Take Me Out To The Ballgame

This edition of The State of the Union originally appeared on July 26, 2002.

There comes a time in every man’s life when he says to himself, “I want -- no, I need -- to eat nine different hot dogs in nine different Major League ballparks on nine consecutive days.”

That time came for me a few months back, when my friend Brett and I decided to take a baseball road trip.

Like many before us, we had tossed around the idea of such a trip on more than one occasion.  It seemed like the consummate all-American thing to do -- get behind the wheel, hit the open road, and experience the national pastime at ballparks across the land for days on end.  It would be a small slice of heaven, only with more pork products.

Until this spring, though, we were no closer to realizing that slice of heaven than idle chatter.  But inspired by the February 28th USA Today sports section, which listed every game that would be played in Major League Baseball’s 2002 regular-season campaign, we decided to look at the schedules, look at our calendars and look at a map, and see what we could see.

What we saw, with the visual aid of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, was a stretch of nine days in July in which we could catch nine games in eight cities -- Detroit, Toronto, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.  The way those games lined up just so on that spreadsheet was a clarion call.  The stars and stadiums were aligning.  We had to take this trip.

Though we would ultimately replace Cleveland with Montreal (more on that later), our plans were set.  The countdown was on.

This column, and those that will follow the next two weeks, are an account of that trip.

Our journey began, like so many others before it, in Detroit...

GAME 1:  Saturday, July 13, 2002, Detroit, Michigan

Chicago White Sox vs. Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park

We flew into Detroit to start our journey, and after picking up our rental car, a gold Chevy Blazer that we failed to name (but probably should have), we ventured into downtown Detroit to explore.  After a half-hour spent wandering aimlessly through the bowels of the General Motors Global Headquarters, we hopped back in the Blazer to head to the ballpark.  But we were ahead of schedule, and on the way saw a sign for old Tiger Stadium, so we decided to stop by and check it out.

One of baseball’s legendary ballparks, Tiger Stadium must have been a great place to see a ballgame in its day, but today, seen from the outside, it has all the charm and warmth of an abandoned warehouse.  However hopping the corner of Michigan and Trumbull may once have been, now it’s just a poor neighborhood with an old ballpark on the corner.  But there was a guy across the street selling peanuts at two bags for a buck, so that was nice.  He looked a little, well, unbathed, but the price was right, so we bought two bags, piled back in the car, and headed off to Comerica Park, the new, retro-style home of the Tigers.

Before the trip began, we established a rule that at each stadium, we would buy the cheapest tickets that would get us into the game.  But moments after parking, we were approached with a fantastic offer -- two tickets, front row, left field, face value $14 each, for $15 total.  When we decided maybe it was more of a guideline than a rule, we had our first tickets of the trip.

We knew we’d snagged a good deal, but we didn’t know how good until we arrived at our seats.  They were, as advertised, in the front row in left field, which put us practically in the field of play.  When the players took their positions, Tigers leftfielder Bobby Higginson was no more than 20 yards away.  In fact, we were so close to the field that we could have leaned over the padded left-field wall and dropped a loogie right onto the warning track below us.  We didn’t, of course, but we could have, and that’s what mattered.  The trip was off to a great start.

Going along with our cheapest-tickets rule/guideline, we expected to get a lot of general admission tickets for seats we’d never sit in and wander instead around each stadium, camping out in a different section every inning or two, sampling different views, and interacting with different groups of fans throughout each park.  This night, that idea fell by the wayside as well.  These seats were so fantastic, we had to stay put.  When the mostly-drunk bachelor party sat down two rows behind us, we knew things would only get more entertaining.

Now, some might say it was his .280 batting average that brought scorn upon Bobby Higginson that night as he manned his leftfield post.  Others might place the blame on his meager power numbers for the season -- a paltry five home runs in 57 games -- particularly in light of his $5.85 million salary.  Still others might suggest that when your team is 33-55, you don’t need an excuse to boo your leftfielder.  The fans in our section certainly didn’t.

The heckling began as soon as the Tigers took the field.  After a few pre-game warm-up tosses, Higginson, in a genuine gesture that very well should have warded off such heckling, tossed the warm-up ball into the stands.  A fan caught the ball and in turn gave it to his young son -- who promptly threw it back onto the field.  Sometimes when you’re the last-place team in the worst division in baseball, you can even screw up giving a kid a souvenir.

But Higginson -- or Higgy, as most of the jeers went -- did get the fans cheering for him in the third inning when he hit a two-run home run to put the Tigers up 2-0.  By the fifth, though, they were heckling him again for not hustling after a ball.

