Cardboard Birds, Concrete Cats, & The Diamond In The Rough
Detroit, Michigan is my kind of beautiful. She’s the metropolitan version of a former teenage beauty queen now in her mid-to late thirties – turn your head a little to the right and you’ll catch a glimpse of her magnificence and all the glory of her breathtaking qualities, while a slight turn to the left will give the view to her aged and worn features born out of trials, tribulations, and the prom kings and fence post boys that have left her abandoned and experienced in ways she never once imagined in the long gone days of her youth. She’s industrious, musical, and has a bit of a reputation. She’s the home of the Cadillac, The Ice Man, The Nuge, Iggy, MC5, The Brown Bomber, Smokey, Stevie, and Aretha. She is perfect in her imperfections. Yes indeed, she’s my kinda beautiful.
Wedged between the rough and tumble and the corporate symbols that drive the city, that can also be seen imprinted on the vehicles being driven on highways and back roads across this great country, is a diamond named Comerica Park. A jewel which sparkles like no other diamond I’ve seen with my own eyes at any point of my baseball fanaticism. A structure which houses not only a baseball team but a small amusement park, the spirit of past legends such as Ty Cobb, and is guarded by giant concrete tigers perching and prowling in poses in the midst of the urban jungle.
COMERICA PARK - DETROIT, MICHIGAN
I awoke at 6:30 a.m. on the morning of the 28th of July still trying to register in my brain the fact that less than 24 hours before I’d witnessed a no-hitter by Ervin Santana in Cleveland, Ohio. Although I was fatigued from the drive the day prior, I was excited to get on the road to Michigan as I would not only be following my pursuit to visit yet another baseball cathedral, but the Los Angeles Angels as well. The game would be the first in a series between the Tigers and Angels, two teams vying for a playoff position. I was curious to see if yesterday’s performance in Cleveland would somehow turn into momentum for L.A., and I had something I needed to do once I arrived at Comerica Park. So with backpack strapped and ticket in hand, I made my way in northwestern direction toward the Motor City.
It had been quite sometime since I’d been in this portion of the world, let alone the baseball universe. Eight years to be exact. There was once a young woman I had been infatuated with from the Toledo, Ohio area. It was nice that my journey to the unseen and unknown was a chance to be reminded and have a smile put upon my face of that time. I recalled our time together when one afternoon when we drove by the home of the Toledo Mud Hens for the first time and how strange it was now I was attempting to visit all of these parks beyond the Ohio region. However, it was not the love or heart of a woman I was on a quest for as I motored across Interstate 75 toward Detroit, but to pay tribute to a wonderful baseball personality and out of love of the game. Although I am no doubt a torch carrier when it comes to matters of the heart, it was what I’ve carried in my wallet for years that gave me great purpose on this day. Though I am not a Tigers fan, for several years I’ve carried a 1977 Topps #265 Mark Fidrych baseball card, a personal tribute to one of baseball’s more non-traditional players.
I was too young to experience the spectacle that was “The Bird”, but the legend that surrounded him and his on the mound antics made me appreciate what he brought to the game during his short tenure with Detroit in the late 1970s. Before the antics of modern-day hurlers such as San Francisco Giants closer Brian “The Beard” Wilson, there was “The Bird” , a shooting star in regards to pitching, who made his debut for the Tigers in 1976 winning 19 games and posting 24 complete games in his Rookie of the Year winning season. Aside from his statistics, it’s hard as a fan not to be drawn to a player who was not only lights out on the bump, but had a notion to talk to the ball, himself, and looked like Sesame Street’s Big Bird. So while I often wax poetic on the reverent elements of the game of baseball, it’s also those irreverent and filled with youthful exuberance which make it such a draw to me. Fidrych represents not only what the game so often lacks to those who view it as a boring sport filled with overpaid millionaires, but a contrast to another famous former Tiger personality that made the drive from small town Jackson, Ohio a necessary task, the legendary and polarizing Ty Cobb.
During my time in Lakeland, Florida back in March, I was seated behind home plate at Joker Marchant Stadium during a spring training affair on the afternoon of March 16th between the Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals and I had intended to leave the Fidrych card there as I felt it was a fitting gesture. However, my tribute somehow got forgotten in between Albert Pujols’ grand slam and text messages to and from “my therapist”/bikini model/friend Dr. O’Malley. Long story short, I left without completing my mission. It was something I had to do this time around as we come this way but once. However, the question was where exactly would be the right place to leave it? I suppose sometimes questions such as this answer themselves and the moment would indeed come. But knowing that I was seated behind the Tiger dugout in Section 134OD Row 12 Seat 4 it would seem mere sacrilege to leave it perched in a cup holder or in the seat itself. However, as I said, the answer appeared eventually.
