2005 Baseball Road Trip Part X
Baltimore, New York and Chicago

On July 25, in Alexandria, I slept in and got some extra sleep. After taking my time to wake up completely, I headed towards Baltimore. The air conditioner in my car was getting noticeably weaker, and by the time that I parked at 2:00, it was completely worthless. The timing of my A/C’s death couldn’t have been any worse; at game time, the temperature was still 97 degrees with an insane amount of humidity. To make things even worse, I would soon be heading towards the Midwest, which was in the midst of a record-setting heat wave.

Since I had arrived in Baltimore five hours before the game started, I decided to walk around the neighborhood around the ballpark looking for a scalper. Camden Yards was one of the parks that we had bought tickets for before we left, and now that Andy was no longer with me, I figured I may as well try to get some food money for his ticket. I only saw one scalper outside of the stadium and he told me to take my ticket and get lost. I kept wandering around the stadium hoping that another scalper would jump out of the woodwork and was surprised when one actually did appear. Unfortunately, it was the previous scalpers’ assistant who told me to go talk with his boss. I told him what had happened earlier and he said that he would help me out. First he wanted me to give him the ticket for free, but I told him that I couldn’t do that and he agreed to give me a hand for a portion of the final fee. The guy’s name was Rudy and he was actually pretty nice for a scalper. (Technically he wasn’t a scalper, just a scalper’s assistant, but I couldn’t be sure since he didn’t exactly have a business card.) Rudy told me that he had to help his friend until he had sold his tickets, but advised me to advertise the ticket in some of the bars in the area.

There were a couple of reasons that I continued to walk around the stadium instead of going into the bars. Number one, I’m underage and would probably get tossed out immediately. Second of all, there was a pretty good police presence around the stadium to go along with signs stating that scalping was illegal; I really didn’t want to miss the game while sitting in a Baltimore holding cell. The third and final reason was that the police ran a little area called a “Scalper Box” that was going to open at any minute. The Scalper Box is a legal means for people to resell their tickets; I thought it sounded like my best bet. As soon as the Scalper Box opened I lined up to head inside. On my way in, I signed in along with information regarding the tickets: how many I had to sell, it’s face value, it’s location, and my asking price. The Scalper Box reminded me of an outdoor jail cell with its police guards and wrought-iron bars. After standing around for a few minutes, Rudy joined me inside with a handful of tickets that his boss had sent him in with. He asked me how I had done so far and if anyone had inquired about my ticket yet. Apparently, while he was working for his boss in the bars across the street, he was also trying to move my ticket and found a potential buyer. I told him that I hadn’t seen the guy and he suggested that he might find me in the Scalper Box. The whole time that Rudy was talking to me, his boss was standing outside glaring in at me. I knew he was mad that his assistant was helping me out, but I didn’t really care at that point; I just wanted to get rid of the ticket.

Rudy moved all four of his tickets pretty quickly. He then told me that he would go back to the bars to get me a customer. Sure enough, about a half hour later, a guy came over looking specifically for me. The police officers and ballpark employees were very friendly and apparently found it funny that I was standing in the Box with guys who looked like common criminals. When I finally got a customer they all jokingly cheered. The guy agreed to pay the ticket’s face value of fifteen dollars. He pulled out a twenty, but when I looked in my wallet I realized I only had four one dollar bills. I asked if he had anything smaller, but he said that sixteen was fine and gladly took the ticket. I planned on getting some change from a street vendor so that I could give the guy his dollar back when I saw him in the stadium. Unfortunately, he decided not to sit in his seat so I was unable to pay him back. After selling the ticket, I started looking around for Rudy so that I could give him five dollars for his help. I figured he would be hanging around right outside the box, but he was nowhere to be found. I walked around for twenty minutes, or so, looking for him, but I didn’t have any luck.

Baltimore has a pretty good selection of street vendors and I bought an Italian Sausage from one of them before going into the ballpark. I watched a little bit of batting practice from my seat, but I mostly tried to sit and stay cool. 97 degrees isn’t all that hot in Nevada, but we have absolutely no humidity. In Baltimore, 97 degrees, combined with the humidity, makes it feel much hotter than it actually is.

Daniel Cabrera was throwing for the Orioles and he consistently hit 99 on the radar gun. Javy Lopez had just come off of the DL and got a nice ovation from the home crowd. When I saw him joking around with some fans near the bullpens before the game, it became obvious why he has always been a fan favorite. Another player got an even larger ovation than Lopez however, and I am now ashamed I took part in that celebration.

This was the first game home for the Orioles after a long West Coast swing on which Rafael Palmeiro reached the 3,000 hit milestone. At the time, it appeared that the home town was simply cheering a future Hall-Of-Famer who had reached a rather impressive career number. When he was announced in the starting lineup, he got a loud ovation and the ballpark went absolutely nuts when he came up for his first at-bat. The Orioles even gave Palmeiro’s hit total the same treatment on the warehouse behind right-field as Cal Ripken Jr.’s consecutive games played streak. What most disappointed me later was that Palmeiro was already aware of his positive drug test, yet showed no remorse at any time. Even later on, when the dust had started to settle, he continued to make excuses and blame his teammates rather than take responsibility for what had happened.

