Sunday, September 11, 2011

A full decade

At the time it started, I was in a meeting room at the Hunt Valley Marriott in Maryland.  The conference, full of researchers from all over the country and Medicare staffers from the agency’s nearby headquarters, was scheduled to run through Friday morning.  I believe it was one of the Medicare database admins, a good ole boy named Gary, who informed us that the WTC had been hit.  Don’t recall whether this was after the first or second plane, nor do I remember whether he told us about the Pentagon, some 60 miles from the hotel.

While the conference ostensibly continued, most of us spent the next several days like everyone else ... watching TV as the events unfolded.  Between plenary sessions, it was even shown on the big screens in the hotel ballroom.  We heard facts and rumors, speculations and opinions.

Supposedly, the Baltimore region was close to lockdown on Tuesday, but a bunch of us did find a restaurant over on York Road, the main drag of the area.  Still, a lot of places were shut down that night.  None of us tried to take the nearby light rail to the Inner Harbor or any other in-town destinations.

Many wanted to forget about the conference and hightail it back to their hometowns, but of course the airports were closed.  Rental car companies changed their policies, allowing renters to drive their vehicles home instead of back to BWI.  Though I never got confirmation, I’m told that the group from Oregon took them up on that offer and drove the 2800 miles back to Portland.  I don’t think any of the Washingtonians drove home, but neither do I remember how any of my coworkers got back to Seattle.

As for me, I’d previously made plans to extend my visit through the weekend.  This was, after all, only six months after I’d moved from working with the Medicare quality improvement contractor for NH/VT/ME to the one for (at that time) WA/ID/AK, so my East Coast ties were still very fresh.  My intention had been that after finishing the conference on Friday, I would take light rail to the Baltimore train station, Amtrak to Philadelphia, and SEPTA regional rail to Doylestown.  From there, my brother would pick me up so that I could visit his family at their place 20 miles farther north, near Lake Nockamixon.  I was scheduled to fly out of tiny Lehigh Valley International Airport ("international" equals puddlejumper trips to Toronto) on Sunday afternoon.

Now, however, Amtrak would be full beyond capacity.  Every seat between Baltimore and Philadelphia was long-since reserved, with dozens and dozens of other hopefuls already turned away (if they got through the overloaded switchboards at all).  So how was I going to get to where I needed to go?

Thankfully, one of my former NE/VT/ME colleagues had chosen to take up his rental car company’s offer to allow long-distance rentals.  He was going to drive back up to New Hampshire when the conference ended, and was happy to offer me assistance.  And it was a lot of assistance ... not just to 30^th Street Station in Philadelphia, not just to the SEPTA station in Doylestown, but right to my brother’s door.  Couldn’t ask for better help than that!

By the time I was ready to head back to Seattle on Sunday, the airlines were running something approximating a normal schedule.  The backup of unflown Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday trips had been handled.  I wasn’t worried about the short hop from ABE to PIT (the principal USAirways hub back then), but the PIT-SEA nonstop hadn’t restarted until Friday or Saturday.

Even at little ABE, concrete barriers already barred parking near the terminal.  Which was a bit awkward at ABE, as virtually all of its parking lots were close-in.  My brother went into the terminal with me, if only to observe the reconfigured security procedures.  It was nothing particularly onerous, actually less stringent than today’s.  No shoe-removal, no 3-ounce rule. 

Once through security, I sat quietly awaiting boarding.  The gate wasn’t even close to filled with travelers.  How unfilled?  Well, in those days, I had lots of USAirways miles, some of which I’d used to upgrade to first class for this cross-country flight.  So I was ready to go at the first boarding call.  But before I could show my ticket to the gate agent, the “all remaining rows” announcement was made!  The plane (a 737, I think) was only about 1/10 full.

It was just about the same on the long trip home from Pittsburgh.  Any passenger who wanted a private row could get one.  I had a bit of company in first class, but not much.  I think they may have already established the rule against metal utensils, but at least they still fed passengers in those days.