When I arrived to the ball park my first order of business, as it always is when driving to a stadium, is the matter of parking. I hate to say it but after the Pittsburgh experience, I judge a lot about a “church’ visit by how easily I can place my vehicle in a lot or parking garage in relation to the stadium. As with my other past experiences, aside from Pittsburgh which was a nightmare and Chicago’s Wrigley Field (a yet to be written account) which I walked five miles to visit, parking was an easy task. In fact, the lot I chose was a short walk from the park and merely ten dollars in cost, unfortunately I only had twenty-dollar bills and the attendant said if I wanted to pull up and wait he’d get me change on the next car through. I offered to just let him have it all as I was excited to get to the stadium and just wanted out of the car which I’d been inside of for five hours to his surprise no doubt. So I parked my car as he yelled to the Hispanic gentlemen also attending the lot, “put him where he can get out easy!”.
Perhaps one of the best parts of this visit was the walk from the lot to Comerica, down side streets and alley ways with a full view of the rough and the rugged as well as the more modern and cosmopolitan architecture the city has to offer. It was slightly overcast, which made me call on the spirits of The Bird and Ty Cobb to bless me on this day so that my arrival at yet another temple created by HKO/Populous would not be greeted or cut short by rain. Lucky for me and other patrons of the park that day, my prayer was answered and we were blessed with all one could expect from a day at the park, a Miguel Cabrera home run, Manager Jim Leyland being ejected by the umpires, a disgruntled Brad Penny arguing with his own teammate, catcher Victor Martinez, in full view of the fans, and the sun peeking from behind the clouds.
I spent the first seven innings of the game taking it all in, snapping photographs and conversing with those next to me, about the park, the game, baseball in general, and the magic I had witnessed the day before in Cleveland. I left my seat in the final two innings to tour the grounds and stand in the center field concourse where fans were yelling at the Angels outfielders with various heckles and insults that couldn’t help but put a devilish grin on my face. But the true draw for me in the outfield area was the monument of Ty Cobb.
If Fidrych was my draw to this team for his quirky spirit, Cobb’s allure spoke more to my dark side. In fact, I would go so far to say that both personalities best exemplify my nature. Where Fidrych is the childlike joy within me, Cobb is my demon seed that unfortunately rears his ugly head with a sharp tongue, piercing eyes, and spikes high intending to harm abrasive nature. While The Bird is a symbol of greatness cut short, The Georgia Peach is the symbol of greatness realized but so full of angst that it pushes away all that it has loved or is loved by and haunted by mistakes and memories that go beyond simple childhood games on dirt and grass. Fidrych represents the part that attracts, Cobb is that which repels others with a “fuck you all” brash and lonesome bravado.
I exited the stadium before the final out, to bask in the glory that is the giant concrete tigers surrounding the park. On the sidewalk outside the gate were bricks with the names of former players and the dates they played for the Tigers and there came the answer to where I would lay to rest the piece of cardboard I had held in my wallet all these years. I searched until I finally found it, a small brick square engraved with MARK FIDRYCH (1976-1980). I waited until no one was nearby and took the baseball card from my wallet and placed it on the ground. I snapped a few quick photos and walked away. I can only hope that some appreciative Tigers fan stumbled upon the bubble gum card and with excitement and wondered how it ever came to be there, or maybe a gust of wind simply blew it away in a quick swoop, just as fast as The Bird’s career had come and gone. Either way, I was at peace. Just as I always am leaving the hallowed ground of a baseball stadium. I stopped just long enough to have my picture taken in front of the tiger statue at the front gate I was so enamored with and lucky for me the crowd had died down to the point I was able to do so without interference.
I then stopped to give money to a man panhandling outside of the stadium which is a common scene I’ve come to notice of late. “God bless you.”, he said humbly. “God bless you.”, I replied, then headed back down the alley ways toward my trusty “Supernova”, back to the grind and gridlock of the highway and real life, wondering where I was headed next on the road map of baseball and all places in between. Leaving behind the cheers and feel of another visit to another house of worship in the Church of the Sacred Bleeding Heart of Major League Baseball for the surroundings of the highway, its racing lights, and the yellow lines I try to stay between both on the road and in my mind.
Until next time…
Angels Thrashing Against Me: That Old Time Religion, Prayers, Superstitions, & No-Hits
Text message:
Tuesday, July 26th 2011
From: Becks
Have fun at your game tomorrow. Say hi to God.
“When an angel completes its task it ceases to exist” is a phrase I’ve been known to throw around. Personally, it’s always been my way of saying my work is done here. I’m by no means angelic by nature, I have too much of a scatological sense of humor and often a disconnected feeling from my fellow-man to sport a halo. However, Ervin Santana is an angel. The Los Angeles/Anaheim/California kind that is, and on a Wednesday afternoon in July in Cleveland he turned Progressive Field into baseball Heaven, at least for those of us there not rooting for an Indians’ victory.
