Ballpark Tours in the St. Paul Pioneer Press

Ballpark Tours Home Page | Breakfast Nook Home Page

THE GRAND OLD GAME IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS

Sunday, August 18, 1991
Page: 1F

By David Brauer, Special to the Pioneer Press


It's been 10 seasons since the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome opened, enclosing Twins baseball under a fabric sky; 10 summers since Julian Empson gave up the fight to smoke his awful, stinky cigars under the starry sky and root, root, root for the home team.

Once upon a time, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and Willie Norwood patrolled center field, Empson led an intrepid group called Save the Met, an organization dedicated to the preservation of Metropolitan Stadium, tailgating and all that was right about outdoor baseball. Empson got squashed flatter than home plate by guys with bigger cigars than his.

After getting angry, Empson got even. If outdoor baseball was being taken away from Minnesota fans, he reasoned, why not take the fans to see outdoor baseball? And that's how Ballpark Tours was born. The group took its first bus trip to Milwaukee County Stadium and Wrigley Field in 1982, right after the Dome opened its vacuum-sealed doors. If indoor baseball had an anniversary to celebrate this season, so did Ballpark Tours.

So when word came last winter that Rod Carew had become the second Twin elected to the Hall of Fame, Empson decided to jettison his usual weekend jaunts and organize the grandest trip in Ballpark Tours' history: 10 days, nine games, eight cities, centered on a trip to Cooperstown to see Sir Rodney enshrined.

It was a road trip that would make any minor-leaguer shudder - more than 2,500 miles, by bus - but the itinerary was a fan's delight. Included was a trip to the newest stadium in baseball, Chicago's 4-month-old Comiskey Park, and three warhorses fated to go the way of the old Met: Baltimore's Memorial Stadium (which will give way next year to the still-unnamed ballpark at Camden Yards), Cleveland Stadium (scheduled to be replaced by a quarter-billion-dollar facility in 1994), and Detroit's Tiger Stadium (which the baseball team wants to demolish in a relentless quest for lucrative private boxes).

There'd also be two days in Cooperstown to celebrate Carew's elevation, and stops at three minor-league towns along the way. And finally, a visit to an old favorite that seems destined to escape the wrecking ball: Chicago's Wrigley Field, which, along with Boston's Fenway Park, will be one of only two parks built before the Korean War to survive into the 21st century.

All this lay before an excited group of 22 fans milling around St. Paul's Midway Shopping Center at 8:30 on a hot Wednesday morning in July. The only thing we had in common were our Twins caps; the lineup included a retired teacher, a traveling salesman, a janitor, a warehouse manager, a retired Iron Range steelworker and his wife, two government bureaucrats, a corporate executive, an unemployed guy and a free-lance journalist. We were not without a celebrity: WCCO-TV anchorman Dave Moore, a longtime outdoor-baseball agitator and Ballpark Tours participant, who went with his wife, Shirley.

We all climbed aboard the blessedly air-conditioned Lorenz Motor Coach, happy to get away. "No tequila before 11 a.m.!," Empson shouted playfully as the bus pulled onto Interstate 94.

It's eight hours to Chicago, plenty of time to exchange baseball stories - a Ballpark Tours tradition that helps break the ice among strangers. It's Empson who has the best tale.

"It's only fitting that I tell a story about Rodney Carew," Empson begins. "I used to vend beer at the Met, so I saw him play a lot. I remember the last game he ever played as a Twin. End of the 1978 season. After the game, we hung around the players' entrance and waited for him to say goodbye.

"He's one of the last ones out, carrying a huge garbage bag with all his Twins stuff in it, probably the last time he'll ever need it. The team was pretty bad that year, and there weren't many fans waiting. Carew looked really sad. He knew he was gone; we knew he was gone. He wasn't always the most approachable guy, so you had to be careful about going up to him.

"But an amazing thing happened. He propped himself against the back of his Mercedes and just started talking, telling stories about Calvin and his early days. It was like he didn't want to leave. We just stood there and soaked it all in."

Empson smiles. "He goes on for about 45 minutes, and we start looking at our watches; you know, `Hey, Rod, we gotta go.' But it was great. They say he was moody, but I'll always remember that day."

