a million more pilgrims

I don’t remember the White Sox ever following the Cubs into Milwaukee? Or maybe Harry Caray did after he kangarooed from south to north side broadcast booths. I doubt anyone made a patriotic stink about Harry having splintered Chicago loyalties. Seeing him behave like a kangaroo could probably end most civil wars.

Holy Cow was steam.

There were others too. Bill Veeck used to show up shirtless; beer in hand; sitting  in the Wrigley bleachers for a day game and when all was 9 innings over and the Cubs lost again, he’d hop an above ground train to the south side for his White Sox turn; an owner of the people for sure.

And since the mid 1990’s, anything seems possible with the promise land of inter-league play invading our lives. This Chicago followed by Chicago on the Brewers schedule must have been some sort of scheduling leap year magic because there was screaming in top halves and bottom halves of innings for over a week at Miller Park; one Chicago after another; this Cubs and then White Sox; did I already say that? Am I repeating myself. I must be punch drunk from this New York 1940’s feeling; a three team city in Bushville…you betchya!

Lake Michigan is steam. 

The Brewers finished the beer and whisky local dance with a 3-3 record; losing to the Cubs in game 1 and then taking 2 in a row and reversing it all against the Sox; winning in game 1 and losing the next 2.

Chicago (s) are always 90 miles away by bus, train or car until that day when tectonic plates shift or polar ice caps melt or maybe earth’s original inhabitants will return. Time to prepare that spaceship welcome runway with messages cut in our yards saying; “the beer is good and drinks served 24 hours a day.”

I sometimes vow that my next step will be in preparation for that day when petroleum runs out or we revert back to the articles of confederation and say the hell with all this sameness. I don’t like inter-league play; never did and probably never will, but I could get used to this Chicago followed by Chicago Milwaukee thing, barnstorming around by canoe or electric car. Let’s see; two Chicago’s, Detroit, St. Louis, maybe Minnesota, Toronto; Cleveland and Cincinnati; rivers connect to Pittsburgh and that makes 10  teams; enough for a league and another on the west coast and another along the Atlantic sea board-the original league but that leaves out Texas and Atlanta; Seattle and I love a lot about Seattle. 

Ah screw it, everything is fine the way it is, but I miss the 70’s and 80’s when the other league felt like a foreign country or another planet or galaxy and the World Series was really a crashing into other ideologies and teams and cities.

One of the great things about being bad are the fissures forming on the ground a team stands and the steam that pours up; like Hector Gomez at second base for the Brewers this year. He’s played in the majors before; with Colorado in 2011 and a bit with Milwaukee last year.  I didn’t know about him until this year. What an arm! Makes me think he should pitch. He catches the relay throw from Braun in right and throws a perfect missile to Jason Rogers at third for a put out. Shortstop Jean Segura was put on the DL yesterday so Gomez will hopefully find a way into the lineup this weekend.

Brewers had the day off Thursday and now in New York to face I think it’s fair to say one of the better teams in baseball so far; the New York Mets. The Brewers are 12-23 and owners of the worst winning percentage in baseball or at some point does it change names; to losing percentage?

day night and day

I have two TV’s,  so I guess in terms of world wealth, I am terribly spoiled. One of them is flat screen and that’s where I watch all the baseball games and movies. The other one is so old that it has one of those VHS bellies built into it. I keep it because I have some Brewer games on tape that are not available on You Tube like that game from I think 2005 when Prince Fielder and Rickie Weeks both hit their first career home runs.

And that old TV freaking exploded Saturday morning. Thank goodness I reacted quickly; wrapping my arms around my head like Egyptian Mummy strands avoiding what I thought were going to be  flying shards of TV tube, but it was just a dream or I guess a nightmare, but what a loud BOOOOM and bizarre way to wake up on Sa-Turds day. The TV suddenly looked like a still and very peaceful Buddha.

The Brewers almost came from behind in the 9th to beat the Cubs Friday night. Lots of home runs too which may be like an uncivilized messy burger at a greasy spoon to some, but I like greasy burgers at local greasy spoons every once in a while and I ate one of those Saturday and well, the Brewers win when they hit home runs; always did and maybe always will. I like the fight in their fabric this past week.