Being that close to the nexus of the attacks was disconcerting.  In the end, though, my own travels were only slightly affected.  What I most remember about that fateful week is the utter shock, the utter feeling of this can’t be happening.  I had read Debt of Honor (Tom Clancy is a bit of a guilty pleasure), but this was even more preposterous than a real pilot crashing his plane into the Capitol.  Especially with the twin towers collapsing in on themselves an hour or two after being struck.  Especially with four hijackings at the same time.  Especially with the Bush Cheney administration’s criminal unpreparedness, treasonous shift of war target, corrupt thievery, insults to freedom and liberty, ruination of the nation’s and world’s financial activities, bombastic false patriotism. 

Of course, that last laundry list was still in the ruinous future on September 11.  In the initial jolting shock of that fundamentalist sociopath Osama bin Laden’s outrageous attacks, we didn’t know anything about the rathole they were plotting to shove us into. 

We were, in a sense, brought together as a nation, as a society, by what transpired on September 11.  The “they” I just mentioned—the ones who have ripped us apart, destroyed our national and international fabric, brought us to the depressing uncertainty of the present day—were our own domestic sociopathic (mal)administration in Washington DC.

Even bin Laden, and even Clancy, couldn’t have written that scenario.

Thursday, September 01, 2011

My NL East ballparks: New York

A product of the National League’s first expansion of the twentieth century, the New York Mets are (can you believe it??) in their 50^th year of existence.  They began in 1962 as the punchline of a very bad joke, featuring antique manager Casey Stengel and a motley crew of retreads, has-beens, never-wases, and never-will-bes tottering to a legendarily-awful 40-120 inaugural season.

They quickly got better, riding a number of extremely good pitchers—Hall of Famer Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Tug McGraw, and others—to a 100-62 record and a shocking five-game World Series upset of powerful Baltimore a mere seven years later.  Oh yeah, future HOFerNolan Ryan was a Miracle Met too, though he contributed little during his tenure in New York.  They won the NL again, but lost the World Series, in 1973.  At 82-79, that club was for many years the weakest Division-winner in history; they were eclipsed by San Diego in 2005 (82-80), though both would undoubtedly have been topped (bottomed?) by the AL West “victor” had the 1994 season been completed ... when the strike cut that season short, the 52-62 Texas Rangers had the least awful record in the American League West.  Ugh!

Anyway, the Mets won another World Series in 1986.  That’s the year of Bill Buckner’s error in Game 6, when the Boston Red Sox somehow failed to gain their fourth Series win after holding a two-run lead with two outs and nobody on base in the ninth inning.  Since then, the Mets have played in only four postseasons, reaching the World Series once (falling to the Yankees in the 2000 Subway Series), and losing three times in the NLCS (1988, 1999, 2006).  Between those occasional high points, in recent decades the Mets have been more a sideshow than a show—ownership controversies, star burnouts, free-agent busts, financial mismanagement, drug scandals, managerial failures.

While awaiting the construction of their new ballpark, the Mets played in the Polo Grounds for their first two years.  Abandoned by the Giants when they left for San Francisco after the 1957 season, the ballpark below Coogan’s Bluff was a cavernous edifice with very short foul lines and very long dimensions everywhere else.  I didn’t see any games in the Polo Grounds, nor will I ever; it was demolished in 1964, the same year that Shea Stadium opened in conjunction with the 1964 World’s Fair (and on pretty much the same Flushing Meadows footprint as the 1939 World’s Fair). Named for the NYC powerbroker who had coerced MLB into expansion, Shea was something of a prototype for the cookie-cutters of the next decade ... circular, symmetrical, and multipurpose.  It had the advantage of not being completely enclosed by stands—as shown in the accompanying photo, few of Shea’s seats were in fair territory (the left field structure was identical, minus the big scoreboard).  That’s why its capacity was “only” about 57,000, versus the 65-70K in most of the cookie-cutters.  Unfortunately, the vista from the stands was of a nondescript Queens landscape rather than the majestic city skylines favored in most of the recent retro parks.  The lower deck stands were moveable, and the NFL’s Jets played there for two decades.  And of course, Shea Stadium was famously the New York venue for both The Beatles in 1965 and Pope John Paul II in 1979.

