Baltimore, Maryland

Part 1 (Friday)



It’s my birthday today, which is not a big deal to me, but as such I am going to ask you to forgive my self-indulgence for a minute as I stroll down memory lane. I couldn’t fall asleep last night, so I was trying to work backwards to see if I could come up with my earliest memory. Three of them tied.

First, I remember that I had a girl over for a playdate when I was very young. I think her name was Lisa, which is coincidentally my sister’s name, so we’ll call this other girl Lisa D since I think her last name was Dearborn or Deerfield or something like that. She came over to our house, and we put together a puzzle starring Smurfs and a tomato garden, and I recall that the tomatoes looked large next to the Smurfs. I know I was young, because the puzzle was simple -- big, unique-shaped pieces with friendly corners and edges, and blue and red splotches that made it easy to complete. On the other hand, maybe I was clever and took out the easy puzzle so I could impress Lisa D with my puzzle solving prowess. With women, it always helps to stack the deck so you look good, right?

The second is something I have never told anyone until now. Our house was only the second down on the left from a cross street with a fair amount of subdivision traffic. I was outside playing, and this red car drove by on the cross street. I was probably three and a half feet tall, with white blonde hair worn in a bowl, and I flipped the car the bird. I don’t know why and I didn’t even know what this meant, but I must have seen it somewhere. Well, the red car slammed on its breaks, reversed back to the end of my street, and the driver -- a young woman -- said “[$%^&] you, you little [!@#$].” This was my clue that I should not have done what I just did, because these were wash-your-mouth-out-with-soap words, and I was terrified. The woman threatened to tell my parents, and when she pulled away, I ran into the house and hid for about three days until my heart rate went back down. I was consumed with a sort of pre-evolved guilt, because I didn’t even understand what I had done, but I knew I had screwed up and I still remember how awful I felt, and how strongly. I was terrified that the woman would come and tell my parents, but of course she never did or I would also remember the paddling I’d have gotten.

The third is a birthday party. I remember that I had to invite every boy in the class to my party even though I didn’t like all of them. My mom made German chocolate cake, and I got gifts: GI Joe’s, Transformers, and a cap gun for which I my mother did not allow me to buy more caps once I had exploded the ones that came with it. I think I compensated by spending a little bit of my birthday money on a Thundercats gun -- not a cap gun, but a gun that was see-through red plastic and had a mechanism that sparked and flashed inside when you squeezed the trigger. This lasted about 4 days until it broke, which might tie the Supermarket toy record.

Birthday parties like this one require a “theme” and so after we were sugared-up from the cake and Kool-Aid, we went across that street to the park to play baseball. Another downfall of having to invite everybody was that everybody got a chance to hit, as my dad softly pitched balls underhand and said “Swing!” to help the sniffle-kids figure out when to swing. I think Chuck Klosterman is on to something when he says that young boys these days like soccer because it gives the lesser athletes a chance to run around and participate with no chance of failure; they can just blend in. But, some of us liked baseball and we were even alright at it for our ages, plus I adored German chocolate cake, and so I had a wonderful birthday party.

Anyway, then I fell asleep and I’m sorry for veering off the point. We left Philadelphia this morning on Interstate 95, heading south along the coast. Sometime last week Tropical Storm Ophelia became a category 1 Hurricane and I missed it, but it has apparently receded and is no longer threatening the area with rain. There was construction on a bridge -- the entire American highway system is under construction from what I can tell -- but then the traffic and the weather cleared for a nice drive through Delware and into Maryland.

I ask my father when Baltimore baseball enters the picture. He tells me that Bill Veeck owned the St. Louis Browns, and tried everything to boost attendance, including the famous time he sent a midget named Eddie Gaedel up to bat, as well as bringing Satchel Paige with him from Cleveland to pitch at age 46. (Paige made the all-star team that year.) They just weren’t drawing crowds, so in 1954 Veeck took the Browns to Baltimore, and they became the Orioles. (The original Orioles dissolved in the 1890s, and the second Orioles team became the New York Highlanders, who became the Yankees in the early 1900s, believe it or not.)

It wasn’t too long before the Orioles became a decent team because they had very good pitchers. Still, my dad remembers, “Inevitably what they did was make a trade with the Yankees where they gave up good pitchers to get bodies -- 8 for 2 trades, something like that.” Turley & Larson were Orioles before they were Yankees, he tells me. The Orioles developed an early knack for scouting good pitchers on a regular basis.

This carried into the late ‘60s and ‘70s, when they became good. “Then they have a run in there with Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson and Boog Powell. Powell was the first baseman. He was a guy like Roy Campanella who seemed to stagger his years -- good year, bad year, good year bad year. They really rode his good years.”

I ask about Memorial stadium, because we went there for a game against the White Sox on a day-trip from D.C. once back in the Lisa D years when I was probably 6 going on 7, but all I remember are shiny aluminum bleachers and orange plastic soda cups with a black bird logo. It was “nothing memorable, just functional. Baltimore is a working people’s city -- with the Orioles and the Colts, they just wanted players to go hard.”