Like many fans of losing teams, these fans didn’t appreciate the efforts of their current Tigers as much as those players from the team’s glory years.  Throughout the game, the leftfield fans called out for old Tigers, like Lou Whitaker, Larry Herndon, Alan Trammell and Chet Lemon.  Of course, when those guys played, Tiger fans probably complained about the fact that none of them were Al Kaline.

Another rule we had for the trip was that we would each sample a hot dog in each stadium -- for the scientific and journalistic purpose of rating them, of course.  The original plan involved one dog per stadium, with one of us eating the majority and the other getting a bite to weigh in on the taste test.  We soon realized the foolishness of such a line of thinking.  Who can go to a baseball game and not eat a hot dog of some sort?  Not I, friends, not I -- especially with my traveling companion enjoying one.  So that rule changed, too.  We decided that at each park, one of us would get a regular dog, and the other would get a specialty dog, each getting a bite of the other, again for scientific and journalistic purposes.  At Comerica, this meant a standard hot dog for Brett, and a kielbasa for me, both of which earned ratings of 7.

This new rule aligned well with the fact that July was (and for a few more days still is) National Hot Dog Month.  Seriously.  We learned this fact later in the evening from a sign in front of a hot dog restaurant called National Coney Island (home of Michigan’s Finest Hot Dog, on the web at www.nationalconeyisland.com -- and the catchy intro music alone makes the site worth a visit), and I confirmed the veracity of this declaration upon my return home thanks to the website of the National Hot Dog And Sausage Council, a site stuffed full of statistics and other valuable research for the hot-dog and sausage enthusiast.

I love it when a plan comes together.

But back to the game.  The eighth inning saw the evening’s first wave attempt, but the wave died before it making it all the way around the stadium.  Subsequent wave efforts suffered similar fates.  In the ninth inning, we heard a nice cheer in our section, led by two young girls.  It went like this:  “Everybody sucks but us, hey!  Everybody sucks but us!”

You may want to try that one at your own stadium.

In the end, the Tigers emerged victorious, 3-1.  After the last pitch, the crowd began to disperse, and we got ready to join them.

But before leaving for the night, I leaned over the wall for one last look at the perfectly-raked dirt of the warning track and the impeccably-kept outfield grass.  The dirt was like white sand from a tropical beach, just slightly coarser; the grass, so close we could count individual blades, was impossibly green.  Being that close to the field proved as thrilling in the ninth inning as it had in the first.

Sure, it’s just grass and dirt.  Except that it’s not.  These places, baseball stadiums, are cathedrals, shrines to the game.  So no, it’s not just grass and dirt -- it’s outfield grass and warning-track dirt.  Which is why those seats weren’t just front-row seats at a ballgame.  They were front-row pews in the non-denominational church of baseball.

GAME 2:  Sunday, July 14, 2002, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Boston Red Sox vs. Toronto Blue Jays at SkyDome

Before we could get to SkyDome for the second game of the trip, we first had to get into Canada.  This is not as easy as it sounds.  Though we both presented two forms of photo ID to the customs officer when we crossed over from Michigan, she still wanted us to visit the immigrations office.  Perhaps this is because we hadn’t been to Canada in several years.  Perhaps it’s because Brett’s passport photo didn’t look like his driver’s license photo -- in the former, taken in 1994, his hair flops down over his forehead, and he looks like the early-90s Metallica fan that he was; in the latter, taken two days ago, his hair is buzzed short, and he looks like an escaped convict (which he is not -- yet).  Perhaps it’s that they couldn’t believe anyone would come to Canada just to see the Blue Jays and the Expos.

Whatever it was, into the immigration office we went.  After waiting for the better part of a busload of young church missionaries from Wisconsin to be processed (and I’d love to know what made those people suspicious to Canadian customs), we approached the window, where the immigrations officer asked us questions about where we were going, if we’d be doing any work there, and how much money we had with us.

The officer, seemingly puzzled by the whole baseball concept, asked if we had tickets reserved.  When we said no, she wondered how we might get tickets.  I replied that we’d heard that games in Toronto and Montreal have not quite been selling out.  This was a bit of an understatement -- but more on that later.

As she asked us what we had in the car, I suppressed the growing urge to wave my hand slowly and calmly state, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”  After a few more benign questions, the nice Canadians let us into their country.

Having survived Canadian immigration, we proceeded to Toronto, home of SkyDome and the Toronto Blue Jays.  This time, we abided by our ticket-buying rule and got the cheapest seats available, which were a measly seven Canadian bucks (that’s less than seven U.S. bucks, but don’t ask me by how much -- you’ll have to ask an immigrations officer).