Although I lived a mere 90 miles away as a kid, and although my grandfather in Manhattan had reluctantly transferred his allegiance from the “Jints” to the Mets, I saw very few ballgames at Shea.  It’s possible that I went there once or twice in the 1970s, but I can’t confirm that.  In fact, my only certain games in Shea Stadium were on consecutive days, June 27 and 28, 1991.  The SABR convention was in New York that summer, and I watched the Mets beat Montreal 4-3 on Thursday afternoon and then lose to the Phillies 6-2 on Friday night.  Nothing particularly memorable in either game, and the stadium may have been even less memorable.  Using the 1991 dates, Shea Stadium was #18 on my ballpark life list. 

Uninspiring as it was when I visited, Shea must have been really rundown by 2008, its final season.  Its reputation among ballpark devotees was quite low by the end.  I haven’t yet been to a game at Citi Field, the home of the Mets since 2009.  It too is located in Flushing Meadows; as in numerous other cities, the new place was built in the parking lots next to the old one, and the site of the demolished stadium eventually became a parking lot for its replacement.  Citi Field on my to-do list, of course, but I have no immediate plans to add the new place to my life list.  Hopefully, by the time I finally get there, some corporation other than the uber-vile Citibank will own the naming rights.

Because I’m running through each Division alphabetically by city name, the next club on my list are the Phillies, my lifelong favorite team (I was following them while the Dodgers and Giants were still in New York).  With all that personal history, it promises to be a long post, replete with boxscores and who knows what else…

Saturday, August 06, 2011

My NL East ballparks: Florida

While the Braves are one of the very oldest franchises in the majors, only two clubs are newer than the Florida Marlins.  The Marlins, along with Colorado, entered the National League in 1993, when it expanded from 12 to 14 teams.  That expansion equalized the sizes of the two leagues; the AL had been larger than the NL for the previous 16 seasons.

In their 18 full seasons, the Marlins have never won the National League East title, coming in second three times.  Two of those runner-up spots earned them the NL wild card, and both of those playoff appearances—1997 (just their fifth season) and 2003—ended with the Fish holding the World Series trophy.  The club’s ownership over the years has been, well, let’s just say that it’s been quite businesslike.  Businesslike, that is, in the sense of executives looting the company and leaving its festering shards to be swept up by the next guy.  First came Wayne Huizenga, builder of (and profiteer from) Waste Management and Blockbuster.  After Florida’s first WS win, he quickly sold off all their quality players, pocketed the cash, and dumped the club on (then) baseball neophyte John W. Henry.  Within a couple of years, Commissioner Selig engineered a trade of owners, letting his despicable pal Jeffrey Loria drop what little was left from his destruction of the Montreal Expos and take over the Marlins.  Henry, of course, got the real prize—he now owns the Red Sox.

During their existence, the Marlins have played their home games in:

• Joe Robbie Stadium (1993-1995)
• Pro Player Stadium (1996-2004)
• Dolphins Stadium (2005)
• Dolphin Stadium (2006-2008)
• Land Shark Stadium (2009)
• Sun Life Stadium (2010-2011)

All six of which are, in fact, the very same place under many different aliases.  It’s undeniably a football stadium, built for the NFL Dolphins by their original owner (he’s the Joe Robbie for which the place is no longer named) and never intended to be used for baseball.  And it shows, in both the clunky conversion and in the tens of thousands of perpetually empty seats at Marlin games. 

To be completely honest, I have no memory of the game I attended there in conjunction with the 2000 SABR convention in West Palm Beach.  The SABR website says it was a 6-1 Florida victory over the Cubbies on June 23, 2000, but that jogs no memories whatsoever.  As for the ballpark, then called Pro Player Stadium, it was located in the North Miami hinterlands, far from the city’s population center (and also far from West Palm and Ft. Lauderdale).  I do recall that I got a ride to the stadium with some pals who had rented a car, and ... well, that’s about all I can say about the experience.  Truly an unmemorable place.  My best guess is that it was 29^th ballyard added to my life list.

Big changes are in the works for this club next year.  They’re currently constructing a baseball-only park, with a Safeco Field-like retractable roof, much closer to downtown Miami.  It will take up a portion of the former site of the Orange Bowl in Miami’s Little Havana.  Moving from a 68,000-seat football stadium to a 37,000-seat ballpark may actually improve the Marlins’ woefully low attendance.  Since the NL went to 16 teams, they’ve never been better than 13^th in attendance, and they’ve been dead-last for the last five seasons.  All those empty seats in the accompanying photo are typical of the way they (don’t) draw.  The roof, they hope, will prevent rainouts without creating an atmosphere as dismal as the indoor atrocity in which the Tampa Bay Rays play.  The jury is still out on whether any summer baseball will go over in the state of Florida.

