Quantcast
Channel: Uncle Mike's Musings: A Yankees Blog and More
Viewing all 4259 articles
Browse latest View live

This Is Getting Pathetic

$
0
0
Maybe the Yankees are just bad. Or maybe Joe Girardi is an idiot. Or maybe Brian Cashman has failed to properly replace the old and/or oft-injured.

Or maybe Yogi Berra really was the good luck charm all along.

Last night, the Yankees made it 8-15, including 6 straight losses. Luis Severino didn't pitch badly, but, again, the attack was insufficient. They were 1-for-7 with men in scoring position, 8 men left on base.

Orioles 4, Yankees 1. WP: Chris Tillman (3-1). SV: Darren O'Day (2). LP: Severino (0-4).

Look at these OPSes: Starlin Castro, .815; Brian McCann, .798; and then, a dropoff to Brett Gardner, .734; Alex Rodriguez, .719; Carlos Beltran, .715; Mark Teixeira, .680; Jacoby Ellsbury, .659; Didi Gregorius, .583; Chase Headley, .400. That's not an on-base percentage or a slugging percentage: That's OBP and SLG combined, .400.

This is getting pathetic. And it gets worse (or does it?), as a strained hamstring puts A-Rod on the Disabled List.

Something has to be done. Say what you want about the pre-1990 George Steinbrenner, but he would have done something about it by now.

The series continues tonight. CC Sabathia starts against Tyler Wilson.

And the Yankees better get some runs.

*

Days until the next Yankees-Red Sox series of the season: 2, this Friday night, at Yankee Stadium II.

Days until the New York Red Bulls play again: 2, this Friday night at 7:00, away to Orlando City.

Days until The Arsenal play again: 4, this Sunday, 11:00 AM our time, away to Manchester City, in a game that may be crucial to both teams' European hopes for next season.

Days until the Red Bulls play a "derby": 9, a week from next Friday night, May 13, against D.C. United (a.k.a. The DC Scum), at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. They next play New York City F.C. (a.k.a. Man City NYC and The Homeless) on Saturday afternoon, May 21, at Yankee Stadium II. They next play the Philadelphia Union on Sunday night, July 17, at Talen Energy Stadium (formerly PPL Park) in Chester, Pennsylvania. And the next game against the New England Revolution is on Sunday night, August 28, at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey.

Days until the 2016 Copa America kicks off in the U.S.: 
30, on Friday, June 3. Just 1 month.

Days until Euro 2016 kicks off in France: 37, on Friday, June 10. Just 5 weeks.

Days until Arsenal play as the opponents in the 2016 Major League Soccer All-Star Game: 85
, on Thursday night, July 28, at Avaya Stadium in San Jose, California, home of the San Jose Earthquakes. Just 12 weeks. Three days later, Arsenal will play C.D. Guadalajara, a.k.a. Chivas, one of the biggest clubs in Mexico, at the StubHub Center, home of the Los Angeles Galaxy, in Carson, California. This will be just 2 years after The Arsenal came to America to play the Red Bulls in New Jersey. I went to that one. I don't think I'll be going to either of these: Even if I could get a game ticket, paying for a plane ticket would be difficult.

Days until the 2016 Olympics begin in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 93
, on Friday, August 5. Just 3 months.

Days until the next North London Derby: Unknown, but at least 108. The 2016-17 Premier League season is likely to open on Saturday, August 20, but it's unlikely that Arsenal will play Tottenham (a.k.a. The Scum) in the opener.
 
Days until Rutgers University plays football again: 
122, on Saturday, September 3, away to the University of Washington, in Seattle. Just 4 months.

Days until East Brunswick High School plays football again: 128, on Friday, September 9, probably away, since, while the 2016 schedule hasn't been released yet, the Big Green opened last season at home.


Days until the New Jersey Devils play another local rival: Unknown, but at least 
156. The schedule for the 2016-17 season has been announced as being released on June 22. The new season is likely to being on the 1st Friday in October, which would be October 7. But they're not likely to play either the New York Rangers (a.k.a. The Scum), the New York Islanders or the Philadelphia Flyers (a.k.a. The Philth) in the opener.

Days until the next East Brunswick-Old Bridge Thanksgiving game: 194
, on Thursday morning, November 24, at the purple shit pit on Route 9. Under 7 months.

Days until Alex Rodriguez' alleged retirement becomes official: 
545, as his contract runs out on October 31, 2017. Or at the conclusion of the 2017 World Series, if the Yankees make it. Whichever comes last. A little over 18 months.

Days until the 2018 World Cup kicks off in Russia: 
771, on June 14, 2018. Under 26 months. Of course, at the rate manager Jurgen Klinsmann is going, the U.S. team might not even qualify.

How to Be a Met Fan In Colorado -- 2016 Edition

$
0
0
On Friday of next week -- Friday the 13th, as if they needed any more bad luck -- the Mets head out to Denver to play the Colorado Rockies.

Before You Go. Denver is a city of unusual weather, because of its elevation. I still remember that Monday Night Football game in 1984, when the Green Bay Packers, thinking they'd escaped the Wisconsin chill, got surprised by a blizzard when they played the Broncos at Mile High Stadium. On October 15. Check the Denver Post website before you decide to go.

For the moment, the projections are varying greatly. For Friday, they're saying high 70s in the afternoon and high 40s at night; for Saturday, high 50s by day, mid-30s by night; for Sunday, mid-60s by day, low 40s by night. You didn't think you were going to need a winter jacket for a baseball game in the middle of May, did you? At least no rain (or snow) is predicted.

This will be the Mets' only trip out to Denver this season, but if you don't want to take a chance on the weather, then, unless you're doing the All 30 Ballparks In One Year thing, the old adage "Wait 'Til Next Year" comes into play: Skip this series, and stay home and watch it on television. The Rockies are a team with rich owners, a relatively new ballpark and a solid fan base: Unlike the hockey team of the same name that became the New Jersey Devils in 1982, they're not going anywhere.

Denver is in the Mountain Time Zone, so you'll be 2 hours behind New York time. And there's a reason it’s called the Mile High City: The elevation means the air will be thinner. Although the Rocky Mountain region is renowned for outdoor recreation, if you're not used to it, try not to exert yourself too much. Cheering at a sporting event shouldn't bother you too much, but even if the weather is good, don't go rock-climbing or any other such activity unless you've done it before and know what you’re doing.

Tickets. When the Rockies began play in 1993, there had never been a major league team in the entire Mountain Time Zone, and the Denver Bears and their successors the Denver Zephyrs had been among the best-attended teams in the minor leagues. That, plus the huge capacity of Mile High Stadium, allowed Colorado fans to set several major league attendance records that are unlikely to be broken in my lifetime, including most fans for an Opening Day game (80,227), most fans for a single regular-season game (same -- the old Yankee Stadium and Cleveland had a few bigger crowds for doubleheaders), most fans in a single season (4,483,350 in that 1st season of 1993) and most fans per home game (56,094 in the strike-shortened 1994 season).

When Coors Field opened in 1995, with a capacity around 47,000 (now officially 50,398), every game was still sold out, until 1999. The Rockies have gone downhill since their last Playoff berth in 2009, but still averaged 31,334 for the 2015 season. So tickets may not be easy to come by.

For tickets that are available, a Rockies game is the most economical in the major leagues: Infield Club seats are $70, Midfield Boxes are $50, Outfield Boxes are $40, Upper Reserved Infield seats are $23, Upper Reserved Outfield seats are $16, Pavilion (left field bleacher) seats are $27, Upper Rightfield Reserved are $67, and the center field "Rockpile" seats -- a holdover from the bleachers of that nickname at Mile High Stadium -- are the cheapest seats in Major League Baseball, just $7. That's right: Seven dollars. For a Major League Baseball game. In the 21st Century.

Getting There. It’s 1,779 miles from Times Square in New York to the Denver plaza that contains the State House and the City-County complex, and 1,790 miles from Citi Field to Coors Field. You're probably thinking that you should be flying.

The good news: Flying to Denver, considering how far it is, is relatively cheap. You can get a round-trip flight heading out on Friday morning, and buy it today, for a little under $700, depending on what time you want to fly. More likely, it'll be around $800, but that's still a decent price per mile.

The bad news: It won't be nonstop. While Stapleton International Airport (named for 1923-47 Mayor Benjamin F. Stapleton) was a major change-planes-here spot for going to the West Coast and Las Vegas, the new Denver International Airport isn't. You want to fly there, you'll have to change planes, most likely in either Chicago or Dallas.

Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited leaves Penn Station at 3:40 PM Tuesday, and arrives at Union Station in Chicago at 9:45 AM Central Time on Wednesday. The California Zephyr leaves Chicago at 2:00 PM Wednesday and arrives at Denver's Union Station at 7:15 AM Mountain Time on Thursday. The return trip would leave Denver at 7:10 PM Sunday (after the series' afternoon finale), arrive in Chicago at 2:50 PM Monday, leave Chicago at 9:30 PM Monday, and get back to New York at 6:23 PM Tuesday. The round-trip fare is $448.

Conveniently, Union Station is at 1700 Wynkoop Street at 17th Street, just 3 blocks from Coors Field. The front of the building is topped by a clock, framed by an old sign saying UNION STATION and TRAVEL by TRAIN.
Greyhound allows you to leave Port Authority Bus Terminal at 4:00 PM Wednesday, and arrive at Denver at 10:50 AM on Friday, a trip of just under 45 hours, without having to change buses. That 44:50 does, however, include layovers of 40 minutes in Philadelphia, an hour and a half in Pittsburgh, an hour in Columbus, an hour in Indianapolis, 2 hours in St. Louis, half an hour in Salina, Kansas, and another half-hour in Burlington, Colorado; plus half-hour meal stops in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Kansas. Round-trip fare is $388, but you can get it for $290 on advanced-purchase. You can get a bus back at 7:10 PM Sunday and be back in New York at 3:50 PM Tuesday. The Denver Bus Center is at 1055 19th Street, 5 blocks from Coors Field.

If you actually think it’s worth it to drive, get someone to go with you, so you’ll have someone to talk to, and one of you can drive while the other sleeps. You’ll be taking Interstate 80 most of the way, through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, before taking Interstate 76 from Nebraska to Colorado, and then Interstate 25 into Denver. (An alternate route: Take the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Turnpikes to Interstate 70 and then I-70 through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado into downtown Denver. It won’t save you an appreciable amount of time over the I-80 route, though.)

If you do it right, you should spend about an hour and a half in New Jersey, 5 hours and 15 minutes in Pennsylvania, 4 hours in Ohio, 2 hours and 30 minutes in Indiana, 2 hours and 45 minutes in Illinois, 5 hours and 15 minutes in Iowa, 6 hours in Nebraska, and 3 hours and 15 minutes in Colorado. Including rest stops, and accounting for traffic (you’ll be bypassing Cleveland and Chicago, unless that’s where you want to make rest stops), we’re talking about a 40-hour trip.

Even if you’re only going for one game, no matter how you got there, get a hotel and spend a night. You’ll be exhausted otherwise. Trust me, I know: Trains and buses are not good ways to get sleep.

Once In the City. Founded in 1858 as a gold rush city, and named for James W. Denver, then Governor of Kansas Territory from which Colorado was separated, Denver is a city of 650,000 people, in a metro area of 3.3 million -- roughly the population of Brooklyn and Staten Island combined. It's easily the biggest city in, and thus the unofficial cultural capital of, the Rocky Mountain region.
The State House in downtown Denver

Broadway is the main north-south drag, separating East addresses from West. But the northwestern quadrant of the street grid is at roughly a 45-degree angle from the rest of the city, and this area includes the central business district, Union Station and the ballpark.

The sales tax in the State of Colorado is 2.9 percent, however, the City of Denver adds a 3.62 percent sales tax, for a total of 6.52 percent. Bus and light rail service in Denver is run by the Regional Transportation District (RTD), and goes for $2.25 for a single ride, and $6.75 for a DayPass.
Don't worry, the weather isn't forecast to look like this during your visit.
I chose this picture for the look of the train, not for the snow and wet streets.

The Denver Post is a good paper, but don't bother looking for the Rocky Mountain News: It went out of business in 2009.

Going In. Coors Field is in the Lower Downtown, or LoDo, section of Denver, a mile and a half northwest of Civic Center Park, the government center which contains the City & County Building and the Colorado State House. The Number 60 bus will get you to within 3 blocks of the ballpark. Denver has a light rail system, RTD, but chances are your hotel will be downtown, and you'd have to change trains at least once, so the 60 bus is the way to go. If you're driving, parking is $13.

The mailing address is 2001 Blake Street. Blake bounds the 1st base side, 20th Street the 3rd base side, 22nd Street the right field stands, and Wewatta Street and the light rail tracks the left field side.
Most likely, you'll enter through the home plate gate, at 20th & Blake (shown above). I like that: All visits to the ballpark should make your first view of the field from behind home plate. This was rarely possible with the old New York ballparks: The stadiums pointed east, and both subway exits put you at the right field corner (if you entered Yankee Stadium from the 157th Street plaza, or the left field corner if you came down 161st Street). In the case of Coors, it’s just more convenient.
The field is natural grass, and points due north. Outfield distances are 347 feet to left field, 390 to left-center, 415 to center, 375 to right-center, and 350 to right. Why so far? To counteract the easy home runs that were hit at Mile High, due to the thin mountain air. A line of purple seats, 6 rows from the top of the upper deck, shows the exact point at which the elevation of the park is 5,280 feet above sea level, making it "a mile high."
After years of opposing teams complaining that the highest elevation in MLB history resulting in too many home runs, prior to the 2002 season the team ordered a study to determine if the elevation was the cause. As it turned out, the study suggested it was not thin air, but dry air that was doing it.

So a giant humidor – a room-sized version of the kind of box where a smoker would store his cigars – was put into the ballpark, and the baseballs were stored there. As a result, the ball is no longer going as far as it once did, although the thin air does make it go farther than at most ballparks. The thin air also makes curveballs curve less, which means it’s still not a good park for pitchers. Nevertheless, the team’s pitching staff can no longer be called, as it once was, "the Rocky Horror Pitching Show." The longest home run was by Andres Galarraga, a 529-footer in 1997.
This past February, Coors Field hosted 2 hockey games. The University of Denver beat arch-rival Colorado College 4-1 in a game billed as the Battle On Blake. And as part of the NHL Stadium Series, the Colorado Avalanche hosted the Detroit Red Wings, perhaps perversely celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the birth of their brief but nasty rivalry. The Wings won 5-3.

Food. Being a "Wild West" city, you might expect Denver to have Western-themed stands with "real American food" at its ballpark. Being in a State with a Spanish name, in a land that used to belong to Mexico, you might also expect to have Mexican food. And you would be right on both counts.

A stand called Buckaroos is at Section 148, Burritos is at 134, the Helton Burger Shack (named for Rockies star Todd Helton) at 153, a full-service bar called the Camarena Loft behind 201, another called Margaritas at 330, 3 Monster Nacho stands, and, for club-seaters, the Mountain Ranch Club Bar.

There's also stands with baseball-themed names, including several Fan Fare stands, Fair Territory in 106, and Yard Ball Yogurt at 330. There's a Starbucks-type place called Madeline’s at 151, a pair of sandwich bars called the Club Carvery behind 219 and 238, a coffee bar call Java City at 223, a Chinese-themed Wok in the Park at 150, and a Blue Moon Brewing Co. outlet at 111.

Buckaroos has "Dinger Nuggets," which I'm hoping is standard chicken nuggets, not dinosaur meat. (I’ll get to that in "During the Game.")

Team History Displays. The Rockies' history is short. They have made the Playoffs 3 times (in 1995, 2007 and 2009, all through the National League Wild Card), have won just 1 Pennant (2007), and have won a grand total of zero World Series games. As yet, they have no figures in their history who are members of the Baseball Hall of Fame. No Rockies players were named to The Sporting News' 100 Greatest Players in 1999. In 2006, Larry Walker won the Rockies' edition of the DHL Hometown Heroes contest.

However, there are 5 men with Rockies connections in the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame, whose display is at the new Broncos' stadium: Original owner Jerry McMorris, original manager Don Baylor, early stars Andres Galarraga and Larry Walker, and more recent star Todd Helton.

And while Walker's Number 33 has not been reissued, officially, their only retired number, aside from the universally-retired 42 for Jackie Robinson, who died over 20 years before the Rockies ever played a game, is the Number 17 of 1997-2013 1st baseman Todd Helton.

Those numbers are on the outfield wall, as is a display reading "KSM," for Keli Scott McGregor. Keli McGregor was a native of the Denver suburbs who played for Colorado State, and then briefly with the Broncos in 1985. He joined the Rockies' front office in the Autumn of 1993, after the 1st season, and was team president from 2001 until 2010, when he died of an undetected heart virus at age 47.
The 2007 Pennant is displayed top the left field scoreboard, under the giant Rockies logo. The 1995 NL Wild Card banner used to be on the wall, but once a Pennant was won, it seemed a bit silly. (Nevertheless, the Mets still have that 1999 Wild-Card display on the third-base facing of Citi Field, along with their 2 World Championship, 3 other Pennant, and 2006 NL East stanchions.) There is no mention, anywhere in the stadium, of the Pennants won by the Rockies' minor-league predecessors, the Denver Bears (also briefly known as the Denver Zephyrs).

Stuff. Coors Field has the Majestic Team Store behind Section 149, in the left-field corner. I don't know if the Rockies gear they sell includes cowboy hats with team logos on them, to tie in with the State's Western heritage. In addition, there are 7 Rockies Dugout Stores throughout Colorado, including 1 in Denver at 535 16th Street.

Don’t look for old Rockies videos on DVD – there aren't any. Unless you want to find the official highlight film of the 2007 World Series, in which the Rockies got swept by the Boston Red Sox. You'd think that, having won 14 of their last 15 regular-season games, making it 21 out of 22 counting the Playoffs, winning their 1st-ever Pennant, and setting a major league record for highest team fielding percentage (.989), there would be a commemorative DVD. But there isn't.

There are, however, a few books about the team, including A Magical Season: Colorado’s Incredible 2007 Championship Season, by the staff of the Denver Post. You can also pick up Colorado Rockies: The Inaugural Season, by Rich Clarkson, which came out right after that 1993 season ended.

The first-year Rockies probably got more respect than any 67-95 team ever. To compare, the 1969 Seattle Pilots went 64-98. They also played in a stadium that was inappropriate for the major leagues – albeit because it was an expanded 1930s Triple-A park, not a 1940s Triple-A park converted into a 1970s football stadium like Mile High. They got fewer fans in a homestand than the '93 Rox got in their home opener, got moved to Milwaukee right before their second season started, and today are remembered only for being in Jim Bouton’s book Ball Four. Even Seattle fans would prefer to believe their major league history started with the Mariners in 1977.

During the Game. A recent Thrillist article ranked Rockies fans 29th among the "most intolerable" fans. More accurately, that makes them the 2nd-most tolerable.

Coloradans love their sports, but they're not known as antagonistic. Although the Jets came within a half of derailing a Bronco Super Bowl in 1999 (1998 season), and the Devils came within a game of short-circuiting their Stanley Cup run in 2001, the people of the Centennial State don't have an ingrained hatred of New Yorkers. As long as you don't wear Kansas City Chiefs or Oakland Raiders gear, you'll probably be completely safe. (But, as always, watch out for obnoxious drunks, who know no State Lines.)

All 3 games in this series will have promotions. On Friday night, as part of their Fan Friday series, the Rockies will be giving away team-logo tote bags. Saturday night will be Scout Night. And on Sunday afternoon, they're giving away a plastic bat & ball set.

The Rockies hold auditions for National Anthem singers, as opposed to having a regular, but they give priority to groups, even letting their Group Sales department handle applications.

When construction workers were excavating to build Coors Field, they found dinosaur bones. So the Rockies' mascot was made a dinosaur. In honor of the thin air's propensity for allowing home runs, the mascot was named Dinger the Dinosaur. Great idea, right? Well, a Tyrannosaurus Rex (or even a "Tyrannosaurus Rox") would probably scare kids, so Dinger is a purple triceratops, wearing a Rockies jersey, Number 00. Think of him as Barney's cousin from the weird side of the family.
The Rockies play Bruce Channel’s song "Hey! Baby" after "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the 7th inning stretch. Why? I have no idea. Channel isn't from Colorado, or any other Rocky Mountain State (he's from Texas). Why not a Colorado singer's song? You got me.

I guess "Rocky Mountain High"– whose singer used the stage name John Denver, for crying out loud – isn't particularly rousing. And his "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" was already the 7th inning stretch song for the Baltimore Orioles. Also not especially crowd-cranking is "How to Save a Life" by The Fray, who, unlike John, are from Denver. Sometimes the Rockies play "Get Free" by the Australian rock band The Vines, but they do not have a postgame victory song.

After the Game. Denver has had crime issues, and just 3 blocks from Coors Field is Larimer Street, immortalized as a dingy, bohemian-tinged, hobo-strewn street in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road. But that scene was written in 1947, and LoDo has become, with the building of Coors Field and the revitalization of Union Station, a sort of mountain Wrigleyville. So you’ll probably be safe.

LoDo is loaded with bars that will be open after the game, including Scruffy Murphy's at Larimer & 20th, and an outlet of the Fado Irish Pub chain at Wynkoop & 19th. But the only baseball-named place I can find anywhere near Coors is Sandlot Brewery, at 22nd & Blake, outside the park's right-field corner. Behind home plate, at 1930 Blake Street, is The Sports Column, hailed by a recent Thrillist article as the best sports bar in the State of Colorado.

Perhaps the most famous sports-themed restaurant near Denver is Elway's Cherry Creek, a steakhouse at 2500 E. 1st Avenue in the southern suburb of Cherry Creek. Bus 83L. It’s owned by the same guy who owns John Elway Chevrolet in another southern suburb, Englewood.

About a mile southeast of Coors Field, at 538 E. 17th Avenue in the Uptown neighborhood (not sure why a southern, rather than northern, neighborhood is called "Uptown"), is The Tavern, home of the local New York Giants fan club. Jet fans gather at Chopper's Sports Grill, possibly named for Chopper Travaglini, at 80 S. Madison Street at Bayaud Avenue, 3 miles southeast of downtown, in the Pulaski Park neighborhood. Bus 83, then a mile's walk.

Sidelights. Sports Authority Field at Mile High, formerly Invesco Field at Mile High, has been the home of the NFL's Denver Broncos since 2001. Everyone just gives it the same name as the old facility: "Mile High Stadium." It includes the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame, and the Broncos’ Ring of Fame.

It was built on the site of the McNichols Sports Arena, home to the NBA’s Denver Nuggets from 1975 to 1999, the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche from 1995 to 1999, and the first major league team called the Colorado Rockies, the NHL team that became the Devils, from 1976 to 1982. The Denver Dynamite played there from 1987 to 1991, made the Arena Football League Playoffs every season, and won the 1st ArenaBowl in 1987. But the cost of running the team was too high, and it folded.

It hosted the NCAA Final Four in 1990, with UNLV (the University of Nevada at Las Vegas) clobbering Duke. (The University of Colorado, in Boulder, made the Final Four in 1942 and 1955, although it wasn't yet called the Final Four.  No other Colorado-based school has made it, and none has won a National Championship -- not in basketball, anyway.)

When the time came to play the final concert at McNichols, the act that played the first concert there was brought back: ZZ Top. This fact was mentioned on a Monday Night Football broadcast, leading Dan Dierdorf to note the alphabetic distinction of the long red-bearded men, and say, “The first one should have been ABBA.” Which would have been possible, as they were nearly big in the U.S. at the time. However, the fact that the arena only lasted 24 years, making it not that hard for the act that played the first concert there to also play the last, says something about America's disposable culture.

The old stadium was just to the north of the new stadium/old arena. The current address is Mile High Stadium Circle, but the old intersection was W. 20th Avenue & Bryant St. (2755 W. 17th Avenue was the mailing address.) It was built in 1948 as Bears Stadium, an 18,000-seat ballpark.

When the American Football League was founded in 1960, it was expanded to 34,000 seats with the addition of outfield seating. The name was changed to Mile High Stadium in 1966, and by 1968 much of the stadium was triple-decked and seated 51,706. In 1977 – just in time for the Broncos to make their first Super Bowl run and start “Broncomania” – the former baseball park was transformed into a 76,273-seat horseshoe, whose east stands could be moved in to conform to the shape of a football field, or out to allow enough room for a regulation baseball field. The old-time ballpark had become, by the standards of the time, a modern football stadium.

The biggest complaint when the Rockies arrived in 1993 wasn’t the thin air, or the condition of the stadium (despite its age, it was not falling apart), but the positioning of the lights: Great for football fans, but terrible for outfielders tracking fly balls. But it was only meant to be a temporary ballpark for the Rockies, as a condition for Denver getting a team was a baseball-only stadium. What really led to the replacement of Mile High Stadium, and its demolition in 2002, was greed: The Broncos' desire for luxury-box revenue.

At Bears/Mile High Stadium, the Broncos won AFC Championships in 1977, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1997 and 1998, winning the Super Bowl in the last 2 years after losing the first 4 in blowouts.  (They've now won an AFC title at the new stadium, but not a Super Bowl.) The Denver Bears won Pennants while playing there in 1957 (as a Yankee farm team), 1971, 1976, 1977, 1981, 1983 and 1991 (winning the last one under the Denver Zephyrs name).

The old stadium also hosted the Denver Gold of the United States Football League, the Colorado Caribous of the original North American Soccer League, and the Rapids from their 1996 inception until 2001 -- in fact, they played the stadium's last event, before playing at the new stadium from 2002 to 2006. The U.S. national soccer team played a pair of games at Mile High Stadium in the 1990s, and beat Mexico at the new stadium in 2002 (the only game they've played there so far).

While the 2008 Democratic Convention was held at the Pepsi Center, Senator Barack Obama gave his nomination acceptance speech outdoors in front of 80,000 people at New Mile High Stadium.

The Red Lion Hotel Denver and the Skybox Grill & Sports Bar are now on the site of the old stadium. At McNichols, the Nuggets reached the ABA Finals in 1976, and the Avalanche won the 1996 Stanley Cup (albeit clinching in Miami). Elvis Presley sang at McNichols on April 23, 1976.

The new stadium, and the site of the old stadium and arena, are at Mile High Station on the light rail C-Line and E-Line.

The Nuggets, known as the Denver Rockets until 1974, played at the Denver Auditorium Arena, at 13th & Champa Streets, from their 1967 inception until McNichols opened in 1975. It was also the home of the original Nuggets, who played in the NBA from 1948 to 1950.

It opened in 1908, and its seating capacity of 12,500 made it the 2nd-largest in the country at the time, behind the version of Madison Square Garden then standing. It almost immediately hosted the Democratic National Convention that nominated William Jennings Bryan for President for the 3rd time – although it’s probably just a coincidence that the Democrats waited exactly 100 years (give or take a few weeks) to go back (it’s not like Obama didn’t want to get it right the 1st time, as opposed 0-for-3 Bryan).

The Auditorium Arena hosted Led Zeppelin’s 1st American concert on December 26, 1968. It was demolished in 1990 to make way for the Denver Performing Arts Complex, a.k.a. the Denver Center. Theatre District/Convention Center Station on the light rail’s D-Line, F-Line and H-Line.