Befitting their price, these seats were way upstairs, and we didn’t stay in them long.  But we sat in them for the singing of the national anthems, during which I was reminded how much cooler-sounding (and easier to sing) “O Canada” is than “The Star Spangled Banner.”  Couldn’t we enlist Randy Newman to come up with a new national anthem?

Anyway, perhaps inspired by the catchiness of their national anthem, these Canadians like to sing, and the anthems were just the beginning.  When the umpires took the field, the sound system pumped out a tune I can only assume is called “The Ump,” which went, mostly, “The ump, the ump, the ump, the ump, the ump, the ump . . .”  It was more tuneful than it sounds.  Then, before “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” was played in the seventh inning stretch, they played another unique song, whose chorus goes, “Okay, Blue Jays, let’s play ball!”

Those kooky Canadians.  Always doing something different.

On the field, however, the Blue Jays have been doing much the same as the Tigers this year -- losing.  They came into the game with a record of 36-53, and would have been languishing in the American League East cellar if they didn’t share that division with the hide-your-eyes awful Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the worst team in baseball.

No doubt such losing was keeping attendance down -- on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, with the masterful Pedro Martinez on the mound for the visiting Red Sox, only 24,140 fans were in the park, less than half of SkyDome’s capacity of 50,516.

And this wasn’t any old Sunday afternoon, either, mind you.  This was Blue Jays Superhero Comic Book Day.  All fans attending the game received a Special Collector’s Edition Blue Jays comic book entitled “Toronto’s Finest,” produced by Ultimate Sports Force.  In the comic book, a team of alien bullies descends to Earth and transmogrifies into monstrous energy creatures, the Interstellar Spoilers.  About the same time, the Chatham All-Stars, a barnstorming African-Canadian team from the 1930s, arrive at the ballfield in their vintage team bus via a disturbance in the space-time continuum.  As a crowd takes shape around the diamond, the All-Stars, along with the Blue Jays Superheroes, take on the Interstellar Spoilers in a game, and after a hard-fought battle, the All-Stars and Blue Jays eventually . . . teach the Spoilers about tolerance.

You wonder why kids’ heads today are filled with crazy ideas?

One the artificial turf at SkyDome, though, there were no space-time portals or Interstellar Spoilers, just Red Sox and Blue Jays, and though the Red Sox tied the game up 5-5 in the top of the ninth inning with a two-run home run from Trot Nixon, Jays rookie Eric Hinske led off the bottom of the ninth with a solo shot, and the Jays were victorious, 6-5.

Wondering about the hot-dog ratings?  I knew you were.  I had a jumbo dog, which was quite tasty, but had a disappointing bun.  Overall rating:  7.  Brett had an Italian sausage, which was spicy but dry.  Overall rating:  5.

SkyDome did earn bonus points for their unusual food selection, which included sushi, garlic fries, and the item that I most wanted to try but couldn’t bring myself to:  Back Bacon on a Bun.

GAME 3:  Monday, July 15, 2002, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Philadelphia Phillies vs. Montreal Expos at Olympic Stadium

(Phillies de Philadelphie vs. Expos de Montreal a Stade Olympique)

When you’re in Toronto, you really don’t feel like you’re in a different country from the United States, unless you pay close attention to what your money looks like or you hear somebody say, “Eh?”  But in Montreal, you know you’re in a different country, because everybody speaks French.

I don’t speak French.

And these days, most of Montreal doesn’t speak baseball.  While attendance is hurting in Toronto, with the Blue Jays averaging just over 19,000 fans per game (25th in the league out of 30 teams, filling just 38.4% of SkyDome’s capacity), the Expos’ attendance makes the Blue Jays look like a hot ticket.  Through Thursday, the Expos are averaging just 9,496 fans per home game, dead last in the league and just 20.4% of Olympic Stadium’s capacity.

There’s no doubt that “fan” “support” has withered this season, a likely repercussion of baseball commissioner Bud Selig’s attempt to contract the team from existence this offseason.  But the Expos got put on the endangered list because they drew even less last year -- their 2001 average home attendance was 7,935.

As a result, there’s a good chance the team won’t be in Montreal next year, either because they’ll move, or they’ll be eliminated from the league, which is why we ended up in Montreal instead of Cleveland.  We knew the Indians would be around next year, but we weren’t so sure about the Expos, so we altered our original itinerary to include Les Expos while they still exist.  As a bonus, it meant I would get to see them play my hometown team, the Phillies.