Day 1: Chicago

As we pull in to 35th and Shields, we see the shattered hulk of the old Comiskey Park sitting across the street from the new Comiskey, as if the White Sox want to rub in their move to shinier digs. The exploding scoreboard that Bill Veeck installed still stands on the old site, but all the seats down the first- and third-base lines have been demolished. Comiskey II looms over the old corpse, twice as tall, shiny and imposing.

There are a few traditional architectural details on the outside of the new Comiskey - a concession to fans' demand for some tradition in their new ballyards. But the frills mask another basically unfriendly modern field. Inside, there are no seats obstructed by posts, but the upper deck is steeper than the Metrodome's heart-attack-inducing tilt, and what's more, it rests atop not one but three levels of private boxes and club seats ($16 a pop). Sneaking into the high-rent district, I hear something I've never heard inside a ballpark: "Hello, my name is Michelle, and I'll be your server tonight."

That's right; fans in the good seats have their own personal attendants, who will gladly hand-deliver a $5.75 "gourmet kosher hot dog" or a $7.50 chicken-breast sandwich. Meanwhile, fans in the cheap seats who tumble down toward their concession stands find a two-inning-long wait; at least the team has installed TVs so you can watch the action while you wait.

The list of abominations at the new Comiskey is distressingly long. The old food court, where Cuban sandwiches simmered on open grills and Mexican families rolled burritos in front of your eyes, has been replaced by "ethnic" concession stands every bit as unique as the International Specialties windows at the Dome. The left-field picnic area, where you used to be able to watch the game through a mesh fence while you chowed, is still there - except it has been moved to right field, costs $25 to enter and is closed once the game starts.

The field is green, and the Sox' new black hats are fashionable, but everything else about the place seems disappointing. The cheapest seat is six bucks, and there are only a few thousand of those; some outfield seats go for $9. The tipsy factory workers who once bellowed for their South Side heroes have been replaced by a monied crowd that resembles the well-heeled Cubs faithful; we count more than 100 men attending the game wearing pink polo shirts - a sure sign of creeping yuppiedom.

Day 2: Buffalo

It's 10 hours to Buffalo - the longest leg of the trip. But the adventure is still fresh, and even though we're pulling out at 8 a.m. for a 7 p.m. game, no one is dragging. Perhaps that's because all the glazed doughnuts from the South Bend Days Inn's free continental breakfast have somehow found their way aboard the bus.

As we roll across Indiana, Julian's 11-year-old son, Jesse Clarkson-Empson, is admiring his Rickey Henderson rookie card, which he got from Tim, the traveling salesman. Henderson is Jesse's favorite player; yesterday, Tim calmly reached into his briefcase and plopped the card - worth $180 - into Jesse's hands. Ever seen a kid's face when he can't decide between delight and amazement? For Jesse, it's Christmas in July - and Tim is Santa in a Houston Astros cap.

Asked to explain this remarkable act of generosity, Tim says, "I paid pennies for Henderson's card when it first came out; I've got five of these cards sitting around my house. I figure the best thing about the prices going haywire is that it increases the smile value."

It's a good portent for the day; we regain some of our soul in the minors. Pilot Field, home of the Buffalo Bisons, is only a few years older than the new Comiskey, but it holds a cozier 20,000 spectators. Bison fans are a loyal lot who routinely pack the place, even after their hopes of getting a major-league expansion team were turned down earlier this summer. "There's not much to do here; everybody comes out," one Buffalonian explains matter-of-factly.

Buffeted by hard economic times, this is a crowd that knows how to release tension at a ballgame. At one point, the public-address announcer introduces a couple in the middle of a trip to all 178 professional ballparks in North America; management has rewarded them with gas for the car, a week's worth of groceries and a steak dinner delivered to their front-row seats. "Hey, I'm unemployed, too," bellows one nearby fan. "How 'bout giving me a steak dinner?!"