The subway car is always something to exit; slipping through those Star Trek swooosh doors into an inverted cathedral; the massive cement underground; the up and down escalators way more than myth or metaphor with heaven and hell definite possibilities. I had a burger to eat and the Brewers another game to play. The afternnon passed and so did the evening. I digested that burger and by George, the Brewers beat up on the Cubs 12-4 with three more home runs; one of them the first in Jason Rogers’s career and heavens to Betsy it came as a pinch hit three run blast. Rogers looks a bit like Bill Madlock and he plays third base too.

The Brewers are 10-21 and I just saw a man wake up from under an evergreen tree.  He stretched his arms, yawned and apparently had a good night’s rest on pine needles and under the stars. Today is Sunday.

the parking lot that changed baseball

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?

retrocom.com

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.

Yo-vani strikes back

JR Towles is hitting .294 this season; 9 home runs. Plays for the Bridgeport BlueFish in the Atlantic Independent League. Towles played 5 years with the Houston Astros; career .187 average in 428 at bats, 11 home runs, but two of them against Pedro Martinez. Kinda weird, but what’s even weirder is he only faced Pedro two times. 

Small sample fluke I guess, but once you’ve arrived in the major leagues, strange things can happen. Same with teams and match ups. Any team can win on any given day. Heck, even the lowly Astros have managed 5 wins against Oakland this year. They also lost 8 times, but still.

Teams and cities who happen to be in first place and feel the need to already print playoff tickets is a common show of premature arrogance this time of year. Detroit fell out of first place last night; Verlander to the MRI room. Hello Royal Powder Blue led by former Brewer catcher and Brewer manager Ned Yost.

The regular season is the full course meal anyway; the playoffs bitter sweet…autumn’s death march.

Savor it while it lasts says the wind, 44 games remaining. The Cubs and Wrigley Field are always festival. Team records never matter. And when the Brewers visit; a 90 minute bus trip away, it’s an even bigger festival. A strange four game series; Brewers Cubs began at Wrigley last night. Strange because three of the games are night games. 

Brewers starter Yovani Gallardo was determined to do what house cats do; leave the bones of mice at the back stoop as a token of appreciation. Last week against San Francisco, Yo couldn’t find the strike zone and when he did, the Giants hit him. Big bummer because his entire family was visiting from Texas and Mexico. Well, they made the 90 minute trip to Chicago and witnessed a different Yo last night.

Gallardo didn’t walk anyone and was ahead of just about every batter. Very rare for Gallardo; so much command. He’s a different pitcher. No more 10 strikeouts per nine innings like earlier in his career, but no more 4 walks either. The high fastball was moving last night and so was the spiked curve for 7 solid innings and only 1 earned run.

Mark Reynolds launched his 20th home run; a no doubter in the second inning….even Reynolds flicked the bat in a rare show of “hey look at me,” but it was the fan in the bleachers. What a Catch! And then in Wrigley loyalty, he surrendered the souvenir; flung it back onto the field as they do in Chicago when the opposition goes yard.

It’s a win win situation; turns a home run by the visitors into a local celebration. A couple of impressive lighting and thunder displays over Lake Michigan almost delayed the game, but the grounds crew was tuned to the forecast; said it would blow over and it did. 

The game was tied 1-1 in the seventh when Scooter Gennett hit a wind blown deep fly to left field. Ryan Braun was on second base after singling and stealing second. Rookie Cub outfielder Arismendy Alcantara circled under the ball; a fireman trying to catch a suicide jumper. The ball bounced off his glove and disappeared into the ivy.

Braun was convinced Alcantra caught the ball and raced back to second with prudence; to tag up, but then realized the ball dropped so he raced around third and headed home and was tagged out, but Gennett took second and Khris Davis stepped to the plate, maybe thinking ” I got your back Braun. I’ll drive in the go ahead run.”

And Davis maybe had Hank Aaron in mind. Cubs impressive starter Jake Arrieta hung the first slider of the game and Aaron always said “if the pitcher hang it, bang it.” Davis lined a double down the left field line. Final Score; Brewers 3, Cubs 1.  

The Brewers are 66-53.

maybe the best mistake of my life

The 20; wikipedia

Thursday morning I remembered one of the first emails I ever received and slipped it into an omen; hoped for the best. Matt Garza was pitching later that night and fanaticism has no reason; just rhyme and that’s why I do it.

The email asked “How bout a little fishing off the porch?” We used to do that as kids. It was a regular fishing pole with a spinning toy top for bait. We would cast the thing off a second floor porch. The line often swung around and shattered a window below. Garza might need this. He’s been struggling to escape the first inning.