To complete their break from the past, the team will drop its pretensions to statewide appeal and concurrently honor the city’s minor league past by rebranding itself as the Miami Marlins.  All this probably won’t help much ... the only real clean break for the Marlins would be to somehow rid themselves of their pernicious owner.

Next stop on the tour ... The Big Apple (Queens, to be more precise).

Monday, July 04, 2011

My NL East ballparks: Atlanta

Our trek through the major leagues begins, fittingly, with one of the two franchises that’s been existence since the very first year of the National League in 1876.  The Braves started out in Boston—as the Red Caps, Beaneaters, Doves, and Rustlers—before setting down as the Braves in 1912.  After the 1952 season, the Braves surrendered the city to their more popular neighbors and moved to Milwaukee; it was the first such change in 50 years for the “original 16” franchises, but as we’ll see it was hardly the last.  In fact, after a mere 13 years the club was on the move again, landing in Atlanta in 1966.

The Braves left Boston before my time (well, technically I was two years old, but you get my drift).  However, I’ve sort of set foot in Braves Field, their home between 1915 and their departure from the city.  Boston University’s Nickerson Field, where the school’s soccer, lacrosse, and track teams now compete, occupies the same site.  Also, I’ve been to a major league game in Milwaukee County Stadium, where they played while representing that city ... though it wasn’t for a Braves games.  More on that in a later post in this series.

From 1966 through 1996, the Braves called Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium their home.  Now they’re in Turner Field, occupying what had been the site of the city’s Olympic Stadium and named for former owner Ted Turner.  That’s where I saw them on August 6, 2010.  It was an odd game, won by the Giants, 3-2 in 11 innings.  San Francisco tied it up in the top of the 9th—an unearned run, scored without benefit of a hit, off Billy Wagner—and tallied the winning run two innings later, also without a hit.  Chipper Jones hit his last homer of the season in the game; he went down with a knee injury a few days later and missed the remainder of the 2010 season.  Between a pre-game rainstorm and the ceremony for retiring Tom Glavine’s number, the game didn’t end until about midnight.

The ballpark was nothing special, pretty much a generic retro baseball field.  By now, “retro”—usually meaning a rather small baseball-only park (in the 40,000-seat range) with a brick facade on the outside and “quirkiness” inside—has become the new cookie-cutter.  It’s a damn sight more interesting than the huge artificial-turf, multipurpose stadia of the 1960s and ‘70s, but it’s now the standard model of ballparks all over the country.  Nothing much about the field, the stands, or the scoreboards stood out.  On the other hand, there was an extensive pavilion, inside the gates but outside the field, with all sorts of entertainment.  Yeah, there was silly stuff, but I also came across some pretty serious, tasty, affordable BBQ out there.

Turner Field is number 43 on my ballpark life list.  While I haven’t yet settled on a rank-order for my opinion about the parks, this ballpark will probably come out somewhere in the middle.  Nothing much that stood out, but it was clean, efficient, and pleasant.

On deck in the ballparks series is the second (alphabetically) of the five National League East clubs, the Florida Marlins.  Stay tuned!

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Twin Cities

Greetings from Minneapolis, site of this year’s Netroots Nation.  It’s the sixth of these events, and I’ve been to all but one (2007, Chicago). 

We’ll be welcomed into town by Al Franken and Keith Ellison.  Howard Dean will be here, as will a number of non-Minnesota congresspeople.  Should be an interesting few days.

But first, I’m visiting with my cousin and her family.  That includes her 92-year-old mother, the younger sister of my mother.  And also, if the weather holds, going to Target Field tonight to see the Twins host the White Sox.

This will be MLB ballpark #44 for me.  Which reminds me that I’m actually going to start my way through the discussion on ballyards I talked about a long time ago.  It’ll probably be team-by-team instead of division-by-division, as I got mighty long-winded on the first essay I started.  So stay tuned for part 1 of 30, in which I’ll say a few words about the first team (and 43rd ballpark) on my list, the Boston Milwaukee Atlanta Braves.

After some more stuff about Netroots Nation, I hope.