Day 3: Utica

It's a three-hour drive to Utica, home of the Blue Sox. The team has a wonderful name, but they are near the bottom of professional baseball's food chain - a sub-.500 club in the short-season New York-Penn League, where recent draft choices begin their pro careers in June and the season ends in early September. Utica's Donovan Stadium is barely a stadium: new metal bleachers and a few covered seats behind the plate. Just 1,000 fans turn out on half-price night, even though tickets are $1.50.

Utica is a depressed central New York town where the big industry is a Matt's Beer brewery; the suds are tasty, but the baseball is rank. This may be the first game I've ever seen where a team smashes a grand slam in the first inning and loses by 15 runs; the visiting Pittsfield Mets give up 13 walks, commit six errors and drop the contest 21-6.

In the fifth inning, Utica scores seven runs on just two hits; two innings later, they get seven more on a four-hit outburst. Pittsfield's pitching coach is former Twin Jerry Koosman; he declines an invitation to come say hello to a couple of dozen of his old fans, probably out of embarrassment.

Days 4 and 5: Cooperstown

Tucked in the foothills of the Adirondacks, Cooperstown (population 2,500) is often described as a gem of a town. If that were really true, someone would have it appraised and slap a price tag on it during Hall of Fame week.

Cooperstown, alas, is testament to how much baseball has become a business - not just for owners and players, but for fans. The town quadruples in size on the weekend when inductions take place, but it seems as if most of the new arrivals are less interested in baseball history than in baseball merchandise. The number of memorabilia stores has shot up from one in 1989 to 11 today. Rents have gotten so high on Main Street that parts of the town have been declared "baseball-free" zones, so that main-line merchants can still afford to be located there.

It's easy to get the feeling that the game's not the thing anymore. Two teams from the New York-Penn League play a free game at lovely Doubleday Field, a cozy brick structure laid out on the mythological spot where Abner Doubleday invented the game. Although thousands of fans are in town, barely 400 people turn out on a perfect summer day to watch the youngsters, one of whom might return to the town to get a plaque someday. Throughout the game, the memorabilia merchants continue to do a brisk business.

Empson, though, gets a heartwarming surprise inside the Hall: Four Met Stadium seats he donated in 1984 are right there in the lobby, and so is the seat bearing the plaque that marked the spot where Harmon Killebrew's longest home run landed. "Imagine what a thrill it is for a fan to see something he's given to the Hall right here," Empson marvels to Jesse. Giving truly is better than buying.

The induction ceremony is held in a tree-lined city park right next to the red-brick Hall; it was filled in 1989 when Carl Yastrzemski and Johnny Bench were inducted, but Carew, Gaylord Perry and Ferguson Jenkins don't have the same marquee appeal, so there's plenty of room to move around.

Though the turnout is lackluster, the hardy fans get a treat: More Hall of Famers have returned to Cooperstown today than ever before. Imagine these greats all on one stage: Warren Spahn, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, Al Kaline, Willie McCovey, Monte Irvin, Brooks Robinson, Juan Marichal, Luis Aparicio, Bob Feller, Catfish Hunter, Yogi Berra, Ray Dandridge, Joe Morgan, Charley Gehringer, Pee Wee Reese and the boys of 1941, Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. It's awe-inspiring.

Dave Moore, befitting his nobility, has secured reserved seats. Later, he tells us that when he saw DiMaggio, he started to tell nearby friends about how Joltin' Joe's 56-game hitting streak was stopped by an adroit Cleveland Indians third baseman named Ken Keltner. "The guy next to me taps me on the shoulder," Moore recalls. "He points to the guy sitting in front of me, and says 'That's Ken Keltner.' I said, `It is?' And Keltner turns around and says, `It sure is!' "

Various other baseball dignitaries are introduced, including Bo Schembechler, the former University of Michigan football coach who, as president of the Detroit Tigers, is leading the charge to destroy Tiger Stadium. The Ballpark Tours crew lustily boos Bo when he stands up, which we later learn is a breach of Hall of Fame decorum. Finding out that we've violated a taboo makes us feel great; in our own way, we feel we're trying to preserve baseball's heritage as much as the Hall is.