I took the email as an invitation to come hang out in Oakland so I hitchhiked from Montreal. It took close to 14 days. I got stuck in Thunder Bay, Ontario, but eventually made it. My friend was a bit surprised. I had misinterpreted his message. Communication breakdown.

The next day I took the subway-BART to the Coliseum. I saw a saxophone player sitting at the end of the caged walkway connecting the carpeted world of Bay Area Rapid Transit and Oakland A’s baseball.

subwaynut.com

A simple King Curtis rendition of Take Me Out to the Ball Game is all he played, but it was sexy like only a saxophone can be. I don’t remember who won the game.

I retraced my steps; heard the same sexy sax, took the Bart to MacArthur station. I walked along 45th avenue, towards Broadway and into a Breakfast in America restaurant on the corner. I sat at the half  moon diner and probably drank some coffee.

I retraced my steps along 45th avenue. The sun was still shining. It must have been a day game. I walked past  Clint Eastwood’s high school and reached Telegraph Avenue and spotted a flat-iron building.

I remembered what some lady at the Oakland Historical Society told me; that the buildings were flat-iron because they were sitting on tracks from the old street car days or something like that.

Kaspers; Oaklandwiki.com

One of the buildings on Telegraph was Kasper’s Hot Dog’s stand. It was right smack in the middle of the avenue, probably still is. Musta been a flat iron. I sat down and talked to the owner. It was actually the owner’s son. He was wearing a plain white t-shirt and had a wild set of hair; copper, grey swirls in every direction. I don’t remember what we talked about.

Then I went to McDonalds and met an old couple. They gave me a cassette of some radical leftist. I think it was Michael Parenti. I gave it to my friends’ roommate. He was studying at Berkeley to be a political science professor.

So many useless wanderings; back and forth, east coast-west coast, north and south, going nowhere; following clues that maybe didn’t exist, but believing in all of them and promising to make more mistakes.

Matt Garrza had allowed 11 of his 33 runs in the first innings so he changed his pre-game rituals and came out throwing strikes in the first inning Thursday night. I was hopeful. Freddie Freeman did  foul off 6 pitches for a 9 pitch at bat, but a soft liner later and Garza pumped his fist. No runs, no hits in the first inning.

The Brewers were cruising. The most underrated catcher in baseball-Jonathan Lucroy hit a  2 out, run scoring double in the first and added a 2 out, run scoring single in the third and then in the fourth, Logan Shaefer executed baseball’s most perfect play; the suicide squeeze.

Brewers were leading 4-2 in the bottom of the seventh when Dan Uggla battled Garza for 9 pitches and then lined a single to left field. Garza to the showers. Brewers manager Ron Roenicke called for a lefty. Zach Duke emerged from the bullpen. He reached the infield and then stopped.

Roenicke confusion; jsonline.com

Roenicke wanted Will Smith, not Duke, but Smith hadn’t been warming up. Communication breakdown. Both the bullpen coach and pitching coach were not in uniform. They were attending graduation ceremonies for family members. Communication breakdown.

But Smith entered anyway and made do with  8 warm up pitches. Smith was cold. It was noticeable. He allowed the go ahead, two run single. Roenicke absorbed the blame after the game; called it a communication breakdown.

Ooooops. My talisman backfired, but it might be just what the Brewers need. Who knows. I sure don’t.

Final Score Braves 5, Brewers 4. The Brewers are 28-20.

 

somewhere down river

I don’t remember when a Greyhound Bus became a philosophy in itself, but it did and soon after, spawned into anthropology, oral history, fashion, a crossroads of American economics, drug smuggling, people smuggling, flashes of evergreens, neon blue toilet swirls, a dream, a mythology swooping passengers beyond time into some sort of shared consciousness.

Or maybe it’s just a filthy, bumpy bus ride from point A to point B and I needed to see it differently. I rode the Greyhound all over the United States and never once meditated to the sound of the motor. I enjoyed the circus instead and when trips ended,I felt an amputation so strong that I packed a peanut butter lunch and enjoyed a brown bag scene at the bus station wherever I happened to be.

I boarded a greyhound and wondered how my life might be altered by whoever sits next to me. It was a terrible expectation, but I couldn’t help it. Bus stations are filled with so many hellos and goodbyes, so many dreams taking flight and so many others being snuffed out. The tears and laughter, the grumpies complaining about the cramped, armpit odor conditions, the secret pockets of enthusiasm for coffee shops at 4 am in the middle of somewhere.

