Baseball Road Trip Part III: Seattle and Arizona

After knocking off all of California, I was now one-sixth done with my entire trip and the summer hadn’t even started. I was still looking for ways to visit some of the West Coast teams before the end of the school year and when my aunt and uncle offered to buy me a plane ticket to Seattle for my birthday, I jumped at it. Andy was unavailable again and he said he didn’t mind not going, so on Saturday May 21, 2005 I boarded a Southwest flight in Reno and was on my way to Seattle.

 
Before I left, I got in touch with a family that had lived next door to mine for much of the time that I was in elementary school. Our families had been very close and I had only seen them once since they had moved to Seattle about 10 years earlier. When I arrived at the airport I was met by the mother, Tammy, and we got caught up over lunch. We went to their house and I got caught up with her husband, Danny. After hanging out for a little while, Danny and I headed into Seattle to see some tourist attractions and to see his daughter before the game that night. On our way in to the city, we went over a couple of bridges that were actually floating on the water. Being a native of Nevada, a completely landlocked and nearly dry state, I had never seen anything like it. Later on in my trip however, I would encounter several other causeways in not such pristine conditions. We went over to their daughter’s apartment and I got caught up with her before we headed over to the Locks. The only way to describe the Locks is as a miniature Panama Canal. There is such a big difference in water levels between the ocean and the river that the boats dock in, that it is necessary to have a compartment that can float the boats up and down all day long. It doesn’t sound very exciting on paper, but it was something to see. After we left the Locks, we went over to Pike Place Market where they have a huge outdoor fish market. If you’ve ever seen a picture of a bunch of guys throwing gutted fish around, it was most likely taken right here. These guys were insane. Not only was it cold outside but all the fish were packed in ice, and they would hurl these huge fish at each other with hardly any warning. I’m surprised more of them don’t suffer from fish related brain damage.
 
It had been sprinkling nearly all day and continued to do so as we arrived at the stadium. We were looking for a parking spot when we saw a woman who was either just pulling in or getting ready to pull out. We realized that she was pulling out, but we had to wait five or ten minutes for her to put her makeup on before her car got rolling. It was the closest free spot available near the stadium. Directly across the street from where we parked was the team parking garage where they were charging $25 per car. I couldn’t help but feel a little bit happy because we had just stuck it to the man. As we approached the stadium we noticed that the roof was closed due to the sprinkling that had been going on all day. However, the roof here at Safeco Field is unlike the roof at any other stadium in baseball. It’s not so much a roof as it is an umbrella. Even when closed the ballpark remains open-aired. There is no wall or blockage in the outfield and you can still see clearly out of it. This also meant that the inside of the stadium wasn’t climate controlled like at other stadiums with roofs. We went into the stadium and checked out where our seats were at. Danny had ordered the tickets before the game and they were awesome. We were about 25 rows back of first base looking directly out over it towards second. We headed over to the café that overlooked right field and had some dinner before the start of the game.
 
When we got back to our seats we were freezing. Because the roof doesn’t form a seal and there is no vent system, it was absolutely frigid. This was the only game that I went to that was played under a roof where you could see your breath. Once everyone got seated though, it started to warm up. By the time the game got underway it was actually pretty comfortable. This was the first inter-league game that I’d ever been to. Brian Lawrence was pitching for the Padres but he wasn’t anywhere near as good as he had been the night that I saw him at Petco Park. He gave up 3 runs in the bottom of the first and before his night was over he would give up two more. The Padres made it a game in the top of the second when they put up two of their own, but they never retied the ballgame. In the third inning Ichiro Suzuki made a grab that was absolutely amazing. He climbed up the wall and then somehow made a backhanded stab at a fly ball that would have otherwise been a homerun. The place went nuts.
 