Carew, a native Panamanian, gets that country's national anthem played before his induction; it's at least 10 minutes and several endless stanza long. (The smaller the country, the more grandiose the anthem.) His speech is humble and modest, as are Jenkins' and Perry's. Carew ticks off the names of the game's greats as a way to acknowledge his appreciation of the place; as he finishes, I sneak a peek out on Main Street, where the memorabilia business has slowed down not one whit, even as history turns another page behind the park's wrought-iron gates.

Day 6: Scranton

Not that all souvenir-buying is bad; collectively, the bus crew contributed several thousand dollars to the Cooperstown economy, mostly to purchase historic caps.

Tim, the traveling salesman/card collector, bought an early St. Louis Browns cap with a narrow brim that makes him look like an overgrown Cub Scout; Jesse wears a 1908 gray Chicago Cubs road model; Dave, a 20-year Navy man who recently returned from active duty, sports a white 1915 Detroit Tigers cap with spiffy orange stripes at the seams.

Now there's more napping on the bus, less chatter and more quiet study of Baseball America. Everybody has staked out a pair of seats to stretch out on, and piles of newspapers, open to the box scores, litter the floor. We're conserving our energy for the swing through the best old ballparks of the trip.

But first, a stop at brand-new Lackawanna County Stadium, home of the Triple-A Scranton-Wilkes Barre Red Barons. Chiseled out of a hillside in anthracite country, just across the highway from a ski run, the ballpark looks like the sort they'd have in Duluth if they still played minor-league ball on the North Shore. Craggy outcroppings loom over center field, but nature ends at the field itself. Lackawanna is the only artificial-turf park on our trip, in deference to the parent Philadelphia Phillies, who play on the fake stuff 100 miles away.

Like Comiskey II and Pilot Field, this modern park is unremarkable, though it does feature the latest trend, spreading from Toronto's Skydome: the Hard Ball Cafe, down the first-base line. Everybody wants to be big-league. At least we see the best-played game of the trip, a one-hitter by Scranton pitcher Andy Ashby.

Day 7: Baltimore

After a three-hour ride, we're in Baltimore, where we're greeted by sizzling 103-degree temperatures; everyone takes off for the pool during the few hours before game time - until storm clouds roll in. "Don't worry," Empson says breezily. "We've only had one rainout in 10 years."

Memorial Stadium, built in 1954, is facing death at the age of 37. Like Met Stadium and County Stadium, it is one of the great underappreciated parks of the '50s: functional but not plastic; graceful steel instead of cold concrete. There's a connectedness to the place: The Met had its nearby cornfields; Memorial is built in the middle of a tidy neighborhood of rowhouses. In our seats just inside the left-field foul pole, we marvel at the Maryland Crab Cakes and the price of our tickets: $4.75, for a seat that would cost $11 at the Dome or $13 at Comiskey.

Baltimore's fans are the best of the trip, cheering and stomping even as the woebegone Orioles fall behind 5-0 to the California Angels. "Gee, they don't even need a sign on the scoreboard to get them to cheer," wisecracks Empson between puffs on his stogie. "And they don't need a Great Tire Race, either."

The fans are rewarded in the eighth when first baseman Randy Milligan cracks a grand slam to bring the O's within a run. But befitting a sixth-place season, the home team can't pull ahead and still loses 5-4. It's the second time on the trip we've seen a team hit a grand slam and lose.

Before the bus leaves, we sneak a peak at the new stadium, which is going up near the tourist district known as the Inner Harbor. There's a lot to like: only one row of private boxes to Comiskey's three, meaning the cheap seats won't be so high up; two decks of seats in left field, much like the old Met; and a row of historic warehouses looming over center and right field. (Word is a 450-shot could break a warehouse window.)

Camden seems distinctive without being elitist, assuming tickets are priced reasonably. It's nice to think that Baltimore will get the best of the new ballparks, because its fans are so passionate about the game.

Day 8: Cleveland

It's a long seven hours to Cleveland, and we tumble off the bus famished. After a week of fast-food highways stops and ballpark hot dogs, we're overdue for some real food. And all you need to know about Cleveland's soul can be summed up in one word: Paninni.