The odds were low, but a Shaman or Medicine Man could sit beside me and maybe I was naive and longing for an escape, but I day dreamed of a conversation and silence followed by a sincere invitation to participate in a peyote ceremony. I would accept and feel fear like never before in my life, but would know this is something I must do.

The shaman would light a couple of candles and pass juice around the room. There’s 8 or 9 of us sipping from a hairy wood cup; maybe it’s a hollowed out coconut. I’m pissing in my pants , but know this is where I’m supposed to be or where I want to be anyway.

The light begins to change or maybe it’s just the sun slipping under the horizon. There’s more shadows, stranger angles. I don’t know how much time has passed. Then there is no time, just a loud buzzing. I’m convinced  the earth is breathing; turtle island earth floating and breathing, but it’s only a retrieved thought from my file cabinet mind.

But I’m passing through spheres or something and shedding them like onion skins. Now I’m standing on this turtle island and my limbs grow from it. My thoughts stop.

I see faces floating around the room; baseball faces, sworn enemy faces. Baseball is offering itself as a vehicle so I can understand something. I see Pedro Martinez and Don Zimmer, Bill Lee and Jim Fanning; maybe ghosts, maybe real. Ty Cobb smells death. Babe Ruth’s laugh echoes through the sweat lodge. I see the sound.

It’s both horrible and beautiful. I can’t speak, none of us can. The Shaman must be reading our thoughts because he taps each of us in a different manner and at different moments. I hear sighs with each tap. The sworn enemies don’t notice each other. They’re too focused on whatever they see. I think we’re all seeing the same thing. Maybe we are the hallucinations and the sworn enemies are real.

This is my day dream. I sometimes sing it to myself like a lullaby before bed. It has rhyme. The faces change, but they are always baseball faces and the result is always the same. Their attention is seized away from their enemy. I never know what does the seizing.

But there is no peace. Each face gains strength from the same source. Their next battle will be ancient, more intense, raw materials.

The scene will be gutters and fast food restaurants, blinking lights, and teleportation to barren roads and dust bowls, side by side and without even trying, their hate towards each other will turn to shame. They’ve been naked before, but not like this, never surrounded by so many shadows and nothing. Fear forces them together. They both want to survive.

when hobos fall in the forest

No one identified the body. No one would even touch it. The shin bone had popped through flesh upon impact. The sight gave everyone the heebie-jeebies. A baseball bat and Tabasco bottle were in each hand. Some say the grip was still strong as he lay there without a pulse, flat lined.

The Silver Bow county morgue printed an obituary with no name and the customary biblical passage underneath. Another anonymous nobody was embalmed and lowered into the earth.

There’s no way of knowing if flinches flared up across rivers and mountains or wherever Hillbilly’s hobo teammates mighta been laying their head, but one thing’s for sure. This wasn’t the first time Hillbilly died, but it would definitely be the last.

How many soft hands he’d slipped away from was anybody’s guess. Ladies called him by the worst of names but Hillbilly loved that first feeling; those first steps away from decency and union. He called it escaping death; a smashing of the whiskey windows and he cherished every moment like a kid floating on air in a new pair of shoes.

The married life was not for Hillbilly, but that never stopped him from duping dames. He plucked rubber bands, tapped the mouths of Mickey’s malt beer bottles and with every swig of Jim Beam, added words that became songs and dance. He spit, burped, and scratched his crotch and yet ladies clung to him like a fire escape.

He never bothered with long notes or saying goodbye. He walked straight towards the tangled mess of train tracks where his family of hobos, locomotion and the whistle onward always waited. Twenty years of back and forth between a lady and riding the rails, between respectability and Hillbilly, sober and drunk, straight and twisted.

There were 15 of em’ hopping trains and heading nowhere. They begged and gambled, splashed in rivers and turned road kill into first suppers with an eye drop dash of Tobasco; instant home under the stars.

It was just outside Boise, Idaho where the first baseball game was played. The hobos didn’t have names for fields; just weeping willows bobbing into PCB infested river water or backyards with 7 clothes lines. The landmarks were flashbacks, reminding them of the quicksand at second base-Shreveport, the barbed wire home run fence-Ashtabula, the wind in Kankakee.