The Pepsi Center is across Cherry Creek from downtown, about 2 miles northwest of City Hall. The intersection is 11th Street & Auraria Parkway, but the mailing address is 1000 Chopper Circle, in honor of Robert "Chopper" Travaglini, the beloved former trainer (and amateur sports psychologist) of the Nuggets, who share the arena with the NHL's Colorado Avalanche. It is 1 of 10 current arenas that is home to both an NBA team and an NHL team.

Chopper was actually a Jersey Boy, albeit from Woodbury on the Philly side. He died in 1999, age 77, right before the new arena opened. Chopper Circle is an extension of Wewatta Street.

Pepsi Center/Elitch Gardens station on the RTD light rail. If you're coming in that way, you'll probably enter from the west gate, the Grand Atrium. If you're driving, parking starts at just $5.00. The rink is laid out east-to-west, and the Avs attack twice toward the east end.

In addition to hosting the Avs and the Nugs, the Pepsi Center has also hosted NCAA Tournament basketball games, the NCAA's hockey "Frozen Four," and the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

The Denver area's Major League Soccer team, the Colorado Rapids, plays at Dick's Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, about 8 miles northeast of downtown. They’ve won the MLS Cup since moving there, in 2010. The U.S. national team has played there 3 times: A 2009 win over Guatemala, and a 2013 win over Costa Rica, and a 2015 draw with Panama. The women's team has played there twice: A 2008 win over Brazil, and a 2012 win over Australia. It's also hosted football, rugby, lacrosse and concerts.

6000 Victory Way. If you're going in by public transportation from downtown Denver, Number 48 bus to 60th Avenue & Dahlia Street, then Number 88 bus to 60th & Monaco. Then they make you walk 10 blocks on 60th to get to the stadium.

The Beatles played Red Rocks Amphitheatre in suburban Morrison on August 26, 1964. It is still in business, and a Colorado Music Hall of Fame is a short walk away. 18300 W. Alameda Parkway, 10 miles west of downtown. Sorry, no public transportation.

Elvis played 2 shows at the Denver Coliseum on April 8, 1956, and 1 each on November 17, 1970 and April 30, 1973. Built in 1951, it still stands, seating 10,500, and is best known for concerts and the National Western Stock Rodeo. 4600 Humbolt Street at E. 46th Avenue, off Interstate 70, 3 miles northeast of downtown. Apparently, no public transportation to there, either.

Denver has some renowned museums, including the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (their version of the Museum of Natural History) at 2001 Colorado Blvd. at Montview Blvd. (in City Park, Number 20 bus), and the Denver Art Museum (their version of the Metropolitan Museum of Natural History), at 100 W. 14th Avenue Parkway at Colfax Avenue (across I-25 from Mile High Stadium, Auraria West station on the C-Line and E-Line).

Denver’s history only goes back to a gold rush in 1859 – not to be confused with the 1849 one that turned San Francisco from a Spanish Catholic mission into the first modern city in the American West. The city isn’t exactly loaded with history.

There’s no Presidential Library – although Mamie Doud, the eventual Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower, grew up there, and her house is now a historic site. Mamie and “Ike” were married there, their son John (a future General, Ambassador and military historian) was born there, and the Eisenhowers were staying there when Ike had his heart attack in 1955. The house is still in private ownership, and is not open to the public. However, if you’re a history buff, or if you just like Ike, and want to see it, it’s at 750 Lafayette Street, at 8th Avenue. The Number 6 bus will get you to 6th & Lafayette.

After his heart attack, Ike was treated at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center in nearby Aurora, 12 years after Senator John Kerry, nearly elected President in 2004 and now Secretary of State, was born there. It’s not a Presidential Birthplace, because Kerry narrowly lost. It is now the University of Colorado Hospital. The Fitzsimmons Golf Course is across Montview Boulevard – it figures that Ike would be hospitalized next to a golf course! 16th Avenue & Quentin Street. Number 20 bus from downtown.

The University of Denver’s Newman Center for the Performing Arts hosted a 2012 Presidential Debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. 2344 East Iliff Avenue, about 5 miles south of downtown. H Line light rail to University of Denver Station.

Denver doesn't have as many tall buildings as the nation's bigger cities, nor are they as interesting, architecturally. The tallest building in the State of Colorado is Republic Plaza, 714 feet high, at 17th Street & Tremont Place downtown.

The University of Colorado is in Boulder, 30 miles to the northwest. At Market Street Station, 16th & Market, take the BV Bus to the Boulder Transit Center, which is on campus. The ride should take about an hour and 20 minutes. Colorado State University is in Fort Collins, 65 miles up Interstate 25 north, and forget about reaching it by public transportation. The U.S. Air Force Academy is outside Colorado Springs, 60 miles down I-25. As with Fort Collins, you'd need Greyhound. Unlike CSU, you might not be able to just go there: Some of the area is restricted.  It is, after all, a military base.

A few TV shows have been set in Denver, but you won't find their filming locations there. The old-time Western Whispering Smith and the more recent one Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman were set in old Colorado, but filmed in Southern California.

Probably the most famous show set in Colorado is South Park, and that's a cartoon, so forget seeing anything from that. Not quite as cartoonish was Mork & Mindy, set in Boulder. The McConnell house actually is in Boulder, at 1619 Pine Street. But don't try to copy the opening-sequence scene with Robin Williams and Pam Dawber on the goalposts at the University of Colorado's Folsom Field. You could fall, and end up saying, "Shazbot!"

The most famous show ever set in Colorado was Dynasty, ABC's Excessive Eighties counterpart to CBS' Dallas, starring John Forsythe as Blake Carrington, an oilman and a thinly-veiled version of Marvin Davis, who nearly bought the Oakland Athletics from Charlie Finley in 1978 with the idea of moving them to Mile High Stadium, but the deal fell through. Right, you don't care about Blake, all you care about is the catfights between the 2nd and 1st Mrs. Carrington's: Krystle (Linda Evans) and Alexis (Joan Collins). The Carrington mansion seen in the opening credits is in Beverly Hills, but the building that stood in for the headquarters of Denver Carrington is at 621 17th Street, while the one that stood in for Colbyco is at 1801 California Street.

Movies set in Denver or its suburbs include The Unsinkable Molly Brown, the original Red Dawn, and, of course, Things to Do In Denver When You're Dead. Films involving skiing often take place in Colorado towns such as Aspen or Vail. City Slickers, a film with loads of baseball references, has a cattle drive that ends in Colorado, but there's no indication of how close it is to Denver. Flashback takes place on the Pacific Coast, but Denver's Union Station stands in for a train station in San Francisco.

*

Denver had been considered a potential destination for Major League Baseball many times: The Continental League planned a team for there for 1961, it was a finalist for expansion teams in 1969 and 1977, and, as I said, the A's came within inches of moving there for the 1978 season. When they finally got a team in 1993, they were embraced as perhaps no expansion team has ever been embraced -- even more than the Mets themselves in 1962. And, the way it's worked out, the Rockies' 1st-ever game was against the Mets (a Met win at Shea), and their 1st game at Coors Field was against the Mets (a Rockies win in 14 innings).

The Rockies have seen the bloom come off the rose, but they've also seen some real success. The experience of Coors Field should be a good one. Have fun!

Winning. It's Better Than Losing.

$
0
0
Yeah! Yeah! I love winning, man! I fuckin' love winning. You hear what I'm saying? It's, like, better than losing?
-- Nuke LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), Bull Durham

It's been so long, I can't tell anymore.

So the Yankees went into last night's game with the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards with a 6-game losing streak and an 8-15 record. It was long past time for the lumber to wake up and for the Yankees to use it properly.

And to get a good start. In other words, get the hitting we need and the pitching we need.

The game's easy, Harry, when you get good pitching, you get good hitting, and you score a few.
-- Richie Ashburn to Harry Kalas during a Phillies broadcast, 1987

CC Sabathia, perhaps the biggest question mark in the Yankee rotation going into the season, got the start, and the Big Fella dealt: 7 innings, 99 pitches, 62 for strikes, no runs, 6 hits, 2 walks, 6 strikeouts.

That's what I'm talkin''bout.

But you can't win if you don't score, and Tyler Wilson of the Orioles matched CC goose egg for goose egg for the 1st 5 innings.

Then came the top of the 6th. Chase Headley led off, and, as you might guess, struck out. But Jacoby Ellsbury singled, and stole 2nd base. Brett Gardner singled... and Ellsbury only got to 3rd.

Let me get this straight: Ellsbury, who was signed mainly because of his speed, stole 2nd, and couldn't score from 2nd on a single?

There's always these omens in baseball.
-- Doris Kearns Goodwin, Brooklyn Dodger fan (1943-57), Boston Red Sox fan (1967-present)

Well, Ellsbury's inability to score from 2nd on a single turned out not to be an omen, because he could, and did, score on a sacrifice fly to center by Carlos Beltran. Then Mark Teixeira (the Baltimore area native still getting booed by Oriole fans for choosing the Yanks over the O's come free agent time) drew a walk. Then Brian McCann singled home Gardner. Then Starlin Castro grounded back to Wilson, who threw the ball away, allowing Teix to score. 3-0 Yankees.

The Yankees struck again in the 8th. Doubles by Beltran and McCann bracketed another walk by Teix, and singles by Didi Gregorius and Headley followed.

Headley got a hit?

Hoo-ah! The boy's alive.
-- Frank Slade (Al Pacino), Scent of a Woman

Ellsbury drew a walk to load the bases, and Gardner was hit by a pitch to force home a run.

Kirby Yates and Dellin Betances pitched a scoreless 8th, and Chasen Shreve pitched a perfect 9th.

Shreve pitched a perfect inning? I don't believe it.

That is why you fail: You do not believe.
-- Yoda (Frank Oz), Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

At any rate, we got everything we needed: 7 runs, 10 hits, errorless baseball, and great pitching.

Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeeeeeeee Yankees win!
-- John Sterling

Yankees 7, Orioles 0. WP: Sabathia (2-2). No save. LP: Wilson (1-1).

Start spreading the news.
-- Frank Sinatra

The series concludes tonight. Masahiro Tanaka starts for us, Kevin Gausman for the O's. Then, it's back home, to face The Scum.

Come on you... yes, we can call them this again, even if there weren't any home runs last night... Bombers!

Ten Innings In a Bandbox, No Runs

$
0
0
Can somebody please tell me why Joe Girardi and Brian Cashman still have jobs?

Or, for that matter, Aaron Hicks (.234), Dustin Ackley (.269) and Chase Headley (.401)? By the way, those aren't batting averages. They're OPS's.

Ackley, Headley, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann, Carlos Beltran, Didi Gregorius and Ronald Torreyes went a combined 0-for-21 last night. (Can't blame Alex Rodriguez: Girardi gave him the night off.)

Last night, in 10 innings against the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards, the Yankees had just 5 baserunners: A double by Starlin Castro; singles by Castro, Hicks and Mark Teixeira; and a walk by McCann.

Then again, the home team didn't score in the regulation 9 innings in their little harborside bandbox, either. Masahiro Tanaka was brilliant for 8 innings, allowing only 5 hits and a walk, striking out 7, proving himself once again to be the best starting pitcher in New York, better than any of the alleged "aces" on The Other Team.

But in the bottom of the 10th, Girardi brought in Johnny Barbato, who allowed back-to-back leadoff singles. That meant 1st and 3rd with nobody out. He brought in Andrew Miller, whom he probably should have brought in to start the inning, despite the game being tied. Miller allowed a game-winning sacrifice fly.

WP: Zach Britton (1-1). No save. LP: Barbato (1-2).

Games Girardi has blown with his pitching screwups, this season alone: 4. And it was only May 5. Long way to go.

What we need right now is to score a bunch of runs. What we don't need right now is to have to face The Scum and their Big Fat Lying Cheating Bastard again, just a week after they swept us at Scumway Park.

And, oh, look who's next on the schedule: Said Scum. Oh, joy.

Here's the pitching matchups:

* Tonight, 7:05 PM: Michael Pineda vs. Rick Porcello.

* Tomorrow, 1:05 PM: Nathan Eovaldi vs. David Price.

* Sunday, 8:05 PM: Luis Severino vs. Steven Wright.

Come on you Pinstripes! Beat The Scum!

Living Former New York Baseball Giants

$
0
0
May 6, 1931, 85 years ago today: Willie Howard Mays Jr. is born in Westfield, Alabama, outside Birmingham. He grows up in nearby Fairfield.

September 29, 1957: The last New York Giants baseball game is played at the Polo Grounds.

To people now under the age of 60, the New York Giants -- presuming you're talking about the old baseball team, not the still-operating football team named for them -- are the home run by Bobby Thomson that won the 1951 National League Pennant, and the catch by Willie Mays that sparked them to win the 1954 World Series.
Even Dusty Rhodes, whose pinch-hit home run (with Mays on base) actually won Game 1 of the '54 Series, gets forgotten. And when Monte Irvin, a hero of the '51 and '54 Giants and a star in the Negro Leagues, died earlier this year, he was just a name to most current fans.

So what hope do Bill Terry, Mel Ott and Carl Hubbell, heroes of the 1933 World Championship team and the 1936 and '37 Pennants, have of being remembered? To say nothing of Frankie Frisch and the 1921-24 Pennant winners (including winniing the '21 and '22 Series)? Or Christy Mathewson, Roger Bresnahan, and the 1905 World Champions? Or the man who managed them to Pennants in 1904, '05, '11, '12, '13, '17, '21, '22, '23 and '24, John McGraw?

The San Francisco Giants have retired Terry's Number 3, Ott's 4, Hubbell's 11, Irvin's 20 and Mays' 24. And, since they were around before uniform numbers were worn, they have "NY" notations with the retired numbers for McGraw and Mathewson.

But time passes. It's been nearly 60 years since the Giants played home games in New York. The Polo Grounds last hosted an event on December 14, 1963, when the New York Jets lost an American Football League game to the Buffalo Bills, 19-10. The Mets clowned their way through the '62 and '63 season at the Polo Grounds. The old Harlem Horseshoe was demolished in April 1964, just as Shea Stadium was preparing for its opening.

As with the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Philadelphia Athletics, the St. Louis Browns and the Boston Braves, an era is slipping away.

And, unlike the Dodgers, who had Roger Kahn write The Boys of Summer and publish it in 1971 while most of the heroes of their 1950s teams were still alive, the Giants didn't get a literary celebration to cement their memory while the Baby Boomers, the last fans they would have, were still relatively young.

All that's left is a few flickering images: Mathewson's windup, Hubbell's screwball, Ott's odd swing, Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World,"Mays' catch, Rhodes' homer. And maybe even a song about Mays.

*

There are 22 surviving New York baseball Giants:

* Wayne Terwilliger, about to turn 91, from Clare, Michigan. A 2nd baseman, he served in the Marines in World War II. He debuted with the Cubs in 1949, and in 1951 was traded to the Dodgers along with Andy Pafko. The Dodgers sent him to the minors for the 1952 season, and he was claimed off waivers in 1953.

After being traded from the Cubs, he spent the rest of his career with teams that no longer exist in those forms: The Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Giants, the Washington Senators and the Kansas City Athletics, with whom he played his last game, in 1960.

He became a longtime minor league manager and major league coach, and was on Tom Kelly's staff when the Minnesota Twins won the World Series in 1987 and 1991. He won an independent league's Pennant as manager of the revived Fort Worth Cats in 2005.

* Harvey Gentry, about to turn 90, from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. An outfielder, he made 5 appearances as a pinch-hitter for the Giants in April 1954, and was long gone before the World Series.

* Ron Samford, 86, from Dallas. A shortstop, he appeared in 12 games as a rookie with the 1954 Giants, but was not on the World Series roster. He appeared in the majors again with Detroit in 1955 and 1957, and with the Washington Senators in 1959. He hit a home run in his last major league at-bat.

* Foster Castleman, 85, from Nashville. A 3rd baseman, he debuted with the 1954 Giants, but did not make the World Series roster. He remained with them through the end, but did not make the move, and played just 1 more season, for the 1958 Baltimore Orioles.

* John "Windy" McCall, 90, ironically from San Francisco. A pitcher, he debuted with the Boston Red Sox in 1948, made a few appearances for the Giants from 1954 (including in the World Series) until 1957, and never appeared in the majors again, just missing out on pitching for a hometown team.

* Billy Gardner, 88, from Waterford, New London County, Connecticut. A 2nd baseman, he played for 2 iconic New York baseball teams: The 1954 Giants and the 1961 Yankees. The Yankees acquired him that year from the Twins, with whom he had made the move as one of the last of the old Senators.

He managed the Twins from 1981 to 1985, and the Kansas City Royals in 1987. His son, Billy Gardner Jr., never made the majors, but is a longtime minor league manager, currently in the Washington Nationals' system.

* Joey Amalfitano, 82, from Long Beach, California. A 2nd baseman, he debuted with the Giants as a bonus baby in 1954, but wasn't on the World Series roster. An original Houston Colt .45 (Astro) in 1962, he wrapped up his playing career with the Cubs in 1967.

He managed the Cubs in 1979, and again in 1980-81, before becoming a coach with the Dodgers, winning a ring in 1988. He is now a minor league instructor with the Giants.

* Johnny Antonelli, about to turn 86, from Rochester, New York. Also a surviving Boston Brave, he was one of the heroes' of the Giants' 1954 World Championship season, leading the NL in ERA, and remained with them through the move to San Francisco. A 6-time All-Star, he had a career record of 126-110.

* Pete Burnside, 85, from the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois. A pitcher, he made scattered appearances for the Giants in the 1955, '57 and '58 seasons, closing his career with the 1963 Washington Senators.

* Gil Coan, about to turn 94, from Monroe, North Carolina. A left fielder, he was The Sporting News' Minor League Player of the Year in 1945, but was undistinguished in the majors for the Senators thereafter. He finished his career with the Giants in 1955 and '56.

* Albert "Red" Schoendienst, 93, from the St. Louis suburb of Germantown, Illinois. A 2nd baseman, he is the last survivor of the St. Louis Cardinals team that won the 1946 World Series. He stayed with the Cards until he was traded to  the Giants in 1956, but he was traded to the Milwaukee Braves and did not make the move to San Francisco. This was lucky for him, because he won another Series with the 1957 Braves, and another Pennant with them in 1958.

He managed the Cards to the 1967 World Series and another Pennant in 1968. He also won rings as a Cardinal coach in 1964 and 1982, and served as interim manager as recently as 1990. The Cardinals retired his Number 2. He is in the Hall of Fame, and 2016 is his 72nd consecutive season on an MLB team's payroll. As far as I know, that is a major league record.

* Ozzie Virgil, about to turn 84, from Monte Cristi, the Dominican Republic. How he didn't get the nickname "The Count of Monte Cristi," I don't know. The 1st Dominican national to play in the major leagues, even though he served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War. He debuted with the Giants in 1956, but was traded before the move.

In 1958, he became the 1st nonwhite player for the Detroit Tigers. He returned to the Giants in San Francisco in 1966, and remained through 1969. Mainly a 3rd baseman, he played all positions in major league games except pitcher and center field.

In 1969, he was named to the Giants' coaching staff, making him (possibly) the 1st Hispanic coach in the major leagues. He was on the Giants' staff when they won the NL West in 1971, on the Montreal Expos' staff when they won the NL East in 1981, and on the San Diego Padres' staff when they won the NL Pennant in 1984.

The airport in his hometown of Montecristi is named for him. His son, Ozzie Virgil Jr., was born in Puerto Rico while his father was playing winter ball there, and became a major league catcher, twice making the All-Star Game and appearing in the 1983 World Series with the Phillies.

* Ray Crone, 84, from Memphis. A pitcher, he went 4-8 with the Giants in 1957, and made the move with them, but was cut by San Francisco in 1958, and never appeared in the majors again.

* Jackie Brandt, about to turn 82, from Omaha. An outfielder, he debuted with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1956, and was soon traded to the Giants, remaining with them through the move, until 1959. A Gold Glove winner with the Giants, he was an All-Star with the Baltimore Orioles.

* Daryl Spencer, 87, from Wichita, Kansas. A utility infielder, he debuted with the Giants in 1952, was a regular in 1953, missed the 1954 and 1955 seasons in the U.S. Army (including the '54 Series), made the move, hit the 1st home run in San Francisco Giants history, remained with the team through 1959, was traded from the Los Angeles Dodgers to the Cincinnati Reds in 1963 (and thus missed out on a ring again), and played in Japan from 1964 to 1972.

* Al Worthington, 87, from Birmingham. A pitcher, he arrived in the majors with the Giants in 1953, spent most of 1954 in the minors and thus missed the World Series, moved with the team, staying through 1959, and bounced around until arriving in Minnesota, helping the Twins win the 1965 American League Pennant and the 1969 AL Western Division title. He went 75-82 with 110 saves in his career.

He later served as head baseball coach at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, and is a member of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.

* Eddie Bressoud, about to turn 85, from Los Angeles. A shortstop, he arrived in 1956, stayed through the move until 1961, and later played for the Mets. Has been a longtime scout for the Los Angeles Angels.

* Joe Margoneri, 86, from the Pittsburgh suburb of Somerset, Pennsylvania. A pitcher, he went 7-7 for the Giants in 1956 and '57, for his only major league experience.

* Roy Wright, 82, from Buchtel, Ohio. A pitcher, he appeared in 1 major league game, on September 30, 1956. It was the last game of the season, he started against the Phillies, got rocked, didn't get out of the 3rd inning, lost, and stayed in the minors through 1959.

* Bill White, 82, from Cleveland. A 1st baseman, he appeared with the Giants in New York in 1956 and in San Francisco in 1958, then was traded to the Cardinals. An 8-time All-Star and a 7-time Gold Glove winner, he won the World Series with the Cards in 1964. Batting .286 for his career, with 202 home runs.

His baseball life was far from over. In 1971, he became the 1st black person to regularly broadcast a major league team's games, with the Yankees, joining Phil Rizzuto and Frank Messer. He remained with the Yankees through the 1988 season, until he was named President of the National League, serving until the Strike of '94. Why he hasn't been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, while he's still alive to appreciate it, is beyond me.

* Mike McCormick, 77, from the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena, California. A pitcher, he debuted with the Giants in 1956, made the move with them, and lasted until the Pennant season of 1962. He was traded after the World Series, came back in 1967, and won the NL Cy Young Award that year. He pitched for the Yankees in 1970, and wrapped up his career with the Kansas City Royals in 1971. His career record was 134-128.

* Willie Mays, 85, from Fairfield, Alabama. He played with the Giants from 1951 to 1972, missing most of 1952 and all of 1953 while serving in the Korean War. NL Most Valuable Player in 1954 and 1965. NL Champion in 1954 and 1962, World Champion in 1954. He added a National League Western Division title in 1971. He was traded to the Mets, and ended his career with another Pennant in 1973.

660 home runs. Over 3,000 hits. Hall of Fame. All-Century Team. Number 24 retired by Giants, unofficially retired by Mets. Regarded by many fans as the greatest player ever. And the last New York Giant still active, playing until 1973.

This past November, "the Say Hey Kid" was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
For the moment, Willie Mays is still a living treasure. And one of the last links to one of the greatest of all baseball teams, which is still in business, although not in the city where it first made its mark.

May 7, 2006: Arsenal, Tottenham, and Lasagne

$
0
0
Imagine that tomorrow is Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, and the Yankees and the Red Sox are playing for the Pennant.

Or that it's Conference Championship Sunday, and the Washington Redskins are playing the Dallas Cowboys; the Chicago Bears are playing the Green Bay Packers; or the Pittsburgh Steelers are playing the Cleveland Browns.

Or that it's Thanksgiving Saturday, and college football conference titles are on the line: Michigan vs. Ohio State, USC vs. UCLA, Alabama vs. Auburn.

Or that it's Selection Sunday for the NCAA Tournament, and North Carolina and Duke are playing the ACC Tournament Final.

Or that it's Game 7 of an NBA Playoff series, Boston Celtics vs. Philadelphia 76ers, or Chicago Bulls vs. Detroit Pistons.

Or that it's Game 7 of a Stanley Cup Playoff series, Montreal Canadiens vs. Toronto Maple Leafs, Chicago Blackhawks vs. Detroit Red Wings, or, perhaps most to the point due to the distance involved, New York Rangers vs. New York Islanders.

Now, imagine that you support one of the teams involved. And imagine that the team is sequestered in its hotel, and they're all having dinner together.

Now, imagine that some of the players wake up in the middle of the night, violently ill, and it looks like they may not be able to play.

You'd be furious, wouldn't you? Damn right you would be. Why, if your team lost this key game, you might go so far as to suggest that the players in question were poisoned by a fan of the other team.

But such a scenario would never actually happen, right?

It wasn't exactly the same thing, but it did happen.

*

Arsenal Football Club (a.k.a. "The Arsenal") and Tottenham Hotspur Football Club (a.k.a. "Spurs") are separated by 4.7 miles in North London. To put that in perspective: Imagine that the Yankees and Mets played each other regularly, and that, while the Mets played in Flushing Meadow as they actually do, the Yankees played in Astoria, instead of the South Bronx.

The relationship is similar -- or it would be, if the Mets, instead of being the successors to the baseball version of the New York Giants, were a continuation of the same team: Great long ago, but only sporadically so since the Yankees first began winning, perennially getting humiliated by the more successful club, treating every win over the more successful club like you'd just won a world championship, and collapsing just as glory seems within your grasp.

But Met fans think the Yankees have unfair advantages: Money (true), getting the benefit of the doubt from the officials and the league office (don't make me laugh), favorable treatment by the media (don't take drugs). Tottenham fans think Arsenal have these advantages, and one more: Arsenal "bribed their way into the First Division in 1919." (It's been almost 100 years: Not one shred of evidence has ever been found to back this up.)

Therefore, both Met fans and Spurs fans claim a moral high ground over their local rivals. This results in a huge superiority complex and a huge inferiority complex at the same time.

Even the mottoes are similar: The Mets' is "Ya gotta believe!" while Spurs' is "To dare is to do."

I've mentioned before that the Mets are the Tottenham of New York, and that this might not be fair... to the Mets. Tottenham have not won their league since 1961, while the Mets, who started in 1962 as a replacement for the Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers (who left for California in 1957), have now won their league 5 times. (The real "Tottenham of New York" is hockey's Rangers, complete with their idiot thug fans: They talk as much trash as Yankee and Arsenal fans do, but they don't get the results to back it up.)

Tottenham have won England's top division of soccer (or, as they say, "football") twice, both times clinching at their home ground of White Hart Lane: In 1951 and 1961. They beat the same opponent both times: Sheffield Wednesday.

Arsenal have also twice clinched England's top division of soccer (or, as they say, "football") at White Hart Lane: In 1971 and 2004. They beat the same opponent both times: Tottenham.

Arsenal have won the League 13 times, including 6 times since Spurs' last title: 1971, 1989, 1991, 1998, 2002 and 2004.

Tottenham have won the FA Cup, England's national tournament, 8 times. This is actually a very impressive total. But they haven't won it since 1991, when they beat Arsenal in a Semifinal. They haven't even been to a Final since, going 0-3 in Semifinals, including losing to Arsenal in 1993 and 2001. Arsenal have won the FA Cup 12 times, more than any other club, including 7 times since Spurs last did: 1993, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2014 and 2015.

Arsenal have qualified for the UEFA Champions League, formerly known as the European Cup, 21 times, including (counting this season, for next season's tournament) 19 seasons in a row. Spurs? In the tournament's 61-year history, they have qualified only 3 times: For 1961-62, 2010-11, and for next season, 2016-17.