In the sixth inning Seattle’s third baseman Adrian Beltre led off. With a couple of pitches already thrown he drilled a ball deep into the left field bleachers. It was a no-doubter as soon as he made contact. The next hitter up was first baseman Richie Sexson. On the first pitch that he saw he hit another no-doubter to deep centerfield. Only on TV have I ever seen back to back homeruns, but to come on consecutive pitches was amazing. The stadium had just started to sit back down again when Sexson hit his. The rest of the game passed without much excitement on the field but we had little bit in the stands. Sometime in the latter half of the game Danny decided that he wanted some peanuts. Here at Safeco they sell the Hot Roasted Peanuts and the guy who was selling them is known for his quick releases and good arm. As soon as Danny raised his hand indicating that he wanted a bag, the guy threw a behind the back pass that caught everyone including Danny off guard. As the peanuts flew toward him, his hand was already on the way down. By the time he had the chance to react, it was too late. The bag of peanuts had grazed his fingers and landed one row behind us. The peanut guy took mercy though and chucked another one but not quite as hard. Danny caught this one and I have to say, that I really enjoyed the hot roasted peanuts. I’d never had hot peanuts before but they really hit the spot in the cold ballpark. The rest of the game was pretty generic. The Padres scored one more but didn’t threaten again and the Mariners held on for the 5-3 victory.
 
We left the stadium and went back to the Wyatt’s house. We watched some movies and I fell asleep. Their son came home from his prom and invited me to go out bowling with him and some of his friends but I declined because I was too tired. I woke up the next morning and after fixing some breakfast, Tammy and Danny took me back to the airport. It was a very short trip, but I really enjoyed it. Safeco was definitely worth the plane ticket.
 
The next ballpark that was on my schedule was Arizona’s Bank One Ballpark. I also had a mandatory advising session at the University of Nevada Las Vegas which was on the way so I could kill two birds with one stone. By this time, Andy had a hernia that required surgery and sidelined him for a few weeks. There was only one weekend left that would allow both of us to go to Arizona; but unfortunately, it was the weekend right after his surgery, so he was once again left out. On Thursday, May 28th Daniel and I started driving towards Las Vegas and eventually Phoenix. We would miss a day of school that Friday, but neither of us really cared and we called it our Senior Ditch Day. We made it about 3 hours after I got off of work and stopped in a campsite at Walker Lake around 9:00. We found a campsite and started looking for how we were supposed to pay. According to the sign at the main entrance, there was a pay-box somewhere around our site. We looked for about 15 or 20 minutes but didn’t find anything. We decided we wanted to go down and see the water at this desert lake and we found a pay-box along our way. However, there were no envelopes, so we had no way of identifying which campsite we would be paying for so we gave up. The water was disgusting as it is in many landlocked desert lakes, and we almost got mauled to death by the bugs. We retreated back to the tent as quick as we could and went to bed.
 
We woke up that morning and took our time getting packed up. We killed a scorpion after we saw it crawl out from under our tent and got on the road. When we got to Vegas, we were both dying from the heat so we got out and stopped at an In ‘N Out Burger. For those of you who live on the East Coast and have never experienced an In ‘N Out, you’ve been missing out. There’s nothing quite as tasty as one of their double meat and double cheese burgers with a homemade milkshake. We were still about 3 hours too early for my advising session, but I got us lost by chasing down a bogus address. We called the advising office and asked for directions, but they weren’t very helpful. I didn’t realize that the building that I needed to go to was in the middle of the campus and that there were no roads that serviced it. We found a neighborhood that looked safe to park in and walked over to the building. We were two hours early and the receptionist let me know it with a sneer. I asked if there was anyway that I could get in early because I really wanted to get back on the road and she said she would see what she could do. Luckily, the academic adviser was much nicer than the front desk help and she got me in almost immediately. After a bunch of BSing and being told what I already knew, we were back on the road in about 45 minutes. It was hot as a mother in Vegas and it was only getting warmer.
 
