My favorite stadiums Preamble-26

 Preamble:

Welcome to this year's countdown to The Real National Hot Dog Day. I hope you've been doing your exercises over the last month to stretch out those bellies because game time is almost here.

In counting down to the big day, one of the fun things I like to do get people hyped (do the kids still say "hyped"? I like to think they do) is to rank things from 30-1. Last year it was my favorite baseball teams, the year before it was Red Sox players. This year it's going to be stadiums (stadia?).

 

I've been to 29 different parks and I have thoughts on all of them, but there are 30 days until April 8. So what to do for today? I'm going to use this as a catch-all for the seven parks that I haven't seen and rank them from 7-1 in terms of ones that I want to see next. 

 

7. Tropicana Field. Florida sucks. Tampa sucks. And this stadium looks awful. Plus as we found out last year, the Rays are my least favorite team in MLB. If I wasn't such an OCD completest, I'd skip this one. But since I'm not, I'm going to go and sit with my arms crossed the entire time. That'll show 'em. Fun fact: do you know that NHL Lightning used to play their home games in this mausoleum? It's the house that (Brent) Gretzky built!

 

6. LoanDept Park. Up until 30 seconds ago, I had no idea of the name of the park that the Marlins play in. Now I do and it's as low-rent as the franchise. The two interesting things about the place: the psychedelic statue in center field and the aquariums behind home plate have been ripped out (by former CEO Derek "FUN!" Jeter) and now it's just a boring ass place to watch a game. Great job Jetes, you should be the next commissioner. 

 

5. Guaranteed Rate Field. Or Comiskey II in Chicago. Fun fact, I'm going to this field this year so I'll be able to give a better synopsis of the place. Know this, it opened a year before Camden and the White Sox are trying their damnedest to get out of the place; even threatening to move to Nashville. Do I think that will happen? No. Owner Jerry Reinsdorf tried this bullshit back in the late 80s when he told the world that the Sox were going to play at Tropicana Field (then called the TropicanaDome) only to get the money to build this legacy to boringness. 

 

4. Globe Life Field. It's hot in Texas. Really hot. Especially in July and August, so it finally dawned on the Rangers that the should play in doors after 45 years of playing outside and sweating their mustaches off. I think that this place looks, I don't know, fine? At least there won't be any rainouts or no one will die of heat stroke. Fun fact: the first teams to play in this place weren't the Rangers! When we were in the depths of Covid four years ago, this was one of the spots where MLB held the playoffs. The Ray and Dodgers took the field before the Rangers did. The only other park I can think of where that happened is Wrigley Field, which was built for the Federal League Chicago Whales. When the FL when belly up, the Cubs moved in. 

 

3. Target Field. This looks like a lovely park to spend a Friday or Saturday summer evening. I'm kinda obsessed with the Twin Cities in a weird sort of way, all tucked up in the northern part of the US. It seems quaint. I've never been to Minnesota--I heard the mosquitos are murder--but I'd like to go and where the Twins play is a TARGET destination. Ho, ho! Get ready Minnesotans for that kind of wit when Byron Magrane comes to town(s)!

 

2. Kauffman Stadium. When I was a kid, this was an absolute house of horrors for the Red Sox (sort of like old Arlington Stadium in Texas, though for other reasons). The Royals were the bizarro Red Sox, they were super athletic, barely hit dingers (Medford, MA native Steve Balboni held the club's season record of 35 for many years) and were fast as hell. Kauffman (nee Royal) Stadium was huge and it was covered in astroturf and guys like Willie Wilson or Lonnie Smith or Frank White would slap the ball around and the next thing you know they're standing on third base waiting for George Brett to drive them in and Red Sox fielders are trying to catch their breath. But then the Royals got rid of the turf, tightened the place up a little and it doesn't have quite the same amount of advantages as it used to. They still have the waterfalls though and the team wants to move to a park in down town KC. So I better get my ass to Missouri if I want to see it. 

 

1. Dodger Stadium. God damn, this is the quintessential ball park. I want to go here so much, my feet hurt. Look at the picture attached to this post, it's so perfect. I mean if that doesn't scream baseball, I don't know what does. I have to go to LA really soon and check out a game here, I don't care how much it's going to cost; this is like a pilgrimage to Mecca (not the place the Bucks used to play at). 

 

29.

 

We are 29 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best. 

 

Today's park is Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Quebec; home of the Montreal Expos.

 

This was the first park I've ever been to, outside of Fenway Park. The way that I got there was kinda dumb, kinda Amesbury but it worked out. When I was in eighth grade our Spanish class took a four day field trip to Montreal during spring break. Why Spanish speaking kids would go to a French speaking city is beyond me, maybe they wanted to expose (no pun) us to people who spoke something other than a butchered version of the King's English.

