Tag Archives: Braves

Rain Delay For What?

20 Tuesday Jun 2017

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Since MLB is obviously never going to permit a major league team move to Tennessee, I must travel for my fix.  Actually, it’s the Braves who won’t allow it. But, I digress.

So, yeah, I can’t beat the Braves or MLB, so thank the baseball gods I have a working car with a full tank of gas and a heavy right foot to make it go.

Picking a game or series involves both struggle and joy.  Which series? Which pitchers will you get? Weather? Seats? Solo, wife or friend army? Lodging? Parking? Getting time off? Schedules? Who feeds the dog? Does the dog WANT go? How do you get the dog in?

I assume the joy part of the equation will be the game itself.  It damn well better be after all that planning.

You can control some of the planning elements, but you definitely can’t control the weather unless you want to be a Rays fan. That’s one line I shan’t cross.

Otherwise, you just have to roll the dice.  Mostly, for this trip, things lined up well.  The Giants are coming to ATL, so that’s that. One game solo, one game pals. Cueto vs. Dickey. Oh yes. Posey in the lineup both nights. Seats are easy to score on a Monday. All giant (ahem) check marks.  And, for the most part, decent weather is displayed in the 10-day sucker deception chart on weather.com.

I loaded up the vehicle with the correct shirts, podcasts and snacks. One more obligatory ‘why bother checking the weather you are going anyway’ weather check before getting on the road. Of course the forecast was suddenly foreboding- as if it were waiting for me to get on I-75 before it told me the truth.

But. For some reason. I didn’t care. I was going. That was….enough?

And it was like that the whole day. Google Maps goes down right as I pull of I-75. Eh, I’ll find it.  Bad check-in instructions for the Air BnB. Yeah, well, I’m early and this BnB is nicer than the photos.  No good places to eat around the stadium.  Yeah, well, I’m going to baseball. I can get bad food there.

I marched up to the Suntrust ticket booth and bought my ticket old style from a HUMAN BEING who gave me a PAPER ticket.

Me: Are you sure this is a covered section, rain free?

Him: Yep.

Me: Double sure? I really want a dry seat.

Him: Yep.

He was wrong. It was directly in the rain.  And rain it did.  From 6:43 until 7:50, delaying the game.  It rained with vigor, like it wanted the Giants to have the night off. (They took it off anyway.)

I went to the usher in my section to explain that the ticket guy sold me a bill of goods but not a dry seat. Before I could explain the obviously winning arguments that I had over-rehearsed in my head before approaching him- he shut me down.

Michael The Usher: No problem, sit in the Giant’s family section. It’s covered.

Me: Yes. Yes, I will. Thank you, kind usher.

The only moment in the day where I sensed my zen was slipping was just seconds before the moment he hit me on the head with unsuspected generosity.  He saw me tensing up and would have none of it.  This is baseball, son, enjoy your neurotic self.  I bow to to Michael the usher.

When the national anthem kicked in I realized it was one of those rare days when the ‘I will be satisfied once- and only once  X, Y, and Z occur’ switch was not engaged.

And I sat there in dryness, talking it up with the colorful array of gabbing Giants fans, including one senior soul who’s kids drove him from Arkansas just for the game. We watched the beautiful rain come down, studied the amazing ground crew battle and defeat the elements, observed people meandering about like it mattered not where they ended up. Nobody seemed bummed out, even the ones who bought those questionable and nasty A-shaped pretzels.  Even when the Giants had the living daylights beat out of them, we all delighted in the joy of each other’s co-misery.

How can that be? I don’t know, maybe you can’t delay the joy when it’s already here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw a some-hitter!

25 Monday Aug 2014

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Or, one could say, I almost saw a no-hitter in Cincinnati on Friday Night.  

The scene: Late August. Braves vs. The Reds.  Great American Ballpark.  Mild expectations for the Braves, none for the Reds. 