PROGRESSIVE FIELD - CLEVELAND, OHIO
The journey to Progressive Field in Cleveland, Ohio on July 27th, as part of my quest to visit every minor league and major league stadium in my lifetime, was not my first visit to the home of the Cleveland Indians. However, it had been quite sometime since I had attended a game there, due to my once very open disdain for the franchise and its fans stemming from a bad experience years earlier. Over the years, I’ve banged on the city of Cleveland and fans of the Indians pretty hard. I’ve even been known to quote or paraphrase Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki when discussing either topic, by saying “If I ever said I was happy about having to go to Cleveland, I’d punch myself in the face, because I was lying.” However, either by the grace of maturity or just sheer respect for my fellow fanatics, I’ve come to have a greater appreciation for The Forest City and even a bit of sympathy for their long and seemingly endless wait for a winner in regards to professional sports.
My last visit to the home of the Tribe, then Jacobs Field, was on July 14th, 2002. It was a day that began as another typical dominant performance by the visiting Bronx Bombers. Through the first five innings, Yankees hitters gave starting pitcher Mike Mussina a seven run cushion and appeared to be cruising to their 58th win of the season. However, something quite uncharacteristic and almost surreal occurred in the ninth inning that summer day, as Mariano Rivera would enter the game in the bottom of the ninth with the Yankees leading 7-4 and surrender six earned runs allowing the Indians to walk-off with a 10-7 victory. Needless to say, the walk from stadium to my vehicle while wearing a Yankees jersey was rather challenging. With the result of the game and the verbal abuse from the fans celebrating the win, it made it easy to despise all that was Cleveland. However, over time and due to what would transpire on this return visit, my hatred eventually gave way to an utter appreciation for the Indians organization.
The trip to Progressive Field on July 27th, 2011 was never supposed to occur. I say this because my original intended visit on this baseball religious pilgrimage I call The Church of The Sacred Bleeding Heart of Major League Baseball was scheduled for July 4th. However, there was a bit of a mix up with the Liam to my Noel Gallagher, and I chose to not attend what would eventually become another Yankees’ defeat at the hand of the Cleveland Indians. So by my estimation, I was never supposed to be on my way to Cleveland to see the Angels play the Indians, but by the grace of the baseball gods, I did. Oddly enough, while en route and as usual when I’m not blasting Nine Inch Nails, Guns N’ Roses, or some random pop music I’ve become fascinated with while on one of my drives, I was tuned in to a sports talk radio station during which I was made aware that on the night before the game I was on the way to (July 26th), the Indians minor league affiliate Columbus Clippers had earned their first perfect game in franchise history in Syracuse thanks to nine innings of magic by pitcher Justin Germano. My immediate thought of course was how amazing would it be, if today, the big club somehow manage to repeat the feat?
I’ve been following the game for twenty-seven years and attending live professional baseball games for nineteen. In that time, I’ve witnessed in-person only minor degrees of baseball history. My most major historical feat that comes to thought immediately was on September 4th, 1992, I was lucky enough to be one of the 23, 852 fans at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati to witness, then New York Mets first baseman, Eddie Murray’s 17th career grand slam. Another great moment outside the park, which no doubt deserves a “diary” entry all its own, was an encounter in March of 2008 in Underground Atlanta with former Negro League player James “Red” Moore. Believe me, seeing career milestones is one thing, but bearing witness to living American/sports history is something entirely different when you realize the significance of such a man, as well as the ugly reasons why he and others were forced to play in a separate league of the sport you love solely based upon the color of skin.
Needless to say, seeing a no-hitter live is something every baseball fan dreams of and very few will ever witness aside from highlight reels or television broadcasts. Personally, the closest I’d come besides those two ways was via video game and once at a family reunion on my mother’s side of the family where at the age of 13 I no-hit the adults in a game of baseball pitting kids versus adults. I unfortunately gave up organized baseball at a young age for the same reason during said game I beaned one particular hitter in the adult line-up that day, because he was my father. But I digress…this too is another writing session for another time. Where were we, yes, the majesty and rarity of the no-hitter. Let us proceed.
The thought of the Indians duplicating the feat performed by their Triple-A affiliate vanished almost as quickly as it appeared while making the trek from Jackson, Ohio to 2401 Ontario Street in Cleveland. However, unbeknownst to me, somewhere along the odyssey my whisper was perhaps mistaken for a prayer to one the baseball patron pitching saints or the gods themselves. Besides, all this baseball mumbo jumbo is just a way to forget some silly girl, right? You’re crazy, they said so. This isn’t really a quest for something magic, it’s madness. The title of your writings isn’t play on the stigma placed on you by someone else empowering you at all, it’s all rambling nonsense right? These things don’t really happen. There are no baseball gods, it’s all superstition. Baseball is dead, remember?