 

Anyway, we were supposed to go to a planetarium that night, but I think that the weather was lousy so the surprised us with tickets to the baseball game instead. And I was ecstatic when I heard the news. National League! Expos versus Phillies! A new, modern stadium! Holy shit this was going to be so good.

It was and it wasn't. I mean it was cool as hell going to the game with 40 other kids. There were only like five chaperones, so it was like we were at the game by ourselves; we ran around the stadium, bought souvenirs, ate like assholes ... it was awesome.

 

But the park itself? Ugh. I wasn't impressed. And I was 14-years-old at the time, I was pretty much impressed by everything that wasn't mundane. The place was dirty, cheap looking, not well lit. The turf looked old, the place was cavernous without a lot of people there. It just seemed, I don't know, sad.

Olympic Stadium was built to hold the 1976 Olympics and then was retrofitted for Expos games. Even when I went back in 1988, you could tell that this wasn't a baseball stadium. It no longer had the track running along the field like it once did, but it just was depressing. It was just run down and didn't feel like a major league team should call this place its home.

 

We were told that the roof was able to open and close, but it broke some years prior to when we got to see our game there, so it had to stay closed. I think that the fixed it some years later, but the system they used to bring in the natural daylight didn't work all that great.

 

In 1991-ish, a huge chunk of cement fell off the roof during a time when no one was in the stadium and crashed on one of the concourses. Had there been a game at this time, more than one person would have gotten crushed. The Expos had to go on a 30-day road trip so that architectural engineers could make certain that that wouldn't happen again.

 

Even though the stadium was a drag, for a long time this was my most interesting fact about myself: I saw an Expos game in far-away Montreal. That doesn't say much for me, but I thought that it was cool as hell.

The Expos ended up leaving Montreal in 2004 and relocated to DC the following season. As for the Amesbury Middle School Montreal trip, it ended up going pretty great. We had a lot of fun, I was introduced to a new rock group: Guns N' Roses that everyone seemed to listen to. I went to my first sports bar, which was cool, even though no one drank. We saw anti-English rallies, which made us want to shout things in English (we were assholes!) and kinda terrified us too.

 

I guess sending a bunch of barely Spanish speaking kids to Montreal was a success. Consider our horizons broadened.

 

As for the game, the Expos beat the Phillies 2-1 in extra innings. I'm pretty sure it was Tim Raines (or maybe Graig Nettles) who hit the game winning home run right into the rightfield section we were sitting in. Only we weren't there. Some of the kids were getting bored and wanted to leave, so we took off in the eighth.

 

Knowing my eighth grade self, I was absolutely furious. But que sera sera.

 

Actually it turns out Nettles hit a dinger in the eighth (where we were sitting) to tie the game and the Expos scratched out a run in the tenth. Here is the boxscore: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1988/B04160MON1988.htm Two Hall of Famers: Michael Jack Schmidt for the Phillies and Tim Raines for Montreal.

28. 

We are 28 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.

 

Today's stadium is RFK in Washington, DC, home (for a short time) to the Washington Nationals. When last we left the Expos (yesterday), they were wards of the League and were playing in a shitty stadium in Montreal and a stadium in Puerto Rico. The team was sold and moved to Washington, where the national game was given its third chance to take root in the nation's capital.

 

RFK was an old, beat up stadium that was never meant to house the Nats for very long. It began its life as one of the multipurpose stadia that dotted the landscape in the 1960s and 70s. Basically the idea was why have two stadiums in the city for baseball and football, when you can spend less money and have two for the price of one?

 

People in New York (Shea), Pittsburgh (Three Rivers), Philadelphia (Veterans), Cincinnati (Riverfront), Miami (The Orange Bowl), Denver (Mile High), Los Angeles (The Coliseum), Houston (Astrodome) and Washington--and there were other--all agreed. A bunch of these multipurpose stadia didn't have grass, they had astroturf, which was basically green painted concrete. Not RFK though, it was a Cheech and Chong special: pure grass. (Good timely reference? Sure, the kids love the dopey hippie antics of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong.)

 

While these venues weren't great for the athletes that played there, the folks who ran the city loved them because every one loves a two-for-one deal. After awhile owners started to get pissy because if you didn't own both teams that played in the stadium, there was a good chance that you were a tenant to the guy who did own the stadium. Rich people hate answering to other people so much, so in the 80s and 90s they began vacating these dual purpose places for palaces of their own.

 

Don't worry folks! Those rich people never had to pay for their stadiums and parks, they got us to do it for them. How? Ginned up "research" papers saying that new stadiums bring huge financial windfalls to the areas (they don't). If that didn't work they'd fall back on good old extortion -- "Build my stadium or we're moving to Louisville or Tampa or some other God foresaken burgh filled with rubes who'd kill to build a stadium for me."

