followed with his Giants and another Iron curtain bites the dust as snow melts and water races for a homeland; out to sea or something like that.
…..and the Athletics move to KC and then to Oakland and KC is awarded the Royals. The Braves flee to Atlanta and Milwaukee steals the Pilots from Seattle and Mariners are born 7 years later and am I repeating myself? and interstate commerce and speed up the reels and it’s all a blur and and and
now it’s 2014 and the Giants and Royals are in the World Series together for the first time and the series is tied 1-1 and they’re going back to San Francisco but without flowers in their hair thanks to Giant’s big hunk rookie right hander Hunter Strickland…..Hunter Strick Land. What a freaking name! and what a freaking temper and rightfully so.
He served up his 5th post season home run last night; five in 5.1 innings and according to everyone’s favorite, Joe Buck, that’s the most home runs allowed in a single post season since gulp…the Brewers’ Chris Narveson back in 2011. He performed his stunt by allowing 2 to the D-backs in the NLDS and 3 to those lovely Cardinals in the NLCS.
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