One thing I wasn’t prepared for was any display of tangible pitching feats, having already told my wife I was a bit bummed that so-so Mike Minor was up next in the Braves pitching rotation.  You’d think since we drove all the way from Knoxville, at least we could get Santana or Harang.

But heck, it’s baseball, it’s not raining, great seats, Minor will do.  

Perhaps because of our fabulous seats and low expectations, I don’t think I even noticed Minor was working his way on a no-no until later in the game when I started getting texts from friends who were trying not to jinx him by refusing to cut through time and space and talk directly to him in the dugout. Once I did notice the fact THERE WERE NO HITS, I became as tense as a jittery unprepared teen taking the SAT.  I just wasn’t ready to witness my secret dream:  to be at no-hitter in person.

And yet, only the night before I managed to check another secret dream off the secret dream list.  I caught a foul ball (from Simmons) in a regular MLB game.  OK, I DROPPED it first, then I caught on the bounce. That counts. For something. My wife instructed me to hand over the holy grail to the pre-teen in the next row.  Thank the Gods of Fate that the kid already had one tossed to him earlier in the game via the dugout- and that I noticed it happening.  He was hiding it in his glove. Clever. I kept the ball. Come visit it in my office sometime. 

Anyway- the eight inning came around which I was sure was the 9th because impatience.  I couldn’t take it- I got up and paced around until it was all sadly destroyed in a single second by a simple bloop single with just four outs standing between Minor and fame.  

Bloop. 

Fame goes poop. 

Billy Hamilton, expressionless destroyer of dreams, I have no words for you.  Elderly Reds usher using his voice box to comfort me: Thank you. 

I kind of think I know what a no-hitter might feel like in person, just from being that close to one. Like quickly glancing at the Grand Canyon but being refused a second look. 

I definitely know what the heartbreak of getting that close to a real no-hitter feels like in person.  It feels like eating 8 consecutive bowls of slightly undercooked Skyline Chili. And yet, my friends, it was the very heartbreak itself  that still made for a hell of an evening- including a bonus lesson on profound loss.  Even though my team won.  See what the baseball does?

A Good Night for Baseball is Most Nights

04 Sunday May 2014

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Pence prepares to be heckled but a drunk kid with a sunburn.

Pence prepares to be heckled by a drunk kid with a sunburn.

Sometimes you just have to.  You just have to drive 4 hours and go see a couple of games starring your supremo teamo, in my case the San Francisco Giants. The natural choice is Turner Field as a weekend trip to Atlanta is about $2,000 cheaper than a weekend jaunt the bay.  Turner Field is a great place to see a game.  Lots of room, it’s rarely cold in the early part of the season, and they don’t even sell it out when they are in a pennant race.  As opposed, to say the Giants, who have sold out every home game since three years before the franchise was created.

I shelled out for a good ticket for the first game of two I will be seeing.  Getting a single ticket can get you pretty close pretty late in the day.  But, as it turns out, you have zero input on who sits
next to you.  It’s a lottery and it doesn’t benefit higher education.

I shuffled down to my seat and waited to see who would show up.  Before the game started they brought out about 20 former players from the Negro League for us to honor.  Oh, that’s cool, one might think. All of us Ken Burns Doc watchers know the story and therefore it’s really fascinating to see some of the teams and players of yore.  And then it hits you.  CRAP, that was NOT that long ago the game we all love and treasure was freaking segregated.  These guys are still out there and they don’t look *that* old.

The got a standing ovation from my section, so we were off to a good start.

Once the game began, it started.  The non-stop, somewhat crude heckling of the Giants by the Braves fans. One guy in particular, let’s call him ‘red head sunburned college kid’- led the charge:

“PENCE, YOU SUCK!”

“PAGAN, SIT DOWN.”

“PABLO, THAT’S A DOUBLE A SWING YOU GOT THERE.”

Ok, that last one was funny and perhaps accurate.

It got louder.  The kids down the row from him joined in.  They were all stone drunk by the third inning, except for the kids, whom I suspect may have been at least trying to figure out a way to get there.