 

Anyway, the second iteration of the Senators called RFK their home and when they left for Texas after 12 seasons in DC, the Washington Football Team had the place all to themselves. And RFK was a legendary football field as the WFT was really good in the 80s and 90s (three Super Bowl Champs!) and their fans (the Hawgs) became something of a media sensation too.

 

But as the millennium changed the WFT moved to Maryland into a new (tax payer supported) stadium and RFK was pretty much only home to the MLS DC United. So the Nats were able to move in and play there.

Was it a good stadium? No. It was run down, beat up and seen better days. There was a charm to it, like there is in all those old stadiums, where you know some cool stuff (at least football wise) happened on the same grass that you were looking at.

 

My wife Aly and I went with her friend Amy and sat in seats in the second tier of stands. It was a warm April day and it was just a lovely day. We didn't have any kids to worry about, we just watched a game between two teams we didn't care about (Nats and DBacks), drank some beers and enjoyed ourselves.

Incidentally this was the second or third week that the Nats were new to town and we got seats no problem. I'm not sure what that means/meant but I remember at the time being worried that we wouldn't get seats.

 

The folks at RFK tried really hard to make their stadium presentable and they did fine. It wasn't as depressing as Olympic Stadium or tomorrow's place, but it was an old shithole. And there's only so much paint and elbow grease you can use to spiffy a place like that up.

 

Here is the boxscore of the game we saw: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2005/B04170WAS2005.htm No Hall of Famers. Woof of a game.

27. 

We are 27 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.

 

Today's stadium is Oakland Coliseum in Oakland, CA home (for maybe just this last year?) to the Oakland Athletics.

 

This is not a brag or anything, but it's needed to make a larger point: I don't mind going out and doing things by myself. For a lot of people, that's difficult and they don't like it. Not me. I've gone to concerts, comedy shows, movies, dinners and baseball games alone. I would prefer company, but if people can't go, they can't go. It's fine.

 

Most of the things I go to, it's hard to talk to someone while you're doing/watching the thing. Baseball games (and dinners) are different. Live sporting events are designed to be communal and sometimes when you're by yourself, they can kinda drag a bit. It's a good time to meet people and talk to them, which is what I do.

 

All of that being said, the one time that I went to the Oakland Coliseum was one of the most depressing times I've ever spent at any ballpark. I was on a business trip in 2008 and the A's were bad. They were playing the Orioles who were also really bad. I took the BART to the Coliseum (it's gone through so many names, that I'm not sure what it was called) and got out of the train.

 

I walked to the park in this completely chain link fenced-enclosed walkway over the parking lot that seemed like a little bit of overkill. It was ominous, like I was going into a battle. Or a war zone. I bought my ticket from the ticket window and the person there seemed bored and completely uninterested--to be fair, she could have been having a bad day.

 

And then I went into the park. I have always been a big Oakland A's supporter, they're my second favorite AL team. I've always romanticized Oakland as this hip, cool place to live. The little brother of nearby San Francisco. The city with the can-do attitude. I wanted to love the Coliseum.

 

But friends, I did not love the Coliseum. I found my seat and for the entirety of the game, my entire section, not row, was completely empty. I wasn't in the upper bowl either, I was in the second bowl and there was no one remotely close to me.

 

So I got a beer and a dog and watched the A's play seven or eight uninspired innings again the Orioles who did the same thing. After about two innings, I began getting restless and started texting my friends. But it was a 7:00 pm start and most of my friends (except Stephen Brown! Good old Brownie!) were asleep. I stretched my legs, walked around the park a bit. Sat in some other seats.

 

Then I decided to go home. As I walked back on the walkway to the BART and under the enclosed chainlink fence I heard something. It was a white guy (this is an important detail) walking in the middle of the street, next to the BART tracks, screaming at the top of his lungs, "HEY (racial epithet) COME GET ME! COME GET ME!"

 

I jumped on the BART and got the hell out of there, though I often wonder what happened to that guy.

Drunk bigots aside, the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum was once one of the most beautiful stadia in the game. Yes, it was a multipurpose bowl like we talked about yesterday but there were some breath taking views of the surrounding areas. Until Al Davis moved the Raiders back from Los Angeles and demanded that they build more seats.

 

The city of Oakland agreed, built them in center field, destroyed the view, made the place look like shit and the Raiders eventually high tailed it for Las Vegas. This is a city where the Athletics want to go too. Owner Jack Fisher is a real asshole and has salted the grounds in Oakland and is doing a terrible, terrible job of selling the A's to the Vegas community, who wants nothing to do with them.

 

But I guess that's where they're going and it's a shame because Oakland can support the A's. They just took a stand in not supporting a fuckhead like Fisher and now they're getting the shaft.

 

Professional sports kinda sucks, you guys.