I ask if this explains the Cal Ripken phenomenon, how he came to embody this attitude as he broke Lou Gehrig’s iron-man streak of 2,130 games. People talk sometimes about how the McGwire / Sosa run in 1998 saved baseball, and these days they say it was all performed under false pretenses, ie steroids. The more I dwell on it, though, I think that it was Ripken’s streak that saved baseball (if baseball needed saving). Ripken’s career was a fulfilling narrative in every sense, a local boy and coach’s son who goes on to play an entire MVP and All-Star career with one team, and did so without missing a day and while evincing class every step. Cal is eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2007, and should be a first balloter. “He’s a cinch,” my dad says, “you know, Ambassador for the game, model citizen, did everything he was supposed to do, all that sort of stuff.” He might be the first player ever to receive 100% of the writer’s votes.

Still, before that it was always the pitchers, my dad says. The Orioles were the first team with four 20-game winners, and my dad can name them instantly: Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, Mike Cuellar, and Pat Dobson. The other thing he recalls is that “Baltimore’s the place where the fans really tend to dislike the owners. Peter Angelos -- they don’t like him, and they obviously didn’t like Irsay, because he moved the Colts to Indianapolis.”

I am excited about Camden Yards, because this is the park that started the chain-reaction of new stadiums. If Ripken’s is the finest modern narrative, they built him a fitting stage, from what I hear. Now, I want to see if it lives up to its reputation.

We stop at a McDonalds around a quarter to 11, hoping they are still serving breakfast. They aren’t, but they do have a DVD rental vending machine outside the restaurant. Isaac Asimov was right to create his Three Laws of Robotics because robots like this vending machine are taking over the entire country. They’re not robots in the artificial-intelligence sense, but maybe the robots’ strategy is even more diabolical: instead of smarter AI robots, someone figures, let’s make dumber people. A co-dependent relationship between McDonalds and $1-a-day new-release DVDs is doing just that, I think -- it’s an amplifying negative feedback loop. “Hey, we can get ‘Monster-In-Law’ with Jennifer Lopez, and a quarter-pounder with cheese for like two bucks!” Not that I’m judging or anything.

We checked into our hotel out near the airport and drove downtown. Baltimore is not an easy city to park a car down near the Inner Harbor. There are one-way streets and only a few parking garages, and it’s all a bit claustrophobic. Eventually we parked in an expensive garage beneath an expensive Galleria mall, and walked over to Camden Yards to visit the Sports Legends museum, which had a nice exhibit on Babe Ruth and then another on the Orioles, as well as some other stuff. The Orioles exhibit was especially great, as they had some nice information about the “Oriole Way” -- the methodology of emphasizing pitching, defense, and fundamentals that led to their long run of success through the ‘80s. I also learned the origin of the “Baltimore Chop” -- where a hitter smacks a baseball into the dirt in front of home plate to bounce it high into the air, and leg out a single. The groundskeeper at Memorial Stadium would pack some clay in front of home plate to give the ball extra bounce, and Orioles’ hitters knew this and practiced so that they could chop one on purpose, on occasion.

We were early for the game, so we walked 5 blocks east to the Inner Harbor. It did not seem like the ides of September, because it was downright hot and muggy outside. Baltimore has completely gentrified the Inner Harbor area though, with shops and restaurants and brew pubs and so on, and it’s nice to sit down there and watch people. In fact, I got the feeling that Baltimore is really an up-and-coming city for urban twenty-somethings like myself. Although, there are still plenty of men with anonymous brown paper bags lying on benches around downtown, so I guess gentrification isn’t done yet, as people just walk around them while they babble and gurgle.

We walked back to Oriole Park at Camden Yards, and came in behind right field to watch batting practice. I realized immediately that Camden Yards lives up to its reputation. It’s brilliant. There is a wide walking concourse behind right field with vendors and tables and picnic benches, all set underneath the old 13-story Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) Warehouse. The effect is staggering, as you walk between a modern baseball cathedral and this tall old light red-brown brick warehouse with arched windows, the longest building on the entire east coast.

After batting practice, we walked past Boog Powell’s BBQ on the concourse, and Boog Powell himself was sitting there signing autographs, as he often is. My dad walked up to him with his program.

Boog: “Hey there, young fella!”
Dad: “Hey now. I remember seeing you play.”
Boog: “Thanks for remembering.”

Boog was all smiles as he signed my dad’s program, and then we walked around to find the escalator to our seats in the upper deck, behind home plate. From the upper deck concourse, you can look west over Baltimore, and I saw that Baltimore does not seem to be a city built in orderly fashion. There are streets running in any-which direction, often dead-ending into each other and forming triangles where people have squished in buildings and houses. This seems to go for miles. On the other hand, it does give the city an older feel, and I’m certain that this maze appeals to locals because it’s not likely a bumbling outsider would find his way out there onto a quiet street.

From our seats, the view was spectacular. I already mentioned the B&O Warehouse dominating right field, but there is open air behind centerfield providing a view of the downtown skyline. I suppose maybe some of the other new stadiums are just as good, but they’re not better than Camden Yards, and Camden did it first, so I’ve decided it has earned its accolades. Although, the upper deck seats are narrow, and my father is not.