Once the game got underway, a couple of guys with their girlfriends came and sat in the seats to my right. At first, I didn’t think anything about it, but when I overheard them talking about a road trip that they were currently doing, I jumped right in. I started to tell them that I was on a road trip to all thirty stadiums and they immediately wanted every detail. We compared our experiences in various stadiums and I gave them some tips for the California baseball trip they had planned for the 2006 season. Their current road trip was a short one; they went to Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., and ended in Baltimore. We ended up talking throughout the entire game and they even offered me a beer. (Don’t worry, I declined. I was underage and had to drive that night.) The only downside was that they were Red Sox fans, but we didn’t talk at all about the rivalry. In fact, the only time the Sox were mentioned was when they asked for my opinion of Fenway.

With all of the road trip conversation, the game seemed to fly by. The game was pretty good and, in the ninth, the Orioles had a shot to win. There was a runner on first base, one out, and Orioles shortstop Miguel Tejada was in the batters box. It was the ideal situation for an Orioles comeback, but it came to a screeching halt when Tejada grounded into a game-ending double play. I said goodbye to my fellow road-trippers and drove back to Alexandria to spend the night at the Johansen’s one last time.

On July 26, I woke up and said goodbye to John and Kirsten. They sent me on my way with more food, soda, and water. I got into Newark, New Jersey, and went back to the same hotel that my dad had previously housed us at. I spent a little bit of time relaxing there before heading into New York City. I arrived in Yankee Town three hours before game time and checked out the shops around the stadium. I picked up a couple of anti-Red Sox shirts for my dad and myself before entering the stadium.

Almost as soon as I sat down into my seat, I realized that I had screwed up big time when I bought tickets. I had wanted to buy tickets in the right field bleachers where cheers such as Role Call and “Red Sox suck” originate from. Somehow, I had instead bought tickets in the left field bleachers which are designated as the family section of the stadium. There were no beer sales at all in left field and the fans were much calmer than those in the right field bleachers. I also still have no idea how it happened, but somehow, the seat next to mine that was supposed to belong to Andy, was filled by some guy who actually had the ticket for it. I couldn’t figure out what the deal was since I had both mine and Andy’s ticket in my pocket, but later on, I would see his ticket, which was printed for the same seat, eliminating the possibility that he was a seat hopper looking for a better view.

The game was fantastic; Randy Johnson dominated the Twins taking a no-hitter into the sixth inning. He left after eight having racked up eleven strikeouts while surrendering just two hits. Sometime during the game, the Twins made a pitching change before Hideki Matsui came up the plate and during the break in the action, the jumbotron flashed up images of all of the Matsui fans who had made signs. I was sitting just two rows in front of a group of four people who had flown all the way from Tokyo just to watch Matsui play a game in Yankee Stadium. They brought signs with them, written in Japanese, and were put on the video screen. The first time, I was surprised to see that I was visible on the jumbotron. The second time they were flashed on the screen, I was ready. I had brought along one of my old license plates, which read “RDSOXSK”, and held it up for everyone to see. I’m not sure whether or not it was readable on the screen, but the people around me seemed to appreciate them.

I had been to Yankee Stadium twice before, but this was the first time that the Yanks had won while I was in attendance. That meant that at the end of the game, I finally got to sing along to the authentic version of “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra. Even when the Yankees lose, they play “New York, New York”, but it’s some sort of knockoff version that no one wants to sing along with.

After the game, I also had the uncomfortable task of asking for somebody’s ticket stub. I had bought my tickets before leaving Reno and printed them out on the computer, but I wanted an actual stub for my souvenir collection. I asked the guy next to me first, and he told me that he was keeping it since it was his first time at the stadium. The guys sitting in front of me told me the same thing so I was forced to ask people several rows back. I finally scored after asking a lady who was at the stadium with her elderly mother. She gave me her mother’s ticket and I couldn’t thank her enough. She thought that my road trip sounded cool and was glad to help me out. After finally securing my souvenir, I headed outside where I had my picture taken, license plate in hand, in front of the stadium. After the picture had been taken, everyone around wanted to know if the plate was real. After I confirmed that it was, in fact, real, they howled with laughter. I hopped back on the subway and went to bed around 12:30.

Little did I know, upon waking up the next morning at 6:45, that I would be making the longest drive of my trip that night, spending the night halfway across the country a day earlier than I had planned. I took a shower and ate some free breakfast from the hotel before getting on the road at 8:00. As soon as I got onto the Turnpike, I was caught in a New Jersey traffic jam. That day, however, I still managed to drive all the way across New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and part of Illinois, paying fifteen dollars in tolls along the way. Sometime during the day, I called home to check in and let my family know where I was planning on staying. Luckily, my Aunt works with a lady whose sister lives in Chicago. She put in a phone call for me and ended up acquiring the name of her sister’s boyfriend who lived fairly close to Wrigley Field. She said he was willing to let me stay with him; I was in contact with Greg Heilman throughout the day, helping me figure out the best path to his house.