 

New thing I'm doing here: if I've seen only one game at the park I'm writing about, I'll link the retrosheet summary here: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2008/B05050OAK2008.htm

 

Huh. Looks like Frank Thomas played for the A's. Wild. Aside from the Big Hurt, no one from this game is going to Cooperstown without a ticket.

26.

 

We are 26 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.

 

Today's stadium is Shea Stadium in New York City (where they make all of that cheap ass salsa) the previous home of the New York Mets.

 

In the last three entries, the one thing that ties all of these low-rated ballparks is that they're dumpy. Low rent. Not taken care of. Places that were once grand palaces to sport, now reduced to afterthoughts.

Shea Stadium is no different. I've seen pictures of this place when it first opened up and it looked really bright and vibrant full of electric blues and shocking oranges mixing with the green grass of the playing field. It managed to encapsulate the technicolor vibe of that late 60s era.

 

With their young team on the precipice of a World Series, the Mets played as shiny as that brand new stadium. But like everything else, what once was new is now old. The stadium fell into disrepair. The blues faded. The oranges wilted. Even the green grass wasn't as bright.

 

Shea Stadium needed more than a paint job, it needed a complete resurrection. But Shea Stadium was never YANKEE STADIUM, the House that Ruth Built where a million World Series were won. Shea had the famous 1969 series, the less famous 1973 tilt against the A's, the infamous 1986 bullshit and the cross town series of 2000 that wasn't that exciting.

 

Also, the Jets played there and they were pretty garbage most of the time.

 

When I walked into Shea, I wasn't really blown away. It was like walking into your very elderly aunt's house, where you recognize that this place was once pretty nice but now it's old, musty and probably needs to be fumigated.

 

The Mets did so and now play at CitiField. The lesson today is sometimes just because something is old, doesn't mean it's worth saving.

 

I only went to Shea once and here is the box score: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2007/B08240NYN2007.htm

 

The Mets had a pretty good lineup! The Dodgers, not so much. No Hall of Famers, but Carlos Beltran has a shot.

My Favorite Teams 30-24

Back in March and April of this year I was counting up my favorite baseball teams on Facebook in anticipation of The Real National Hot Dog Day. I thought that it might be a good idea to keep them here for posterity. Here are the first group of teams along with the FB introductions. 

 

30. 

It's that time of the year everyone! The Real National Hot Dog Day will be here in a month! Get your collective asses ready.

 

We are 30 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Casey Kasem style, my favorite baseball teams.

 

We begin at the bottom with a surprising entry at number 30, the Tampa Bay Rays. You might think that I hate (and this is sports hate people, not the real thing) another team even more, but you're wrong. I hate everything about the Rays.

 

I hate:

- Their players. If a team could have 25 middle relievers, the Rays would do so. Everyone (except Wander) is bland as hell.

- Their front office.

- Their front office's philosophy.

- That they made the shift "cool".

- That they made openers "cool".

- Their hats. Have you ever seen anyone wearing a Rays hat? Ever?

- Their boring-ass uniforms.

- Their stupid logo. It looks like it's for a Chili's rip off bar anchoring a dead-ass strip mall where you get watered-down margaritas and microwaved jalapeno poppers.

- That they were bullied by Christian fundamentalists to remove the word "Devil" from their name because it was "Satanic". (True story!)

- Their park. Every game here is like watching paint dry. Though my friend Ryan Foley said it "wasn't too bad", which is a five-star ringing endorsement for this shit hole.

- The weird rules of their park. And dude, I love weird baseball. But fuck this place.

- Their lack of fans. Most of them are Yankee fans, let's be honest.

- How all of their fans constantly cry about getting to the park on game day. Like going to any of the other 29 stadia on game days are a breeze.

- How they're not in Montreal.

 

29.

The Evil Empire? Not any more, amigo. They're just another team.

We are 29 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Casey Kasem style, my favorite baseball teams.

 

It's a bit of a shock that this team wasn't number 30, but guess what, here's another thing that this team hasn't won. Coming in at 29 is the New York Yankees.

 

Truthfully, if this countdown was done 20 years ago, they'd be number 30 with a bullet. But one World Series since 2001 will cool the fires of hate (the embers are always there), plus there isn't as many current Yankee bad guys as many. There's no Reggie or Thurman or Billy or Nettles or Goose or Posada or Giambi or Sheffield or Jeter or O'Neil or Pettitte or Kevin Brown or Steinbrenner or Zimmer to really focus your hatred on.

 

I mean are you going to hate Aaron Judge? Or Giancarlo Stanton? Gerrit Cole seems like a douche, but I mean, so what. He's not that detestable, at least not yet. Brett Gardner was always a shithead, but he'd probably be a fourth outfielder on a really good Yankee, he's sort of like hating Ricky Ledee.

 

The reality is that the Yankees became what I wanted them to become the most: just another team.