It was fan-appreciation weekend, which means $1 hot dogs and $1 sodas, although the cokes are misleading because they’re the kiddie cokes, and I’m pretty sure you could pour four $1 cokes into the regular $4 souvenir cup and come out even. It was still warm as the game began -- 87 degrees at 7:35pm. Both teams were out of the race, the Devil Rays as of spring training in March and the Orioles as of around the All-Star break. The park was probably not quite half-full, and they were subdued quickly as Tampa Bay opened the game with 4 hits and 2 runs. The Devil Rays put up two more pairs of runs in the 3rd and the 7th, and that was more than enough to win. There were a couple of nice defensive plays -- a stab behind third, a great running catch by the centerfielder, and for the Devil Rays a catch in right that might have robbed a home run. Still, most of the crowd left after the 7th inning.

They have a tradition in Baltimore that goes back to the winning years: they sing John Denver’s Thank God I’m A Country Boy” after “Take Me Out To The Ballgame.” I think this is one of those wacky phenomena whose best explanation is, “well, you know, it was the ‘70s.” Back when they were good, the Orioles had a taxi-driver super-fan named Wild Bill Hagy with long hair and a big beard who led the crowd on O-R-I-O-L-E-S chants by spelling out the letters with his body on top of the dugout. I think the John Denver song tradition started at about the same time. I wonder, if you’re name is Bill, can you have any other nickname than “Wild Bill?” Although in Hagy’s case it fits.

This was the worst game of the trip so far, but Orioles Park at Camden Yards is the best park, so I guess it’s a wash. Plus, we’ll be back tomorrow for another one…


Part 2 (Saturday)

Today is my father’s birthday. I wished him a happy birthday and asked him what he wanted to do before the game, and all he did was sing: “Another day older and deeper in debt.” It’s a Tennessee Ernie Ford song, he tells me, but I’ve never heard it. “St. Peter don’t you call me because I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.” I take it Dad doesn’t care where we go before the game, so I choose Edgar Allen Poe’s grave, which is only 6 or 7 blocks north of Orioles Park.

Poe’s grave is only about 4 blocks north of Oriole Park at Camden Yards. There’s a tradition there where someone drops off a half-drank bottle of cognac and three roses (presumably to include Poe’s wife and mother, buried there also) during the night of his birthday, although no one knows who does this. It’s strange to imagine a Baltimore so small that someone like Poe is buried in a church just a few blocks from everything else that was around at the time, although much of Baltimore was leveled in a fire in 1904. Across from the old church and its old cemetery are all sorts of new downtown buildings, but I can imagine a time when it was part of a neighborhood, right next to the old market which is also still around, but rebuilt in a modern style.

We have more time to kill before the game, so we head over to Babe Ruth’s birthplace, a block west and a half block north of Oriole Park, where of course they have a museum now. It’s another dose of good baseball history. Then it’s time for the game. My roommate for 5 semesters in college lives in Baltimore now, and so we meet up with him and some of his family for the game. It was a close game, 1-1 until the Orioles got a run via small ball: a stolen base, a sac bunt and a single. It was hot -- 91 degrees -- but our seats were in the shade, and the sunset behind us lit up the B&O warehouse building perfectly during the final innings.

After the game, my father heads back to the hotel, as we are leaving for New York early in the morning and he wants to call it a night. I head out with my old roommate, and visit his apartment in Federal Hill, a Baltimore neighborhood south of the Inner Harbor where a lot of twenty-somethings live. I ask my roommate how I can reconcile my conflicting impressions from yesterday: on the one hand, lots of degenerates loiter in areas around downtown, but on the other hand, a lot of new development and gentrification has happened around the Inner Harbor. He says it’s simple: there are two Baltimores. There is a huge poor urban population, many of whom are addicted to drugs. (Think HBO’s The Wire.) There is also a growing population of upwardly mobile young professionals, now in a larger second wave, who have decided to take part in the reinvigorated downtown scene and stake out neighborhoods like Federal Hill.

As for this new scene, it’s spectacular. As we head out and visit a few bars in the Federal Hill neighborhood, I get the distinct sense that these people are enthusiastic about where they live and what they’re a part of, and they’re all out having a blast. Baltimore is up and coming in that sense, and I’m jealous that my old roommate is there to be a part of it and I’m not. Joining New York city and Boston, I think Baltimore might be the new hip city for people to live out their 20s on the east coast. It’s alive and flourishing in nightlife.

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I have more notes, but I won’t be able to put them up right now because we have checked into our hotel in Manhattan and our car is on a forklift in a parking lot, which is no cause for concern in Manhattan because it's just a cheap way to park more cars, and my pocket notebook is in the car. Besides, it’s been a long day in New York and this is already over 3,000 words. In conclusion, let me just say that we should all keep half an ear open for what’s happening in Baltimore, because I think it’s on the rise. Camden Yards is spectacular, but beyond that the city has a great vibe right now, and I don’t suppose it will take much longer for the new developers to protect their investment by building more of a cosmopolitan buffer around what’s there, which is a great start.