1,001 Words

Sunday, July 23 - RFK Stadium, Washington DC (various times) - This is what baseball fandom looks like when you’re looking down on it.  This was "Paint the Town Red" weekend with the Nationals - the quote-unquote Grand Re-Opening of RFK Stadium.  Granted, it came about 15 months after the team officially began calling RFK home.  And it came on a weekend that the Nationals knew they would draw plenty of Cubs fans.  However, brilliant marketing because that way everyone wore red, definitely standing out from the Cubbies Faithful.  And I have to say this marketing ploy worked.  I mean, that’s what it is.  The team won’t get good for years to come.  So why not make people have a little fun at the stadium?  They opened a new food court (beef brisket…tasty), and they had giant President-head races, and they gave out plenty of swag.  It also doesn’t hurt that the home team swept the hapless Cubbies, not that their fans expected anything less.  And, on a personal note, the team’s ploy definitely worked because I went to all three games.  I found it intriguing my three companions for the three games.  Friday night I went with my mom; we talked mostly about family stuff and work and her back and the kinds of things moms and sons talk about.  Saturday afternoon, I went with Martin Louis Levine, Esq.  We have our baseball game standards, and we make the same hilarious jokes every time.  I will admit Mr. Levine, Esq. did take his funny pills that day, as he was in rare form.  He also threatened to knife the guy sitting next to him.  Sunday was an afternoon with dad, where he kept buying me beer to the point I had to remind him I was going to work in a few hours.  I hope I didn’t break some kind of man law.

I like this picture of a couple (or mother and son or some other time of relation - maybe she’s filthy rich and he’s trying to work his way into her will, a la Lex Luthor or Anna Nicole Smith) walking to the game.  The old lady was so cute.  I saw her in the Metro station, and quickly fumbled to get new batteries into my camera to take their picture as stealthily as I could.  Which isn’t at all.  It shows why baseball is all that’s good and right with the world.  This would not happen at a Redskins-Chiefs game.  Nor would it happen at a Capitals-Red Wings game.  But it’s cute.  Especially the old lady.

Here’s just a bonus picture of a girl who’s heart is in the right place, but her spelling is not.  I also am not a fan of giving out "rally towels," shy of Steelers and Twins games.  They stop people from clapping.  That reduces the noise level.  And when people are wearing red, then waving red towels in a stadium whose main colors are burgundy and orange, well it just doesn’t work.  However, I still like free stuff.  As a former roommate once said endlessly: If it’s free, it’s me.

Title from "Red Rain" by Peter Gabriel

Wednesday, July 5, about 3:30pm, the A Terminal at Pittsburgh International Airport, Pennsylvania.

Okay, the photo in this one is not so good, and if I didn’t have a piece of crap photo program, I would have enhanced it and lightened it up and all that jazz.  But since I’m stuck with the crap Dell put on here when I bought the computer, that’s the photo you get.  But I think you’ll get the gist.

I was flying from Indianapolis to Baltimore after helping my friend Jon move from Boston to the University of Illinois, and I was going through Pittsburgh.  How’s that for a flight path through a bunch of C-list cities?  On the flight from Indy to Pittsburgh, I sat across the aisle from this man in the straw hat, overalls, beer gut, and electric smile.  I would guess he was in his 60s.  Speaking with the man next to him, I found out he was from about 100 miles northwest of Indianapolis.  He was on his way to Newark (F-list city, as in a place I f’ing hate because I had crutches stolen from me there once) to pick up his daughter and her husband, and help move them to Indiana.  The Man In The Straw Hat had a booming and pleasant voice, making all of us crammed onto the bus-with-jet-engines smile.  He talked about his farm (rented out to some soybean farmers), his wife, his daughter, her husband, his life in the Army, etc.  It was actually quite amusing.  He said he hoped his daughter would take him into Manhattan, because all he wanted was a hot dog and pretzel from a street vendor.

And that brought a thought of horror to my mind.  This man, who apparently had little to no luggage with him, would be going into New Jersey and possibly New York City in his fresh-from-the-farm fashion.  Now, I think that’s cool.  Good for him.  Enjoy your trip.  My horror was how people in New Jersey and New York would look at him.  He caught odd glances in Indianapolis.  What would people do in Gotham?  They would no doubt point, laugh, snicker, and be rude.  All because this earnest man from the heartland of America dared to not fit in.  And I’m not saying I’m innocent, because I know he’d surely get a crooked glance from me. 

The whole trip to Central Illinois brought back all the stereotypes I had when I moved to the Midwest four years ago.  Everyone would be backwards rubes wearing overalls, cow tipping, gigging frogs, sleeping with their cousins, amazed at any building taller than their silos and not locking their doors at night.  Of course, most of this is untrue, as I found out while living in St. Louis.  The thing that got me was the strength, vehemence, and sweeping generalities placed on us Northeast Coast kids.  For all the beliefs we have about the people living in Flyover Country, they have just as many beliefs about those of us living in the Boston-NYC-Philly-DC Megalopolis.   They know we think we’re important, and they really don’t give a shit.  Just because it happens on the Hudson, doesn’t make it more important than what happens on the Wabash.  And while I first thought this was all jealousy of the importance of the coasts, I realize they’re right on most counts.  The self-important East Coast is just that.  And maybe all the important people live along I-95, most of the good people live along US 45 and I-35. 

I hope some day, a loud Yankees-cap doffing New Yorker stops in Man-In-The-Straw-Hat’s town in Nowheresville, Indiana.  And I hope that loud Yankees-cap doffing New Yorker acts just as his or her stereotype says.  And I hope that New Yorker gets odd stares and a few points, and remembers what he did to Straw Hat Man.  But… I doubt it.

And since you paid attention to my non-sensical aimless rant, you get a bonus picture.  It inspired me to eat cookies.  July 4, 2006, about 11:30am, Green Street in Campustown, Champaign, IL.

Title is the name of a song by Barenaked Ladies.