Because of their association with the old Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, in what's now Southeast London, Arsenal have always had a cannon on their club crest, and are thus known as the Gunners. Their fans, known as Gooners, like to say that Tottenham Hotspur, named for early 15th Century English rebel Henry Percy, a.k.a. Lord Harry Hotspur, are "forever in our shadow."

But ejery so often -- currently, we are in one of those moments -- the lopsided advantage in honors that tilts toward Arsenal looks like it might be reversed, what Spurs fans call "a power shift in North London."

A decade ago, there was one of those moments. But it ended up getting flushed down the toilet. Almost literally.

*

May 7, 2006, 10 years ago today: Arsenal had their best Champions League campaign ever, reaching the Final. That Final, still the closest Arsenal have ever come to winning the European Cup (the Champions League format kept the name for the trophy), turned out to be the last appearance in Arsenal's colours for Dutch forward Dennis Bergkamp, French winger Robert Pires, English centreback Sol Campbell (who controversially transferred from Spurs to Arsenal 5 years earlier), and, controversially, English left back Ashley Cole.

Cole had grown up as an Arsenal fan and in Arsenal's youth system, but had been "tapped up" by West London rivals Chelsea, and would go to them due to new owner Roman Abramovich's spending spree, which had gotten Chelsea the 2005 and '06 Premier League titles. Cole has been known as "Cashley" to Gooners fans ever since.

But the 2005-06 season was the end of an era for another reason: It was the last season for the Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury. The new Emirates Stadium -- some call it The Emirates, some by the area's former name Ashburton Grove, some cheekily call it New Highbury -- was going up, 500 yards away, and would open in the summer, the product of the success Arsenal had enjoyed in its 1st 10 years of management by the Alsatian genius, Arsene Wenger.

Arsenal wanted very badly to end the last game at Highbury with a win. It was against Manchester area club Wigan Athletic, and was expected to not be hard, but Arsenal have a history of losing the occasional game that they really should win.

But it wasn't just sentiment: Arsenal went into the season's League finale in 5th place in the Premiership, with Tottenham in 4th. All Spurs had to do in their game, which was away to East London club West Ham United, was match Arsenal's performance on that final day of the Premiership season, and it would be Spurs in the 2006-07 Champions League, with Arsenal "relegated" to the UEFA Cup -- unless, of course, Arsenal could win the CL Final, as the defending champion is always invited back.

The night before, Tottenham manager Martin Jol had secluded his players at a hotel, the Marriott Canary Wharf, in London's financial district, a.k.a. The City. This is not unusual: Many managers do things like this, even before home games. American football head coaches, in both the professional and the collegiate ranks, also do this. The players would have a nice dinner the night before the game, and get a good night's sleep, and would have a nice short bus ride to the stadium, all away from the prying of fans and the media.

What did Scottish poet Robert Burns say? Translated into modern common English, "The best-laid plans of mice and men often go astray."

In the middle of the night, 10 Spurs players woke up, vomiting, and/or having diarrhea (or "diarrhoea," as it would be "spelt" in England): Robbie Keane, Edgar Davids, Michael Carrick, Aaron Lennon, Michael Dawson, Lee Barnard, Calum Davenport, Teemu Tainio, Lee Young-Pyo and Radek Cerny.

Someone decided to blame the lasagne they'd eaten for dinner that night, and after the whole thing was over, some Spurs fans started a conspiracy theory (shades of their delusions about 1919) that the Marriott chef was an Arsenal fan, and had purposely poisoned the Spurs players! It became known as Lasagne-gate.

In the morning, several Spurs players were still, uh, indisposed. So club chairman Daniel Levy called the League office, and asked League chairman Richard Scudamore to postpone the game.

Nothing doing: With 1 League game to go, all teams were to play their games at the same time, 3:00 PM. This was a change from past policy, to avoid teams whose League place had already been decided from laying down on the job, thus giving gamblers some easy pickings and paying customers a less than honest performance.

Levy protested: We have sick players, so can't the game be postponed until tomorrow? Or even until tonight, just to give us a few more hours to recover? Scudamore asked if Spurs had 11 players who could play. Well, yes, but... Then the game would go on. If Spurs wanted to postpone, they could refuse to play, but an inquiry would be held, and Spurs would likely lose that appeal, and the penalty for refusing to play would be a deduction of points, which would make a win in the rescheduled match meaningless.

West Ham officials said they were willing to accept a postponement, so long as it wasn't too close to the following Saturday, when they were to play Liverpool in the FA Cup Final (which Liverpool went on to win). Unlike Spurs, West Ham were not threatened with a points deduction for going along with the postponement (which makes sense, since it wasn't their idea).

But the police were afraid of what additional time to drink that day would do, considering the reputation that both Spurs' and the Hammers' fans had for hooliganism, including against each other. (A fight between fictionalized versions of hooligan firms from those clubs opened the 2005 film opened Green Street.) So the cops said they would allow the game to start no later than 5:00 -- an extra 2 hours, not much of a help for the last 2 players who still needed rehydration, Carrick and Lennon.
In the end, the game kicked off on time, at the traditional English football starting time of 3:00 in the afternoon, and only one of the affected players, backup goalkeeper Cerny, did not make it into the game, although Carrick had to be subbed off after 63 minutes, Lee (for fellow affectee Barnard) in the 78th, and Tainio (for fellow affectee Davenport) in the 87th.

*

That season was Wigan's first-ever season in the Premiership, and they had achieved midtable respectability, finishing 10th. An Arsenal win shouldn't have been assumed, but it was well possible. West Ham were about Wigan's equal, finishing 9th, and were hosting Spurs -- hence the Canary Wharf hotel, not far from the Hammers' Boleyn Ground, a.k.a. Upton Park.

Pires scored the Highbury opener, and, for the last time at that ground, the song "One-nil to The Arsenal" was sung -- by both Arsenal fans at Highbury and West Ham fans, learning by radio and text message, at Upton Park.

But Wigan struck back, and led 2-1. Spurs fans, getting calls and messages on their mobile phones, found out, and were ecstatic. And when Jermaine Defoe scored in the 35th to match Darren Fletcher's goal for the Hammers in the 10th, meaning Spurs were looking at a draw while Arsenal were losing, it looked like it would be Spurs' day.

It wasn't. Arsenal's superstar French forward Thierry Henry scored a hat trick, tallying in the 35th, the 56th, and the 76th with a penalty that was the last goal ever scored in the ground's 93-year history. Feeling that history, after putting the ball in the net, instead of launching a ghastly celebration, he bent down and kissed the grass. The final score was Arsenal 4-2 Wigan Athletic.

Of course, it wouldn't have mattered if Spurs had also won. But West Ham came from behind, and won 2-1 on a goal in the 80th minute by Yossi Benayoun, a midfielder from Israel.

Arsenal finished 4th, 2 points ahead of Tottenham, and qualified for the Champions League; Tottenham, finishing 5th, went to the UEFA Cup.

*

The remains of the supposedly offending lasagne were sent to a laboratory, and tested. As it turned out, there was nothing wrong with it, at least not medically. The virus that spread among the Spurs players was real, but it had nothing to do with food.
Still, Spurs fans blame that lasagne, and the chef that served it. Just like the Yankees-Red Sox "Curse of the Bambino," the lasagne contagion never really existed, but it has taken on a life of its own, because the afflicted team's fans believed it. And so, to spite them, ever since, Arsenal fans have sung, to "Volare":

Lasagne, whoa!
Lasagne, whoa!
We laughed ourselves to bits

when Tottenham got the shits!

Which matches another Arsenal chant. I don't know how far back it goes, but it was already in place in early 2007:

Q: What do you think of Tottenham?
A: Shit!
Q: What do you think of shit?
A: Tottenham!
Q: Thank you!
A: That's all right! We hate Tottenham and we hate Tottenham! We hate Tottenham and we hate Tottenham! We hate Tottenham and we hate Tottenham! We are the Tottenham haters!

Indeed, Tottenham haven't finished higher than Arsenal in the League since 1995. No other pair of local rivals in English football have so long a gap. It nearly happened in 2012 and 2013, going to the last game of the season again.

This year, with 2 games to go, Spurs could finish ahead of Arsenal. But knowing the histories of the teams, don't be surprised if they find a way to "Spurs it up."

Yanks Win, Sox Lose, Ortiz Loses It

$
0
0
The Yankees, not hitting, and with injuries stacking up, were not in the best of positions to face their arch-rivals last night.

Nevertheless, when the Boston Red Sox come in, you better be ready.

Michael Pineda started for the Yankees, and he pitched all right for 6 innings, allowing 2 runs, 8 hits and a walk. He allowed a home run to, of course, David Ortiz, the big fat lying cheating bastard, in the top of the 1st, to make it 2-0 Sox. But he settled down after that, and didn't allow another run through 6.

In the bottom of the 1st, Brian McCann doubled home Jacoby Ellsbury. In the bottom of the 2nd, Dustin Ackley singled home Starlin Castro. Tie game, 2-2.

So Pineda got through the 6th with the game tied. All right, leave him in for the 7th, right? Right. Except Joe Girardi got it wrong: He saw them triple digits on Big Mike's pitch count (106), and he brought in...

Chasen Shreve? With David Ortiz, the big fat lying cheating bastard, as the potential 5th batter of the inning? In a tie game? After he's already hit yet another steroid-aided home run off the Yankees?

Oh, that's it: Lord, deliver me from this evil, and take me now.

Sure enough, Christian Vazquez led off the top of the 7th with a double. Shreve got Mookie Betts to pop up.

And then Girardi pulls Shreve for Kirby Yates. Right, after Shreve actually, you know, got an out.

I rip Girardi when he gets it wrong, so I have to give him credit when he gets it right. This time, boy, did he ever get it right. Yates got Dustin Pedroia to line out to short, and then he struck Xander Bogaerts out looking, leaving Big Cheati in the on-deck circle.

That K charged up the fans, and it must have charged up Aaron Hicks: Unable lately to hit the ground if he fell off a ladder, he cranked one into the bleachers in right-center field, his 1st home run of the season. 3-2 Yankees.

Top of the 8th. Dellin Betances in to pitch. He gets Ortiz to hit a line shot to right. He fans Hanley Ramirez looking. But he allows a single to Travis Shaw.

Girardi doesn't take any chances, and brings in closer Andrew Miller. He walks Chris Young. Uh-oh, those walks'll kill ya...

Unless ya don't let 'em score. Miller struck Jackie Bradley out looking. Threat over.

Top of the 9th. Miller still pitching. Josh Rutledge singles, and the tying run is on 1st. But Miller fans Mookie Betts. Then Pedroia singles. Then Bogaerts singles, but Rutledge can't score. Bases loaded, only 1 out. Tying run on 3rd, potential winning run on 2nd, possible major insurance run on 1st.

And who's up? Of course. Him. Ortiz. The biggest Yankee Killer ever (in terms of both impact and weight). The greatest cheater in the history of baseball -- and yet, only the 2nd-biggest cheater in New England sports. (Tom Brady has 4 titles, Ortiz 3.)

Ortiz worked the count to 3-and-1. Then Miller threw a pitch on the outside corner. He flipped his bat back toward the Sox dugout, sure that he'd just taken ball 4 and forced in the tying run. Instead, home plate umpire Ron Kulpa called strike 2.

Ortiz had a conniption. He screamed at Kulpa. Sox manager John Farrell ran out, knowing that the at-bat wasn't over -- and that, if the Sox did tie the game, he'd need Big Poopi's bat in the lineup for extra innings. But his own argument got him thrown out of the game by Kulpa.

Then Miller threw another pitch that just ticked the outside corner. Kulpa called strike 3, and The House That Steinbrenner Built erupted.

So did Big Sloppy. He walked back toward the dugout, kept yelling, and Kulpa tossed him, too.

This sort of thing doesn't happen to the Red Sox. It usually happens for them, especially when it hurts the Yankees. Big Popoff couldn't believe he was being treated this way. You know, like any other player would have been if he'd been such an asshole to the umpire.

He ran back out, like George Brett (another cheating asshole, although it didn't keep him out of the Hall of Fame, just like Ortiz's cheating won't keep him out) during the Pine Tar Game in 1983. He screamed at Kulpa, showing a remarkable gift for American profanity, given that English is not his first language. He was in full "Don't you know who I am?" mode.

Let me remind you: There have been Yankees who have acted that way. Billy Martin comes to mind. So does Lou Piniella. But most Yankee stars don't. Reggie Jackson never did. Thurman Munson argued, but respectfully. I can't recall Derek Jeter ever arguing with an umpire in his 20 seasons in Pinstripes. Alex Rodriguez cursed out a Red Sox pitcher who intentionally hit him, but I can't remember ever seeing him argue with an umpire. Paul O'Neill? He would get back to the dugout, and throw his helmet and his bat, and scream at himself -- but I never saw him scream at an umpire.

It remains to be seen whether Commissioner Rob Manfred will further discipline Ortiz, but getting ejected from a game by an umpire usually results in a fine and a suspension. Most likely, he'll appeal, and still be able to play in the 2 remaining games of the series. But it would be a breath of fresh air to see David Ortiz -- or any Red Sox player -- to get suspended for something.

By the way, as somebody reminded me on Twitter last night: David Ortiz has failed a PED test, while, as far as the general public knows, Alex Rodriguez has not. Guess which one has missed


Nearly lost in the commotion was the fact that the game was not over. The Yankees still had to get 1 more out, the bases were still loaded, and the dangerous Hanley Ramirez was coming to bat.

Miller struck him out swinging.

Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Yankees win! Holy cow! How about that!

3-2! We beat The Scum, 3-2! We beat The Scum, 3-2! We beat The Scum, 3-2!

WP: Yates (1-0). SV: Miller (6). LP: Rick Porcello (5-1).


Yes, I got to say, it was a good day. But it wasn't quite the same as Ice Cube's "good day." The Lakers didn't play, in a rare playoff miss for them. The Seattle SuperSonics have been gone for 8 years. And, yes, we did "get static from the cowards," i.e. the Red Sox.

The series continues this afternoon.

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the Pittsburgh Steelers for Cutting Johnny Unitas

$
0
0
May 7, 1933: John Constantine Unitas is born in Pittsburgh. He died on September 11, 2002 in Baltimore. In the intervening 68 1/2 years, he became, quite possibly, the best quarterback who ever lived.

He could have done it for his hometown team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. But you don't see his Number 14 on the wall at Heinz Field, do you? (Note: That photograph above is real, not photoshopped.)

The Steelers drafted him in 1955, but cut him before the season started. They also had, in their training camps of the 1950s, Len Dawson and Jack Kemp -- all at a time when Terry Bradshaw was still a little kid.

The quarterbacks they kept for the 1955 season? The starter was Jim Finks. He's in the Pro Football Hall of Fame... as an executive. Most fans who know him as an executive have never seen film of him playing, and I'm sure a lot of them didn't even know that he played.

The backups? One was Ted Marchibroda, who opposed Unitas' Louisville for St. Bonaventure. That school, which dropped football while he was there, allowing him to transfer to the University of Detroit Mercy, hosted the Steelers' training camp in Olean, New York. Why there? Because the athletic director was Father Dan Rooney, brother of Steelers founding owner Art Rooney.

Marchibroda, too, would be an important figure in the history of Baltimore football, coaching the Colts to 3 straight AFC Eastern Division titles in the 1970s, after Unitas retired; and becoming the 1st coach of the Ravens. The other backup that the Steelers kept in '55 was Vic Eaton, from the University of Missouri, who didn't get far in the NFL.

The Steelers' head coach was Walt Kiesling. Once a good offensive lineman by the standards of his time (the 1920s), he was an idiot as a coach. Because of him, the Steelers were the last NFL team to drop the single-wing formation that had dominated football in the 1st half of the 20th Century, before the T formation began to take over in the 1940s.

He seemed to have one play: Handing the ball off to Fran Rogel, a running back from Penn State (making him a "local hero," I suppose). Steeler fans, not happy about this, would chant, "Hi diddle diddle, Rogel up the middle." It usually didn't work.

"Kiesling was an introverted guy," Marchibroda said, half a century later, "who had very little correspondence with the players. It seemed all head coaches in the pros were more distant then, but he was more distant than most. I'm not sure Keez even knew that John was there."

Clearly: Unitas wasn't sent out to take a single snap in the Steelers' exhibition games. So he would spend time after practice getting in more practice, tossing the ball around with Art Rooney's sons: Art Jr., Dan and Pat. They would all remember how good Unitas' arm was, even then.

It would be the late 1960s, and the total collapse of a once-promising team (the Steelers just missed Division titles, and berths in the NFL Championship Game, in 1962 and '63), before Art Sr. finally gave up, and turned control of the team over to his sons. They built a team that dominated the 1970s, including going 4-0 in Super Bowls. If Art Sr. had listened to Art Jr., Dan and Pat in the Summer of '55, maybe "The Man With the Golden Arm" would have been a Steelers legend.

To make matters worse -- Met fans may remember how Omar Minaya made Willie Randolph fly across the country on a roadtrip before firing him and sending him back -- instead of telling Unitas before the last exhibition game, which was in his hometown of Pittsburgh, that he was cutting him, Kiesling waited until they got back to Olean, before Keez dropped the other shoe.

"You know," Unitas later claimed he'd said to Kiesling, "I wouldn't mind being released or being cut if I'd had an opportunity to play and I screwed up very badly. But you never gave me the damn opportunity to do it!" Later still, Johnny U said, "I was really, really ugly with Kiesling. I called him every name I could think of."

Years later, when Unitas was playing in Baltimore under head coach Wilbur "Weeb" Ewbank, Weeb told John about a meeting he had with Nick Skorich, one of Kiesling's assistants. Skorich told Weeb that John was "just too dumb," that he "couldn't keep the plays straight in the huddle."

After the Philadelphia Eagles won the 1960 NFL Championship, coach Buck Shaw retired, and Skorich was named head coach. The team collapsed. Skorich later coached the Cleveland Browns. He never made the Playoffs as a head coach. Who looks dumb now?

Surely, there had to be reasons for the Steelers to cut a hometown guy who turned into such a great quarterback...

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the Pittsburgh Steelers for Cutting Johnny Unitas

5. The Mentality of the Times. The following men were great quarterbacks in the NFL in 1955: Otto Graham of the Cleveland Browns, Bobby Layne of the Detroit Lions, Norm Van Brocklin of the Los Angeles Rams, Y.A. Tittle of the San Francisco 49ers... and that's it. George Blanda is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, with those other 4, but for what he did later on in the AFL, not for what he was doing in the Fifties with the Chicago Bears.

This is because it was still a game where running the ball was considered the key. Most coaches in the Fifties thought the same way that Woody Hayes, the head coach at Ohio State University, thought: "There are three things that can happen when you throw the football, and two of them are bad." (A completed pass, and incomplete pass, and an interception.)

It was Graham, Layne, and, in a few years, Unitas who helped turn it around, and make the passing game a serious weapon in the NFL. Before them, a great quarterback was an outlier: Sid Luckman of the Bears, and Sammy Baugh of the Washington Redskins. But Graham and Layne paved the way, and Unitas really started the age of the quarterback.

But Kiesling was still coaching the 1920s game in the 1950s. And, while intense loyalty was frequently one of Art Rooney's great virtues, there were times when it was a drawback. "The Chief" was too loyal to old friend Keez, who never got him into the NFL Championship Game.

4. Size Matters. Unitas wanted to play for the University of Notre Dame. coached by Frank Leahy, a pretty good judge of football talent who had coached 2 Heisman Trophy-winning quarterbacks in Angelo Bertelli and Johnny Lujack.

He got a tryout, but Leahy never saw him. Not figuratively, not getting noticed, like with Kiesling, but literally: Leahy never stopped what he was doing long enough to look at Johnny Unitas, who could have been the next great Notre Dame quarterback.

Instead, assistant coach Bernie Crimmins, a former All-American halfback for the Fighting Irish, looked at Unitas. Crimmins said, "Jeez, I like what you do, but, God, you're so small. You're 5-11, 130-some pounds. We're liable to be sued for manslaughter up here."

Even in his senior year at the University of Louisville, he was 6-foot-1, but only around 170 pounds. Playing against defenders who'd been in The War just 10 years earlier, or maybe even Korea even more recently than that, ready to look on anybody on the other team as "the enemy," and who had no qualms about purposely injuring an enemy? After all, then as now, football was "a man's game." Johnny U had the height -- we're not talking about 5-foot-9-3/4-inch Doug Flutie here, or the 5-foot-7 Eddie LeBaron then quarterbacking the Redskins -- but not the bulk.

3. Johnny Who? Unitas was a nobody. Today, a great quarterback coming out of the football-rich region of Western Pennsylvania would have college recruiters all over him. Unitas is a big reason why. Conversely, that reputation for producing great quarterbacks was not yet in place.

Lujack was the 1st, and done well for the Bears, but he was now out of the NFL. And  he had thus far been followed only by Vito "Babe" Parilli, who had starred for Paul "Bear" Bryant at the University of Kentucky, but was, at this point, in the Canadian Football League. (He would later lead the Boston Patriots as the New England team was then known, into the 1963 AFL Championship Game, and was Namath's backup on the Jets' Super Bowl team.)

Despite having a decent career at St. Justin's High School, major colleges weren't beating down the door to get Unitas in 1950. It didn't help that St. J's was in Pittsburgh's B League, the league for Catholic schools with small enrollments.

Thanks to the contacts of his coach, Max Carey (his real name was James, but he was nicknamed Max after the Baseball Hall-of-Famer of the same name), he got a tryout at Notre Dame. But, as I said, he was turned down for being too skinny. Carey also knew someone at Indiana University, but they took a look at Unitas, and passed on him.

The 2 big schools in Western Pennsylvania? The University of Pittsburgh offered him a scholarship, but he failed the entrance exam. And it appears that Penn State, then coached by Rip Engle with Joe Paterno in his 1st year as an assistant, and not yet the powerhouse it would become with Paterno as head coach, didn't look at him at all.

Nor did any of the other major football-playing Catholic schools of the time, such as Fordham in New York and Boston College, take a serious look at him. The aforementioned Woody Hayes did not recruit him. Nor did Bud Wilkinson at the University of Oklahoma. Nor did the aforementioned Bear Bryant, the great University of Alabama coach, then leading Kentucky to that season's Southeastern Conference Champions.

Nor did Bennie Oosterbaan of the University of Michigan, Big Ten Champions. Nor did Blair Cherry of the University of Texas, Southwest Conference Champions. Nor did Pappy Waldorf of the University of California, Champions of the league now known as the Pac-12. Nor did Darrell Royal, the great University of Texas coach, then at Mississippi State University, and a former quarterback himself at Oklahoma under Wilkinson.

Unitas was accepted at the University of Louisville. While that school has produced a few decent college quarterbacks from the 1990s onward, it was not known for football in the Fifties. It wasn't even known for basketball then.

Under the rules of the time, freshmen were eligible at Louisville, giving him 4 years to impress the pro scouts. But they went just 12-22 in his 3 years on the varsity: 5-4 in 1951, 3-5 in 1952, 1-7 in '53, and 3-6 in '54, his senior year. Due to injuries, Unitas didn't even have the most passing yards on his own team that last year.

And even when the Steelers went to camp, having drafted Unitas in 1955, he didn't seem to impress anyone. Maybe that was down to Walt Kiesling being an idiot, but Ted Marchibroda and Jim Finks, 2 of the other 3 quarterbacks in camp, weren't impressed, either, and they both proved to be very smart football men. Marchibroda remembered:

To be honest with you, Finks and I hardly noticed him, either. Later, when we had reason to think back, Jim and I talked about it. What had we missed? Neither one of us could remember a single thing John had done. 

2. The Other NFL Teams. The Steelers drafted Unitas in the 9th round. How far down is that? Today, the NFL Draft only has 7 rounds. Think about what that means: It means that all 12 teams then in the NFL -- the Steelers, the Browns, the Lions, the Rams, the Bears, the Redskins, the Eagles, the Chicago Cardinals, the Green Bay Packers, the New York Giants, the San Francisco 49ers, and, yes, the Colts, the team that eventually did sign him -- had eight chances to draft him, and all twelve refused all eight.

Or, should I say, those teams had an average of 8 picks. The Steelers had 6 chances, before finally drafting Unitas with their 7th possible pick. (Unless you really know your Steeler history, you've never heard of any of the 1st 6.) The Colts actually had 10 chances. So did the Cards. The Lions had 11 chances to draft Johnny Unitas -- they sure could have used him after they dumped Bobby Layne, and they haven't won an NFL Championship, or even reached an NFL Championship Game (or Super Bowl), since 1957. The Rams also had 11 chances, and they didn't reach an NFL Championship Game (or Super Bowl) between 1955 and 1979. The Browns had 9 chances, the Bears 8, the Packers 8, the Eagles 8, the 49ers 8, the Redskins 7, and the Giants only 5.

He was the 102nd pick. One hundred and one players were chosen in the NFL Draft before Johnny Unitas. Or, to put it another way: Take the Steelers, the team that actually did draft him, out of the equation, and there were 95 chances for 1 of the other 11 teams to have drafted Unitas. Ninety-five. Not one of those chances was taken.

To give you more perspective: The Colts did take a quarterback with the 1st pick in the 1955 NFL Draft. Not Unitas, but George Shaw. Who? The guy Johnny U replaced as Colts starting quarterback in 1956.

What I'm trying to say is, If the Steelers were fools for taking until the 9th round to draft Johnny Unitas, and fools for releasing him before he ever took a regular-season snap, it makes things look worse for the 11 teams that didn't draft him, including the Colts, who would sign him for 1956, and change the course of football history.
Why is this man smiling? Because he's playing for Weeb Ewbank,
not sitting on the bench for Walt Kiesling. And it's working.

1. Lady Luck. As ESPN said when they did The Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the Portland Trail Blazers for Drafting Sam Bowie (instead of Michael Jordan), "The draft is a crapshoot." This has always been true for all 4 major North American sports. But it went well beyond that in football in the 1950s.

Football scouting in the Fifties was a tricky business. There was no ESPN to allow pro scouts, coaches and general managers to see who was a great pro prospect, who was a good college player but might not be adaptable to the pros, and who was someone you should pass by completely. There was no sharing of game footage between college and pro teams. You could see a player on a good day, and then find out that this was as good as he got; or you could see a great player on a bad day, and pass him up.

In other words, you can't blame the Steelers for not knowing what they had in Unitas, for the same reason you can't blame the other 11 teams for not drafting him at all. Nobody knew very much. To find a great player, you either had to have somebody right there in town, making it easy and cheap to send someone to go see him, or you had to get lucky.

Lady Luck did not smile on the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1955, the year the film version of Guys and Dolls featured Marlon Brando singing "Luck Be a Lady." A year later, she did smile on the Baltimore Colts, and a legend was born.

In 1969, the Steelers went 1-13, and the best quarterback in the team's 37-season history to that point was the aging Bobby Layne, who nearly got them into the Playoffs in 1962, then retired. They got the top pick in the 1970 NFL Draft, and, with Art Rooney turning the reins over to sons Dan and Art Jr., they used it to draft a little-known quarterback from a small school starting with L -- in that case, Louisiana Tech, which, like Unitas' Louisville, is better known for basketball (in their case, women's).