While the rivalry of the early 00s was a lot of fun, it was also exhausting to listen Boston sportswriters breathlessly inform us that the latest Yankee signing was going to destroy the Sox (it rarely did) or how the guys in the Bronx have a super prospect on the rise (most of the time no). Now they're one of 30 and no special attention is needed.

 

They'll find their way to the playoffs every year, probably win a round (especially if the Twins or the A's are involved) and then get blown out by the Astros or even the Sox (when they decide it's worth it to be in contention).

 

To be honest, I can live with this new reality. I think that we all can.  

 

28. 

The Diamondbacks are just fine. Only 28 more days until the Real National Hot Dog Day!

 

 

 

We are 28 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Casey Kasem style, my favorite baseball teams. 

 

I don't hate too many baseball teams and I don't love too many baseball teams, but I'm indifferent to a lot of them. It's a sliding scale where I might root for a team one spot above the other, but that doesn't mean I like that team much better.

 

Beginning the league of indifference is the Arizona Diamondbacks. I don't dislike the D'backs, but if any subsequent teams played them in a postseason game, chances are I'd root for them. However, that could change if the D'backs get a transcendent player or if they employ someone who it would be cool if they won the World Series (like the Astros last year).

 

Otherwise they're an uninspiring team. They have a long ass name, so they have to put their nickname of their uniforms, which sorta bugs me for some reason. I should like their original colors of purple, teal and copper because it was a unique look but I don't. Having said that, I'm not wild about their red, black and tan colors either. Though their hat that has a snake shaped like a "D" is pretty inspired.

 

Aside from the 2001 World Series, they haven't been anything that really captured the sport's zeitgeist. Though to be fair, the 2001 Series was pretty god damn epic for a lot of reasons.

 

They just seem to exist in the desert and around to get their asses kicked by the western team du jour (mostly the Dodgers) and just play uninspired baseball. Back in the day, I'd write out an MLB season preview and I forgot to include Arizona one year. I think about that a bunch when I think of this team. 

 

The Diamondbacks are just there as ballast.

 

27. 

While you're waiting the 27 days until the Real National Hot Dog Day, why don't you check out what I have to say about the Rockies -- a team that may or may not exist. 

 

Also, if you don't follow The Real National Hot Dog Day, what are you doing with your life? Give it a follow and learn all about the bunny goodness that is TRNHDD. Your mouth will thank you for it!

 

 

We are 27 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Casey Kasem style, my favorite baseball teams. 

 

The past three times it has grown, baseball expanded in a pair of teams (which makes sense). Mariners and Blue Jays in 1977, Diamondbacks and Devil Rays in 1999 and wedged between those two expansions were the Marlins and Rockies in 1993.

 

What I felt that this meant is that you become a fan of either one of the other: I liked the M's, I eventually warmed up to the Jays. I thought a lot about liking the D-Backs, but as we saw with yesterday's post that didn't happen and I've always disliked the Rays.

 

I thought that I was really going to appreciate the Rockies, despite the fact that they ripped off the old Colorado NHL franchise's name. But there was a lot of history of baseball in the Mile High City, they were going to play in a place where a ton of homers were going to be hit and it was going to be fun.

It's been 30 years and aside from one World Series appearance against the Red Sox (where they were destroyed an ultimately lost on the exact day my eldest was born), the Rockies have been a pretty lame ass team.

 

The team's owner, Dick Monfort, sucks and consequently, the front office is pretty clueless. There always seems to be a rebuild going on, the team's philosophy changes on a whim and for such a beautiful ballpark (honestly, top five for me) there's not a lot of excitement there.

 

It's like their whole motto is, "We understand you need a team in Dever and we're that team!"

 

The Rox were fun in the 90s when they didn't have a humidor to squelch the number of homers hit in their park and they loaded the lineup with aging sluggers who mashed their way throughout the season. I guess they got sick of losing 11-10 every game, so they tried to find some pitchers, but that didn't work out but they also jettisoned their power threats and now they're just a team with some decent hitting and below average pitching.

 

I get that most GMs will say that "We want a balanced team mainly because we don't play all 162 games in Colorado." But is it entertaining? If you're a Rockie fan, wouldn't you much rather watch a bunch of steroid addled lumberjacks hit tape measure dingers and lose a little more than you win than watch what the Rockies have become now?

 

I know what I'd choose, but hey, the Rockies are my 27th favorite team and I don't really have a dog in this fight.

 

26.

A few words on the Texas Rangers.

 

 

We are 26 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Casey Kasem style, my favorite baseball teams. 

 

If Tuesday was a baseball team, it would be the Texas Rangers.

 

The Texas Rangers are just there. Even when they get superstars (and they've had their share over the years -- Ted Williams was the first Rangers manager ever), they never seem to grasp the spotlight.