Sometimes this type of thing just crushes my zen.  Why can’t they just let the game be about…oh…not themselves for a few minutes? Seconds? Please?

I was waiting for that magic moment when the drunks have too much to even heckle, and the kids get hoarse and bored.  It came about the 7th inning.  A few homers from the Giants also helped settle the mood.  All the while, I was getting along fabulously with my row-mates, who were funny and much more selective hecklers.  They made each pitch count.

It felt like perfection.  The balance had arrived and the Giants had never been behind so I didn’t have that stress in the mix.  Just watch ’em win and high five the other Giants fans (who treat each other like their favorite lost cousins) on the way to the beer stand.

The Braves didn’t rally.  They sure tried.  But LOUD RED HEAD SUNBURNED COLLEGE DUDE behind me did. He rallied in the bottom of the ninth, basically just screaming “ROMO!” like it was Kirk yelling the name of Khan.  Also, more concerning, he turned on his own team, in particular Dan Uggla.

“I BELIEVE IN YOU DAN. I BELIEVE IN YOU!”

Pause.

“Not really.”

I laughed out loud at that one, why hold back?

Anyway, Romo finished off my favorite second team and the place got very quiet and humble.  The drunk kid, to my astonishment- looked directly at me and said in the most dignified and sincere way possible: Congratulations on your team’s win tonight.

He, after all, had both class and manners- all hidden from sight behind the Bud-Lite bravado. But they were there, just waiting for him to inhale for a second. He loved the game every bit as much as the studious guy behind him with the program glued to his face.

We all had a great time. In our own way.

Sometimes it all meshes. Some nights are perfect for baseball.  Most nights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Brian McCann in pinstripes

17 Monday Mar 2014

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This time… it’s personal.

McCann was my dad’s favorite player.  When we used to watch the Braves in his later years, he would he sit up a bit more straight, focus in tighter, when McCann was at the plate.  I really wish he would have lived long enough to see McCann take on Carlos Gomez, and win, in the infamous third baseline stare down.  And if I am being greedy, I wish he were here right now to go to breakfast with me and represent the best of humanity at the buffet as I represented the guy sitting next to such a person.

There’s really nothing positive about him being gone, but at least he didn’t have to see McCann in Yankee pinstripe.  He wouldn’t have heckled, he wouldn’t have belittled him, but I know he would have trouble with it.  I have trouble with it. If he had to leave at all I was hoping he would go the American League, but not THAT part of the American League.

Yesterday was my first opportunity to see him play, albeit in a spring training game vs. the Braves, his old flame. The first time he came to the plate, I just stared with no single emotion taking over from the countless others.  While I was processing that, a Braves fan yelled “TRAITOR” a particularly quiet moment. A mixture of uneasy laughs and easy laughs followed.

But…he looked…so… earnest.  Like he always has.  It was still the same guy my dad loved watching catch and hit baseballs. More importantly, he seemed pretty friendly with his old teammates, who, unlike the betrayed heckler, seemed pleased to see him, whatever his fashion choices.

The second time at bat, the heckler used the same “TRAITOR” joke- this time with less appreciation from the Braves fans. It’s like when the nerd gets teased in junior high- you go along with it by laughter, just to avoid getting the same abuse yourself.  But after awhile, you take up for the nerd or at least stop piling on.

Not that McCann is nerd.  In fact, he can be a hothead ready to defend the honor for a slighted pitcher. If I can only stick one label on him, it’s not hothead.  It’s ball player. The guy is a great ball player.  And, BAM, there goes a wobbly drive to right field that results in a double.  Not pretty, but it’s true in it’s direction.

When I was leaving the game I walked out the backside of Steinbrenner Field and saw a guy running laps around practice park.  It was McCann.  I stopped, admired, and forgave- and even forgave the folks who let him get away.

On the long, hot walk back to the hotel I also silently forgave one Mark Teixeira, who was my mom’s favorite.  She never saw him switch to the dark side, either. Like dad, she was also painfully absent at breakfast.