The quarterback's name was Terry Bradshaw. Like Unitas, he would be a member of 4 NFL Championship teams, make his team one of the iconic ballclubs of North American sports, and make the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

But it would be a painful process for T.B. It could have been very different. He could have had Johnny U to mentor him on the Steelers.

Blackie Sherrod, 1919-2016

$
0
0
Those of us who write, even if it's only a blog like this, owe a lot to lots of people who've inspired us, whether we realize it or not, and to those who've inspired them.

Blackie Sherrod inspried Dan Jenkins, Bud Shrake, and everybody who ever read him.

"There have been about as many imitation Sherrods as there are sportswriters who drink," wrote someone in D, a magazine about his hometown of Dallas, in 1986,

William Forrest Sherrod (pronounced SHERR-uhd, not Sheh-RODD) was born on November 9, 1919 on a farm outside Belton, Texas. He later said that he read every book in Belton's library. We're talking about a small town in Texas -- in the 1920s and '30s, no less -- so that may not be as much of an accomplishment as you might think.

He attended Baylor University in Waco, then transferred to Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, graduating in 1941. A football injury there ended his athletic career. It was there that his dark hair and complexion, supposed a result of Cherokee blood, earned him the nickname Blackie. He didn't like it, but a later editor told him that "Blackie" would stand out on a byline more than "William,""Bill" or "Billy" would.

He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and was hired thereafter by the Temple Telegram. He soon moved on to the Fort Worth Press, and quickly became its sports editor. Jenkins and Shrake both wrote for him.

Jenkins once told of how he worked all night on his first story for the Press. He presented it to Sherrod, who read the first paragraph, and told him, "Don't ever write a morning lead for an afternoon newspaper, dumbass."

In 1958, he was hired by the Dallas Times Herald. In spite of his being a sportswriter, they sent him to cover the 1960 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. John F. Kennedy was nominated for President. When Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963, Sherrod was the main rewrite man for the Times Herald's coverage. They also sent him to the space center named for JFK at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to cover Apollo 11 in 1969.

Following the 1963 National Championship won by the University of Texas Longhorns, Sherrod collaborated with their head coach on a book, Darrell Royal Talks Football.

In the 1967, '68 and '69 seasons, he was the color analyst on Dallas Cowboys games on KLIF radio, with Bill Mercer doing play-by-play. He quit just as the Cowboys started reaching Super Bowls, but he was one of the few writers in Texas to be openly critical of, if not "America's Team" as they began calling themselves in 1978, certainly the most popular sports team in Texas. (After all, a big chunk of the State hates the Longhorns, but even Houston Oiler fans, in another conference, didn't particularly hate the Cowboys then. It's different with today's Houston Texans fans.)

He knew the Cowboys' fans were just short of worshipful, and he tended to refer to them in his columns as "Your Heroes" -- Capital Y, Capital H. While he liked head coach Tom Landry, he liked to call him "Mount Landry," as if his face and his famed hat were already on Mount Rushmore.

About the legendary Baltimore Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas: "He is a day laborer who somehow fell into fame on his way to work and it impresses him not a whit." Those words not only work, they have the added advantage of being true. (Disclaimer: I'm currently reading a biography of Unitas, hence last night's post examining how the Pittsburgh Steelers could have let him go.)

About Roger Staubach, the Cowboy quarterback known as "Captain America," who concluded a bad game with a game-winning drive: "Like putting a cherry on a glass of buttermilk."

In 1985, he moved to the Dallas Morning News. In 1988, they collected his columns in The Blackie Sherrod Collection, with an introduction by Dan Jenkins, who, I suppose, now succeeds him as the great Texas sportswriter. (Fans of Mickey Herskowitz may feel free to disagree.) In 2003, another collection appeared, Blackie Sherrod At Large.

He married twice. The 1st marriage ended in divorce. He married Joyce Wilson in 1979, and she is his only known survivor.

After years of Alzheimer's disease, and his health further compromised by 2 recent falls at home (always a danger to elderly people), Blackie Sherrod died on April 28 at his home in Dallas. He was 96 years old.

For its obituary, The New York Times had a headline describing him as a "Texan Who Wrote About Sports With an Informed Swagger."

Aside from the part about being from Texas (unless you actually are from Texas), isn't that what any sportswriter should inspire to do with his or her writing?

Yankees Double Their Win Total Over Sox

$
0
0
About time the Yankees got a little something going. They made it back-to-back wins over the old enemy yesterday afternoon, and, for the first time all season, look like the team we hoped they'd be.

Nathan Eovaldi was fantastic -- so good that Joe Girardi actually let him pitch 8 innings. Actually, it really is all about the pitch count with Girardi: It wasn't until the 8th that Nasty Nate crossed the 100-pitch barrier, finishing with 107. He allowed 2 runs on 6 hits and no walks, striking out 6 Red Sox.

No, David Ortiz did not hit a home run. The only big fat old steroid cheater who hit a home run last night was Bartolo Colon.

He actually fell behind 1-0 in the 2nd inning, but the Yankees tied it in the 3rd on an RBI double by Austin Romine. Didi Gregorius hit a bases-loaded double in the 4th, making it 4-1. The Sox got a run back in top of the the 5th on a Jackie Bradley home run, but Carlos Beltran drove in 2 with a double in the bottom half, Aaron Hicks added another on a sacrifice fly in the 6th, and yet another double, Romine's 2nd of the game, brought home another run in the 8th.

Nick Goody mopped up with a 1-2-3 9th. Those 4 doubles allowed the Yankees to double their win total over Boston this season: We're now 2-3 against them.

Yankees 8, Red Sox 2. WP: Eovaldi (2-2). No save. LP: David Price (4-1).

8-2! We beat The Scum, 8-2! We beat The Scum, 8-2! We beat The Scum, 8-2!

I'd 8-2 be a Red Sox fan right now.

The Yankees go for the sweep tonight, in the Sunday night ESPN game. Luis Severino starts against Steven Wright. I don't know if it "sends a message" if we complete the sweep, but you always want to win, especially against The Scum. Come on you Pinstripes!


No Sweep vs. Scum, 11-18, But Chapman Back

$
0
0
The Yankees should never wear pink on their uniforms again. I don't care that it was Mother's Day: You do not mess with the Yankee uniform.

Wearing star-spangled interlocking N-Y's on the caps on Memorial Day, the 4th of July and September 11 is one thing. But a pink N-Y on the chest? Never again. Pink bats, gloves, wristbands, fine; logos on the jersey, no.

We didn't get the sweep last night. Playing on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball, especially against The Scum, usually doesn't work in our favor.

Luis Severino started against the Red Sox, and fell behind 2-0 in the 1st inning, before allowing 4 runs over 6 2/3rds innings, although he only walked 1 batter and struck out 9. He's now 0-5, and just not getting the job done. He needs some serious coaching.

In contrast, Steven Wright -- not to be confused with the existentialist comedian of the same name, who is a Red Sox fan from Massachusetts -- went the distance for Boston. He allowed only 4 baserunners: A walk to Dustin Ackley, a single to Brian McCann, a double to Starlin Castro and a pointless 9th inning home run by Brett Gardner (his 3rd of the season). Wright advanced to 3-3. There was no save, naturally.

Red Sox 5, Yankees 1.

The Yankees still aren't hitting enough. The pitching has been better, but hardly good enough. It's 5 weeks into a 26-week season, the Yankees are 11-18, and 6 1/2 games behind The Scum.

And now, just what we didn't need: The defending World Champions, the Kansas City Royals, come to town. Here are the pitching matchups:

* Tonight: Ivan Nova vs. Chris Young.
* Tomorrow night: Masahiro Tanaka vs. Kris Medlen.
* Wednesday night: Michael Pineda vs. Yordano Ventura.

Aroldis Chapman's suspension -- for suspicion of domestic abuse, which he still denies, and for which he hasn't yet had his day in court to defend himself -- is up. He is eligible to pitch tonight.

Of course, the last thing Joe Girardi needs is another relief pitcher. Another excuse to pull a starter who's cruising.

Remember Jose Reyes? The guy who was going to lead the Mets to glory and to "take back New York"? Well, he's going to be suspended for 60 games under MLB's domestic violence guidelines, just as Chapman was.

Met fans thought he was a hero. Yet few ballplayers have proven themselves so overrated, both on the field and off.

How to Be a New York Soccer Fan In Portland -- 2016 Edition

$
0
0
The New York Red Bulls don't play away to the Portland Timbers this season. But New York City Football Club do, this coming Sunday.

Before You Go. Like its Pacific Northwest neighbors Seattle and Vancouver, Portland is notorious for rain. The website for The Oregonian, Portland's major newspaper, says the temperatures will be in the high 60s during the day and the high 40s at night next Sunday, and, lucky you, there should be no rain.

Portland is in the Pacific Time Zone, 3 hours behind New York. Adjust your timepieces accordingly.

Tickets. Portland has only 2 teams in major league sports, the NBA and MLS. They also have a team in the National Women's Soccer League, and, more than any other city, they pack the joint for both MLS and the NWSL. The Timbers averaged 21,142 fans per home game last season, a sellout. Tickets will be tough to get.

Fortunately, the nature of soccer means that an entire section is set aside for visiting fans. At Providence Park that is Section 223, at the southwest corner (the right field corner, if they were still using the stadium's baseball setup). Tickets are $35.

Getting There. It's 2,895 miles from Times Square to downtown Portland, and 2,887 miles from Red Bull Arena to Providence Park. In other words, if you're going, you're going to want to fly.

After all, even if you get someone to go with you, and you take turns, one drives while the other one sleeps, and you pack 2 days’ worth of food, and you use the side of the Interstate as a toilet, and you don’t get pulled over for speeding, you’ll still need over 2 full days to get there. One way.

But, for future reference, if you really, really want to drive... Get onto Interstate 80 West in New Jersey, and stay on that through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming and Utah. Outside Ogden, Utah, at Exit 168, switch to Interstate 84 West. Take that into Idaho and Oregon, all the way to the end of I-84.

Not counting rest stops, you should be in New Jersey for an hour and a half, Pennsylvania for 5:15, Ohio for 4 hours, Indiana for 2:30, Illinois for 2:45, Iowa for 5 hours, Nebraska for 6:45, Wyoming for 6:30, Utah for 3:30, Idaho for 5:30, and Oregon for 6:15. In total, that's around 49 1/2 hours. Given rest stops, we're talking more like 60 hours -- 2 1/2 days.

That's still faster than Greyhound, 70 hours, changing buses in Denver, $438 round-trip, but it could drop to $338 with advanced purchase.

It's also faster than Amtrak: 67 hours. You'd leave Penn Station on the Lake Shore Limited at 3:40 PM on Thursday, arrive at Union Station in Chicago at 9:45 AM Central Time on Friday, switch to the Empire Builder at 2:15 PM, and arrive at Union Station in Portland at 10:10 AM Pacific Time on Sunday. Round-trip fare: $464, before booking sleeping arrangements).

Union Station, which serves Amtrak and Greyhound, is at 550 NW 6th Avenue. 6th & Hoyt station on MAX. The "GO BY TRAIN" sign atop its clock tower is reminiscent of the "UNION STATION TRAVEL BY TRAIN" sign at its namesake in Denver.
A round-trip flight from Newark to Portland, for the distance, is quite cheap: It can be had for $643, if you don't mind changing planes in Dallas or Phoenix. The MAX Red Line will get you from the airport to downtown in 33 minutes.

Once In the City. Founded in 1845 as the end of the Oregon Trail, in the shadow of Mount Hood, legend has it that the name of the town was decided by a coin flip. Francis Pettygrove wanted to name the town after his hometown of Portland, Maine. Asa Lovejoy was from Groton, Massachusetts. Pettygrove won, and that's why the Knicks aren't playing the Groton Trail Blazers next Saturday.

Portland, a.k.a. the Rose City or PDX (for its airport code) has a population of around 620,000, and a metro area of about 3 million. It's still growing, but not as fast as it was in the 1980s and '90s, when a group successfully lobbied to slow down the suburban sprawl. It was named PLAN, for Prevent Los Angelization Now.

The State of Oregon has no sales tax, and this covers the County of Multnomah and the City of Portland. The Willamette River is the divider between east and west, and Burnside Street, including its bridge over the river, is the divider between north and south.

TriMet, the area's public transit service, runs buses and the MAX light rail system. A single fare is $2.50, while a day pass is $5.00. They also run the WES Commuter Rail.
A MAX train, downtown

Going In. The official address of Providence Park is 1844 SW Morrison Street. It's about a mile west of downtown. Parking is cheap: Depending on the lot, you can get it for under $7.00. If you'd rather not drive, use Kings Hill/SW Salmon Street MAX station.
MAX station

This started as a minor-league baseball field named Multnomah Field in 1893. It was replaced by Multnomah Stadium in 1926. The name has been changed to Civic Stadium in 1966, PGE Park in 2001, Jeld-Wen Field in 2011 and Providence Park in 2014. Elvis Presley played one of the earliest stadium concerts at Multnomah Stadium on September 2, 1957.
Civic Stadium in 1969

At 21,444 seats, it was one of the largest ballparks in the minor leagues. It was home to the Pacific Coast League's Portland Beavers from 1956 to 1972, again from 1978 to 1993, and again from 2001 to 2010. It was home to the Portland Mavericks of the Northwest League, the team with whom Jim Bouton began his post-Ball Four comeback and co-invented Big League Chew. It was home to the Portland Rockies of the Northwest League from 1995 to 2000. Currently, the city doesn't have a professional baseball team.
Portland State University plays football there, and both the University of Oregon and Oregon State University played "home" games on the site between 1894 and 1970. It was home to the Portland Storm, later the Portland Thunder, of the World Football League in 1974 and '75, and the Portland Breakers of the USFL in 1985.
An overhead shot from 2009, before
sideline seating was built in the former left field,
making a return of baseball to the stadium impossible.

The original Portland Timbers, of the original North American Soccer League, played there from 1975 to 1982. After the NASL folded, the Timbers were reconstituted, began play in 1985, folded again in 1990, started again in 2001, and joined Major League Soccer in 2011. The Portland Thorns of the National Women's Soccer League began play there in 2013. While their masculine counterparts are one of the best-supported teams in MLS, the Thorns are the best-supported team in the NWSL.
Civic Stadium hosted Soccer Bowl '77, in which Pelé and the New York Cosmos won the NASL title by beating the Seattle Sounders. (I wonder if the Portland fans rooted against Seattle.) It hosted 4 games of the 1999 Women's World Cup, and 6 of the 2003 edition, 1 involving the U.S. It's hosted 4 games of the U.S. men's national team, 3 wins and a draw, most recently a 2013 win over Belize.
Pelé holding the NASL trophy,
after his last competitive match.

Visiting fans are instructed to enter at Gate 5, at the stadium's southwest corner. This will lead you right into Section 223, the section for visiting supporters. However, Providence Park being an old stadium, you'll have seats aimed straight ahead, and you'll have to turn your head to see nearly all of the action. The field is artificial, and is aligned (more or less) north-to-south.

Catty-corner from Providence Park, on the southeast corner of 18th Avenue and Salmon Street is another stadium, used by adjacent Lincoln High School. As far as I know, neither the Timbers nor the Thorns use it as a training facility.

Food. Centerplate Catering runs the concession stands at Providence Park. These include Timber Pie, British-style meat pies provided by Pacific Pie Company; Timber Brat, a bratwurst stand; and the Thai Curry cart.

Four carts operate on a rotating schedule out of the Soccer City Grill concession stand, above section 93 in the stadium's southeast corner. Big Ass Sandwiches serves "Over-the-top sandwiches stuffed with sliced meats, french fries and bechamel sauce." Nong's Khao Man Gai serves a "famous dish" of poached chicken and steamed rice with ginger sauce and a cup of broth. 808 Grinds, named for Hawaii's Area Code, serves heaping plates of Hawaiian plate lunch dishes like shoyu chicken and Kahlua pig. 
Porklandia Panini serves sandwiches. Bahn Mi Dog serves Vietnamese-style hot dogs. (Don't worry, they're beef and pork, not actual dogs.) Tillamook Quesadilla Cart serves 4 kinds of toasted quesadillas including Bacon Mac ‘n Cheese, Philly Cheesesteak, Cubano, and Grilled Chicken. The Wood Shed Roll serves a sandwich that features Carlton Farms pork butt braised in Widmer beer, plus Tillamook White Cheddar cheese, wrapped in soft pretzel bun.
Olympia Provisions Charcuterie Box serves salamis and pates, Tillamook Cheese, crackers, and house-made marmalade. Bacon Bleu Cheese Tots are tots topped with Oregon Bleu Cheese, crumbled Zenner's bacon, chopped green onions, diced tomatoes, and chipotle ranch sauce.
There's a Tillamook Grilled Cheese Station, Carlton Farms Pulled Pork, and Tillamook Mac ‘n Cheese Dog: a Zenner's quarter pound hot dog on a Franz stadium roll smothered in house-made Tillamook Mac ‘n Cheese.
Team History Displays. The original Portland Timbers played in the North American Soccer League from 1975 to 1982. In 1975, they reached the title game, the Soccer Bowl, but lost to the Tampa Bay Rowdies. Only 3 more times did they reach the league's final 4.

The new Timbers, who started in a minor league in 2001 and were admitted to MLS in 2010, have already surpassed their forebears. They are the holders of the MLS Cup, having beaten the Columbus Crew in last year's Final (in Columbus, no less), and also won the regular-season Western Conference title in 2013.

The 2015 MLS Cup banner hangs under the roof by 3rd base -- excuse me, by the northeast corner. Next to it is the Portland Timbers Ring of Honor, with 5 honorees, all connected to the NASL version of the team. On the other side of the Ring of Honor is the Thorns' 2013 NWSL Championship banner.
Clive Charles, an East End London man who played left back for West Ham United before playing with the old Timbers, stayed in town to coach the University of Portland team. He was managing the U.S. national team's Under-23 side when he died of cancer in 2003. The Timbers have retired his Number 3.

The only other number they've retired is 5, worn by longtime fan Jim Serrill, a.k.a. Timber Jim, an actual timber-industry worker who became an unofficial mascot for the NASL Timbers, and stayed with the various incarnations of the team until retiring in 2008.

Also in the Ring of Honor, although not with their numbers retired, are John Bain, Jimmy Conway and Mick Hoban. Bain was a Scottish midfielder who played for Bristol City, and then for several American teams, including the old Timbers. He later managed a version of them, and has spent most of the last quarter-century coaching high school soccer in Portland. Conway was an Irish midfielder who played for Dublin club Bohemian F.C., West London's Fulham, and Manchester City, before playing for the Timbers, and later coaching at and managing the minor-league version. Hoban is an English midfielder who played for Birmingham-based Aston Villa, before coming to the Timbers, and staying in town to work for Nike.

Stuff. Despite Oregon's association with Nike, another shoe company sponsors the Timbers' main shop. The adidas Timbers Team Store is at KeyBank Plaza, on the corner of SW 18th Avenue and SW Morrison, at the northeast corner of the stadium.

Michael Orr wrote a book about the original version of the team: The 1975 Portland Timbers: The Birth of Soccer City. And, to commemorate last season's title, the staff of The Oregonian compiled Green & Golden: Portland Timbers' Historic March to the MLS CupThere is also a team video available, titled Portland Timbers We Adore You.

During the Game. Portland is a relatively safe city. The Timbers have a bit of a rivalry with the Seattle Sounders, but that mellow Northwest vibe is going to hang over the stadium, and they're not going to get aggressive toward New Yorkers -- Timber Joey's chainsaw to the contrary. As long as you don't provoke anybody, you'll be fine.


The Timbers hold auditions for National Anthem singers, rather than having a regular singer, but they only let groups do it, not individuals. 

The aforementioned Timber Jim had a trademark of cutting a round from a large log with a chainsaw every time the Timbers scored (those of you who are Rutgers fans will note the similarity to a player driving an ax into a stump in the corner of the stadium, keeping with the "Keep Chopping" theme), and presenting the round to the scorer after the game. He also cut a round for the goalkeeper if he kept a clean sheet. In 2008, the retiring Timber Jim was replaced by a younger man, Timber Joey, and the tradition continues.
The main supporters group was founded in 2001 as the Cascade Rangers, a nod to the Northwestern mountain range. In 2002, due to complaints about being associated with bigoted Scottish club Rangers (and because the Timbers' green uniforms reminded people of Rangers' crosstown Glasgow arch-rivals, Celtic), the name of the group was changed to the Timbers Army.

They gather 4,000 strong in Section 107, which they call The Woodshed, right behind the north goal, and engage in all the European "ultra" traditions: Scarves, flags, drums, smoke bombs, and 90+ minutes of constant noise. They may well be the best supporters' group in North American soccer; certainly, they seem to have the most stamina and the biggest tifos. 
As you can see by the photo, the Army now pretty much takes up the entire north end (the old 3rd base stands). Individual sections have nicknames like the 101st Amphibious Assault, the 102nd Airborne Division, and so on. Section 208 is a group of older fans, nicknamed Del Boca Vista, after the fictional Florida retirement community on Seinfeld.

The Timbers are one of the few MLS teams that seeks out supporters from outside its home region. In addition to elsewhere in Oregon (Capitol City Company in Salem, Echo Squadron in Eugene, Mt. Bachelor Brigade in Central Oregon, Jefferson Reserves in Southern Oregon, Govy Brigade in the Mount Hood area), they have fans elsewhere in the Northwest (1st Montana Volunteer Infantry, Northern Alliance across the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington State, Midnight Sun Elite in Alaska, Inland Ultras along the Washington-Idaho border, and Timbers Army: Covert Ops in the Seattle Area, Sounders territory). They even have fan groups from outside the Northwest: NYC Loggers, D.C. Federal Reserves, Heartland Regiment (Midwest), Sunshine Squadron (Florida), Lone Star Brigade (Texas), Green and Golden Gate (Bay Area), even London Timbers.

They sing their theme song "Portland Boys" at kickoff, "Rose City 'Til I Die" when a goal is scored against them, "You Are My Sunshine" in the 80 minute, and Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling In Love" in the 85th. They take chants not just from the traditional MLS sources of England, Italy and Latin America, but also from Greece, Russian and the Middle East.

There is some controversy over their take on a classic, as to whether it's disrespectful to women: "Portland Boys, we are here, steal your women and drink your beer!" Then, of course, there's their take on the Sex Pistols'"Anarchy in the U.K.":

I am a Timbers fan
And I am an Oregonian
I know what I want and I know how to get it
I wanna destroy Seattle scum
'Cause I... wanna be... Rose City!

After the Game. Portland's reputation for safety, and their fans' reputation for being noisy but not nasty, will work in your favor. Both you and your car should be safe.

If you're hungry after the game, there's a Taco Bell 2 blocks away, at 21st & Burnside. Want something better? Okay: The Bunk Sandwiches Truck is parked outside the stadium, starting 2 hours before kickoff. Uno Mas, a fast-casual taqueria, offers a big lineup of little tacos, most priced around $2.50. The Boise Fry Company, while not exactly a British-style chip shop, is big on fries and their dips, and serves burgers as well. Both Uno Mas and Boise Fry are on W. Burnside Street, at 1914 and 1902, respectively, a block north of the stadium.

The Jolly Roger, at 1340 SE 12th Avenue at Madison Street, is known as a hangout for New York Giants fans. They may also be welcoming to Red Bulls or NYCFC fans. Bus 4 from Rose Quarter Transit Center. I have also heard that Kingston Bar & Grill is a Giant fans' bar. 2021 SW Morrison Street, at 20th Place, across from Providence Park.

If you visit Portland during the European soccer season, the following clubs' supporters meet at the following locations:

* Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur: Toffee Club (I'm sure the Everton fans love that), 1006 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Bus 14. If you don't see your club mentioned, this is the likeliest place.

Arsenal: Beulahland, 118 Northeast 28th Avenue, about 2 miles east of downtown. Bus 20.

* Liverpool: 4-4-2 Soccer Bar, 1739 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Bus 14.

* Manchester City: Lightning Will, 305 NW 21st Avenue. Bus 15.

* Chelsea: Highland Stillhouse (Scottish theme), 201 S. 2nd Street, Oregon City, 13 miles south of downtown Portland. Bus 35.

* Everton: The Beermongers, 1125 SE Division St. Bus 4.

Sidelights. Being a relatively small city, albeit the 2nd-largest in America's Northwest, Portland doesn't have much of a sports history. But there are a few items worth mentioning.

* Memorial Coliseum and Moda Center. The home court of the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers has an official address of 1 North Center Court Street. The Moda Center is bounded by Ramsay Way (named for former head coach Jack Ramsay) on the north, Wheeler Avenue on the east, Multnomah Street on the south and Center Court Street on the west. MAX reaches the arena via Rose Quarter and Interstate stations.

Opening in 1995 as the Rose Garden, it was renamed for healthcare provider Moda Health in 2013. It is also home to the Western Hockey League's Portland Winterhawks (for some but not all games), and the Arena Football League's Portland Thunder. The court is aligned northwest to southeast.

The Blazers' former home, the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, is across Center Court Street. It opened in 1960, and was home to the Blazers from their 1970 debut until 1995, and the Winterhawks full-time from 1976 to 1995 and part-time since then.

It hosted the 1965 NCAA Final Four, with UCLA beating Michigan in the Final. This was also the 1st Final Four to feature a New Jersey-based team, the Princeton squad led by future Knick and future U.S. Senator Bill Bradley. The Beatles performed at the Coliseum on August 22, 1965, and Elvis Presley sang there on November 11, 1970 and April 27, 1973.
* Portland Ice Arena site. From 1914 to 1926, the Portland Rosebuds played in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association. Their home ice was the Portland Ice Arena. In 1916, 100 years ago, they won the PCHA title, and became the 1st American team to play in the Stanley Cup Finals, losing to the National Hockey Association Champions, the Montreal Canadiens. (Don't mention this to Portland fans, but the next year, Seattle became the 1st American city to actually win the Cup.)

The team included future Hall-of-Famers Dick Irvin Sr. (father of the legendary broadcaster), Ernie "Moose" Johnson and Tommy Dunderdale, but folded in 1926, and its players were mostly brought east to form the Chicago Blackhawks. This makes it interesting that Portland's current minor-league team is the Winterhawks, who share the Chicago team's Indian head log.

From 1928 to 1941, the Arena was home to the Portland Buckaroos. Several teams of that name played in Portland until 1975, and were replaced by the Winterhawks in 1976. The Arena closed in 1953 and was demolished. NW 20th & 21st Avenues, Northrup & Marshall Streets, a mile west of Union Station. NW 21st & Northrup on MAX.

Portland has the NBA and MLS, but don't expect it to get teams in the other sports soon. Its population would rank it 24th in MLB, 21st in the NFL and 19th in the NHL. For the time being, the closest MLB and NFL teams are in Seattle, 173 miles away; and the closest NHL team in Vancouver, 314 miles away.

An April 23, 2014 article in The New York Times shows that the most popular MLB team in Portland is the closest team, the Seattle Mariners, but it's not overwhelming: They average about 22 percent of Portland baseball fans, while the Yankees and Red Sox battle it out for 2nd place, in the 10s. The September 2014 issue of The Atlantic shows that the most popular NFL team in Portland, and in most of Oregon, is the Seattle Seahawks -- and while this was after the Hawks' Super Bowl XLVIII win, it was before they got into Super Bowl XLIX. Southwestern Oregon, closer to California than to Washington State, prefers the San Francisco 49ers, while southeastern Oregon prefers... the Dallas Cowboys, as does neighboring southwestern Idaho. Ew.

