Something old, something new
Sep. 6th, 2004 07:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogJust sitting here trying to chill as the dogs do their morning re-enactment of Crips vs. Bloods. Feeders of pets get no Days off from their Labors, yknow.
I continued a tradition last night. Emily and I have made it to the final Buffalo Bisons night game of the season, which usually falls on the Saturday or Sunday night of Labor Day weekend, virtually every year since 1998 (it was a shoulda-been-rained-out suck night last year). Through the design or accident of the scheduler, every one of those games was against our former home town team, the Rochester Red Wings. This year, the final Bison night game fell on the other end of the Thruway, so we made the trip to Frontier Field in Rachacha.
It occurred to me we'd sorta done this before: I won last-minute tickets to the last regular season game played at the Wings' crumbly old Norton Street ballyard, 8 years ago, and even wrote about it (and, amazingly, saved the file). Thought it would be fun to compare those memories, the new ones being recorded before I retrieve the file containing the old ones:
Though I've lived away from Rochester for a decade, I've always kept my fondness for Rochester baseball and its home. There's more baseball tradition there, no major league teams in other sports to divert attention, and you're far more likely to sit next to someone (as we did last night) who's scoring the game than you will at Dunn Tire Park. That's the stupid current name of the otherwise equally nice downtown stadium in B-lo.
Both teams have endless tacky promotions between innings, and after a while you have to laugh at them. I put my brother-in-law in the aisle laughing when they came out onto the field with a big tub of some sort. Knowing he works for one of Rochester's big ugly hospital conglomerates, I announced that we were about to witness Via Health's nightly "Guess What's In the Bedpan" competition. Picture half the stadium cheering for 1's and the other half for 2's. Okay, so you had to be there.
Emily mooches for snacks less. She also goes and gets them herself now. She's not the little girl you're about to meet from the right field bullpen, but I'm glad we've kept this as a bond.
The Wings were no-hit for over 4 innings, then exploded for 11 runs over the next 3. They're now guaranteed to finish over .500 for the first time since their first season in this ballyard. The nice thing, for us, about Bison-Red Wing games is we always leave happy.
Then the fireworks. Buffalo's are shot off from someplace behind the ballpark on the other side of the 190, so they start instantly and are big, impressive and predictable after 7 years. Frontier Field is tucked in more tightly to its downtown nest, so they get launched from the infield and a few from behind the right field picnic pavilion. They seemed a little ho-hum for awhile, then they got cranking. Better choreographed with the music than Buffalo's (including one simulating Robert Redford's final Natural home run shot and set perfectly to the music from the film at that very second). Best of all, I could still smell the gunpowder on my clothes an hour after we left. Now them's fireworks.
Since the game started earlier, we wound up home at about the same time as usual. Now a relaxing day before school, and the other usuals of life, kick back in tomorrow. Go teams.
And then there's Then- August 30, 1996, if you're keeping score
I hadn’t planned on writing any sentimental farewells to 500 Norton Street. Hell, until barely 24 hours before game time I wasn’t even planning on going to the game. With the vagaries of pennant races, work schedules and weather all being what they are, the game was a sellout long before I had a chance to commit to going. But a last-minute bit of luck at trivia (thank you, Bob Matthews) put a pair of tickets in my hand for the final regular game at Silver Stadium. The tickets were by far the worst I’ve ever come upon- by purchase, win or gift- for an event of any kind. Yet, oddly enough, the worst seats in the house made for the best time I’ve ever had at a ballgame in 30 years.
In a way, we got to sit at Frontier Field for the last game at Silver. The Wings, seeking to accommodate the most people by exploiting every square inch of real estate, trucked several sets of portable bleachers from the new ballpark to the old. Ours got set up in the right field corner, behind a very crochety old chain-link fence and less than five yards from the right field foul line. The denizens of the Red Wings bullpen were as much a part of our group as anyone; the bullpen catchers, who caught for a half dozen relievers throughout the night, were closer to us than the hot dog vendors. Home plate was a good 315 feet away (there was even a sign to tell us that), but so much of the love of baseball was within inches. We heard the pop of the 90-mile-per-hour fastballs as the hitters and catchers do; we saw the grins and grimaces of the bullpen crew as both pitching staffs fed their pet gophers throughout the night; and we wondered how the jacketed team members would react when the kids called out, “Hey baseball player!” in their never-ending search for the autograph of the next generation’s Cal Ripken.