Aside from Nolan Ryan, I suppose. But he retired 30 years ago. The Rangers have had some really good team chock full of really good players since then but they're somehow terrific and anonymous. I know that people say that teams like the Pirates or the Reds are baseball's version of Siberia, but it's Arlington, Texas.

 

If you're a Ranger, nothing you do seems to matter much.

 

This might be my own biases talking, but childhood is where you start putting stuff together and it leaves a mark that lasts a long time. Whenever I'd get a Texas Ranger in a pack of baseball cards, he always looked the same: longish hair under a washed out blue hat with a white "T", droopy mustache, kinda looked like a cowboy--but one that had been dragged by a horse for a few miles. The pics always showed a man that appeared to be hot and uncomfortable--no matter where the picture was taken--like he had been running sprints in the Texas heat for an hour before the photographer nabbed his shot.

 

And when I watched the Sox play games there it was always sunny, but it was that unbearable sunshine: too bright, too hot, it made you feel sluggish; like the last thing you wanted to do was hit a ball or throw it. Boston always wilted there, which might be the cause of my dislike, but by August, the Rangers would inevitably get worn down too. But by then it was football season and no one cared about the Rangers.

The idea that Rangers getting to back-to-back World Series will never not shock me. For my entire life, they were also rans, a group of players who were assembled to play pretty well in the spring, break down in the summer and limp off to obscurity in the fall.

 

I don't hate the Rangers, but even with their success, I kinda think that they're just nothing. 

 

25.

Know a Marlins fan? Neither do I.

 

Know a Real National Hot Dog Day fan? I'm sure you do. As we count down to TRNHDD, peruse this essay on baseball, fun and the elimination of fun told through the prism of the Miami Marlins.

  

We are 25 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Shadoe Stevens style, my favorite baseball teams. 

 

Every time the Miami Marlins do something interesting, they get cold feet and reverse course. Baseball is an exciting game, but unlike hockey or hoops, it's not a constantly exciting game. There's a lot of down time and during those periods, people at the stadium need to be entertained.

 

This is not a new, "stupid kids and their Tik Toks!", thing. The Lords of Baseball have known this since Cracker was introduced to Jack. It's why there are beer vendors in the stands and seventh inning stretches and exploding scoreboards and fly overs and kiss cams and grounds crews doing the YMCA. You are not less of a baseball fan if you want a little entertainment outside of the game.

 

When the Marlins put one over on the city and county that they play in and got them to pay for their new park, they added this loud, ostentatious statue that would move when one of the Marlins hit a home run. It was bright and colorful and reflected the most vibrant city in MLB--it was quintessential Miami--and it was beautiful.

 

So when the Marlins named the most boring milquetoast superstar to ever lace up his cleats as their team President, one of Derek Jeter's first actions was to take the statue down. Why? I'm sure he mumbled something about unwritten rules, playing the game the right way, this is a Major League franchise and about 100 other cliches. The bottom line is the statue was gone and now the stadium is as dull as the last 20 Marlins team.

 

Good work, Captain Jeter, the team is now as soulless and mundane as you.

 

In 1996 former owner Wayne Huizenga (and Blockbuster maven) was getting ready to sell the team but he wanted to go out a winner. He signed and traded for every really good baseball player, won the World Series and immediately had it dismantled. He sold the team to John Henry who baby sat the franchise for a few years until selling it to Jeffrey Loria--it was more complicated than this.

 

Loria won the World Series in 2003 and then also started to dismantle the team. And they've stayed dismantled since then. The one interesting thing about this malaise is that the Marlins were the only team to ever win the World Series every time they made the playoffs. What a weird stat, right?

 

Of course, a former Yankee had to help ruin that. In the Covid shortened season of 2020, just about everyone made the playoffs and that included Don Mattingly's Miami squad! They weren't very good and were bounced in the first round, so that's another weird wrinkle ironed out by a former New Yorker.

 

I guess this is just a long winded way of saying, the Marlins can be fun, but they're not going to be fun for too long. So whether it's a dope ass statue, a weird playoff streak, using teal as your primary color or your favorite Marlin, don't get used to it. It's probably on its way out the door very soon.

 

24.

Remember the Barbie Twins from the 90s? This post isn't about them.

#24 on the countdown: The Minnesota (not the Barbie) Twins.

 

   

We are 24 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Shadoe Stevens style, my favorite baseball teams. 

 

I definitely don't hate the Minnesota Twins. In fact, when they were one of the two teams that were going to be folded back in the early 00s (and how fucked up was that, seriously?), I was really bummed out that a team that had been around since 1901 was going to go away due to owner greed (it's always owner greed, forever and ever).