The University of Oregon is 114 miles south on I-5, in Eugene. It can be reached by Cascades Point bus from Union Station, although this will take 2 hours and 45 minutes and cost $26 -- each way. Oregon State University is 87 miles south, in Corvallis. You'd have to take at least 2 conveyances to get there, and it would cost $50.50 -- each way.

Portland's top museum is its Art Museum, at 1219 SW Park Avenue. The Oregon Historical Society Museum is across the street at 1200 SW Park. City Hall station on MAX. The Oregon Museum of Science & Industry is at 1945 SE Water Avenue. OMSI/SE Water station on MAX.

Oregon has never produced a President. The closest it's come is the years when an orphaned Herbert Hoover lived with an uncle growing up in Newberg, 25 miles southwest of downtown Portland. The Hoover-Minthorn House is at 115 S. River Street. There is a bus that goes there, but it's prohibitively expensive, so if you want to see it, you should rent a car.

As with Utah, the tallest building in Oregon is named the Wells Fargo Center. This one opened in 1972, and looks it: It's rather dull architecture. It stands 546 feet at 1300 SW 5th Avenue. City Hall station on MAX.

The TV shows Bates Motel (based on the film Psycho, which was also set there) and Eureka were set in Oregon. Specifically in Portland, Leverage, Portlandia, and the brief 1990s CBS crime drama Under Suspicion were both filmed and set there. Unfortunately, the most famous TV show set in Portland was one of NBC's all-time turkeys, the late 1970s McLean Stevenson sitcom Hello, Larry.



In addition to Psycho (which was filmed in Southern California), films based in Oregon include Ice Cube's Are We There Yet? series, the Madonna bomb Body of Evidence, Drugstore Cowboy, Five Easy Pieces, The Goonies, Arnold Schwarzenegger's comedy Kindergarten Cop, The Lathe of Heaven, Mr. Brooks, Mr. Holland's Opus, My Own Private Idaho, Overboard, Paint Your Wagon (Clint Eastwood in a musical? Yes), Pay It Forward, the track & field movies Personal Best and Pre (the latter about Steve Prefontaine, the 1st athlete to endorse Oregon-based Nike footwear), The Postman (Kevin Costner's postapocalyptic film, a.k.a. "Kevin's Gate"), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Short Circuit, Stand By Me, and, of course, the film version (which he hated) of Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.



*



And on that note, let me remind you that the city has the slogan "Keep Portland Weird." The Timbers, with one of American soccer's longest histories, are a part of that. This is not a threatening town, unless you don't like weird things.



But you're from New York (or New Jersey), so you're used to weird. You should be able to have fun in Portland.

How to Be a New York Baseball Fan In Arizona -- 2016 Edition

$
0
0
Next Monday, the Yankees begin an Interleague series in Phoenix against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The Mets go out there in August. Arizona in August? Serves them right.

Before You Go. AZcentral.com, the website for Phoenix's largest newspaper, the Arizona Republic, is predicting the low 70s for the evenings next week, but the mid-90s for the afternoons, peaking at 96 on Tuesday. Don't give me any of this "It's a dry heat" crap: That is too damn hot.

The roof will be closed, but you will have to spend some time outdoors. So stay hydrated. That means watch your alcohol consumption. It's the worst thing for you if you're dehydrated. I'm not kidding.

While the Eastern Time Zone is on Daylight Savings Time, Arizona is not, so their time matches Pacific Time at this time of year, 3 hours behind us.

Tickets. The Diamondbacks averaged 25,680 fans per home game last season, in a stadium whose listed capacity is 48,633. So you can probably show up on the day of the game and get any ticket you can afford. Still, as always, it's better to have them printed up from your computer before you leave the house.

In the lower level, Infield Boxes will cost $90, Baseline Boxes $80, Baseline Reserves $65, Bullpen Reserves (corners by the foul poles) $42 and Bleachers $38. In the upper level, MVP Boxes are $50, Infield Reserves $30, and Outfield Reserve $20.

Getting There. It’s 2,458 miles from Times Square to Chase Field in downtown Phoenix. In other words, if you're going, you're flying.

You think I'm kidding? Even if you get someone to go with you, and you take turns, one drives while the other one sleeps, and you pack 2 days' worth of food, and you use the side of the Interstate as a toilet, and you don’t get pulled over for speeding, you'll still need nearly 2 full days to get there. One way.

But, if you really, really want to... You'll need to get on the New Jersey Turnpike. Take it to Exit 14, to Interstate 78. Follow I-78 west all the way through New Jersey, to Phillipsburg, and across the Delaware River into Easton, Pennsylvania. Continue west on I-78 until reaching Harrisburg. There, you will merge onto I-81. Take Exit 52 to U.S. Route 11, which will soon take you onto I-76. This is the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the nation’s first superhighway, opening in 1940.

The Turnpike will eventually be a joint run between I-76 and Interstate 70. Once that happens, you’ll stay on I-70, all the way past Pittsburgh, across the little northern panhandle of West Virginia, and then across Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, into Missouri.

At St. Louis, take Exit 40C onto Interstate 44 West, which will take you southwest across Missouri into Oklahoma.  Upon reaching Oklahoma City, take Interstate 40 West, through the rest of the State, across the Texas Panhandle and New Mexico, into Arizona.  At Flagstaff, take Interstate 17 South, which will take you into Phoenix.  Take Interstate 10 East to Exit 145, which will lead you to North 7th Street.  Chase Field is at 7th and East Jefferson St.

If you do it right, you should spend about an hour and 15 minutes in New Jersey, 5 hours and 30 minutes in Pennsylvania, 15 minutes in West Virginia, 3 hours and 45 minutes in Ohio, 2 hours and 45 minutes in Indiana, another 2 hours and 45 minutes in Illinois, 5 hours in Missouri, 6 hours in Oklahoma, 3 hours in Texas, 6 hours and 15 minutes in New Mexico, and 5 hours and 15 minutes in Arizona. That’s about 41 hours and 45 minutes. Counting rest stops, you're porbably talking about 55 hours.

That’s still faster than Greyhound, averaging around 68 hours, including a 1:45 bus-change in Richmond, a 1:15 stopover in Charlotte, an hour's bus-change in Atlanta, an hour's stopover in Birmingham, a 45-minute stopover in Jackson, Mississippi, an hour's stopover in Shreveport, a 1:30 bus-change in Dallas (that's right, changing buses 3 times each way), and a 1:15 stopover in El Paso.

It's $398 round-trip, maybe as low as $318 if you order on advanced purchase. To get to Phoenix by Monday afternoon, you'll have to leave on Friday night. The station is at 2115 East Buckeye Road, adjacent to Sky Harbor International Airport. Number 13 bus to downtown.

The way Amtrak has it set up now, it's so convoluted that I can't even recommend looking it up.

Flights to Phoenix' Sky Harbor International Airpot, usually changing in Chicago or Dallas, are actually among the cheapest to any big-league city, and, if ordered ahead of time, can be had for under $600.

Once In the City. While the Diamondbacks have the State name as their geographic identifier -- apparently from a Native American word meaning "small spring" -- they play in Arizona's State capital, Phoenix. Jack Swilling, a Confederate veteran who founded the place in 1867, accepted the suggestion of a fellow settler, an Englishman named Lord Duppa: Since it was on the site of a previous Indian civilization, it should be named Phoenix, for the mythical bird that rose from its own ashes. The city was incorporated in 1881, making it the youngest city in American major league sports.

Home to just 100,000 people in 1950, Phoenix saw huge growth in the 2nd half of the 20th Century: 440,000 by 1960, 580,000 by 1970, 800,000 by 1980, and it surpassed the 1 million mark in the early 1990s. All this made it an expansion target: The NBA's expansion Suns arrived in 1968, the NFL's St. Louis Cardinals in 1988 (after the Philadelphia Eagles had to quash a moving-there rumor earlier in the decade), and the NHL's first Winnipeg Jets in 1997 (after the WHA had the Phoenix Roadrunners in the 1970s). Today, Phoenix is home to 1.5 million people, with 4.4 million in its metropolitan area.

The sales tax in Arizona is 5.6 percent, but it's 8.3 percent within the City of Phoenix. Central Avenue is the source street for east-west house numbers; oddly, the north-south streets are numbered Streets to the east, and numbered Avenues to the west. Washington Street divides addresses into north and south.

A single ride on Phoenixbuses and Valley Metro Rail is $2.00, with an All-Day Pass a bargain at $4.00. With the ballpark being downtown and thus probably near your hotel, you probably won't need the light-rail system to get there. But in the heat, you may still want to take a cab. If you do take Metro Rail, it's Washington at 3rd Street station going westbound, and Jefferson at 3rd Street station going eastbound.
Light rail train stopped at the stadium

Going In. The official address of Chase Field is 401 East Jefferson Street, the street bounding center field.  Home plate faces a railroad and East Buchanan Street, South 4th Street is the 3rd base side, and the 1st base side is South 7th Street. With the railroad on the south/home plate side, most of the gates are on Jefferson and 4th. Parking ranges from $10 to $16.
Roof open

As a retractable-roof stadium, Chase Field -- opening in 1998 as Bank One Ballpark, and having that name during what remains the Diamondbacks' only World Series thus far, 2001 -- somewhat resembles Miller Park in Milwaukee, which opened 3 years later. In other words, it looks like a big airplane hangar, without much atmosphere.
Roof closed

True, there is that pool in the right-center-field corner... but what's a pool doing at a ballpark? At any rate, you won't get much of a view of downtown Phoenix from inside the place, which points due north.
The field is natural grass, points due north, and is functionally, but not quite, symmetrical: 330 to left field, 334 to right, 374 to both power alleys, 407 to center, and 413 to corners on each side of center. The longest home run hit at Chase is 504 feet, by Adam Dunn in 2008. The field is natural grass, and has a dirt path from the pitcher's mound to home plate, known as a "keyhole" for its shape, a phenomenon once common in baseball, one of the few old-time features in this monstrosity meant for the 21st Century.
In addition to the Diamondbacks, Chase Field has also hosted concerts, rodeos, and the Cactus Bowl, formerly known as the Insight.com Bowl.

Food. As a Southwestern city, you might expect Phoenix to have a Mexican/Spanish/Southwest food theme. Which is the case: Their "A-Zona Grill" includes burritos, churros, and all kinds of tacos ranging from steak to chicken to shrimp.  They also have popcorn named "Catcus Corn."

But they also have Philadelphia-style cheesesteaks, San Francisco's trademark garlic fries, and an outlet of Los Angeles' famed Fatburger. They have chain outlets Subway, Panda Express, Mrs. Fields, TCBY and Cold Stone Creamery. And, knowing they have lots of ex-New Yorkers in their Sun Belt city and its surrounding metro area, they have stands called "Streets of New York" at Sections 104, 113, 125, 138, 306, 326 and 328.

They have 3 bars overlooking the outfield: The Arizona Baseball Club is above right field, the Sedona Club in center field, and Friday's Front Row (part of the T.G.I. Friday's chain) overlooks left field.

Team History Displays. As 1 of the 2 newest teams (unless you count the Washington Nationals separately from the Montreal Expos, and I usually do), the Diamondbacks don't have a lot of history, but they have some. They've won one Pennant, in 2001, and beat the Yankees in the World Series. They've won the National League Western Division 5 times: 1999, 2001, 2002, 2007 and 2011.
They've retired the Number 20 of Luis Gonzalez, outfielder, 1999-2006; and the Number 51 of Randy Johnson, 1999-2004 and 2007-08. The title banners are to the left of the big center field scoreboard, and the retired numbers, along with Jackie Robinson's universally-retired Number 42, are above the right field stands.
The retired number display, before Johnson's 51 was added

The D-backs have handed out Curt Schilling's Number 38, currently worn by pitcher Robbie Ray. They do not yet have a team Hall of Fame. Perhaps they're waiting for their 20th Anniversary (2018) or their 25th (2023)?


There is no mention of the 1959 and 1977 Pacific Coast League Pennants won by the Phoenix Giants, or of the Division titles won by their replacements, the Phoenix Firebirds, including in 1996 and 1997, the last 2 seasons before the majors finally arrived in Phoenix.

Obviously, no Diamondbacks were chosen by The Sporting News for their 100 Greatest Baseball Players in 1999. If they were to do it again, Johnson would be selected. He was chosen by Diamondback fans for the DHL Hometown Heroes contest in 2006.

Stuff. The Diamondbacks have Team Stores all over Chase Field, oddly having more in the upper level than in the lower level. I don't know if they tie into the city's Western heritage by selling cowboy hats with team logos on them.

The 2001 World Series highlight film and a DVD package of that Series are available, although there is, as yet, no Essential Games of the Arizona Diamondbacks DVD collection.

As one of the newest teams, the D-backs don't have many books written about them, but there are 2 you should know about: Len Sherman wrote Big League, Big Time: The Birth of the Arizona Diamondbacks; and Sara Gilbert (not the actress of that name) wrote The Story of the Arizona Diamondbacks, published last year. Buster Olney's The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, as you would expect, mentions the Yanks' loss in the 2001 World Series, but is about them, not the Diamondbacks.

During the Game. A recent Thrillist article on "Baseball's Most Intolerable Fans" put Diamondback fans at 17th, right in the middle of the pack, although they did invoke the joke, "D-Backs, more like D-Bags, amirite?"

Really, how big of a douchebag is the average Arizona baseball fan? Not especially douchey. On the other hand, this is still the home State of racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio. As the Thrillist article says, "You definitely have your segment of the fanbase that sees no cognitive dissonance whatsoever between saying horribly racist things about Latinos and cheering for Yasmany Tomas."

Neverthless, wearing Met (or Yankee) gear in Phoenix will not endanger your safety. As a franchise only in their 19th season, the Diamondbacks don't really have a rivalry yet; and if they did, it probably wouldn't be with the Mets, although the Mets did beat them in the 1999 NL Division Series.

For the most part, Arizona fans are okay, not making trouble for fans of teams playing the NFL Cardinals, NBA Suns or NHL Coyotes, either. In fact, their biggest rivalry is intrastate: The University of Arizona vs. Arizona State University. It's a heated rivalry... but it's a dry heat.

With the death of Joe Garagiola, whose last broadcasting job was with them, and whose son Joe Jr. was the team's 1st general manager, the D-backs are wearing memorial patches for Joe Sr. for the rest of this season. Monday night's game will feature a tribute to Joe Sr.

The Diamondbacks hold auditions for National Anthem singers, instead of having a regular. They don’t have a lot to hold your attention during a game, unless you want to count that pool. There’s no special "Get Loud" device, and no famous fans known for getting people going. No special song during the 7th Inning Stretch or after a win. There is a song titled "Arizona," a 1970 hit for Mark Lindsay, who was the lead singer for the rock band Paul Revere & the Raiders, but it's clear that the title refers to the name of the narrator's girlfriend, and has nothing to do with the State or the ballclub, which, of course, would not exist even on paper for another quarter of a century.

The team has 2 mascots. The first was D. Baxter the Bobcat, named for the team's abbreviation, "D-backs," and for the facts that bobcats are common in Arizona and the stadium was originally known as Bank One Ballpark or "The Bob."
The newer one is "The D-Backs Luchador," a character based on Mexican "professional wrestling," introduced last year to appeal to Hispanic fans. He wears a black cape, red pants, and a mask patterned after the team's logo. Clearly, making the mascot a snake, which is what a diamondback actually is, was out of the question.
They have a variation on a mascot race, with kids chosen to wear hot dogs suits, with different condiments (ketchup, mustard, relish).

After the Game. Phoenix does have crime issues, but you should be safe as long as you stay downtown. It's incredibly unlikely that Diamondback fans will try to provoke you. As I said, the newness of the team, the lack of nearby rivalries, and the fact that the Mets (or the Yankees) wouldn't be such a rivalry anyway all help.

There are, as yet, no bars around Chase Field that have become famous as postgame hangouts. As for anything New York-friendly, the closest I can come at this time is a place called Tim Finnegan's, the local Jets fan hangout, but that's 11 miles north of downtown, at 9201 North 29th Avenue. It appears that the local football Giants fan club meets at Blue Moose, at 7373 E. Scottsdale Mall, but that's 12 miles northeast.

I've read that a Yankee Fan hangout is at LagerFields Sports Grill, at 12601 N. Paradise Village Pkwy. W., 14 miles northeast. Alas, I can find nothing Mets-specific in the area.

Sidelights.
 The US Airways Center, previously known as the AmericaWest Arena for a previous airline, is 2 blocks west of Chase Field, at 2nd & Jefferson. The Suns have played here since 1992, and the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury since 1997. The Coyotes played here from 1996 to 2003.

* Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum. The Grand Canyon State's 1st home to big-league sports, opening in 1965, was home to the Suns from their 1968 arrival until 1992, and to the World Hockey Association's Phoenix Roadrunners from 1974 to 1977.

Elvis Presley sang at the Coliseum on September 9, 1970, and again on April 22, 1973. Early in his career, on June 9, 1956, he sang at a grandstand at the adjoining Arizona State Fairgrounds. (While individual ex-Beatles have performed in Arizona, the band as a whole did not do so on any of their 3 North American tours.)

The Coliseum still stands, and is part of the State Fairgrounds. 1826 W. McDowell Road. Northwest of downtown. Number 15 bus to 15th & McDowell, then 3 blocks west.

* Phoenix Municipal Stadium. This ballpark was home to the Phoenix Giants/Firebirds from its opening in 1964 until 1991, and is the current spring training home of the Oakland Athletics, the Diamondbacks' Rookie League team, and Arizona's State high school baseball championship. 5999 E. Van Buren Street. East of downtown, take the Light Rail to Priest Drive/Washington station, then a short walk up Priest.

* Scottsdale Stadium. This stadium was home to the Firebirds in their last years, 1992 to 1997. Its seating capacity of 12,000, 4,000 more than Phoenix Municipal, was meant to showcase the Phoenix area as a potential major league market. It's the San Francisco Giants' spring training site, and replaced a previous stadium on the site that dated to 1956, used as a spring training home for the Giants, A's, Red Sox, Orioles and Cubs -- sometimes all at the same time.

Because it was the Cubs' spring training home, thus leading to Phoenix becoming "Chicago's Miami," where retirees from the city tend to go (paging Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post & ESPN's Pardon the Interruption & NBA coverage), it was where former Cub catcher Randy Hundley hosted the very first baseball fantasy camp. As Met fans, you might remember Randy's furious reaction to Tommie Agee scoring on a controversial umpiring call at home plate at Shea in September 1969. You might also remember Randy's son, former Met catcher Todd Hundley.

7408 E. Osborn Road, at Drinkwater Boulevard. Northeast of downtown. Light Rail to Veterans Way/College station, then transfer to Number 72 bus to Osborn, then walk 2 blocks east.

* Glendale Sports & Entertainment District. The University of Phoenix Stadium, home to the Arizona Cardinals since 2006, is in Glendale, and New York sports fans know it as the place where the Giants derailed the New England Patriots' bid for the NFL's first 19-0 season. The Cardinals defeated the Philadelphia Eagles there in January 2009 to advance to Super Bowl XLIII. The stadium is also home to the Fiesta Bowl. (There is an actual University of Phoenix, on the ground, not just on the Internet. But that's not here.) It's hosted 3 matches of the U.S. soccer team.

The neighboring Jobing.com Arena has been home to the Coyotes since 2003. In 2012, for the first time since the Jets/Coyotes franchise entered the NHL in 1979, they reached the League's last 4 (now the Western Conference Finals). Nevertheless, the team is still having financial troubles, which could yet lead to it being moved.

The official address of the stadium is 1 Cardinals Drive, and that of the arena is 9400 W. Maryland Avenue. Number 8 bus from downtown to 7th & Glendale Avenues, then transfer to Number 70 bus, to Glendale and 95th Avenue, then walk down 95th.

* Arizona State University. The University of Arizona is 114 miles away in Tuscon, but ASU is just a 24-minute Light Rail ride from downtown. The station is at 5th Street & Veterans Way, and is 2 blocks away from Sun Devil Stadium and the Wells Fargo Arena (formerly the ASU Activity Center), home to their football and basketball teams, respectively.

Sun Devil Stadium was built in 1958, and ASU still plays there rather than move to the larger, more modern (but well off-campus) University of Phoenix Stadium. The Cardinals played there from 1988 to 2005, and the Fiesta Bowl was held there from 1971 to 2006. The Dallas Cowboys treated it as a second home field when they played the Cardinals (always seemed to be more Cowboy fans there), and won Super Bowl XXX there, when the world learned A) it was possible for the Pittsburgh Steelers to lose a Super Bowl, and B) Terry Bradshaw was smart compared to Neil O'Donnell. It also hosted 2 U.S. soccer team matches in the 1990s.

Packard Stadium, opened in 1974, is home to the ASU baseball program, one of the most successful college baseball teams, east of the stadium and arena, at Rural Road and Rio Salado Parkway. The Sun Devils have won 5 National Championships, most recently in 1981. Their legends include Reggie Jackson, Barry Bonds, and current stars Dustin Pedroia and Andre Ethier. Notable ASU and Met alumni include Gary Gentry, Duffy Dyer, Lenny Randle, Craig Swan, Hubie Brooks, Paul Lo Duca and Ike Davis.


ASU’s Gammage Auditorium, at the other end of the campus, hosted one of the 2004 Presidential Debates between George W. Bush and John Kerry. 1200 S. Forest Avenue.

The US Airways Center, Wells Fargo Arena, University of Phoenix Stadium, and the University of Arizona's McKale Center have all hosted NCAA basketball tournament games, but, as yet, the State of Arizona has never hosted a Final Four -- although the University of Phoenix Stadium certainly could. UA has been in the Final Four in 1988, 1994, 1997 and 2001, winning it all in 1997; but ASU has never gotten any closer than the Sweet 16, in 1995.

* Arizona Science Center. Phoenix is not a big museum center. And while there have been Native Americans living in Phoenix for thousands of years, and Spaniards/Mexicans for hundreds, its Anglo history is rather short. No Arizonan has ever become President, although Senators Barry Goldwater and John McCain got nominated, so there's no Presidential Library or Museum. And it doesn't help history buffs that the city only goes back to 1867, and Statehood was gained only in 1912. But the Science Center is at 4th & Washington, just a block from the ballpark. And Arizona State has a renowned Art Museum.

The tallest building in Phoenix, and in all of Arizona, is the Chase Tower, bounded by Central Avenue and Van Buren, 1st and Monroe Streets. That it's only 483 feet, and that no taller building has been built in the city since it opened in 1972, says something about this city, but I'm not sure what. But the city seems to be intent on growing outward, not upward.

Television shows set in Phoenix, or anywhere in Arizona, are few and far between. The High Chaparral, another Western created by Bonanza creator David Dortort, ran on NBC from 1967 to 1971, and is fondly remembered by some.

But the best-remembered show is Alice, starring Linda Lavin as one of several waitresses at fictional Mel's Diner, running on CBS from 1976 to 1985. Although the show was taped in Hollywood (Burbank, actually), that once-famous "14-ounce coffee cup" sign is still used outside a real working diner in Phoenix.

It was Lester's, until the owner agreed to change the name to "Mel's Diner" for the publicity. Today, it's Pat's Family Diner, at 1747 NW Grand Avenue, 2 miles northwest of downtown. Number 15 bus to 15th Avenue & Pierce Street, and then walk one block east to Grand, Pierce, and 12th. There are also still-in-business diners in Ohio and Florida that use the same sign design. "Pickup!"

Movies set in modern-day Arizona usually show the Grand Canyon or the Hoover Dam. Notable on this list is Thelma & Louise, in which Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon drive a 1966 Ford Thunderbird into the Canyon rather than be captured by the FBI, enacting a distaff version Paul Newman and Robert Redford at of the ending of Butch Cassidy & the Sundance KidNational Lampoon's Vacation and Natural Born Killers also used Arizona as a backdrop.

The vast majority of movies set in Arizona have been Westerns, including the 1957 and 2007 versions of 3:10 to Yuma, the 1950 film Broken Arrow (not the later John Travolta film of the same title), Fort Apache (not the later Newman film set in The Bronx), Newman's Hombre, Johnny Guitar, A Million Ways to Die In the West, No Name On the Bullet, and all the films based on the 1881 Earps vs. Clantons gunfight, including My Darling Clementine in 1946, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1957, Tombstone in 1993 and Wyatt Earp in 1994.

If you're a Western buff, and you want to see the site of the legendary gunfight, the official address is 326 East Allen Street, Tombstone, AZ 85638. Re-enactments are held daily. Be advised, though, that it's 184 miles southeast of downtown Phoenix, a 3-hour drive, and ain't no Greyhound or Amtrak service, stranger: You'll have to drive. It's also just 50 miles from the Mexican border.

*

If you go to Phoenix to see the Mets (or, this season, the Yankees) play the Diamondbacks, be careful of the heat: Inside the ballpark, you should be fine; outside it, it will be as close to hell on Earth as you are ever likely to get. But you should still be able to have a good time in Phoenix.

And, if you're a Met fan, and worse comes to worst, you can always reminisce about the 2001 World Series -- even if your own club had nothing to do with it, and also lost to the Yankees the year before.

Top 10 Things Wrong With "The Natural"

$
0
0
May 11, 1984: The film version of Bernard Malamud's 1952-published, 1923-and-1939-set baseball-themed novel The Natural premieres, starring Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, Barbara Hershey, Robert Duvall, Joe Don Baker, Wilford Brimley, Red Farnsworth, Darrin McGavin and Robert Prosky.

Is it the best baseball movie ever? Maybe. Certainly, it's the one with the best photography (thanks to director Barry Levinson), and the one with the best music (thanks to Randy Newman).

It's not perfect, though. And I don't mean that it's corny or sappy.

Top 10 Things Wrong With The Natural

And, no, I'm not going to cite the changes in baseball history -- the New York Knights taking the place of the New York Giants, but having a history more like that of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and George "Babe" Ruth, lefty slugger, becoming George "the Whammer" Wambold, righty slugger. Whatever was true within the world of the movie that isn't true in ours doesn't matter. What matters is things that, even within the context of the movie, don't make sense.

1. Why does the story never explain what happened to Roy in the intervening 16 years? We only get a brief, mumbled, skipping-ahead explanation from Roy to Iris on the Chicago roadtrip, and we don't really hear the details. We never find out.

I checked the book: It doesn't explain what happened in the interim, either.

2. When we last saw Roy, in 1923, he was a pitching prospect. When we next see him, in 1939, he's a right fielder, and, as Pop Fisher later says, "the best goddamned hitter I ever saw." Okay, Roy can hit. But why did he stop pitching? Certainly, the '39 Knights could have used another good pitcher.

3. Pop isn't just the manager of the Knights, he's half-owner of the club. I'm presuming that he's also the general manager. Are you telling me that his chief scout didn't tell him about Roy? Are you telling me that the Judge, the other half-owner, didn't tell him that he was signing Roy? Don't both half-owners have to sign the contract to make it official? Roy did say, "I got a contract." And Pop did say, "I wanna see it." How has he not seen it yet?

4. Max Mercy is not stupid. He heard the name "Roy Hobbs" at that county fair in 1923, and saw Roy strike out "The Whammer," the Babe Ruth analogue, the greatest player in baseball at the time, on 3 pitches.