By Expos standards, the 11,576 in attendance on this Monday night in Montreal could be considered a bustling crowd.  But it’s surprising that the crowds in Montreal these days aren’t at least a little bigger than that, and not just because the Expos were, at the time, in the hunt for a wild-card spot.  Personally, if I lived in Montreal, I’d go to games for the cuisine.

The fare at Olympic Stadium isn’t as fancy as the sushi and garlic fries of SkyDome, but Stade Olympique offered two tasty treats we found nowhere else on this trip -- corn dogs and poutine.  As it was my day for the specialty dog, I got to enjoy the corn dog, or, as they called it, a Pogo.  It rated an 8.  The jumbo dog was very average, rating just a 5.  But Brett and I both sampled the poutine, a Quebec specialty which consists of french fries, gravy and cheese curds.

Trust me, it’s better than it sounds.

Another reason fans should come to Expos games is Youppi!  Unfortunately, I can’t explain to you exactly what Youppi! is.  Well, in some ways I can.  He’s orange.  He’s furry.  He’s not human, but he has humanoid features.  But mostly he’s the Expos mascot.  And wherever he went in Olympic Stadium, children screamed for him like he was a rock star.  (And now we can include pictures in the column; that’s Youppi! at right.)

They screamed for him in French, of course, because everything in Stade Olympique is in French.  When a home run was hit, the scoreboard didn’t flash “Home Run!”, it flashed “Circuit!”  When they handed out the ballots to vote for Major League Baseball’s Memorable Moments, the ballot asked you to “Votez pour les eventements les plus memorables dans l’histoire du baseball majeur.”  I voted for “Bobby Thomson’s ‘Shot Heard ‘round The World’ defeats the Brooklyn Dodgers as the New York Giants win the NL pennant in a one-game playoff,” also known as, “Bobby Thomson et les Giants de New York remportent le championnat de la Ligue nationale contre les Dodgers de Brooklyn en un seul match eliminatoire.”

Like I said, I don’t speak French, but you can tell when some things get lost in the translation.

What didn’t get lost in the translation, though, was shaking your booty.  In a quest to find the “Pom Fan of the Game” (Pom makes bread in Quebec), the song “Shake Your Booty” was played every other inning, and the JumboTron panned the crowd in search of fans who were, well, shaking their booty.  The search had narrowed to three fans by the middle of the sixth inning: two young women, and one very shady-looking guy.  As the song blared, the camera flashed from one to the next.  The guy, shaking his booty vigorously, took off his shirt.  And then he unbuttoned his pants.  Though the camera quickly switched back to one of the young ladies, all 11,576 of us came frighteningly close to witnessing JumboTron nudity.

During a pitching change in the eighth inning, we were treated to the sounds of “Oh, What a Night” -- in French, of course.  Oh, what a night, indeed.  Poutine, Youppi!, JumboTron near-nudity . . . and the greatest comeback I’ve ever witnessed.

Entering the top of the ninth, the Phillies were down 8-3.  Catcher Mike Lieberthal led off by grounding out to third base.  I figured my beloved Phillies were two outs from yet another loss.

And then an amazing thing happened.  Travis Lee hit a single.  Then Tomas Perez hit a double.  Then Ricky Ledee homered.  In fact, before the Expos could record the second out of the inning, Pat Burrell and Scott Rolen would both homer, and the Phillies would post eight runs on the board.

Rallies are very different when you’re cheering for the visiting team.  Instead of excitement and momentum building, things just got quieter and quieter with every successive hit.  The crowd, which had already thinned from the fans who left early, thinking an Expos win was a foregone conclusion, got smaller and smaller.

And there I was, screaming like an idiot.

That’s something fun about going to a baseball game in any country -- it’s one public place where it’s perfectly acceptable to yell.

Finally, the Expos retired the Phils in the ninth, but they went down one-two-three in their half of the inning, and the Phillies came away with the win, 11-8.

With the trip a third of the way done, Brett and I assessed what we had seen thus far.  We concluded that Youppi!, whatever he was, was the best mascot of the bunch.  We determined that three days in, we were anything but tired of hot dogs and sausages.  And we identified a common denominator, something found in all three stadiums:  advertisements for the movie Eight Legged Freaks, due to open July 19.

Of course, in Montreal, the ads read, “Terreur Sur Huit Pattes” -- “Terror on Eight Feet.”

Some things definitely get lost in the translation.

NEXT WEEK:  New York (Queens), New York (The Bronx) and Philadelphia.

As it turns out, we were right -- the Expos did end up leaving Montreal, to move to Washington, D.C., to become the Washington Nationals.  But Youppi! stayed behind in Montreal, and became the mascot of the Montreal Canadiens, making him/it the first mascot in professional sports to switch leagues.