When I got off the highway in Indiana to fill up for gas, I decided to stop at the Burger King inside the service station to use some coupons for something free to eat. I waited in line at the counter, placed my order and was told that my coupons were no good at that particular restaurant. I walked out without buying anything and headed back to my car. I was hungry, but I figured I’d just snack on something in my car instead of getting fast food. As I was walking back to my car, I was chased down by a guy who had been behind me in line who asked if I needed money for food. I was surprised that he would even ask, and after explaining what had happened I thanked him anyway before hopping back into my car. I made pretty good time the rest of the way before ending my drive by getting caught in a traffic jam in Chicago. It was fitting that 14 hours after starting my drive in New Jersey in a traffic jam that it wound end in one in Chicago. Greg Heilman welcomed me into his house and I went to bed almost right away.

I woke up on the morning of July 28 and called a buddy of mine from Nevada who happened to be in Chicago. (You might remember Daniel from the first few articles.) Well, he was in Chicago meeting some internet girlfriend that he had been talking to for the past five years. Oddly enough, he had been kicked out for a few days while she had her wisdom teeth pulled. The whole thing was really weird and I could dedicate an entire article to all the weirdness. I didn’t really care why he was there though, I was just happy that I would be meeting up with someone from home to accompany me to a few games. Greg gave me directions to get Daniel onto a train that would bring him into Chicago (he was actually staying in a suburb of Chicago) and I called him with those directions. I don’t know why, but for some reason the girl that he was staying with made him late. He had missed several trains already and wasn’t even packed by the fourth or fifth time I called him. I talked to Greg and he said that I was going to miss out on all of the pre-game craziness outside of Wrigley if I didn’t leave soon. Since Daniel was nowhere close to getting into Chicago, I decided to walk over to the stadium and do some sightseeing before the game started. Wrigleyville is a pretty cool neighborhood and everyone there is involved with the team in one way or another. I grabbed some coffee from Starbucks and took in the whole scene for awhile. There were people lining up outside the gates five hours before game time and three hours before the gates opened; I hadn’t seen that sort of dedication in any city.

Daniel called me and told me that he had finally made it onto a train. According to the schedule, he would be at the station where we were supposed to meet in about half an hour. I walked back to Greg’s house and waited for him to call me. About forty-five minutes later, Daniel called and said that he had gotten mixed up when he was supposed to change trains and was now lost. Greg once again helped me give him directions to get headed the right way and I met him at the station about ten minutes before game time. I already didn’t like his internet girlfriend because she was making him late for the game, and I wouldn’t grow any fonder of her over the next several days.

We dropped off Daniel’s stuff at Greg’s house and hustled to Wrigley. We made it inside just in time to see the first pitch. Our seats were in the upper deck looking out over home plate down the third base line. This was the other ballpark where my dad had bought us tickets since none were available through the teams’ website. I think they had a face value somewhere in the upper-teens, but he had paid around fifty apiece. If you ever plan on going to a game in Chicago’s north-side, you definitely want to buy your tickets as far ahead of time as possible.

Wrigley is the ultimate ballpark for fans of the game; all of the attention is on the field and there aren’t any distractions to take your focus away from the game. Everyone around us was watching the game and many of them were keeping score. I didn’t see one person in our section pick up a cell phone all game and most of the talk that wasn’t about today’s game revolved around the Cubbies in general. Needless to say, Wrigley ranks pretty high in my ranking of the ballparks.

Unfortunately for the Chicago fans, their team didn’t impress me nearly the way that their ballpark did; the Cubs were blanked by the Diamondbacks 6-0 and the Wrigley Faithful had to throw back two home run balls.

After the game, we walked around outside the stadium looking for some cheap eats. We couldn’t find anything close to the ballpark that wasn’t a bar but we did find a Burger King a little farther away that honored my coupons. We took our time eating and watched the WGN post-game show which focused on Ryne Sandberg’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. We headed back to Greg’s house where he asked what we had eaten. He couldn’t believe it when we told him that we had decided to grub on some free Burger King and told us that we had to eat some deep-dish pizza. He asked us what kind of pizza we liked and I told him I would eat anything. The place he was ordering from had a specialty pizza which consisted of mushrooms and spinach. I was skeptical at first since I don’t eat a whole lot of vegetables, but after my first bite I was hooked. I absolutely hate mushrooms in any other context, but they were great on this pizza. I thought I’d eaten deep dish pizza before too, but, in Chicago, deep dish means that it looks like lasagna. If you’re ever in Chicago and need something to eat, I highly recommend the mushroom and spinach deep dish from Giordano’s. After putting away a couple of pieces of pizza, I spent the rest of the night relaxing in front of my laptop and watching TV.

Coming up next time, Daniel and I head to Milwaukee and Minnesota before returning to Chicago, where events are set into motion that will end in my road trip story being bigger news in my home town than Steve Young’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

Kevin Naughton is getting ready to mark a full year since he started his road trip. He can be found on the Cafe’s forums where he posts as luckygehrig.

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