This would be a national story, as it was when 17-year-old girl Jackie Mitchell, pitching in a 1931 exhibition game for the minor-league Chattanooga Lookouts, struck out the real Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

So when Max hears Roy's name again in 1939, does he really not remember? He knows the name and the face are familiar, that he knows Roy from somewhere. How hard would it be to go back into his personal records and check? He does do it some time later, so he could have done it earlier. But he didn't.

Indeed, a good reporter would wonder why Roy never showed up for his tryout with the Chicago Cubs -- the very reason he was on that train. A good reporter would find out what happened. If Bernard Malamud were paying attention to his characters, Max might well have made Roy his special project, trying to get him back to a chance at the majors, and he'd probably get back a lot sooner than 1939. Look at the stories surrounding the comebacks of Rick Ankiel -- a pitcher turned outfielder -- and Josh Hamilton.

5. Why does Bump Bailey die? He crashes into an outfield fence that is made of wood. Not concrete, wood. He might have a concussion, but he wouldn't be killed. Not unless there was a broken bottle that he fell on behind the fence, and he fell on it, and bled out. Or if he hit his head on something hard there. But hitting his head against a wooden fence shouldn't have been enough to do it.

6. Roy is not stupid. And, by age 35, he certainly is not naive. Does he really need Iris' note during the Playoff game to tell him that her son is his son? He couldn't figure it out based on their conversation back in her Chicago apartment?

7. The silver bullet is removed from Roy's stomach after the party at Memo's apartment in late September 1939. He was shot with it by Harriet in the summer of 1923.

Removing a bullet from a human body is tricky now, and it was trickier then, before the development of antibiotics. But it was very possible. Why wasn't it removed when he was first shot?

8. Why would the playoff game be held at night? In real life, no postseason game, or playoff for a Pennant, was held at night until 1971.

I realize that Levinson wanted that great shot of the light standards shooting out and raining sparks down on the field. But he went so far out of his way to make the film look historically accurate, down to the red & black stitching on the baseballs, the advertising signs, and the 1839-1939 Baseball Centennial patches on the left sleeves of the uniforms. So why this one wrong detail? Why the playoff game at night?

9. A home run ball destroying a scoreboard clock? That did happen in a major league game once. A home run ball knocking out the power of a light standard? That's never happened, although Reggie Jackson hit the transformer on one at the 1971 All-Star Game, so, theoretically, it's possible.

Both of these occurrences happening at some point (or rather, at a pair of points) in Major League Baseball history? I can buy that. But both of them happening to the same player, within a few weeks of each other? I can accept a little suspension of disbelief, but, in the immortal words of the great New York sportscaster Warner Wolf, "Come on, give me a break!"

10. Why do the lights go out one by one? Either only the one that Roy's drive broke should go out (if their connected in parallel), or they all should (if they're connected in series), and then only in that one standard, not every light standard in the ballpark.

Even if you believe that a ball could be hit that high and that far (the right field pole was listed as 310 feet from home plate, so we may be talking 400 or so feet from the plate where the light standard was, so it's far-fetched, but not a crazy idea), the way the lights went out is scientifically ridiculous.

May 11, 2006: A Bad Day

$
0
0
You may have noticed that, last night, for the first time all season, I did not post about the previous day's Yankee game. It's because I had a lot on my mind, because it was the anniversary of the last time I saw my grandmother, which was a harder day than the day she actually died. (The piece on The Natural was already written up, ready to go.)

May 11, 2006, 10 years ago: Grace Golden dies in Brick, New Jersey, from complications from heart trouble. She was 81, almost 82.

My Grandma lived through a lot. The Great Depression, losing her parents before she could graduate high school (John Adams in Ozone Park, Queens), having to drop out during her senior year to get a job, the home front of World War II, the way America thought of women in the 20th Century, a Red Scare that tried to marginalize people who thought the way she did, Dodger-Giant games at Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds, a marriage that was frequently difficult, raising a daughter who was as spirited and as stubborn as she was, having a grandson who was a bit off, over 30 years of living in New York City, and half a century of living in New Jersey.

The Depression really left its mark on her. I used to spend Thanksgiving weekend with her, and would help her shop on the weekend. One time, we walked from the car to the store, and I saw a penny lying on the ground. I knew she was superstitious. But the penny was tails up. Finding a penny heads up is good luck; finding one tails up is just 1 cent. So I ignored it.

She saw it, too, and said, "Aren't you going to pick that up?"

Me: "It's not heads up, it's not good luck."

Her, with her N'Yawk accent kicking in: "Whaaaat?!? It's money!"

I picked it up.

But she survived it all, and never gave an inch. She was a Maude long before anyone heard of Beatice Arthur.

She detested unfairness in all its forms, and always supported the underdog. It's why she was a New York New Deal Democrat until the end. It's why she was a Brooklyn Dodger fan, and then a Met fan. It may even be why, even though she was old enough to remember the New York Rangers as a regular Stanley Cup winner, and remember maybe not their 1928 Cup win, but certainly their wins of 1933 and 1940, she turned to the New Jersey Devils when she got into hockey as an old lady.

She listened to Game 3 of the 1951 Dodger-Giant Playoff on the radio, and when she heard that Ralph Branca was coming in to pitch to Bobby Thomson, she turned the radio off. She knew that Branca only had a fastball, and that Thomson could only hit a fastball, and that Thomson had already hit a home run off Branca in Game 1 of the Playoff, and that Branca tended to give up home runs ("gopher balls," she always called them when Branca's name came up). She knew Thomson was going to hit the Pennant-winning home run.

Like any good fan of the Dodgers, she hated the Giants long after the teams moved to California. When the Mets came along, she was always glad to see them beat the San Francisco Giants -- and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Like any good fan of the Dodgers, the Giants, or the Mets, she hated the Yankees. (We had a few discussions about which team was better.) She hated Joe DiMaggio. She hated Mickey Mantle. She hated Yogi Berra -- making her a true rarity. She hated Billy Martin. She really, really hated Casey Stengel.

There were 2 Yankees she liked: Phil Rizzuto and Whitey Ford. Part of it was that, like her, they were from Queens. Part of it was that they were little guys who came up big when it counted. But what she most liked was how Ford was always calm on the mound, no matter what the situation.

The opposite was what she hated in Billy Martin: She could never stand hotheads. That's why she admired Jackie Robinson so much: She knew how much crap he was putting up with, and loved that he turned his anger into performance, rather than fighting back. It's why she admired Gil Hodges, and loved that he went from playing 1st base and hitting home runs for the Dodgers to managing the Mets to the 1969 World Championship.

On April 15, 1997, the Mets played the Dodgers at Shea Stadium. It was Jackie Robinson Night, the 50th Anniversary of Robinson's debut. I won tickets to it in a radio contest. I knew I had to take her. We had great seats behind home plate, saw some old Dodger greats (including Sandy Koufax -- wearing a Mets cap, as he was then feuding with Dodger management), saw President Bill Clinton give a speech, and heard Commissioner Bud Selig announce that Robinson's Number 42 would be retired for all of baseball. And we saw the Mets win.

That was the last live Major League Baseball game she ever saw. When the minor-league Lakewood BlueClaws arrived in 2001, just 5 miles from her house, she went to a few of their games over the next 5 seasons. By the time the 2006 season began, she was in the hospital, never to return. The BlueClaws won their 1st Pennant that year. I'd like to think she had something to do with that.

She wouldn't want me to tell you that I still haven't gotten over losing her. She would want me to tell the 2 great-granddaughters that she didn't quite get to see (and the 3rd that's about to arrive) about her, and for them to know that the world is easier for girls like them because of women like her. And I have. And I will.

How to Be a Red Bulls Fan In D.C. -- 2016 Edition

$
0
0
This coming Friday, the New York Red Bulls go down to Washington to play their arch-rivals, D.C. United.

A true Red Bulls fan, not accepting that a New York Tri-State Area team's arch-rival is either New England, or Philadelphia, or another Tri-State Area team, not Washington, would say that this is perfect: Going into RFK Stadium on a Friday the 13th.

Before You Go. D.C. can get really hot in summer, but this will be mid-May, so you shouldn't have to worry about the heat. The Washington Post is predicting low 80s for Friday afternoon, and high 50s for the evening. They do not mention a chance of rain, so it should be dry.

Washington is in the Eastern Time Zone, so you won't have to fiddle with your clocks, digital or otherwise.

Tickets. While Redskins tickets are notoriously difficult to get, D.C. United have serious attendance issues: They averaged only 16,244 fans per home game last season. It's not because RFK Stadium is outdated, or because it's in a bad neighborhood. Actually, the neighborhood isn't any worse than the Ironbound section of Newark that a Red Bulls fan might go through on his pub crawl before going over the Jackson Street Bridge to the Arena. And RFK is a great stadium for soccer, which is why it's hosted more U.S. national team games than any other facility.

Visiting supporters sit in Section 318, at the back of the lower level. When baseball was played at RFK, this would have put you right behind home plate. But, for soccer, it puts you high above the southwest corner flag. Forget it: For the 2013 U.S.-Germany game, I sat across, in the upper deck behind the opposite corner (in what would have been deep center field), and the view was still good. Tickets for Section 318 are just $20.

Getting There. Getting to Washington is fairly easy. Ordinarily, if you have a car, I recommend using it, and getting a hotel either downtown or inside the Capital Beltway, because driving in Washington is roughly (good choice of words there) as bad as driving in New York. However, since FedExField is not in the District, I would recommend driving, especially if you're only going down for the game, and not "seeing the city."

It’s 229 miles by road from Times Square to downtown Washington, and 216 miles from Red Bull Arena to RFK Stadium. If you’re not "doing the city," but just going to the game, take the New Jersey Turnpike all the way down to the Delaware Memorial Bridge (a.k.a. the Twin Span), across the Delaware River into the State of, well, Delaware. This should take about 2 hours, not counting a rest stop.

Speaking of which, the temptation to take an alternate route (such as Exit 7A to I-195 to I-295 to the Ben Franklin Bridge) or a side trip (Exit 4, eventually leading to the Ben Franklin Bridge) to get into Pennsylvania and stop off at Pat’s Steaks in South Philly can be strong, but if you want to get from New York to Washington with making only 1 rest stop, you’re better off using the Delaware House Service Area in Christiana, between Exits 3 and 1 on the Delaware Turnpike. It’s almost exactly the halfway point between New York and Washington.

Once you get over the Twin Span – the New Jersey-bound span opened in 1951, the Delaware-bound one was added in 1968 – follow the signs carefully, as you'll be faced with multiple ramp signs for Interstates 95, 295 and 495, as well as for US Routes 13 and 40 and State Route 9. You want I-95 South, and its signs will say "Delaware Turnpike" and "Baltimore." You’ll pay tolls at both its eastern and western ends, and unless there’s a traffic jam, you should only be in Delaware for a maximum of 15 minutes before hitting the Maryland State Line.

At said State Line, I-95 changes from the Delaware Turnpike to the John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway, and you’ll be on it for about an hour (unless you want to make another rest stop, either the Chesapeake House or the Maryland House) and passing through Baltimore, before seeing signs for I-895 and the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, Exit 62.

From here, you’ll pass through the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel. Take I-895 to Exit 4, and you’ll be on Maryland Route 295 South, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. BWP exits are not numbered, but that won't be an issue here, as you'll just take it all the way to East Capitol Street. From there, it's just 1 mile, including over the Whitney Young Memorial Bridge over the Anacostia River, to the stadium.

If all goes well -- getting out of New York City and through downtown Baltimore okay, reasonable traffic, just the one rest stop, no trouble with your car -- the whole trip should take about 3½ hours. However, being that this is a Friday night, and that you could be hitting the D.C. area at the height of rush hour, it could be 4½. Best to leave around lunchtime.

Washington is too close to fly, just as flying from New York to Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore, once you factor in fooling around with everything you gotta do at each airport, doesn’t really save you much time compared to driving, the bus or the train. So forget about flying from JFK, LaGuardia or Newark to Reagan National or Dulles International Airport. (John Foster Dulles was President Eisenhower's Secretary of State.)

The train is a very good option, if you can afford it. Washington’s Union Station is at 50 Massachusetts Avenue NE, within sight of the Capitol Building. But Amtrak is expensive. They figure, "You hate to fly, you don't want to deal with airports, and Greyhound sucks, so we can charge whatever we want."
Union Station, outside

New York to Washington will run you $157 round-trip on a standard Northeast Regional, and $3226 on Acela Express (formerly the Metroliner). And that’s before you add anything like Business Class or, God forbid, Amtrak’s overmicrowaved food. Still, it’s less than 3 hours if you take the Acela Express, and 3 hours and 40 minutes if you take a regular Northeast Regional train.
Union Station, inside

Another option is to buy a ticket for the New Carrollton, Maryland station, head out to Bus Bay C, and take the F14 bus to Hill Oaks Drive & Michele Drive. From there, it's a 10-minute walk to the stadium. The Amtrak price won't be any different, although the price for the bus may be, compared to the Metro.

Greyhound has rectified a longtime problem. They now use the parking deck behind Union Station as their Washington terminal, instead of the one they built 6 blocks away (and thus 6 blocks from the nearest Metro station), in the ghetto, back in the late 1960s. So neither safety nor aesthetics will be an issue any longer. Round-trip fare on Greyhound can be as high as $84, but you can get it for as little as just $16 on advanced purchase. It takes about 4 1/2 hours, and usually includes a rest stop about halfway, either on the New Jersey Turnpike in South Jersey or on the Delaware Turnpike.

Once In the City. Founded in 1800, and usually referred to as "The National City" in its early days, and "Washington City" in the 19th Century, the city was named, of course, for George Washington, although its "Georgetown" neighborhood was named for our previous commander-in-chief, King George III of England.
The name of its "state," the District of Columbia, comes from Columbia, a historical and poetic name used for America, which was accepted as its female personification until the early 20th Century, when the Statue of Liberty began to take its place in the public consciousness. "Columbia" was derived from the man who "discovered America," Christopher Columbus, and places throughout the Western Hemisphere -- from the capitals of Ohio and South Carolina to the river that separates Washington State from Oregon, from the Ivy League university in Manhattan to the South American nation that produces coffee and cocaine, are named for him.

Like a lot of cities, Washington suffered from "white flight," so that, while the population within the city limits has seriously shrunk, from 800,000 in 1950 to 650,000 today; the metro area went from 2.9 million to double that, 5.9 million. As a result, the roads leading into the District, and the one going around it, the Capital Beltway, Interstate 495, are rammed with cars. Finally, someone wised up and said, "Let's build a subway," and in 1976, the Metro opened.

That metropolitan growth was boosted by the Maryland and Virginia suburbs building housing and shopping areas for federal-government workers. And, perhaps more than any other metro area, the poor blacks who once lived in the city have reached the middle-class and built their own communities (especially to the east, in Maryland's Prince Georges County, which includes Landover). The metro area now has about 6 million residents -- and that's not including the metro area of nearby Baltimore, which would boost it to nearly 8.5 million and make it the 4th-largest "market" in the country, behind New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, slightly ahead of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Lots of people from the District and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs went up the Parkway to Baltimore to see the Orioles during the District's 1972-2004 baseball interregnum. However, during the NFL interregnum between Robert Irsay's theft of the Colts in 1984 and the arrival of the Ravens in 1996, Baltimore never accepted the Redskins as their team, despite 2 Super Bowl wins in that period. (So from March 1984 to August 1996, if you lived in the BaltWash Corridor, you had to take the Orioles for baseball and the Washington teams for the other sports. Since April 2005, you've had options for MLB and the NFL. But if you live closer to Baltimore, you still have to go to D.C. for the NBA, the NHL or MLS.)

When you get to Union Station, pick up copies of the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun. The Post is a great paper with a very good sports section, and in just 6 seasons (now into a 7th) has covered the Nats very well, despite the 1972-2004 era when D.C. had no MLB team of its own. As a holdover from that era, it still covers the Orioles well. The Sun is only an okay paper, but its sports section is nearly as good as the Post's, and their coverage of their town's hometown baseball team rivals that of any paper in the country -- including the great coverage that The New York Times and
Daily News give to the Yankees and Mets.

Do not buy The Washington Times. It was founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in 1982 as a replacement for the bankrupt Washington Star as the area’s conservative equivalent to the "liberal"Post. (That’s a laugh: The Post has George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Gerson and Kathleen Parker as columnists!) Under editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden, the Times was viciously right-wing, "reporting" every rumor about Democrats as if they were established, proven fact, and giving Republicans a free pass. Moon’s "Unification Church" sold the paper in 2009, and Pruden retired the year before. But it has cut about 40 percent of its employees, and has dropped not only its Sunday edition but also its sports section.

And now, there’s another paper, the Washington Examiner, owned by the same company as the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, and it is so far to the right it makes The Washington Times look like the Daily Kos. It is a truly loony publication, where Michael Barone of the American Enterprise Institute and Byron York of National Review are considered moderates. So avoid the loonies and the Moonies, and stick with the Post. Even if you don’t agree with my politics, you’re going down to D.C. for baseball, and the Post’s sports section kicks ass.

The sales tax in the District, once as high as 9 percent, is now just 6 percent.

The centerpoint for street addresses is the Capitol Building. North and South Capitol Streets separate east from west, and East Capitol Street and the National Mall separate north from south. The city is divided into quadrants: Northwest, Northeast, Southeast and Southwest (NW, NE, SE and SW). Because of the Capitol's location is not in the exact geographic centerpoint of the city, NW has about as much territory as the other 3 quadrants put together.

Remember: On street signs, 1st Street is written out as FIRST, and I Street is written out as EYE, so as to avoid confusion. And for the same reason, since I and J were virtually indistinguishable in written script when D.C. was founded in 1800, there is no J Street. Once the letters are expended, they go to to 2- and then 3-syllable words beginning with the sequential letters: Adams, Bryant, Clifton, etc.

Washington’s subway, the Metro, was not in place until 1976, but, thereafter, it was a relatively easy ride to Redskins games at RFK Stadium. But the move to the Beltway made this a lot harder.

From Union Station (having taken either the train or the bus in), you'll get on the Red Line to Metro Center, and transfer to the Blue Line to Morgan Blvd. The walk up Morgan to the stadium should take about 20 minutes. Because the outbound trip will be during rush hour, it will cost you $4.10. To make matters worse, the Metro stops running at midnight, and you won't be able to get back from Morgan Blvd. station to Union Station. For this reason, driving down would be the best option for this game. Next season, when the Giants are more likely to be playing the Redskins away on a Sunday, things will be different.

Going In. Originally named District of Columbia Stadium (or “D.C. Stadium”), and renamed for the former U.S. Attorney General, U.S. Senator from New York, brother of President John F. Kennedy, and martyred 1968 Presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium is at 2400 East Capitol Street SE, 3 miles east of downtown and 2 miles east of the Capitol building.

If you drive in, parking is $20. If not, take the Metro's Orange Line or Blue Line to Stadium-Armory. Unfortunately, it's about a 10-minute walk from the station, at 19th & C Streets SE, to the stadium. The D.C. Armory, headquarters of the District of Columbia National Guard, is that big brown arena-like thing across the parking lot.
The Stadium, with the Armory behind and to the left

The NFL's Washington Redskins played there from 1961 to 1996. Baseball's "new" Washington Senators opened there in 1962, and JFK threw out the first ball at the stadium that would be renamed for his brother and Attorney General. (There was a JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, formerly Municipal Stadium, where the new arena, the Wells Fargo Center, now stands.)

The new Senators played at RFK Stadium until 1971, and at the last game, against the Yankees, the Senators were up 7-5 with one out to go, when angry fans stormed the field, and the game was forfeited to the Yankees. The 'Skins moved to their new suburban stadium in 1997, after closing the '96 campaign without the Playoffs, but the final regular-season game was a thrashing of the hated Cowboys, with over 100 Redskin greats in attendance. Baseball's Washington Nationals Nats played the 2005, ’06 and ’07 seasons at RFK. The USFL's Washington Federals played there in 1983 and '84. And the Beatles played there on their final tour, on August 15, 1966.

D.C. United, once the most successful franchise in Major League Soccer, have played there since MLS was founded in 1996, winning the league title, the MLS Cup, 4 times, including 3 of the 1st 4. The MLS Cup Final was played there in 1997 (DCU over the Colorado Rapids), 2000 (the team now known as Sporting Kansas City over the Chicago Fire) and 2007 (the Houston Dynamo over the New England Revolution).
Previously, in the North American Soccer League, RFK was home to the Washington Whips (1967-68), the Washington Darts (1971), and the Washington Diplomats (1974-81), featuring Dutch legend Johan Cruyff. Women's soccer's Washington Freedom formerly played there (2001-03 and 2009-11).

DC/RFK Stadium was the 1st U.S. stadium specifically designed to host both baseball and football, and anything else willing to pay the rent. But I forgive it. It was a great football stadium, and it’s not a bad soccer stadium, but for baseball, let’s just say Nationals Park is a huge improvement. And what is with that whacked-out roof?
No stadium has hosted more games of the U.S. national soccer team than RFK: 23. (Next-closest is the Los Angeles Coliseum, with 20.) Their record there is 15 wins, 3 draws and 5 losses. So RFK is thus the closest America comes to having a "national stadium" like Wembley or the Azteca. The last match there was on September 4, 2015, a 2-1 win over Peru.

On June 2, 2013, I was in attendance at RFK Stadium for the 100th Anniversary match for the U.S. Soccer Federation. It was a 4-3 win over Germany, but this was not indicative of their true strength: They were operating at half-power, because their players from Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund had so recently played the UEFA Champions League Final. Only 4 players who played in this game went on to play and win for Die Mannschaft in the 2014 World Cup Final: Centreback Per Mertesacker (of Arsenal), left back Benedikt Howedes, and forwards Miroslav Klose and Andre Schurrle (you can't be serious). At least U.S. manager Jurgen Klinsmann, a German, took it seriously and tried to win. Then again, he's great in friendlies; in competitive matches, not so much.

RFK hosted 5 games in the 1994 World Cup, 9 games of the 1996 Olympic soccer tournament (6 men's and 3 women's, with the main portion of the games being played in Atlanta), and 6 games of the 2003 Women's World Cup.

With the Nats and ‘Skins gone, United are the only team still playing there, and plans for a new stadium for them, near Nationals Park, are moving slowly, so it will still be possible to see a sporting event at RFK Stadium for the next few years.

Even if you drive in, most likely, you'll be entering the stadium from its west side. The field is natural grass, and is laid out east-to-west.

Food. In 1992, I attended a preseason baseball game at RFK Stadium, between the Orioles and the Red Sox. The food was horrible, including the worst hot dog I've ever had at a sporting event. Worse even that the terrible tube steaks at Sayreville High School football games (and those things are foul). The next day, right before the O's were to open the brand-new Camden Yards, it was reported that several of their players (but none of the Red Sox) had come down with food poisoning. I wasn't surprised. (They won the Camden Yards opener anyway.) I would later attend 2 Nationals games and the 2013 U.S.-Germany soccer match at RFK, and the food, while not great, had substantially improved.

Hopefully, it is better now. They've got quesadillas at stands behind Sections 205 and 227, cheesesteaks at 206 and 324, burgers at 207, pizza at 208 and 228, Dippin Dots at 211 and 313, barbecue at 212, pretzels at 212 and 230, Peruvian chicken at 214, popcorn at 235 and 313, smoked beef brisket at 236, funnel cake at 309, Italian sausage at 324, and stands for hot dogs, fries and drinks all over the place.

Team History Displays. As they never cease to remind us, DCU have won 4 MLS Cups, including 3 of the 1st 4: 1996, 1997, 1999 and 2004. Their displays thereof is on the wall at the lower level of the east end (formerly center field).
They were runners-up in 1998. They've won the Supporters' Shield 4 times: 1997, 1999, 2006 and 2007. They won the U.S. Open Cup in 1996 (giving them the U.S. version of "The Double"), 2008 and 2013 (despite finishing with the worst record in MLS); they were runners-up in 1997 (just missing back-to-back Doubles) and 2009. And along with the L.A. Galaxy in 2000, DCU are 1 of just 2 MLS teams to have won the CONCACAF Champions League, in 1998.

It is because of their early success, and their arrogance about it, that most MetroStars/Red Bulls fans, ever since those early days, have considered DCU, not the New England Revolution, or the newer but closer Philadelphia Union and now NYCFC, to be their main rivals. It doesn't work out this way in any other sport. Ranger fans consider their biggest rivals to be the Islanders, while fans of both the Islanders and the Devils consider the Rangers theirs. The Mets and the Giants have Philly teams as their biggest rivals, and the Tri-State Area hockey teams all have rivalries with the Flyers. The Yankees, Jets, Knicks, and, to a lesser extent, the Rangers all consider Boston/New England to be major rivals.

Washington? Surely, Met fans don't like the Nationals, Giant fans don't like the Redskins, and the hockey teams don't like the Capitals, but there isn't really hatred there. And the Knicks and the Nets barely even notice the Wizards. But in MLS? Metro fans call them "the D.C. Scum." Their fans call the Red Bulls "the Pink Cows."

DCU have a Hall of Tradition, on the wall at the lower level of the east end (what used to be the right field wall). It honors 8 players: Forwards Raul Diaz Arce and Jaime Moreno; midfielders John Harkes (native of Kearny, New Jersey), Marco Etcheverry, Richie Williams (native of Middletown, New Jersey) and Ben Olsen (now the team's manager); and defenders Jeff Agoos and Eddie Pope. (Moreno, Williams, Agoos and Pope were briefly MetroStars.) In addition, they've honored executives Kevin Payne Betty D'Anjolell, and broadcaster Danilo Noel Diron.

Harkes (the 1st inductee), Etcheverry, Agoos, Diaz Arce, Pope, Williams and Moreno were charter players for DCU, and thus were all members of the 1996 MLS Cup winners -- and the '97 winners. Etcheverry, Agoos, Pope, Williams and Olsen played on the '99 win. Olsen and Moreno played on the 2004 win.
DCU don't retire numbers, but Harkes wore Number 6, Etcheverry 10, Agoos 12, Olsen 14, Williams 16, Diaz Arce 21, Pope 23 and Moreno 99.

Stuff. The official D.C. United Team Store is located at Main Gate behind section 317, at the southwest corner (what used to be the home plate entrance).

I looked up "D.C. United," and then "DC United" without the periods, on Amazon.com, and found no books and no DVDs about the team.

During the Game. The "Atlantic Cup" rivalry between RBNY and DCU might be the nastiest in the League. This is one roadtrip where your safety might be an issue, especially since one of their supporters' groups named itself a Barra Brava after Argentine ultras groups, which tend to get violent. The best thing you can do is listen to the instructions of cops and stewards, and make sure your ticket is in Section 318, no matter how many empty seats are elsewhere in the stadium.

One thing you will not have to be afraid of is the condition of the stadium. I've been to RFK several times, 4 times since 2005, and I can tell you it's not the crumbling relic that some Metro fans suggest it is. The fact that DCU are building a new stadium is due to RFK's ability to generate gameday revenue, nothing more.

