A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES
Road Trip Bandwagon Rider
My first published short story (1984) was baseball themed. When my past decides to present itself in my head, I do enough cringing and cursing without having to reread The Rites of Spring; its very title a wretched cliché. I remain enamored with baseball. The numbers and statistics the sport generates don’t grab me so much as the idea of it and the wonderfully written ruminations the game’s inspired.
The last major league games I attended were in Chicago. I saw the Indians once and Oakland twice. White Sox, a southside weekend. The Indians are now the Guardians and the A’s are headed for Las Vegas (although they’ve only made it out to Needles – or somewhere so far). It’s been a while.
When Stats Guy and I convene the Tuesday Night Beer Club we always talk baseball. We remember the AAA Pacific Coast League Trappers and the subsequent CrackerCats, Capitals and Prospects. We enjoy Edmonton’s current baseball iteration, the short season, collegiate level West Coast League Riverhawks who play in our fine little ballpark beneath downtown’s bluffs on the flood-prone flats of the North Saskatchewan River. Baseball is a live sport. The second-best experience is radio, picturesque.
My dream game would be the Cubs hosting the Cardinals, a sunny afternoon at Wrigley and none of those dumb looking City Connect marketed merchandise uniforms. I’d like to see the Red Sox at Fenway against an established American League team, a club with some history like the Tigers. Stats Guy and I have been planning a baseball road trip together for more than a decade. Maybe we just book Denver or Minneapolis? Direct flights; although when I conjure the Twin Cities, I don’t imagine baseball, no, more Mary Tyler Moore, Prince, the Replacements and Soul Asylum. Maybe we should go see the ex-Expos in DC and catch the Orioles too? Maybe …
Ann knows I’ve been itching for seats at The Show. We’ve talked about a long weekend in Seattle. A place where we don’t know anybody else and our only obligation would be the time on our game tickets. But for Ann and me (Stats Guy too), travelling to the unravelling republic south of the Medicine Line strikes us as a form of implicit endorsement. That just won’t do. I mean, the clown car administration running my province of Alberta is embarrassing enough, but we’re just one Canadian province. The American clown car is a massive, huge duct taped wreck; it’s bad, it’s nationwide. Ann said, “Our only viable option for the next few years at the least is Toronto.”
I pulled up the Blue Jays’ late September schedule near the end of August. The most attractive game to me was September 25, the Thursday night finale of a three-game series against the Red Sox. The Friday game against Tampa did not appeal because the Jays would be decked out in their dreadful black City Connect uniforms. I want to see teams in their proper laundry. And who cares about Tampa unless the club relocates to Montreal to Ouija board the Expos? The Rays were out of the mix anyway, but the Jays and Bosox weren’t. That game would matter.
Me, a native Montrealer, I never hated Toronto’s baseball team as much as I hated (and still hate) its hockey team. The Expos and the Jays played in separate leagues. There was no interleague mix and match back then. I saw the Jays twice (Twins, Tigers) at the old Exhibition Stadium on Toronto’s windy summer fairgrounds. It was Twilight Zone baseball: unfamiliar rules (the designated hitter) and strange teams.
Rogers Centre is a hangover from a different era, a multipurpose, multisport stadium. A bit like Phil Collins, huge in the 80s. I watched a football game there once, the 2007 Grey Cup championship; I can’t remember who was playing. Maybe Winnipeg? The Jays organization has since poured millions of dollars into the concrete pile. Its guts have been transformed into a baseball-only venue, with more renovations to come. They’ve done a great job to date. The illusion was real, Ann and I were in a major league ballpark. Should be at least another five years before the Jays begin snuffling around the public trough seeking cash for a new stadium.
Pro sport is an industry, a sector of the entertainment industry. The ultimate marketing strategy is winning. When a club is a contender, in the mix as playoffs loom, it becomes the face a city presents to the rest of the continent. There’s a palpable energy throughout town – even the batshit crazy street people pick up on the vibe. The parade of secondary revenue stream passing our hotel on Front Street was credit card manic: every conceivable iteration and design of Jays caps, hats, t-shirts and jerseys. Where did you get those baby blues?
I went with the flow. I bought a solid blue cotton ’47 Brand logo hat. I like them, they fit and fade well. The Jays are not the Expos. I must confess to a few minutes of moral consternation. Poor Ann in the store, tapping her foot and staring up at the ceiling as if she was reclined in her dentist’s chair. But how can you betray the dead, the defunct? Some righteous snot will preach about memory, but the truth is the departed won’t ever know and no longer care.
The visitors wore traditional grey road uniforms. The Boston Red Sox looked like the Boston Red Sox even if I couldn’t identify a single player. The Jays have inflicted some horrible logo and uniform aberrations on their hometown fans since their inception, but they got their costumes right this particular night, white pants, blue tops. The ceiling cracked before the first pitch. The stadium’s roof opened. The downpour didn’t hit until we were leaving Rogers Centre afterward. And that was okay, my new hat needed a workout, a working in.
Newspapers don’t publish box scores anymore. Through the first three or four innings of the game I figured the tell-tale sign of a Jays loss would be LOB – runners left on base. The game changed in the bottom of the sixth. Toronto loaded the bases the way good and lucky teams do: an infield error (an errant throw to first) and a walk followed by a HBP – hit by pitch. The next hitter may as well have been crime novelist Dennis Lehane: Gone, Baby, Gone (1998). A grand slam.
Aristotle posited that theatre, comedy, tragedy, what have you, requests and requires those in the odea to suspend their sense of disbelief. When that two-strike pitch went up and over, I forgot I’d paid too much money to watch a corporate asset. I forgot that the players in the game were making more money for one night’s work than I ever netted in a single tax year. I forgot that I’ll never have instant access to a doctor who will fussily attend to a blister on my finger. I forgot too how much the Jays were charging me for each tin of mass-produced domestic beer.
This blog post is running long, a baker’s dozen or so beyond 1200 words. Your lab rat social media-eroded attention span is scratching at the walls of the maze. There are no distractions with a Crooked 9 dispatch, no advertising, no sound, no pictures, no animation. Taking in the scene at Rogers Centre, I realized baseball lacks the confidence to sell itself, the game’s intricacies and nuances. The night was all about the “in-game experience”: the relentless high-definition scoreboard assault, the disc jockey and her dance troupe. Place a wager in real time. Somehow the Jays managed to squeeze in a game.
I’m mildly appalled by how much Ann and I enjoyed ourselves.
Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is out now in multiple formats. Visit my revitalized companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still available.