 

But at the same time, I don't think that I actually like the Twins. Back in the day, I was a big Kirby Puckett fan, like Kent Hrbek, Gary Gaetti, Jeff Reardon, Frank Viola, Bert Blylven. In subsequent years I liked watching Joe Mauer play, Johan Santana pitch, Torii Hunter and Byron Buxton (what an awesome first name) make amazing plays.

 

Even the idea of Minnesota having a baseball team way up in the northern part of the country is appealing to me. I am looking forward to visiting Target Field one day.

 

Having said all that, I don't think that I've ever actively rooted for Minnesota. In the 1987 World Series, I wanted the Cards to win. In the 1991 World Series, I wanted the Braves to win. I wasn't devastated that the Twins won, but I would have preferred it if the other walked off the field with the trophy*.

 

* Especially in 1991. I'm a big Hall of Fame guy, but I was never aboard the Jack Morris for the Hall of Fame train. I thought that Morris was fine and never really dominant. If Lonnie Smith didn't get deked out and scores, maybe the Braves win and Morris' Game 7 performance doesn't go down in history. IDK. All I know is that Morris owes a percentage of any revenue he gets from being a Hall of Famer to Smith, second baseman Chuck Knoblauch (for doing the faking) and Puckett for single-handedly getting Minnesota to Game 7 in the first place.

 

The only time that I really have rooted for the Twins (fun fact, since 1987 the Twins have had an underscore line on all of their home shirts so that it reads tWINs, also the logo [Minny and Paul] with this post rocks though, I love it) is when they play the Yankees. This is an absolutely Sisyphian chore as since 2002, the Twins are 39-111 (.243) against the Bombers.

 

That's insane to me. How bad is that? It's comical at this point. Why bother scheduling the Yankees at all?

 

Another thing that leads to my Minnesota malaise, the Twins also share Ft. Myers so the Red Sox play them a ton in Spring Training -- so much so that there is a Mayor's Cup where the winner of the Spring series gets to show off that they're the best in Ft. Myers. I have no idea who is leading, but it's a lot of Twins games in March.

Don Zimmer 1991 Topps

Sometime in June 2022 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

 

 

Not only has it been some time since I received any communication from the BCB, but this particular card was sent from Ireland! How about that?

Don Zimmer was a baseball lifer. He famously claimed that he never drew a paycheck from any profession that wasn't baseball related. He was a player (not really good), a manager (not really good), a coach (tough to quantify) and probably a scout (ditto). He spent a lot of time in the majors as a coach and manager and spent a ton of time in the minors as a player. To be fair, while he was a minor leaguer, he was property of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s. "The Boys of Summer" Dodgers. The team that seemingly had a Hall of Famer at practically every position and beginning in 1950 finished second, second, first, first, second, first (World Champs), first, third and then made tracks to Los Angeles. 

 

Maybe if Zimmer had been property of the Phillies, he'd have played more. 

 

Actually. Hold the phone. I'm double-checking his numbers right now. The funny thing is that the more I look at his numbers, he's not really that bad. He made the All-Star team in 1960, he appeared in two World Series and won rings in both postseasons. He had a 12-year Major League career and that's not too shabby. I guess my view of his career was colored by how much he was despised by the Boston players and media when he managed the Red Sox--more on that in a minute. 

There's a lot of stories about Zimmer, some of them have a kernel of truth to them. He was plugged in the head when he was a minor leaguer. The beaning was so bad that he was in coma for close to two weeks. When he was with the Dodgers a few seasons later, he was hit in the face by a fastball and broke his cheek and had a detached retina. The stories that circulated about Zimmer was that it was because of these horrific injuries that he had a metal plate in his head. 

 

He did not. But the thing about Zimmer was that he seemed dim-witted enough that maybe the metal plate was the cause for his slow thinking. 

While in the minors Zimmer got married to his high-school sweetheart during the break between a double header. I'm not sure what his wife Soot (real name Carol Jean Bauerle) thought of that idea, but apparently she couldn't care less because they were together for over 70 years. Imagine loving your job that much that you'd get married at your office? "Yeah honey, I got a sweet deal where we can have the break room for practically nothing during the lunch break. It'll be awesome!"

And that was thing about Zimmer; he seemingly loved baseball more than he loved anything else. And I suppose this is where I'd say that if I were a baseball player, I'd be the same way. Maybe if I was 13-years-old, I might have said that but as an adult; that seems more than a little pathetic. I mean, it's a great that a person loves what he does; but there has to be boundaries, right? Balances? Counterbalances?

Ted Williams loved baseball but the guy could also fly a plane and was a world-class fisherman. Babe Ruth was obsessed with baseball, but he also loved to drink and whore around. I think you need outside interests. Don Zimmer seemed to have one setting: baseball. Even in the winter, when players like Zimmer had to work at auto dealerships or other part-time jobs to make ends meet, he was in the Caribbean either playing or managing in the winter leagues.