I arrived one hour before the first pitch of the game and found parking much easier than my last stadium journey a few weeks earlier in Pittsburgh. I entered the venue from the street through the left field entrance and quickly made my way to my section of the field – Section 152 Row F Seat 3 – front row behind the safety and security of home plate. As I’ve mentioned previously, there is a certain calm I have within the confines of a baseball stadium and my financial standing now gives me the ability to add somewhat of a luxurious aspect I didn’t possess back when I purchased my first game ticket what seems like eons ago at the age of sixteen. The journey from the cheap seats to the front row sponsored by a local Mercedes-Benz dealer may seem like a few strides down a concourse, but the stark reality is it’s actually miles upon miles and several digits in distance. For baseball zealots such as myself, it’s a sign of our dedication to a system of beliefs or culture and a better view at a the teams on the field fighting for a position in the league standings, for many others it’s merely a better view of their economic and social standing. Perhaps that’s why I get the looks I do from some of the regulars. I show up merely a ragamuffin, dressed in my best super hero or metal band t-shirt, cut off camo BDU pants, my long wind-blown hair from the road, and cheap aviator sunglasses. Guess that’s why they always check my ticket or ask where or whom I purchased it from, just making sure I’m “in the right place”.
On this day, it would be hard not to say that I was exactly where I belonged. Far from “home”, yet not far from home. To my right, I could catch a glimpse of Jared Weaver from time to time peeking from out of the visiting dugout. To my immediate left the tunnel which the umpires would use to enter the field. Further left, the Indians dugout and when my eyes were to the front of me the wide open view of yet another hallowed ground created by the architectural designers Populous, the 216 square inch house shaped plate, and the minor gods of the Church of the Sacred Bleeding Heart of Major League Baseball. Little did those 21,546 there that day know that very shortly after 12:05 p.m., we would bear witness to 2 hours and twenty minutes of history, superstition, and baseball lore. Something that first occurred on record nearly 136 years to the day on July 28th, 1875 and would be duplicated for the 272nd time that day, perhaps the single most obvious display of an individual’s ability to exhibit domination over an entire team in the game – the no-hitter.
LA ANGELS PITCHER ERVIN SANTANA PITCHING TO LONNIE CHISENHALL - 27 JULY 11
Perhaps out of excitement or my desire to take photographs, I did not purchase anything to eat or drink on my way to my seat. I had a waitress at my disposal but chose instead to wait to leave my seat to buy some ballpark refreshments. At the start of the third inning of play I took notice of what Santana was in the midst of and told myself that when the first Cleveland hit of the game happened as it surely would I thought, I would then and only then, leave my seat to get food. To say I am superstitious in regards to the game would no doubt be an understatement. Let’s just say I have my reasons, which mainly revolve around predicting Aaron Boone’s home run against the Red Sox in the 2003 ALCS three-hours before the game was played. This is indeed a fact by the way, something almost spoke to me that day literally that made me look at my best friend at the time and say, “Aaron Boone is going to Bucky Dent them, I’ve seen it.” I also blamed the 2004 collapse on a New York Yankees game bat I own being moved and Jason Varitek electing to bat right-handed against a right-handed pitcher despite being a switch hitter, so maybe I am a bit off after all. Nonetheless, when it comes to certain aspects of my religion of choice, I don’t play around with the more “supernatural’ aspects of it.
Which is perhaps why, I spent those two hours and twenty-two minutes of game time seated comfortably with out a word being said, an empty stomach, taking photos in the same manner I did at the start of the game, and cringing every time the young boy behind me mentioned to his mother, “there’s a no-hitter going, Mom.” Everybody knows, you don’t talk about it, well everyone but this kid. And of course, I couldn’t say anything to him, I hadn’t spoken all game, right?
Oh well, true believer or not, the game, its players, and fans have their various quirks, beliefs, and obsessive compulsive behavioral traits. I suppose that’s what makes it so perfect and beautiful to me. Its numbers, ability to be infinite, the opportunity for perfection, the success of seventy percent failure, the display of domination, the tradition and history of the game both horrid and beautiful. As a future educator, I have even gone so far at times to build entire educational thematic units around the game with mathematics, history, science, it’s almost impossible to find a subject matter not comparable to the game of baseball. And on July 27th, 2011, it was nearly impossible to find a time comparable as a fan, when everything seemed to make sense. Nothing became something. Zero hits plus a sunny summer afternoon equaled one hundred percent joy. The result of such equation for me had long been lost. It was a good way to feel again and the realization hit me. I had to complete this. I had to see all of them. I had to see this through to the end, no matter how long it took. From Single-A to MLB to all the way to the Tokyo Dome in Japan, I would see the world again, and the game would be the map to guide me.
Until next time…
Diary Of A Mad Fan 