DCU hold auditions for singing the National Anthem, instead of having a regular. Their mascot, like those of the Washington Nationals and Washington Capitals, is an eagle, in this case named Talon. This Friday's game will be Star Wars Night. Well, when the Red Bulls come in, D.C.'s going to have a bad feeling about this!
Talon and the Nats' Screech

There are 4 main supporters groups, all hosting pregame tailgate parties in the RFK Stadium parking lot. La Barra Brava (Spanish for "The Brave Fans") was the original MLS supporters' group, founded by South Americans living in The District, in support of original DCU players Marco Etcheverry and Jaime Moreno, both from Bolivia. With the passage of time, however, they are no longer a Latino majority. Unlike the notorious barras bravas of Argentina, they avoid violence whenever they can. They sit in Sections 135, 136, 137 and 138, just to the east of midfield on the north side of the stadium, and in 233, 234 and 235 above.

The Screaming Eagles, also founded before the team actually began play, sit in Sections 132, 133 and 134 (collectively, The Nest) and above that in 230, 231 and 232 (The Perch), just to the west of midfield on the north side, across the midfield line from La Barra Brava. Despite the ethnic and linguistic differences, they are allies, and have never fought with each other. (Fights between supporters' groups at a single club does, occasionally, happen at some soccer teams, although never, as far as I know, in the U.S.) They also serve as a supporters' group for the U.S. national team, particularly when they play in the Northeastern U.S. (not just in the D.C. area).

The other main Latino group is La Norte (The North), who were founded in 2001 as a breakaway group from La Barra Brava. They were evicted from their former section when RFK Stadium was reconfigured to return it to baseball use, and now sit in 118 -- in a twofold irony, on the stadium's south side (the southwest corner) and underneath the visiting supporters in 318. The other main Anglophone group is the District Ultras, founded in 2010. They sit in 127, at the northwest corner.

Like so many MLS teams, including ours, they use the "Vamos" song: "Vamos, vamos United, esta noche, tenemos que ganar..." (Let's go, let's go United, this night, we have to win... ) And, like the Yankees, they proudly proclaim themselves "The Evil Empire."
After the Game. Especially at night (which this game will be), safety could be an issue. The stewards will probably keep you in your section until the rest of the stadium empties out, then guide you out. Let them do this. Then follow your fellow fans, and the directions of the D.C. Metro Police, back to your car or the subway.

Another reason to go directly to the subway is the lack of decent places to eat and drink around RFK Stadium. The bar 51st State is a known hangout for Yankees, Mets, Giants, Jets, Knicks and Rangers fans. (No mention of the Nets, Islanders or Devils, though.) 2512 L St. NW at Pennsylvania Avenue. Metro: Blue or Orange to Foggy Bottom. Nanny O'Brien's is also said to be a Giants fan bar. 3319 Connecticut Ave NW. Metro: Red to Cleveland Park.

If you visit D.C. during the European soccer season, supporters of the following clubs meet at the following places:

* Arsenal, Manchester City, Real Madrid: Lucky Bar, 1221 Connecticut Ave. NW. Red Line to Farragut North. If you don't see your club listed here, and their game is on TV, chances are, Lucky Bar will show it. (I once watched matches by Arsenal, Newcastle, Real Madrid and Internazionale there, all at the same time.)

* Liverpool and Aston Villa: The Queen Vic, 1206 H Street NE. (Remember, that's Northeast.) Bus X2. Liverpool fans also meet at Ri Ra, at 2915 Wilson Blvd. in Arlington, Virginia. Orange Line to Clarendon.

* Chelsea, Newcastle United, and a secondary meeting place for Arsenal fans: Ireland's Four Courts, 2052 Wilson Blvd. in Arlington. Blue or Orange Line to Courthouse.

* Manchester United: Public Bar, 1214 18th Street, around the corner from Lucky Bar. (Apparently, they pissed fans of other teams off so much, they had to find a new place.)

* Everton: Fado, 808 7th Street NW., in Chinatown, a block from the Verizon Center. Red, Yellow or Green Line to Gallery Place.

* Tottenham Hotspur: The Irish Channel, 500 H Street NW, a block down H from Fado.

* Celtic: Flanagan's Harp & Fiddle, 4844 Cordell Avenue, Bethesda, Maryland. Red Line to Bethesda, then it's a bit of a walk.

* Barcelona: Elephant & Castle, 900 19th Street NW. Blue or Orange Line to Farragut West.

Sidelights. Washington's sports history is long, but not good. The Redskins haven't won a World Championship in 24 seasons; the Bullets/Wizards, 37 seasons; all of its baseball teams combined, 92 years (yes, ninety-two); the Capitals, never in their 42-season history. Indeed, no D.C. area team has even been to its sport's finals since the Caps made it 18 seasons ago. But, if you have the time, these sites are worth checking:

* Nationals Park and new D.C. United stadium. The Nats' new home opened in 2008, at 1500 South Capitol Street at N Street. It's not flashy, but it looks nice. They've won National League Eastern Division titles there in 2012 and 2014, but, due to Playoff collapses, no Washington baseball team has won a Pennant since 1933, and none has won a postseason round since the only World Series win in city history, the 1924 Washington Senators.

The plan for a new D.C. United stadium is for one at Buzzard Point, on land bounded by R, 2nd, T & Half Streets SW, 3 blocks from Nationals Park. The land has finally been acquired, but not yet cleared, and construction may not begin until the spring. For the moment, the plan is for DCU to begin play there in March of 2018, meaning 2 more seasons at RFK.

Prince Georges County had a proposal for a new stadium near FedExField, and Baltimore offered to build one, leading fans of DCU's arch-rivals, the New York Red Bulls, to mock the club as "Baltimore United." But ground has finally been broken for the Buzzard Point stadium.

* Site of Griffith Stadium. There were 2 ballparks on this site. Boundary Park was built in 1892 and burned down in 1911, within weeks of New York’s Polo Grounds. Just as the Polo Grounds was rebuilt on the same site, the Senators rebuilt their home exactly where it was. Originally called League Park and National Park (no S on the end) before former pitching star Clark Griffith bought the team, this stadium was home to the old Senators from 1911 to 1960, and the new Senators only in 1961.

The Redskins played there from 1937 to 1960, and won the NFL Championship there in 1937 and 1942, although only the ’42 title game was played there. There was another NFL title game played there, in 1940, but the Redskins were beaten by the Chicago Bears – 73-0. (Nope, that’s not a typo: Seventy-three to nothing. Most points by one team in one game in NFL history, slightly ahead of the ‘Skins’ 72-49 victory over the Giants at RFK in 1966.)

While the Senators did win 3 Pennants and the 1924 World Series while playing at Griffith, it was not a good home for them. The fences were too far back for almost anyone to homer there, and they hardly ever had the pitching, either (except for Walter Johnson). In 1953, Mickey Mantle hit a home run there that was measured at 565 feet – though it probably shouldn’t count as such, because witnesses said it glanced off the football scoreboard at the back of the left-field bleachers, which would still give the shot an impressive distance of about 460 feet.

The Negro Leagues’ Homestead Grays also played a lot of home games at Griffith, although they divided their "home games" between Washington and Pittsburgh. Think of the Grays as the original Harlem Globetrotters, who called themselves "Harlem" to identify themselves as a black team even though their original home base was Chicago (and later moved their offices to Los Angeles, and are now based in Phoenix).

By the time Clark Griffith died in 1955, passing the team to his nephew and adopted son Calvin, the area around Griffith Stadium had become nearly all-black. While Clark, despite having grown up in segregated Missouri during the 19th Century, followed Branch Rickey's path and integrated his team sooner than most (in particular going for Cubans, white and black alike), Calvin was a bigot who wanted to move the team to mostly-white Minnesota. When the new stadium was built, it was too late to save the original team, and the “New Senators” were born.

Griffith Stadium was demolished in 1965, and, as I said earlier, Howard University Hospital is there now. 2041 Georgia Avenue NW at V Street. Green Line to Shaw-Howard University Station, 3 blocks up 7th Street, which becomes Georgia Avenue when you cross Florida Avenue.

* FedEx Field. Originally Jack Kent Cooke Stadium, the old Redskins owner built it in suburban Landover, Maryland, across the Capital Beltway from the Capital Centre. The official address is 1600 FedEx Way.

The move from RFK in the District, where the fans had to walk down hard city streets from the Metro (hazardous even if you weren't wearing enemy colors), to FedEx (originally named Jack Kent Cooke Stadium in memory of the team's former owner, before new owner Daniel Snyder sold the naming rights to Federal Express) in the comfortable suburbs, meant that the 'Skins could no longer play in a stadium where the upper deck was right on top of the field, and where the aluminum stand that retracted to fit in a baseball field could no longer be jumped on to create noise like an oversized high school football game.

The Redskins went from having the smallest stadium in the NFL, and possibly the best atmosphere and the best home-field advantage, to having the largest stadium (now the 2nd-largest, behind Dallas), with the worst atmosphere, and hardly any home-field advantage.

The Army-Navy Game was played at FedExField in 2011. So far, the U.S. soccer team has played just 1 match at the stadium, a draw with Brazil on May 30, 2012. There were 4 matches played there in the 1999 Women's World Cup. European soccer clubs Real Madrid, Barcelona, Internazionale Milano , Manchester United and Chelsea have plays summer tour games there. It's hosted concerts by Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, U2 and Metallica.

* Uline Arena/Washington Coliseum. This building was home to the District’s 1st NBA team, the Washington Capitols, from 1946 to 1951. They reached the 1949 NBA Finals, losing to the Minneapolis Lakers of George Mikan, and were the 1st pro team coached by Red Auerbach. Firing him was perhaps the dumbest coaching change in NBA history: By the time Red coached the Boston Celtics to their first NBA title in 1957, the Capitols had been out of business for 6 years.

The Coliseum was last used for sports in 1970 by the Washington Caps (not "Capitols," not "Capitals," just "Caps")of the ABA. It was the site of the first Beatles concert in the U.S. (aside from their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show 2 nights before), on February 11, 1964.

It still stands, and its interior and grounds are used as a parking lot, particularly for people using nearby Union Station. Unfortunately, it’s in a rotten neighborhood, and I wouldn’t recommend visiting at night. In fact, unless you’re a student of NBA history or a Beatlemaniac, I’d say don’t go at all. 1140 3rd Street NE, at M Street. Red Line to Union Station, and then it’s a bit of a walk.

* Site of Capital Centre. From 1973 to 1997, this was the home of the NBA's Washington Bullets, who became the Wizards when they moved downtown. From 1974 to 1997, it was the home of the NHL's Washington Capitals. The Bullets played in the 1975, '78 and '79 NBA Finals there, although they've only won in 1978, and clinched that title at the Seattle Kingdome.

The Cap Centre was also the home for Georgetown University basketball, in its glory years of Coach John Thompson (father of the current coach, John Thompson III), Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo and Allen Iverson. Remember those 1980s battles with the St. John’s teams of Louie Carnesecca, Chris Mullin and Walter Berry?

Elvis Presley sang there on June 27, 1976 and on May 22 and 29, 1977. (He never gave a concert in the District.) It was demolished in 2002, and a shopping mall, The Boulevard at the Capital Centre, was built on the site. 1 Harry S Truman Drive, Landover, Prince George’s County, Maryland, just outside the Capital Beltway. Blue Line to Largo Town Center station.

* Verizon Center. Opened in 1997 as the MCI Center, the NBA's Wizards, the NHL's Capitals, the WNBA's Washington Mystics, and the Georgetown basketball team have played here ever since. Only one Finals has been held here, the Caps' 1998 sweep at the hands of the Detroit Red Wings. (Georgetown has reached a Final Four since it opened, but those are held at neutral sites.) But it's a very good arena. 601 F Street NW, at 6th Street. Red, Green or Yellow Line to Gallery Place-Chinatown Station.

* Maryland SoccerPlex. This suburban facility opened in 2000, with 22 soccer fields, 3 of them artificial. The main stadium, seating 4,000, is named Maureen Hendricks Field, after the wife of John Hendricks, founder of Discovery Communications. Together, they founded the Washington Freedom, who now play in the National Women's Soccer League.

18031 Central Park Circle, in Boyds, Montgomery County, 34 miles northwest of downtown Washington. You want to get there without a car? Good luck: You'd have to take MARC (MAryland Commuter Rail, which doesn't run on weekends) to Metropolitan Grove, transfer to Bus 78, take that to Richter Farm Road & Schaffer Road, and then walk a mile.

* The Smithsonian Institution. Includes the National Museum of American History, which contains several sports-themed items. 1400 Constitution Avenue NW. Blue or Orange Line to Federal Triangle. (You could, of course, take the same lines to Smithsonian Station, but Fed Triangle is actually a shorter walk.)

If you're into looking up "real" TV locations, the Jeffersonian Institute on Bones is almost certainly based on the Smithsonian. The real NCIS headquarters used to be a short walk from Nationals Park, on Sicard Street between Patterson and Paulding Streets. Whether civilians will be allowed on the Navy Yard grounds, I don't know; I've never tried it. I don't want to get stopped by a guard. I also don't want to get "Gibbs-slapped" -- and neither do you. However, they have since moved to the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, and that's a bit of a trek.

Of course, The West Wing was based at the White House, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The best-known D.C.-based show that didn't directly deal with government officials was Murphy Brown. The FYI studio was said to be across the street from Phil's, whose address was given as 1195 15th St. NW. Neither the bar nor the address actually exists, but if the address did, it would be at 15th & M Streets. This would put it, rather conveniently, right down the block from 1150 15th Street, the headquarters of The Washington Post.

The University of Maryland, inside the Beltway at College Park, can be accessed by the Green Line to College Park and then a shuttle bus. (I tried that for the 2009 Rutgers-Maryland game, and it works very well.) Byrd Stadium is one of the nation’s best college football stadiums, but I wouldn't recommend sitting in the upper deck if you’re afraid of heights: I think it’s higher than Shea’s was.

Across from the stadium is Cole Field House, where UMd played its basketball games from 1955 to 2002. The 1966 and 1970 NCAA Championship basketball games were played there, the 1966 one being significant because Texas Western (now Texas-El Paso) played an all-black starting five against Kentucky’s all-white starters (including future Laker, Knick and Heat coach Pat Riley and Denver Nuggets star Dan Issel). In the 1970 Finals, it was UCLA over the University of Jacksonville.

Elvis sang there on September 27 and 28, 1974. The Terrapins won the National Championship in their final season at Cole, and moved to the adjacent Comcast Center thereafter.

Remember that Final Four run by George Mason University? They're across the Potomac River in Fairfax, Virginia. Orange Line to Virginia Square-GMU.

The U.S. Naval Academy is 30 miles east in Annapolis, Maryland; the University of Virginia, 117 miles southwest in Charlottesville; and Virginia Tech, 270 miles southwest in Blacksburg. 

I also recommend visiting the capital's museums, including the Smithsonian complex, whose most popular buildings are the National Archives, hosting the originals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; and the National Air and Space Museum, which includes the Wright Brothers'Flyer, Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, Chuck Yeager's Glamorous Glennis (the 1st plane to break the sound barrier), and several space capsules including Apollo 11. The Smithsonian also has an annex at Dulles International Airport out in Virginia, including a Concorde, the space shuttle Discovery, and the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the 1st atomic bomb.

One of the 1960 Presidential Debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon was held in Washington -- still the only Presidential Debate held in the capital. On October 7, it was hosted not in a sports arena, a theater or a college auditorium, but in front of no live audience other than the panelists and the TV crew, at the studios of the NBC affiliate, WRC, Channel 4, 4001 Nebraska Avenue NW. Red Line to Tenleytown-AU.

In spite of what some movies have suggested, you won't see a lot of tall buildings in the District.  The Washington Monument is 555 feet high, but, other than that, no building is allowed to be taller than the Capitol. Exceptions were made for two churches, the Washington National Cathedral and the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and the Old Post Office Pavilion was built before the "unwritten law" went into effect. In contrast, there are a few office buildings taller than most D.C. buildings across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia, and in the neighboring Maryland cities of Silver Spring and New Carrollton.

*

For Red Bulls fans, RFK Stadium is the belly of the beast, the home of "The D.C. Scum." Be careful when you go to Washington to watch the footy. We want you to live long enough to once again sing, "D.C. United went to Rome to see the Pope, and this is what he said... "

Yanks Take 3 of 4 From Defending Champs. Flushing Heathen, Take Note

$
0
0
Sorry for slipping behind. Now I have to cram 4 games into 1 post. I've done it before, but I don't like it. At any rate...

Anybody who still says the Mets are better than the Yankees needs to stop calling me "delusional."

Last October, the Mets got beat 4 out of 5 by the Kansas City Royals in the World Series, including dropping 2 out of 3 in New York, and blowing leads in all 5 games, including the 1 they won.

The Yankees just took 3 out of 4 from the Royals.

*

On Monday night, K.C. came in, and Ivan Nova got the start in place of the injured CC Sabathia. He pitched decently through the 1st 4 innings, and the Yankees gave him a 5-1 cushion, thanks to home runs by Brian McCann (his 4th of the season), Brett Gardner (his 4th), Aaron Hicks (his 2nd), and 2 by Carlos Beltran (giving him 6).

But Nova allowed 1st & 3rd with only 1 out in the 5th. You would expect manager Joe Girardi to panic in this situation. Instead, he left Nova in to pitch to Lorenzo Cain, and Nova struck him out.

Then Girardi took him out. Why? Because the next batter was Eric Hosmer, who's a lefthanded hitter, and Girardi wanted a lefthanded pitcher to face him. So he brought in...

Phil Coke? Phil Coke who can't fucking pitch? Phil Coke who has a 4.19 career ERA as a reliever? Phil Coke who had a 5.68 ERA last season? Phil Coke who'll be 34 years old next month? Phil Coke who's been released by 5 (yes, five) different major league teams since October 30, 2014? What the flying fuck is Phil Fucking Coke doing in the major leagues, let alone on the New York Yankees?

Seriously? I mean, blame Brian Cashman for signing the bum in the first place, but blame Joe Girardi for letting the bum into a game in the second place!

And Coke very nearly served up a gopher ball to Hosmer! To the opposite field, no less! But Gardner caught it at the wall.

Well, you would think that Girardi would know better than to let Phil Coke Is Not It throw another pitch as a Yankee, let alone in this game. But no, he leaves Phil Choke in. He gets Kendrys Morales to fly out, but he walks Alex Gordon. Why did he leave Coke in? Because Morales is a switch-hitter who's weaker from the right side, and Gordon is lefthanded.

Joe, if you can't trust Nova to get hitters out, regardless of handedness, why pitch him at all?

Joe brought Kirby Yates in, and he ended the threat. Then Yates went 1-2-3 in the 7th inning. Of course, a manager with any sense would leave him in. Instead, Girardi brings in Chasen Shreve, who can't fucking pitch, and he surrenders a homer to Hosmer. Even Phil Fucking Coke didn't do that!

Fortunately, a sacrifice fly by Hicks got the Yankees another run. And then, in the top of the 9th, the much-discussed Aroldis Chapman made his Yankee debut. Wearing Goose Gossage's old Number 54, which he wore with his previous team, the Cincinnati Reds, the man known as the Cuban Missile got 2 strikeouts, but allowed a double and a single. Perhaps he's a little rusty? After all, he didn't have spring training. But he got the last out.

Yankees 6, Royals 3. WP: Yates (2-0). In spite of Chapman's debut, no save. LP: Chris Young (5-1).

*

On Tuesday night, Masahiro Tanaka did not have good stuff, allowing 6 runs in 7 innings. But the Yankees knocked Kris Medlen out in the 3rd inning, taking a 5-3 lead. But he fell behind 6-5 in the 5th. The Yankees made it 7-6 in the 7th, but Andrew Miller, the 8th inning guy now that Chapman is eligible, blew it, giving up a homer to Cain, his 3rd of the game!

But just as in Game 3 of the 1978 American League Championship Series, when George Brett did to us for the Royals, the Yankees got the winning runs in the 8th inning. With 1 out, Ben Gamel reached on an error by Royal shorstop Alcides Escobar. Brett Gardner doubled him home. Starlin Castro was hit by a pitch, and McCann doubled them home.

Yankees 10, Royals 7. WP: Miller, despite the blown save (2-0). SV: Chapman (his 1st as a Yankee). LP: Kelvin Herrera (0-1).

*

Michael Pineda started the Wednesday night game, and, like Tanaka the night before, he didn't have it, and the Yankees ended up allowing 7 runs. Unlike the night before, this time, the Yankee bats were not up to the task.

Hicks, one of several Yankees who got off to atrocious starts at the plate, got 3 hits. Beltran, another, got 2. The rest of the Yankees combine got only 2 hits and 3 walks, and left 8 men on base.

Royals 7, Yankees 3. WP: Yordano Ventura (3-2). No save. LP: Pineda (1-4).

*

Thursday night felt like a key game. Lose it, and it would seem like the Yankees were once again falling into bad habits, as if the 1st 2 games in the series didn't matter. Win it, and you've taken 3 out of 4 from the Champions, which sends quite a message to the rest of the League.

It was Nathan Eovaldi, who looks like a big part of the Yankees' future, against Ian Kennedy, who was supposed to be, and now does have a World Series ring -- with the Royals.

Castro (his 4th) and Chase Headley (finally, his 1st) hit home runs, and the Yankees led 3-0 after 2 innings. The Royals closed to 3-2 in the 4th. Didi Gregorius got those runs back with a homer in the bottom half of the inning. But Eovaldi allowed another run in the 5th to make it 5-3 to the Bronx Bombers.

So Girardi brought Yates in, and he pitched a perfect 6th. So leave him in, right? Right. Except Girardi's binder said wrong, and he brought Dellin Betances in to pitch the 7th. He pitched a perfect inning, too. So leave him in, right? Right. Except Girardi's binder said wrong, and he brought Miller in to pitch the 8th. He pitched a perfect inning, too. So leave him in, right? Right. Except Girardi's binder said wrong, and he brought Shreve in to pitch the 9th.

Apparently, Girardi's binder thought that Chapman needed a rest, but Yates, Betances and Miller didn't. And that the next-best option was Shreve.

Chasen Shreve is only the next-best option if the next-best option after him is Boone Logan.

Shreve got the 1st 2 outs in the 9th, then allowed a single... uh-oh... and then got the last out.

Before I total it up, let me report that, when Royal manager Ned Yost pulled Ian Kennedy in the 7th, the reliever he brought in was our old friend Chien-Ming Wang. He couldn't work out of the jam, and the Yankees scored 2 runs in the inning, both charged to Kennedy.

It's a real shame what happened to Wang: For 2 1/2 seasons -- 2006, 2007, and early 2008 -- he was more of an ace than any pitcher the Mets have had sinc the young David Cone. But the National League's refusal to adopt the designated hitter led to a baserunning injury from which he has never fully recovered. Before that, his career record was 54-20. He was only 28 years old. Since, it's 9-14. He's pitched only 174 2/3rds innings in the last 8 years, an average of 22 a season.

Yankees 7, Royals 3. WP: Eovaldi (3-2). No save. LP: Kennedy (4-3).


*

The Yankees are now 10-1 this season when they score at least 4 runs (the 1 loss being an 8-7 loss to Boston at Fenway on May 1), 14-4 when they score at least 3, and 0-15 when they score 2 or fewer.

We've won 5 of the last 7, and are up to 14-19. Since (as I've previously established) it usually takes 93 wins to finish 1st in the American League Eastern Division, the Yankees would have to go at least 79-50 the rest of the way, a .612, 99-win pace. Unlikely, but it can be done.

As for the Mets, who lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers last night, with Bartolo Colon crashing back to Earth after his steroid-aided home run... I hope they took note of how the Yankees beat the Royals, which they couldn't do when it counted even more than this.

I hope the Mets took note of this. I hope their nitwit fans, the Flushing Heathen, took note of it. And I hope those sorry-ass people who claimed (and may still claim) to be Yankee Fans but have been slobbering over the Mets for the last year took note of it.

Records, schmecords: The Yankees are still better than the Mets.

Tonight, the Yankees begin a 3-game home series against the AL Central Division-leading Chicago White Sox:

* Tonight, 7:05 PM: Luis Severino (0-5) vs. Chris Sale (7-0). The only way we have a chance of defying those records is if Michael Kay mentions them on the air. You know "The Curse of Kay" has flipped overwhelming stats before.

* Tomorrow, 1:05 PM: Nova vs. Jose Quintana.

* Sunday, 1:05: Tanaka vs. Miguel Gonzalez.

Come on you Pinstripes!

How to Be a Yankee Fan In Oakland -- 2016 Edition

$
0
0
The Yankees begin a 3-game series away to the Oakland Athletics next Thursday.

If the Athletics can't get a new ballpark agreement soon, there won't be many more chances to see them play in Oakland against anybody, let alone the Yankees. So if you do get the chance, you should go. This will be the Yankees' only trip to Oakland this season, and the A's current lease will keep them in the Coliseum at least through next season. A's owners Lew Wolff and John Fisher are said to be negotiating a new 10-year lease, which would keep them at the building currently named the O.co Coliseum through the 2025 season. But that's not assured yet.

The fact that there aren't many stadiums capable of hosting Major League Baseball that are not already doing so limits their moving options. (The Olympic Stadium in Montreal is pretty much it, unless somebody -- Charlotte? Salt Lake City? Las Vegas -- does some serious expansion on a stadium that they already have.) But, with their financial struggles (some of their own making) and the success of the Giants across the Bay, the A's may not be long for the area.

At the moment, the likeliest result is a move to nearby San Jose, but since the Giants have territorial rights to the city and a farm team there, they would have to give permission, and, for the time being, they choose not to.

Before You Go. The San Francisco Bay Area has inconsistent weather. San Francisco, in particular, partly because it's bounded by water on 3 sides, is the one city I know of that has baseball weather in football season and football weather in baseball season. Or, as Mark Twain, who worked for a San Francisco newspaper during the Civil War, put it, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."

The Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum – currently named the O.co Coliseum (O.co being the marketing name of Overstock.com), but I’ll use the original name throughout for simplicity’s sake – doesn't get as cold as Candlestick Park did, but it has been known to be bad enough, getting quite chilly early in the season. But, this being mid-June, that shouldn't be a problem for you. Still, before you go, I would suggest checking the websites of the Oakland Tribune and SFgate.com, the website of the San Francisco Chronicle, for the forecasts. For the moment, they're predicting the mid-60s for daylight, and the low 50s for night.

(This is one of the difficulties with doing these guides: I want to give you enough time to get a decent travel deal, but to do that, I'm sacrificing accuracy on the weather forecasts.)

As with the rest of California, Oakland is in the Pacific Time Zone, 3 hours behind New York. Adjust your timepieces accordingly.

Tickets. Even when they win, the A's tend to have one of the worst attendance records in baseball. Even when they won 5 straight AL West titles in 1971-75, they only drew a million or more fans once, in 1975, averaging 13,278 fans per home game. (In 1973, owner Charlie Finley fudged the figure on the final day of the season, to sneak them over the million mark, which he later admitted.) They peaked at 35,804 in 1990, the height of their "Bash Brothers" success, and had 27,365 at the height of their "Big Three" run in 2003.

The A's averaged 21,829 fans season, and are averaging 18,380 this season -- dropping from 25th to 28th out of 30. So, even with the upper deck entirely tarped-over except for the right-over-the-plate seats, reducing baseball seating capacity from a potential 55,945 to an official 35,067, making the seats about 52 percent full, essentially, you can walk up to the gate at the Coliseum right before the first pitch and buy any seat you can afford.

"MVP" seats are $95, Lower Boxes are $79, Field Level seats are $44, Plaza Level seats are $36, Bleachers (in "Mount Davis") are $28, Plaza Reserved (also in Mount Davis) are $26, and the top-level Value Deck seats are $29.