A quick cameraderie developed among us out in the cheap seats. Ballparks are awfully cliquey places for the most part- even in a section of fans who obviously bleed the same Red Wing Red, my family and I have rarely come away knowing a face around us or a thing about them. Something was different about this night, though- whether it was the special occasion or the close quarters, I don't know. Everyone quickly developed respect for each others’ seats, even though our tickets accorded us nothing more than squatters’ rights on our little slabs of aluminum. We laughed together (no disrespect intended) when the three-second delay between the organist and crowd on the National Anthem turned the song into a musical version of The Wave. We fumbled through “YMCA” and the Macarena and marveled at how the kids seemed to pick these things up as if by osmosis. And by the end of the night, we were looking out for each others’ kids as if they were all our own.
I have that chain-link fence to thank for that, to some degree. Early on, I became jointly responsible with the adjoining seven-year-old boy for keeping the fence (which was actually an overgrown unlocked gate) from sailing into the right-field bullpen, as it wanted to do every time somebody bumped it or leaned on it or a reliever came back through it from getting coffee. By the fifth inning, my helper (now known to us as Andy) was making eyes at my four-year-old daughter, and the two of them were fast friends by the seventh-inning stretch. Minutes before that, my daughter lost her footing on the bleacher behind us and wound up in the first-aid office for about half an inning. The Monroe Ambulance guys were top-notch, fixing up her bruise but more importantly her feelings- giving her a team picture and an ice pack made out of a surgical glove that would do Howie Mandel proud. She was the queen of the right field seats when she came back- tossing around her now-melted five-finger water balloon with Andy, showing off her new Wings hat as if it were covered with the Crown Jewels, and making quite clear that we were staying for the fireworks no matter how late Daddy thought it was getting.
The last-inning rally fell three runs short, and the Wings closed Silver the way their grandfathers’ peers had opened it in 1929- with a loss. Still, the night was young, and we still had time to turn into scofflaws. First, the fencegate (now THERE’s a scandalous term) gave up the ghost as kid after kid headed after some invisible Pied Piper toward center field. Boys AND girls following after their mothers AND fathers to claim, if only for a moment, their 15 seconds of fame on a field shared by Stan the Man and Luke Easter. By the time Emily talked me into crossing the foul line ourselves, the grownups had arrived to chase us off. We then snuck into the main part of the stadium for the closing ceremonies and fireworks. Most of the special effects seemed professional but not overstated- a metaphor, perhaps, for why triple-A baseball is truly the sport at its best. The true closing moment was the solo trumpet rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”- played slowly and sentimentally, but in no way evoking “Taps.” Today’s game is over, and it IS one-two-three strikes you’re out, but another game and another season lie ahead. While I hope to be as far away from those bleachers as Frontier Field will allow, I’d sure like to spend another summer night under the lights downtown with the same group of people and make the magic happen again.
I continued a tradition last night. Emily and I have made it to the final Buffalo Bisons night game of the season, which usually falls on the Saturday or Sunday night of Labor Day weekend, virtually every year since 1998 (it was a shoulda-been-rained-out suck night last year). Through the design or accident of the scheduler, every one of those games was against our former home town team, the Rochester Red Wings. This year, the final Bison night game fell on the other end of the Thruway, so we made the trip to Frontier Field in Rachacha.
It occurred to me we'd sorta done this before: I won last-minute tickets to the last regular season game played at the Wings' crumbly old Norton Street ballyard, 8 years ago, and even wrote about it (and, amazingly, saved the file). Thought it would be fun to compare those memories, the new ones being recorded before I retrieve the file containing the old ones:
Though I've lived away from Rochester for a decade, I've always kept my fondness for Rochester baseball and its home. There's more baseball tradition there, no major league teams in other sports to divert attention, and you're far more likely to sit next to someone (as we did last night) who's scoring the game than you will at Dunn Tire Park. That's the stupid current name of the otherwise equally nice downtown stadium in B-lo.
Both teams have endless tacky promotions between innings, and after a while you have to laugh at them. I put my brother-in-law in the aisle laughing when they came out onto the field with a big tub of some sort. Knowing he works for one of Rochester's big ugly hospital conglomerates, I announced that we were about to witness Via Health's nightly "Guess What's In the Bedpan" competition. Picture half the stadium cheering for 1's and the other half for 2's. Okay, so you had to be there.
Emily mooches for snacks less. She also goes and gets them herself now. She's not the little girl you're about to meet from the right field bullpen, but I'm glad we've kept this as a bond.
The Wings were no-hit for over 4 innings, then exploded for 11 runs over the next 3. They're now guaranteed to finish over .500 for the first time since their first season in this ballyard. The nice thing, for us, about Bison-Red Wing games is we always leave happy.
Then the fireworks. Buffalo's are shot off from someplace behind the ballpark on the other side of the 190, so they start instantly and are big, impressive and predictable after 7 years. Frontier Field is tucked in more tightly to its downtown nest, so they get launched from the infield and a few from behind the right field picnic pavilion. They seemed a little ho-hum for awhile, then they got cranking. Better choreographed with the music than Buffalo's (including one simulating Robert Redford's final Natural home run shot and set perfectly to the music from the film at that very second). Best of all, I could still smell the gunpowder on my clothes an hour after we left. Now them's fireworks.
