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Baseball Blues: Day One We arrived in Columbus on Thursday evening in time for a pre-game beer at a low rent, loser's karoake
sports bar a few blocks from Cooper Stadium. Gardog wasted no time embarrassing Lonesome Bob by holding his beer glass up to the light checking for greasy lip residue. Lonesome warned him not to embarrass him by
doing this in West Virginia. Gardog drank straight from the bottle. Although the stadium is located in a fairly down and out section of Columbus, it is itself a fairly attractive structure. The view over the
center and right field fences included a memorial and a cemetery-- both very green-- and the Columbus skyline was visible in the near distance.
The Charlotte Knights, AAA farm team for the Florida Marlins,
were in town. There was already a man on first with no outs when we entered the stadium to the sweet sounds of Aretha Franklin singing "Respect"-- a good musical beginning we thought. The playlist for
the evening included the Beatles and even more.
As we began to watch our first game of the trip we established some rules. First, since we had no other particular allegiances, we decided that we would always
root for the home team. Second, we take a scout's perspective and be on the lookout for the comers. In the first game we identified a Homer Bush, a light hitting but agile second baseman as the player with the
most potential. Homer was an outstanding defensive player. The highlight of his play this particular evening had to have been the critical double play he started with bases loaded in the 7th inning. Homer stole a
hit from the batter by fielding a hard hit ball that was headed in the gap between himself and second base. Falling off balance, he flipped the ball backhand to the short stop who finished the play with a throw to
first. Homer also bunted successfully late in the game. And besides, who wouldn't like a bunter named Homer?
After a rocky start (the Knights scored all three of their runs in the first inning) Columbus'
starting pitcher, Gardiner, settled down and struck out 11 batters in only 7 innings. We became impressed by Stump Merrill's shuffling of his pitching staff as he guided his team to a 12th inning victory.
After the game we drove through downtown toward the campus of Ohio State University. Looking for a bar with live music, we found our way to a place with a loud derivative punk band. We got out of paying the cover
charge by telling the doorman that we were only there to drink beer and not to listen to the music-- which was mostly true. We talked about how difficult it must be to posture as a rebellious punk band when punk
music in the 90's is really nostalgia music for those who grew up in the late 70's. We played a couple games of pool and then headed back for the car. Along the way we encountered a strip joint where a sample of
the merchandise was displayed in the window in the form of a flabby, aging, tattooed woman. Gardog asked her, through the window, about her tattoo-- was it a dragon?-- and she mouthed something that looked like
"your mother." |