Paninni's is a bar about half a mile from Cleveland Stadium, along the railroad tracks down the shore of Lake Erie. It's a typical shot-and-a-beer kind of place, except for its signature sandwich, the Paninni: two big slices of white bread, a heaping portion of red meat, lettuce, tomato, onion, sauce, fries. If you think that sounds unremarkable, consider that Paninni's puts the fries inside the sandwich. You bite into the thing, and it looks like you've just chewed through a big coaxial cable with the fries sticking out the middle. It's weird but satisfying, much like the city itself.

Talk about weird: Cleveland Stadium features stands that curve around home plate and an open outfield section, yet everyone in town thinks the Indians should move because the place was built for football. The only explanation is that 40 years of losing baseball, combined with the Browns' successful history, have warped local perceptions of the place.

Cleveland Stadium (natives call it "The Mistake by the Lake") was a public-works project built during the Depression; like most public-works projects, they used way too much concrete: The place seats almost 80,000. Commentators often say that makes the stadium too big for baseball, but the park, while boasting a giant upper deck, feels surprisingly intimate. If you can mentally lop off the upper 20 rows of the cheap seats, Cleveland Stadium is as good as Wrigley or Tiger.

There's a terrific picnic area in the outfield where the old fences used to extend; the old warning track now serves as a path. But all those empty seats, and the Indians' losing ways, have made local baseball fans feel small. You get the idea they want to move only to escape the ghosts lurking in the rafters.

Day 9: Detroit

The drive to Detroit is short, and we pull into town a bit early to meet with the Save Tiger Stadium Fan Club, a '90s version of Empson's Save the Met crew. Most people remember the area around Tiger Stadium from the 1984 World Series, when jubilant Detroiters nearly set the place on fire. But the area that locals call Corktown is still there, if a little worse for wear; vacant lots are the rule, and the fan club meets on the second floor of the aged Gaelic Hall, one of the remaining outposts of the neighborhood's Irish heritage.

We wind up in a bar down the street, owned by the guy who was driving Billy Martin's car when he died last winter. It's a very creepy first impression; decay and death seem everywhere.

That said, tearing down venerable Tiger Stadium would be a great travesty. This is a fans' ballpark, built in 1912, just a year after Fenway. Home plate is located in the same place where Ty Cobb used to steal home; infield seats sit below the crown of the field, so fans actually watch the action take place slightly above them, instead of looking down into a bowl as you do at the Dome.

There are nooks and crannies for fans to find their favorite cheap seats, and the second deck hangs right over the first, creating a surprisingly intimate view. Upper deck right field, where Pat Sheridan hit his homer off Jeff Reardon to give the Tigers their only win of the 1987 American League Championship Series, offers the closest view of the plate of any outfield seat in baseball. Sitting in the upper deck down the first-base line, we're directly over the visitors' bullpen. Jesse mischievously kicks a sunflower seed shell off the deck, and it flutters past Twins pitcher Terry Leach's head. We're that close.

The park has a fresh coat of paint and comfortable blue and orange seats; its sturdiness and comfort aren't concerns. Problem is, the place wasn't built for private boxes - which now sit at the top of the park instead of between the upper and lower decks, as they do in new stadiums. This is apparently too much for the big cigars of Detroit to bear, and the Tigers are leading a crusade to persuade the city to build another new Comiskey.

Who cares if the boxes at the top of Tiger are as close as the ones at Comiskey II? Who cares if Tigers fans have told pollsters again and again that they want their old ballpark? Bo Schembechler wants to ram a new stadium down Detroit throats as if it were a Wolverine fullback plunge.

Politicians such as Detroit Mayor Coleman Young seem eager to cooperate; the day we're there, the city and Wayne County announce that they've settled their differences and have agreed to build a new park.

Get to Tiger Stadium while you still can.

Day 10: Chicago

Four hours to Chicago and a complete change of scenery. Wrigley Field, of course, is the ultimate yuppie park. Scalpers are getting a whopping $30 per bleacher seat on this warm summer day; people seem willing to pay it to sit in the seats made famous by the Bleacher Bums and, in the '80s, by WGN-TV's cable empire. But thank God for publicity: The attention paid to lights and Harry Caray have saved this park from destruction. It's become a treasured cultural landmark.

We're sitting way up behind the plate, high enough to see sailboats sailing