Before I left for my road trip, my mom had been helping me find places to stay along the road. I don’t have a very big extended family so I really needed some outside help if I didn’t want to shell out for a motel every night. Fortunately, my mom works at the Washoe County District Attorney’s office and she is friends with Penny Rasmussen who handles the extraditions for the county. What this meant for me was that she had contacts in police departments and sheriff offices around the country. I stayed with the first of these contacts when I went to Phoenix. Hank Brandimarte is a sheriff’s deputy in the Phoenix area and he hooked us up when we visited. I had been in contact with him for a couple of weeks before I left and he instructed me to give him a call when I was in town. We got off the freeway when we felt that we had gone a pretty good distance into Phoenix and gave him a call. He gave me an intersection to drive towards and to call him when we were parked somewhere near that. After another 20 minutes I was back on the phone with him and he told us that he would meet us there in 10 or 15 minutes. When he got there he told us that he had set us up in a hotel in the area because his house was too small for us to stay with him. He took us over there and gave us a quick description of the entertainment that was around us and said he would pick us up the next afternoon to go to the game. We went up to the room and got settled in when we decided that we were hungry. There was a Taco Bell/Pizza Hut in the parking lot right outside so we went over there to get some food. We opened the door only to have it immediately shut in our faces and told that the dining room was closed. We walked back across the parking lot and grabbed my car so that we could go through the drive thru. We got our food and sat in the parking lot while we ate. As we sat there we saw several groups of people walk in the doors and get served inside. After we got over the idea that we had just been shafted, we headed over to the movie theaters that were closest to see if we could get tickets for the new Star Wars movie. As we were walking across the parking lot, we were stopped by a couple of security guards who asked us what we were doing. After explaining, they offered us a ride so we hopped in and went to the ticket office. The closer we got to the front doors though, the more we realized that we were the oldest people here. We were being swallowed in a sea of middle-schoolers (which immediately made me remember why I don’t go to movies on Friday nights.) When we got to the ticket booth we were told that this theater wasn’t showing Star Wars. We decided to just call it a night and head back to the hotel and watch some TV. We turned on the Diamondbacks game only to see what looked like a huge dust-devil swirling around inside the stadium. It was in the 7th and they were closing the roof to try to get things under control. The roof took about five minutes to close up and as soon as the last panel in the outfield slid shut, everything went back to normal. The Diamondbacks lost the game and we went to sleep.
 
The next morning I woke up early to hopefully be able to catch the Yankees and Red Sox game on FOX. For some reason however, the game wasn’t being broadcast so we decided to go check out some of the stuff around us before Hank picked us up for the game. We went over to the Spring Training home of the Mariners and the Padres. The fields looked like really nice High School fields and almost everything was closed. One field was in use though for some sort of PONY League game or something and we got to see what the inside of the “stadium” looked like.
 
After we got done looking around the complex we still had a lot of time to kill. Hank had told us about another set of movie theaters that were in the area so we headed over there and watched Star Wars: Episode III. The movie theater was a lot nicer than anything we have in Reno and the movie was pretty good too. But this isn’t a movie review article, so back to the road trip. After the movie was over we went back to the hotel where Hank and his oldest son picked us up to go to the game. On our way to BOB we got to see the new football stadium that’s being built for the Arizona Cardinals. It’s a pretty impressive building and the turf will actually be able to slide in and out of the stadium on a huge tray. The reason they’re doing that is because in a roofed stadium, it’s difficult to get even sunlight to all parts of the stadium. They have a lot of problems with the grass dying in Bank One Ballpark because of that so they decided to build a huge sliding tray for the grass.
 
We parked in the bottom of the sheriff’s office and walked the couple of blocks to the stadium. Mr. Brandimarte already had tickets so we went right in. At this point the roof was still shut so that it was possible to pump enough A/C into the stadium to keep it cool for most of the game. Daniel and I went and grabbed some home-made sausages from one of the food stands and headed back to the seats to watch the rest of batting practice. The sheriffs in Phoenix provide security for the ballpark and Hank’s wife is also a sheriff’s deputy. She was on duty that night in the ballpark and introduced us to her supervisor who was going to take us on a tour of the stadium. We headed off to check out the tunnel that serviced the stadium. We headed out to the visitor’s bullpen and I was standing about ten feet away from the Dodger’s relievers. I’d never been that close to actual MLB players before and unfortunately, I wouldn’t get any closer that summer. After we checked out the bullpen we walked through the tunnel back towards the clubhouses (which we unfortunately weren’t allowed to go into), when the Diamondback’s mascot approached us on his juiced up golf cart. He got out and gave a high five to Hank’s son and then proceeded to mess with Daniel a little bit. I thought it was hilarious, he didn’t find it anywhere quite as funny. After we were done touring we headed back to our seats and watched one of the strangest games of my life.
 