Since the game started earlier, we wound up home at about the same time as usual. Now a relaxing day before school, and the other usuals of life, kick back in tomorrow. Go teams.
And then there's Then- August 30, 1996, if you're keeping score
I hadn’t planned on writing any sentimental farewells to 500 Norton Street. Hell, until barely 24 hours before game time I wasn’t even planning on going to the game. With the vagaries of pennant races, work schedules and weather all being what they are, the game was a sellout long before I had a chance to commit to going. But a last-minute bit of luck at trivia (thank you, Bob Matthews) put a pair of tickets in my hand for the final regular game at Silver Stadium. The tickets were by far the worst I’ve ever come upon- by purchase, win or gift- for an event of any kind. Yet, oddly enough, the worst seats in the house made for the best time I’ve ever had at a ballgame in 30 years.
In a way, we got to sit at Frontier Field for the last game at Silver. The Wings, seeking to accommodate the most people by exploiting every square inch of real estate, trucked several sets of portable bleachers from the new ballpark to the old. Ours got set up in the right field corner, behind a very crochety old chain-link fence and less than five yards from the right field foul line. The denizens of the Red Wings bullpen were as much a part of our group as anyone; the bullpen catchers, who caught for a half dozen relievers throughout the night, were closer to us than the hot dog vendors. Home plate was a good 315 feet away (there was even a sign to tell us that), but so much of the love of baseball was within inches. We heard the pop of the 90-mile-per-hour fastballs as the hitters and catchers do; we saw the grins and grimaces of the bullpen crew as both pitching staffs fed their pet gophers throughout the night; and we wondered how the jacketed team members would react when the kids called out, “Hey baseball player!” in their never-ending search for the autograph of the next generation’s Cal Ripken.
A quick cameraderie developed among us out in the cheap seats. Ballparks are awfully cliquey places for the most part- even in a section of fans who obviously bleed the same Red Wing Red, my family and I have rarely come away knowing a face around us or a thing about them. Something was different about this night, though- whether it was the special occasion or the close quarters, I don't know. Everyone quickly developed respect for each others’ seats, even though our tickets accorded us nothing more than squatters’ rights on our little slabs of aluminum. We laughed together (no disrespect intended) when the three-second delay between the organist and crowd on the National Anthem turned the song into a musical version of The Wave. We fumbled through “YMCA” and the Macarena and marveled at how the kids seemed to pick these things up as if by osmosis. And by the end of the night, we were looking out for each others’ kids as if they were all our own.
I have that chain-link fence to thank for that, to some degree. Early on, I became jointly responsible with the adjoining seven-year-old boy for keeping the fence (which was actually an overgrown unlocked gate) from sailing into the right-field bullpen, as it wanted to do every time somebody bumped it or leaned on it or a reliever came back through it from getting coffee. By the fifth inning, my helper (now known to us as Andy) was making eyes at my four-year-old daughter, and the two of them were fast friends by the seventh-inning stretch. Minutes before that, my daughter lost her footing on the bleacher behind us and wound up in the first-aid office for about half an inning. The Monroe Ambulance guys were top-notch, fixing up her bruise but more importantly her feelings- giving her a team picture and an ice pack made out of a surgical glove that would do Howie Mandel proud. She was the queen of the right field seats when she came back- tossing around her now-melted five-finger water balloon with Andy, showing off her new Wings hat as if it were covered with the Crown Jewels, and making quite clear that we were staying for the fireworks no matter how late Daddy thought it was getting.
The last-inning rally fell three runs short, and the Wings closed Silver the way their grandfathers’ peers had opened it in 1929- with a loss. Still, the night was young, and we still had time to turn into scofflaws. First, the fencegate (now THERE’s a scandalous term) gave up the ghost as kid after kid headed after some invisible Pied Piper toward center field. Boys AND girls following after their mothers AND fathers to claim, if only for a moment, their 15 seconds of fame on a field shared by Stan the Man and Luke Easter. By the time Emily talked me into crossing the foul line ourselves, the grownups had arrived to chase us off. We then snuck into the main part of the stadium for the closing ceremonies and fireworks. Most of the special effects seemed professional but not overstated- a metaphor, perhaps, for why triple-A baseball is truly the sport at its best. The true closing moment was the solo trumpet rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”- played slowly and sentimentally, but in no way evoking “Taps.” Today’s game is over, and it IS one-two-three strikes you’re out, but another game and another season lie ahead. While I hope to be as far away from those bleachers as Frontier Field will allow, I’d sure like to spend another summer night under the lights downtown with the same group of people and make the magic happen again.