 

After he couldn't play anymore, he moved into the coaching ranks hopscotching all over North America in the minors before getting experience in the Majors. That experience paid off when he was named San Diego's newest manager in 1972. But he didn't do so great, going 114-190 with the Padres before getting the axe. 

 

He took over a crazy talented Red Sox team in the second half of 1976 before ripping off win totals of 97, 99, 91 and 82 in four successive seasons in Boston. But that 99-win team is where he gets a lot of shit (and deservedly so). That was the year that Bucky Fucking Dent became an acceptable name for children to say in front of their parents. It was 1978 and the Sox still hadn't won a World Series in 60 years, but this team seemed special. 

They had hitting, they had pitching, good defense, a strong bullpen and they were stomping the crap out of everyone. But as the juggernaut grew, Zimmer couldn't seem to handle it. He fought constantly with a handful of players (Bill Lee, Hall of Famer Fergie Jenkins, Bernie Carbo and more--they called themselves the Buffalo Head Society) and to show them who was boss, he either got players traded or buried them on the bench. The crux of this fight (as I understand it) was the Zimmer was a conservative old shit head and these guys were more progressive (Zimmer probably called them hippies) and they clashed. 

But Zimmer was stubborn and despite needing these players, he'd play other guys who weren't as good just to spite them. That stubbornness bit him in the ass because throughout most of the summer the Sox were cruising, but then started to get tired and then hurt and then started to lose games. The Yankees got healthy and then hot and a once insurmountable 14-game lead turned to crap by the beginning of September and the Sox had to play out of their minds to force a one-game playoff between themselves and New York. 

The Yanks won on a pop fly home run by diminutive shortstop Bucky Dent and the Sox were sent into winter with this awful defeat hanging around their necks like a millstone. Aside from not playing men that he didn't like, Zimmer would not give his regulars days off. Third baseman Butch Hobson made 43 errors that year. 43! Mainly because he was rearranging elbow chips between pitches. But Zimmer wouldn't replace him so that Butch could heal up. He just wore players out. The only regular who played less than 145 games was George Scott at 120. Catcher Carlton Fisk played 157! The team should have collectively sued him for medical malpractice that year. It was criminal the amount of time these guys were on the field. 

 

And as the lead started to chip away and the noose tightened, ZImmer got more and more paranoid. He fought with the media daily. They turned him into a cartoon--his nickname was the Gerbil, which he did not like. 

 

Zimmer lasted another two seasons with the Sox before getting fired--which to be honest, is two more seasons that I would have given him. That collapse was an absolute disaster and the majority of the blame is Zimmer's. He royally screwed that entire season up. 

 

The Rangers kept him around for two seasons where he went 95-106 and then at the end of the 80s he joined the Cubs where he went 265-258 over four seasons, bringing his 13 year managerial total to 885-858 with a 1-4 postseason record. Despite being about 30 games over .500, he really wasn't that great of a manager. 

 

After he got the message that he wasn't a manager anymore, he bounced around as a the "wise" bench coach. He came back to Boston for a season when Butch Hobson began his disastrous two-year managerial tour. Then he joined Don Baylor in Colorado for their inaugural season. He got pissed at Baylor when he felt as if he listening more to Art Howe than him and so he quit in the middle of a game. Then new Yankees manager Joe Torre brought him to New York and he hung around there for a bunch of seasons where he was part good luck Buddha and racing pal to Torre. The one thing that Zimmer liked almost as much as baseball was the horses and dogs. 

 

During this tour in NY, the Sox and the Yanks were bitter enemies. This erupted in 2003 ALCS when after a series of brushbacks and beanballs, the benches emptied. It was the typical macho baseball posturing of yelling, being held back and pushing. Until Zimmer went fucking apeshit and started charging Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez. It was almost a Three Stooges skit as a 60+-year-old Zimmer charged the Boston God with his head down, I guess he thought that he was going to tackle him, and Pedro sidestepped the old man and pushed him to the ground. 

New York fans wanted Pedro dead ("HOW DARE HE DO THAT TO AN OLD MAN!") but Boston fans philosophized that Zimmer didn't know how to handle Boston pitchers when he managed here and he still couldn't. To his credit, Zimmer was completely embarrassed and in a next-day press conference apologized and cried. After his tenure in the Bronx ended, Zimmer took his final job in Tampa Bay with new skipper Lou Pinella. I guess the Rays loved him because they retired his number 66 when he finally retired from baseball--eight decades after getting into the sport. 

I don't know what it is about baseball, but there always seems to be a Don Zimmer type in the game at all times. It must be strange to be the lovable grandfatherly mascot in a hyper competitive field. Zimmer had a pretty full baseball life and touched a lot of eras. He knew a lot.

But he still couldn't manage a team worth a shit.