Boilermaker threw a “splat ball;” nastiest pitch anyone had ever seen, stopped in mid-flight and hop skipped to the right, but only a hair. Then it would whip back to the left, down and out.

Lone Wolf roamed the tall outfield grasses, never did take responsibility for his life; loud and arrogant one day; quiet and apologetic the next, but hell if there was a fly ball he couldn’t track down.

Hot foot ranged all over the infield, planted those big feet of his and threw an underhand sling shot never dipping below waist level. Musta traveled over 150 miles per hour.

Lemon Doo was fatter than anyone liked to admit. Couldn’t pan handle a dime with her around, but she was the only one to ever connect on Boilermaker’s splat pitch; nothing but a foul ball, but definitely an indication. And sure enough….throw her a fastball and she sent it sailing faster than the early evening Hiawatha.

Years passed faster and faster and the hobos forgot all about their bodies and the world; became no different from leaves or snow falling; rushing water, a still mountain peak.

That all changed when young mean drunks took over the train yards. The hobos felt naked and distance crept over them. It was a dark day in autumn when Lone Wolf suffered one too many pummels from a Louisville Slugger. The angry kids took off and ran, leaving the bloody body and baseball bat behind.

One hobo after another squeezed under fences and back into society. Some found holes under subways. Others slipped behind shopping mall walls and lived beside boiler rooms. A few fled to the hills and built makeshift shacks.

Only Hillbilly remained; choosing to die in the same ring that brought him to life. He yanked the baseball bat and Tabasco bottle from Lone Wolf’s grip and hopped a Union Pacific, heading east towards the Continental Divide.

It was on a ridge somewhere near Pipestown Pass in Montana where Hillbilly extended his arms east and west as far as they could go. He touched rivers and mountain peaks with the tips of his fingers, felt the surge of river water racing through his veins, let out a long sigh and leaped. He was buried with baseball bat and Tabasco bottle in hand.

there musta been a time

Nostalgia can be such a bitter dance, longing for what we think were simpler days while the river of today rolls right on by. Yeh, I do it all the time.

Take me back to 1957 County Stadium with Milwaukee on the brink of its first and only World Series victory . Or take me back to July 23, 2009 and Ireland’s Dublin Area Rapid Transit (DART) celebrating its 25th year. Or take me across the Atlantic on that same day when a different kind of train rolled into Philadelphia’s 30th street station.

The St. Louis Cardinals boarded an Amtrak in Washington DC headed for Philly. It was the first time the Cardinals had traveled by train in 40 years.

But there musta been a time before charter flights when train travel was the quickest way to go from Pittsburgh to New York and Detroit to St. Louis and back to New York and then to Chicago. There musta been a time when the only team west of the Mississippi was the Cardinals. There musta been a time about to change.

When Lou Perini relocated his Boston Braves to Milwaukee the in winter of 1952, he knew what was coming. He knew “fly the friendly skies” was already here.”No more scrunching into a sleeper car from New York to St. Louis and up and down the Atlantic Seaboard. Yeh sure, it was quaint and romantic, but it was headed for the scrap-book. Baseball was an expanding universe. There were profits to be made.

The sacred dominoes were leaning. The Brooklyn Dodgers packed up the truck and moved to Beverly, Chavez Ravine that is. Palm trees, movie stars. The Dodgers in the city of Angels and the Giants copy-catting with a move to San Francisco.

In 1882 the maximum distance between major league parks was 430 miles. By 2005, the number had skyrocketed to 1155. Walk down a ramp, secure your carry on luggage, stuff headphones in your ears and next thing you know; touchdown.

But there musta been a time before expansion and chartered planes. Oh, there musta been a time.

I thought teams began flying the friendly skies in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, but the origins go much further back. The Cincinnati Red’s Larry Macphail chartered an American Airlines DC-2 on June 8, 1934 and 19 of his Reds flew to Chicago for a game against the Cubs

Twelve years later Larry Macphail did it again, this time as General Manager of the New York Yankees. He chartered a DC-4 during the 1946 season and the “Yankee Mainliner” became the first team plane to fly on a regular basis.

But there musta been a time when players sat together on trains and played cards, carried out pranks, slipped into the bar car at 3am. Oh, there musta been a time before private jets.

I wonder if players and fans will wax and whine nostalgic about airplanes when teleportation slips into our lives like all transportation revolutions tend to do.

Oh, there musta been a time.