The Great Baseball Journey, Part One: Chicago to Washington, D.C.

I left Minneapolis with the husband-and-wife team of C & J on Friday, 23 June 2006, and we drove to Chicago to connect with the husband-and-wife team of K & L, and to see the White Sox play the Houstros. I'd been to Chicago before, but long ago, and on that trip we didn't even approach the Public Transportation system, opting instead to be chauffeured around by a native Chicagoan that happened to be traveling with us. Thus, on this trip I was suitably impressed to ride the El; to look down on rooftops and take in the apparently high population density. The game was good; we saw S-Pod hit his first career grand slam to propel the Sox to their eighth-straight victory. Not that we liked to see them win; around the time of our return, our Twins had won an incredible nineteen of their last twenty games, but still remained nine games out in the AL Central, behind Detroit and the Chi-Sox.

One notion that became repeatedly apparent to me during the trip is that every aspect of the game of professional baseball is for sale. I had of course been familiar with billboards and other advertisements that make up the landscape at any major-league ballpark, as well as such disgraces as commercially-sponsored Pitching Changes, but traveling to a field that had recently been renamed for the U.S. Cellular corporation was a bit disgusting, as was arriving to see the Golden Arches in the spot of highest prominence.

We stayed that night at K & L's apartment, and breakfasted at Tre Kronor, a local Swedish cafe, at which J had been employed during part of her former life in Chicago. I had a spinach-and-cheese omelet, which was a bit watery but quite agreeable, and toasted limpa, a sweet Swedish bread. A few jokes were made connecting the limpa to Tolkein's lembas. After breakfast we left for a KOA in Ypsilanti, Michigan. I was perhaps a bit overexcited to be seeing Michigan for the first time, and forced everyone in our rented Grand Caravan [the Cadillac of minivans] to listen to Sufjan Stevens' seminal recording. K brought us to DiBella's for lunch, a sub shop with a location in Ann Arbor. I had a Philly cheesesteak that made me grin like an idiot. At the KOA we set up camp among our, er, lower-income campmates (K made a related joke that the showers probably would be largely unoccupied for us in the morning), and drove into Detroit to see the Tigers beat St. Louis, a game which turned out to be the meat in their sweep-sandwich. We hadn't secured tickets before the game, and were surprised to find only standing-room berths available. It was not a problem, however, because Comerica Park turned out to be something of an amusement park, which happened to have a baseball game being played out in its center. We watched half the game, and decided to have a look at the park's other aspects. We had a burger at Big Boy, and C and I took swings in a batting cage. I made contact with most of my pitches, but the majority of them probably would have become fouls if allowed to travel beyond the net. C, however, connected solidly with most of his, and probably batted .750 during his session.

Comerica is interesting because all visitors are allowed to walk around the corridor behind the seats, and even linger to watch the game from behind home plate, which was our course. Once there, however, we once again came up against that pervasive beast, Capitalism, in the form of a high-pressure housing-addition sales booth. We were informed by its representative that we were "loitering" near his booth, which he would allow only if we filled out forms with our personal contact information. I tried to defend with the "I don't own a house; what am I going to do with a basement?" argument, but he was quite immune, and we consented to share our information. Having recently completed a discussion with K & C about the progression of American presidents, I became James Monroe. C & J became Tom and Jan Anderson, and K & L, K being of Asian descent, became Sun and Fran Yun Kim.

As the trip went on, I began to make discoveries of items that I had managed to leave home without. These were, in descending order of importance: Socks [more than one pair], camera [hence the lack of original images accompanying this post], shoes [other than the Crocs I was wearing], and belt. At a CVS Pharmacy, somewhere in Michigan, I replaced one of these items when I found a $6 reversible black-and-brown jobbie to help prevent myself from being pantsed.

After baking in the Cleveland sun while watching Sowers' debut against Cincinnati, we spent a few days being wet. The rain began during the night at our stay at another KOA outside Pittsburgh, and slowed long enough for us to relocate to Cherry Hill Park, a coven for comfort-campers outside Washington, D.C. We constructed a fortress against rain with two large tarps over our tents, and were on our way into Our Nation's Capital when it really hit. I was soaked inside of five minutes. However, we persevered and spent a soggy day in D.C., walking around the Mall to have a look at the monuments. [By the way, the subways in D.C. have got to be the cleanest and most appealing subways in the Nation.] We spent some time in a small sanctuary when the rain came hard again, watching with fellow pilgrims as a rain-river flowed in one side of the open-sky structure and out another. I had another opportunity to check up on my favorite memorial, old man Lincoln:

IN THIS TEMPLE
AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE
FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION
THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
IS ENSHRINED FOREVER.

In D.C. I made the second of my replacement-purchases, finding some inexpensive socks at a store in L'Enfant Plaza. We had a meal at Capital City Brewery; I had a salad with sesame-rolled salmon [and some of L's nachos], and a glass of very strange root beer. That night was our third and final night camping, and we survived dryly: the fortress held. The next morning, C & J rose early and went back into the city, to Arlington. I had intended to go back and spend the day at various museums, but C sent a text-message that most of them were closed due to flooding, so K & L and I spent the day in College Park, Maryland. They escorted me to my first IHOP experience, and we played pool and air-hockey while doing some much-needed laundry. Later that day, at Target, I completed my collection of missing items with a $20 pair of sneakers, and it was on to a decidedly more cosmopolitan leg of the adventure.