The Diamondbacks scored one in the home half of the first and both teams put up one each in the second. There wasn’t much excitement until in the top of the 6th the Dodgers broke through for three runs, including a two-run homer by JD Drew. Javier Vazquez, the Diamondbacks pitcher, worked through it though and came back the next inning to shut down the Dodgers again. In the bottom of the 7th is when things started going crazy. The first hitter of the inning was Luis Terrero who hit a high chopper over the pitchers mound. Well, it would have been over the pitchers mound if it hadn’t had met with a little interference along the way. The pitcher for the Dodgers, Duaner Sanchez, took off his glove and threw it at the ball. I can’t tell you how many times I’d seen the exact same thing attempted when I played for my High School Junior Varsity team, only to have nothing happen. Sanchez, however, apparently has much better aim than anyone I ever played with as his glove hit the ball a good ten feet over his head. Both the glove and the ball fell to the ground and Terrero made it safely to first. Due to the interference however, Terrero was awarded a triple and headed over to third base. Terrero ended up scoring on a groundout and then Javier Vazquez came up to the plate for Arizona. On the second pitch of the at-bat Vazquez swung and sent the ball into the left field bleachers. I’d never seen a pitcher hit a home run in person before, and since this one tied the game, the stadium was going absolutely insane. Even when the next batter came to the plate, everyone was still on their feet, prompting Vazquez to come out for a curtain call. At this point, the game was really starting to get exciting and it wasn’t done with yet.
 
In the top of the 8th the Diamondbacks put in a new pitcher. This meant that Vazquez had been left in the game to hit for himself. Normally a pinch hitter would come in to try to get something started, but according to an interview I saw with Arizona’s manager after the game, he had intended to leave Vazquez in to pitch another inning but after he homered to get himself off the hook for the loss, he chose to replace him. The eighth inning went by with no more excitement on the field but off the field was another story. I don’t care how old you are or how lame it might sound on paper, but when something the size of the roof on a stadium starts moving, you have to look. The dust had started back up just like the night before and it was necessary to close the roof again. It takes about five minutes for the two panels to slide together and the entire stadium was awestruck watching it happen.
 
The top of the ninth went by with the Dodgers going down pretty easily. The Diamondbacks were facing Dodgers reliever Giovanni Carrara in the bottom of the ninth and they created the most interesting end game that I’d ever seen. Tony Clark led off the inning with a double off the wall and was followed by Shawn Green who received an intentional walk. The next batter up was Luis Terrero who again would be at the center of attention. Terrero attempted a sacrifice bunt that was fielded and thrown to first where Dodgers Jeff Kent appeared to drop the throw. The Dodgers argued that the ball had actually hit Terrero though and that he should be out. The umpires disagreed and after several minutes of arguing, the game was back underway. With the bases loaded, Kelley Stinnett, who had been recalled by the Diamondbacks earlier in the day, came up to the plate. By this time everyone in the ballpark was on their feet in anticipation of the walkoff hit. That was the ending that everyone had in mind, but not the one that we would get. On a total of five pitches Carrara walked Stinnett to end the game. I’d already seen a walkoff homerun and now I had a walkoff walk to go with it. During that last at-bat it was pretty obvious that Carrara was not happy with the calls that he was getting (or not getting, depending on how you look at it.) After the ump called ball four Carrara was all over him and followed him off the field screaming the whole way. After the stadium started clearing out a little bit we took some pictures and then Hank dropped us off back at our hotel.
 
When we woke up the next morning we went down to the dining room and had some of the complimentary breakfast. The dining room was already overcrowded though so we took our waffles outside and ate them in the parking lot. It was only 8:30 but it was already in the mid to low 80’s. We started the drive back and stopped for gas in Vegas. We stopped once more for gas in Schurz, Nevada where we also bought some fireworks. Fireworks are illegal in Washoe County and this is the closest place that you can get them. We made it back to Reno after a total of about 10 or 11 hours on the road. This was the last trip I would take before school got out. The next article will cover the beginning of my trip to the other 23.

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