Getting There. It's 2,914 miles from Yankee Stadium to the Oakland Coliseum. This is the longest regular Yankee roadtrip there is (regular as in annual, since the Interleague schedule is staggered), and will remain so barring realignment, unless some future Commissioner decides to create a World League of Baseball and the Tokyo-based Yomiyuri Giants come in. In other words, if you're going, you're flying.

You think I'm kidding? Even if you get someone to go with you, and you take turns, one drives while the other one sleeps, and you pack 2 days' worth of food, and you use the side of the Interstate as a toilet, and you don’t get pulled over for speeding, you’ll still need over 2 full days. Each way.

But, if you really, really want to drive... Get onto Interstate 80 West in New Jersey, and – though incredibly long, it’s also incredibly simple – you'll stay on I-80 for almost its entire length, which is 2,900 miles from Ridgefield Park, just beyond the New Jersey end of the George Washington Bridge, to the San Francisco end of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Getting off I-80, you'll need Exit 8A for I-880, the Nimitz Freeway – the 1997-rebuilt version of the double-decked expressway that collapsed, killing 42 people, during the Loma Prieta Earthquake that struck during the 1989 World Series between the 2 Bay Area teams. From I-880, you'll take Exit 37, turning left onto Zhone Way (no, that's not a typo), which becomes 66th Avenue, and then turn right onto Coliseum Way.

Not counting rest stops, you should be in New Jersey for an hour and a half, Pennsylvania for 5:15, Ohio for 4 hours, Indiana for 2:30, Illinois for 2:45, Iowa for 5 hours, Nebraska for 7:45, Wyoming for 6:45, Utah for 3:15, Nevada for 6:45, and California for 3:15. That's almost 49 hours, and with rest stops, and city traffic at each end, we’re talking 3 full days.

That's still faster than Greyhound and Amtrak. Greyhound does stop in Oakland, at 2103 San Pablo Avenue at Castro Street. But the trip averages about 72 hours, depending on the run, and will require you to change buses 3, 4 or even 5 times. Fare: $438.

On Amtrak, you would leave Penn Station on the Lake Shore Limited at 3:40 PM on Monday, arrive at Union Station in Chicago at 9:45 AM Central Time on Tuesday, and switch to the California Zephyr at 2:00 PM, arriving at Emeryville, California at 4:10 PM Pacific Time on Thursday. Round-trip fare: $582. Then you'd have to get to downtown Oakland on the Number 26 bus, which would take almost an hour.

Amtrak service has been restored to downtown Oakland, at 245 2nd Street, in Jack London Square. Unfortunately, it's a half-mile walk to the nearest BART station, at Lake Merritt (8th & Oak). For A's and Raiders games, the station at the Coliseum site, which is part of the BART station there, might be better. 700 73rd Street. And yet, for either of these stations, you'd  still have to transfer at Emeryville to an Amtrak Coast Starlight train.

Getting into Oakland International Airport, right by the Coliseum, won't be easy. But you might be able to get a round-trip flight for under $800, although you'll have to change planes in Phoenix. You still might be better off flying into San Francisco International Airport, and then taking BART into either San Francisco or Oakland. BART from SFO to downtown San Francisco takes 26 minutes, to downtown Oakland 43 minutes. It's $8.60 to San Fran, $8.95 to Oakland.

Once In the City. Founded in 1852 and named after oak trees in the area, Oakland is a city of a little over 400,000 people. But if you count the "Oakland area" of the San Francisco Bay Area as being the Counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Merced, San Joaquin, Solano, Stanislaus, Sutter and Yolo (not "YOLO"), it comes to 4,723,778 people -- almost as much as the San Francisco side of the area, counting the Counties of Marin, Monterey, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara (including San Jose), Santa Cruz and Sonoma: 4,855,538.

So anyone who says, "Oakland is a small market," or, "The East Bay is a small market," is wrong: The Oakland part of the Bay Area has more people than the metro areas of every major league city except New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington, Miami, Atlanta and San Diego.

Most Oakland street addresses aren't divided into north-south, or east-west.  The city does have numbered streets, starting with 1st Street on the bayfront and increasing as you move northeast. One of the BART stops in the city is called "12th Street Oakland City Center," and it's at 12th & Broadway, so if you're looking at a centerpoint for the city, that's as good as any.

The sales tax in California is 7.5 percent, and rises to 9 percent in Alameda County, including the City of Oakland.

Going In. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) subway line has a Coliseum/Oakland Airport stop, which can be accessed from nearly every city in the Bay Area. It takes about 20 minutes to ride either the Green (Fremont) or Blue (Dublin/Pleasanton) Line from downtown San Francisco to the Coliseum stop, and it will cost $4.20 each way – a lot more expensive than New York’s Subway, but very efficient.

From downtown Oakland, it will take about 10 minutes on the Fremont Line, and cost $1.95, cheaper than New York's, because, in this case, you would be staying not just on the Oakland side of the Bay, but wholly within the City of Oakland.
The Coliseum BART stop

The complex includes the stadium that has been home to the A's since 1968, and to the NFL's Oakland Raiders from 1966 to 1981 and again since 1995; and the Oracle Arena, a somewhat-renovated version of the Oakland Coliseum Arena, home to the NBA's Golden State Warriors on and off since 1966, and continuously since 1971, except for a 1-year hiatus in San Jose while it was being renovated, 1996-97. Various defunct soccer teams played at the Coliseum, and the Bay Area's former NHL team, the Oakland Seals/California Golden Seals, played at the arena from 1967 to 1976.

The official address of the Coliseum is 7000 Coliseum Way. If you're driving in (either having come all the way across the country by car, or from your hotel in a rental), there are 4 major lots, and going clockwise from the north of the stadium they are A, B, C and D, each corresponding with an entry gate at the stadium. Parking is $20 for A's games, $30 for the Warriors, and $35 for the Raiders.

If you're coming from the BART station, there will be a walkway over San Leandro Street, which may remind you of the walkway from the Willets Point station into the parking lot of Shea Stadium and its successor Citi Field. (Hopefully, it won't be as creepy as the Meadowlands' walkway over Route 120 from the Giants Stadium side of the parking lot to the Arena.) That will drop you off at the due east side of the Coliseum, dead center field.

The Coliseum faces east, away from San Francisco, and is 6 miles northwest of downtown Oakland. From the outside, it won't look like much, mainly because it was mostly built below ground. Above ground, you’ll be seeing only the upper deck.
From 1966 to 1995, the Coliseum consisted of three decks wrapping from the left field pole around the infield to the right field pole, and bleacher sections topped by big scoreboards in left and right fields in between. But the price of getting the Raiders to come back was an expansion, with new bleachers, named Mount Davis in "honor" of then-Raiders owner Al Davis.
Before the construction of "Mount Davis"

The construction of Mount Davis ruined a lot of the atmosphere at A's games, mainly by obstructing the view of the Oakland foothills. It stands as a bold green reminder of the man who stole one of the locals' teams away, and then, in order to bring it back, screwed up a stadium that was already looking more and more inadequate with the building of every new retro-style stadium. Indeed, with the Toronto Argonauts having moved from the Rogers Centre to BMO Field, the Coliseum is now the last stadium in MLB that is shared by a pro football team.

In spite of the Raiders' return, the 49ers are more popular -- according to a 2014 article in the Atlantic Monthly, even in Alameda County. The Raiders remain more popular in the Los Angeles area, a holdover from their 1982-94 layover, and also a consequence of L.A. not having had a team since, although the return of the Rams changes that.

The Coliseum has also hosted 3 games of the U.S. national soccer team, all wins, most recently over China in 2001.

The field is natural grass, and although the A's are one of 2 teams left in MLB that has to groundshare with a pro football team (the Raiders), at this time of year the football markings won't be a problem. The field dimensions are symmetrical. The foul poles are 330 feet from home plate, the power alleys 367, and center field 400.

These distances might sound a little short, but the vast amount of infield foul territory, easily the most in the major leagues throughout my lifetime, result in a lot of balls getting caught which would be into the stands in most parks. So the Coliseum has always been regarded as a pitcher's park.
With Mount Davis

In spite of such big boomers as Reggie Jackson, Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi -- all but the first are confirmed steroid users -- the longest home run in the Coliseum is fairly recent, hit in 2012, 462 feet, by Yoenis Cespedes. (As far as is publicly known, he's clean.)

For those of you who are Jets fans, the Oakland Coliseum was where the Jets lost the "Heidi Bowl" to the Raiders on November 17, 1968 -- but the Jets ended up beating the Raiders in that season's AFL Championship Game at Shea.

It's worth noting that Elvis Presley sang across the parking lot, at the Coliseum Arena, on November 10, 1970 and November 11, 1972. It's also worth noting that the Warriors have put together a plan to leave the Arena and move into a new arena on the San Francisco waterfront, 4 blocks from the Giants' ballpark. It will be known as the Chase Center, and is set to open in the 2019-20 season, 48 years after they last played on that side of the Bay.

Food. San Francisco, due to being a waterfront city and a transportation and freight hub, has a reputation as one of America’s best food cities. Oakland benefits from this.

Aramark Sports & Entertainment, the successor corporation to the Harry M. Stevens Company that invented ballpark concessions, provides food and beverage services for the Westside Club, Eastside Club, Luxury Suites, and all of the Coliseum's Premium Seating areas. Traditional ballpark fare is also offered throughout the stadium by Aramark. Specialty items such as barbecue, pizza, and garlic fries can also be found at specific concession stands. (The Giants have been known for their garlic fries, the A's less so.)

The blog Athletics Nation recommends Ribs & Things BBQ, a stand based on the restaurant of the same name in the East Bay suburb of Hayward, behind Section 104; Hot Dog Nation at 111 and 123; Round Table Pizza at 114; A's Grill, featuring specialty sausages, at 205; and Burrito District and 220.

They also recommend Ballpark Poppers, on the lower level behind the foul poles. They fry cheeseburger bites, corn dogs and Jalapeno peppers in cornbread batter, with ranch and Sriracha sauces.

Team History Displays. The Yankees and A's have played each other in 3 postseason series: The 1981 AL Championship Series and the 2000 and 2001 AL Division Series -- the Yanks winning all 3. Still, if you count the Philly titles (and you really shouldn't, but if you do), the A's have won 9 World Series, more than any AL team except the Yankees, and the only NL team with more is the St. Louis Cardinals (with whom the Philly edition of the A's split back-to-back World Series, the A's winning in 1930 and the Cards in '31.)

Indeed, at the Coliseum's front entrance, you'll see banners for each team. Both teams' banners have their logos on them. The A's logo mentions Oakland as their city. The Raiders' logo does not. The A's banner lists their 4 World Series wins. The Raiders' banner says only, "COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE."
That was a slogan that Al Davis demanded, and got signs for, when they moved to Los Angeles in 1982, and were kept after the return to Oakland in 1995. They are still hung, but they get more laughable with every year.

But that's all the display that you'll see of the Raiders' past. There are no mentions, visible from the field of play, about their Super Bowl XI, XV and XVIII wins; nor of their 1967 AFL Championship; nor of their 1976, 1980, 1983 or 2002 AFC Championships; nor of their 15 Western Division Championships from 1967 to 2002 -- and while that included a streak of 9 in 10 years from 1967 to 1976, only 4 of them have been won in the last 30 seasons.

And don't bother looking around the Coliseum for a display of the Raiders' retired numbers: They don’t have any.
The tarped-over outfield upper deck displays the A’s history – or, rather, those parts of it that they want you to see. In the left field corner of the main structure, they show the 4 World Series they’ve won in Oakland: 1972, 1973, 1974 and 1989. In the right field corner, they show the 5 World Series that the A’s won in Philadelphia: 1910, 1911, 1913, 1929 and 1930.
At the left field corner of the bleachers are 3 retired numbers: 9, Reggie Jackson, right field, 1967-75 with a return at the end of his career in 1987; 24, Ricky Henderson, left field, on and off 4 times 1979-98; and 43, Dennis Eckersley, pitcher, 1987-95. At the right field corner of the bleachers are 2 more numbers: 34, Rollie Fingers, pitcher, 1968-76; and 27, Jim "Catfish" Hunter, pitcher, 1965-74. Dave Stewart, an Oakland native who pitched for the A's 1986-92 and again in '95, also wore 34, but the A's did not do a dual retirement the way some teams have done (including the Yankees with 8 for Bill Dickey and Yogi Berra).
Previously, the A's also had an A's logo, standing in for a retired number, for Walter Haas, the Levi Strauss heir who bought the team from Charlie Finley in 1981, saving the franchise from being moved (at least for one generation) before dying in 1995, at which point his heirs sold the team.

Reggie and Catfish began their careers with the A’s in Kansas City; but, while the A's put up banners honoring their Philadelphia titles, they have not retired any numbers from their Philadelphia days. The Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society honors these figures with a mini-museum at Spike's sporting goods store in Northeast Philly. It features plaques that used to be part of the Philadelphia Baseball Wall of Fame display at Veterans Stadium. I visited the plaques' former home in the suburb of Hatboro, Pennsylvania, but damage from Hurricane Sandy forced them to seek new quarters, and I haven't been to Spike's yet.

Jackson, Fingers, Eckersley, McGwire, Henderson, and Philadelphia Athletics, Eddie Plank, Eddie Collins, Mickey Cochrane, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons and Lefty Grove were named to The Sporting News' 100 Greatest Players in 1999. That same year, Grove and McGwire (at the peak of his fame, before his downfall) were named to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.

In 2006, A's fans selected Reggie as their team's representative in the DHL Hometown Heroes series. In 2008, the A's selected a 40th Anniversary team: Catcher, Terry Steinbach; 1st base, Mark McGwire; 2nd base, Mark Ellis; shortstop, Bert Campaneris; 3rd base, Carney Lansford; outfield, Reggie, Rickey and Joe Rudi; designated hitter, Dave Kingman; pitchers, Catfish, Stewart, Eck and Vida Blue; manager, Tony LaRussa. (The Cardinals have retired Number 10 for LaRussa, but the A's haven't.)

The Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame (BASHOF) is unusual in that its exhibits are spread over several locations, including the Coliseum. The ones honored there, on the walls of the Coliseum's concourse, are: Reggie, Catfish, Fingers, A's pitcher and Oakland native Dave Stewart, Billy Martin (the Yanks & A's manager grew up in nearby Berkeley); Oakland-area natives Ernie Lombardi (Cincinnati Reds HOF catcher), Dick Bartell (New York Giants All-Star shortstop), Bill Rigney (Giants infielder, coach & manager), Frank Robinson, Curt Flood, Vada Pinson, Willie Stargell and Joe Morgan; and Raiders stars Jim Otto, George Blanda, Fred Biletnikoff, Art Shell, Willie Brown and Ken Stabler.

Other A's stars have been honored in the BASHOF, but their plaques are elsewhere: Eckersley and 1970s shortstop Bert Campaneris at San Francisco International Airport, and 1970s pitcher Vida Blue, who also pitched for the Giants, at their new home, AT&T Park, along with Giants HOFers Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal and Orlando Cepeda; and San Francisco Seals star-manager Lefty O’Doul. (Al Davis was elected to the BASHOF after his death, but his plaque is at the San Francisco Airport.)

Stuff. The A's have a Team Store located at Gate D in the stadium's northwest corner. Additional merchandise locations and novelty kiosks are open throughout the stadium during all home games.

Having a fascinating (if occasionally controversial) history even if you only count the Oakland years, the A's have had several books written about them, although they don't always put the team in a good light. The ones about the "Swingin' A's" of the 1970s invariably mention the successes and excesses, including cheapness and pettiness, of then-owner Charles O. Finley. And the players, including Reggie, often don’t come off much better in these books.

Michael Lewis' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, which came out in 2003, showcases the way general manager Billy Beane brought the A's back in the 2000s, but it glosses over a glaring fact: The A's have won a grand total of zero American League Championship Series games since George Bush was President. The father, not the son. If he's been GM for 16 years (since 1998) and has never won a Pennant, how much of a "genius" can Beane be? Especially since he hasn't been able to hold onto his players? (Put it this way: 2006 is the only season since 1990 in which the A's have won a postseason series, and they then got swept in the ALCS by the Detroit Tigers. That was 8 years ago, and by the time it became 6 there were no players left from that team). Nevertheless, the book is sold at the Coliseum, and was made into a mediocre movie starring Brad Pitt as Beane. I don't think having Angelina Jolie in it would have helped.

There is a DVD collection of the official World Series highlight films of 1972, '73, '74 and '89, all won by the A's (the 5 they won in Philadelphia came before there were official highlight films), but, as yet, there is Essential Games of the Oakland Athletics or Essential Games of the Oakland Coliseum DVD collection.

During the Game. Although the Raiders fans who show up for home games like to wear costumes ranging from biker gang members to sci-fi film villains – a guy in a Darth Vader mask was a regular Raider-goer in the Jimmy Carter years – and have been known to be the closest thing North American sports has to English-style football hooligans, you’ll probably be safe. Wearing Yankee gear to the game will probably not endanger your safety. True, A's fans hate the Yankees, but you'll probably get nothing more than a little bit of verbal abuse.

A recent Thrillist article on "Baseball's Most Intolerable Fans" ranked the A's 18th, in the middle of the pack, saying:

A solid blend of hardcore old-school Oaklanders (plus ones who tell you they’re from Oakland, but, when pressed, admit they mean Piedmont), people who grew up in the surrounding East Bay towns, and baseball hipsters who've decided that wearing an A's cap makes them a little more edgy than a Giants one.

The A's current slogan is "Green Collar Baseball." If that's supposed to be like "blue collar," it's a poor rewording of it: It makes them sound less like longshoremen on the Oakland side of the Bay, more like environmental activists on the San Francisco side. But the A's have usually had a blue-collar image, from Charlie Finley's Swingin' A's of Reggie, Catfish and Rollie in the Silly Seventies to the McGwire-Canseco Bash Brothers of the late Eighties and early Nineties, to the Giambi Brothers, "Big Three" pitchers, Billy Beane "Moneyball" era of 2000-06.

This season, the A's are wearing memorial patches for Dave Henderson and Tony Phillips, who played for their 1988-92 quasi-dynasty, and died during the last off-season. The Friday night game will be a Fireworks Night.

Back in 1905, when the 2 Bay Area teams were the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Athletics, they played each other in the World Series, and Giants manager John McGraw dismissed the A’s as a "white elephant." A's manager-owner Connie Mack decided to just go with it, and had white elephants stitched onto their gray jerseys. The elephant remained a team symbol into the Kansas City years, until Finley dumped it when he bought the Kansas City edition of the team in 1960, replacing it with a "Missouri mule" that he named Charlie O after himself. But in 1990 the elephant logo was brought back and modernized. In 1997, the A’s created a new mascot, a man in an elephant suit named Stomper.

The A's hold auditions for National Anthem singers, instead of having a regular. The A's don't have a special "Get Loud" device, nor a special song played after "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at the 7th Inning Stretch. After years of playing Kool & the Gang's "Celebration" after victories, last year, they switched to "Theme for Oakland" by the Phenomenauts.

After the Game. Oakland has a bit of a rough reputation, but, since the Coliseum is an island in a sea of parking, you won’t be in any neighborhood, much less a bad one. But if you do want to go out for a postgame meal or drinks, be advised that some sections of town are crime-ridden. And, in this case, wearing Yankee gear might not be a good idea. It's probably best to stay within the area from the 12th Street/Oakland City Center BART station and Jack London Square, center of the city's nightlife.

I can't find any reference to an Oakland bar that is Yankee-friendly. There are 4 bars in the Lower Nob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco that are worth mentioning. R Bar, at 1176 Sutter & Polk Street, is the local Jet fan hangout. The Wreck Room, at 1390 California Street at Hyde Street, is also said to be a place for Jet fans. And Greens Sports Bar, at 2239 Polk at Green Street, is also said to be a Yankee-friendly bar. Of course, you’ll have to cross the Bay by car or by BART to get there.

The Kezar Pub is rated by some as the best sports bar in San Francisco. It's at 770 Stanyan Street, at Waller Street, in the Haight-Ashbury, across from Golden Gate Park and the new version of the stadium from whence comes its name. Number 7 bus.

Sidelights. The San Francisco Bay Area, including the East Bay (which includes Oakland), has a very rich sports history. Here are some of the highlights, aside from the Oakland Coliseum complex:

* Site of Emeryville Park. Also known as Oaks Park, this was the home of the Pacific Coast League’s Oakland Oaks from 1913 until 1955. The Oaks won Pennants there in 1927, '48, '50 and '54.
Most notable of these was the 1948 Pennant, won by a group of players who had nearly all played in the majors and were considered old, and were known as the Nine Old Men (a name often given to the U.S. Supreme Court). These old men included former Yankee 1st baseman Nick Etten, the previous year's World Series hero Cookie Lavagetto of the Brooklyn Dodgers (an Oakland native), Hall of Fame catcher Ernie Lombardi (another Oakland native), and one very young player, a 20-year-old 2nd baseman from Berkeley named Billy Martin.

Their manager? Casey Stengel. Impressed by Casey's feat of managing the Nine Old Men to a Pennant in a league that was pretty much major league quality, and by his previously having managed the minor-league version of the Milwaukee Brewers to an American Association Pennant, Yankee owners Dan Topping and Del Webb hired Casey to manage in 1949. Casey told Billy that if he ever got the chance to bring him east, he would, and he was as good as his word.
Pixar Studios has built property on the site. 45th Street, San Pablo Avenue, Park Avenue and Watts Street, Emeryville, near the Amtrak station. Number 72 bus from Jack London Square.

* Seals Stadium. Home of the PCL’s San Francisco Seals from 1931 to 1957, the Mission Reds from 1931 to 1937, and the Giants in 1958 and '59, it was the first home professional field of the DiMaggio brothers: First Vince, then Joe, and finally Dom all played for the Seals in the 1930s. The Seals won Pennants there in 1931, '35, '43, '44, '45, '46 and '57 (their last season). It seated just 18,500, expanded to 22,900 for the Giants, and was never going to be more than a stopgap facility until the Giants' larger park could be built. It was demolished right after the 1959 season, and the site now has a Safeway grocery store.

Bryant Street, 16th Street, Potrero Avenue and Alameda Street, in the Mission District. Hard to reach by public transport: The Number 10 bus goes down Townsend Street and Rhode Island Avenue until reaching 16th, but then it’s an 8-block walk. The Number 27 can be picked up at 5th & Harrison Streets, and will go right there.

* Candlestick Park. Home of the Giants from 1960 to 1999, the NFL 49ers since 1970, and the Raiders in the 1961 season, this may be the most-maligned sports facility in North American history. Its seaside location (Candlestick Point) has led to spectators being stricken by wind (a.k.a. The Hawk), cold, and even fog.

It was open to the Bay until 1971, including the 1962 World Series between the Yankees and the Giants, and was then enclosed to expand it from 42,000 to 69,000 seats for the Niners. It also got artificial turf for the 1970 season, one of the first stadiums to have it – though, to the city’s credit, it was also the 1st NFL stadium and 2nd MLB stadium (after Comiskey Park in Chicago) to switch back to real grass.

The Giants only won 2 Pennants there, and never a World Series. But the 49ers have won 5 Super Bowls while playing there, with 3 of their 6 NFC Championship Games won as the home team. The NFL Giants did beat the 49ers in the 1990 NFC Championship Game, scoring no touchdowns but winning 15-13 thanks to 5 Matt Bahr field goals. The Beatles played their last “real concert” ever at the ‘Stick on August 29, 1966 – only 25,000 people came out, a total probably driven down by the stadium’s reputation and John Lennon’s comments about religion on that tour.

The Giants and 49ers got out and built new stadiums. The last sporting event at Candlestick Park was a U.S. national soccer team win over Azerbaijan, the 4th game the Stars & Stripes have played there (2 wins, 2 losses). The stadium has now been demolished.

Best way by public transport isn't a good one: The KT light rail at 4th & King Streets, at the CalTrain terminal, to 3rd & Gilman Streets, and then it’s almost a mile’s walk down Jagerson Avenue. So unless you're driving/renting a car, or you're a sports history buff who has to see the site, I wouldn't suggest making time for it.

* AT&T Park. Home of the Giants since 2000, it has been better for them than Candlestick -- aesthetically, competitively, financially, you name it. Winning 3 Pennants and 2 World Series since it opened, it's been home to The Freak (Tim Lincecum) and The Steroid Freak (Barry Bonds).

It's hosted some college football games, and a February 10, 2006 win by the U.S. soccer team over Japan. 24 Willie Mays Plaza, at 3rd & King Streets.

* Kezar Stadium. The 49ers played here from their 1946 founding until 1970, the Raiders spent their inaugural 1960 season here, and previous pro teams in the city also played at this facility at the southeastern corner of Golden Gate Park, a mere 10-minute walk from the fabled corner of Haight & Ashbury Streets. High school football, including the annual City Championship played on Thanksgiving Day, used to be held here as well. Bob St. Clair, who played there in high school, college (University of San Francisco) and the NFL in a Hall of Fame career with the 49ers, has compared it to Chicago’s Wrigley Field as a “neighborhood stadium.” After the 49ers left, it became a major concert venue.

The original 60,000-seat structure was built in 1925, and was torn down in 1989 (a few months before the earthquake, so there’s no way to know what the quake would have done to it), and was replaced in 1990 with a 9,000-seat stadium, much more suitable for high school sports. The original Kezar, named for one of the city’s pioneering families, had a cameo in the Clint Eastwood film Dirty Harry. Frederick & Stanyan Streets, Kezar Drive and Arguello Blvd. MUNI light rail N train.

* Frank Youell Field. This was another stopgap facility, used by the Raiders from 1962 to 1965, a 22,000-seat stadium that was named after an Oakland undertaker – perhaps fitting, although the Raiders didn’t yet have that image. Interestingly from a New York perspective, the first game here was between the Raiders and the forerunners of the Jets, the New York Titans. It was demolished in 1969. A new field of the same name was built on the site for Laney College. East 8th Street, 5th Avenue, East 10th Street and the Oakland Estuary. Lake Merritt BART station.

* Cow Palace. The more familiar name of the Grand National Livestock Pavilion, this big barn just south of the City Line in Daly City has hosted just about everything, from livestock shows and rodeos to the 1956 and 1964 Republican National Conventions, nominating Dwight D. Eisenhower and Barry Goldwater, respectively. (Yes, the Republicans came here, not the “hippie” Democrats, although they did hold their 1984 Convention downtown at the George Moscone Convention Center, 747 Howard Street at 4th Street, nominating Walter Mondale.)

The ’64 Convention is where New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller refused to be booed off the podium when he dared to speak out against the John Birch Society – the Tea Party idiots of their time – and when Senator Goldwater was nominated, telling them, “I would remind you, my fellow Republicans, that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And I would remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” (Personally, I think that extremism in the defense of liberty is no defense of liberty.)

Built in 1941, it is one of the oldest remaining former NBA and NHL sites, having hosted the NBA’s Warriors (then calling themselves the San Francisco Warriors) from 1962 to 1971, the NHL’s San Jose Sharks from their 1991 debut until their current arena could open in 1993, and several minor-league hockey teams. The 1960 NCAA Final Four was held here, culminating in Ohio State, led by Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek (with future coaching legend Bobby Knight as the 6th man) beating local heroes and defending National Champions California, led by Darrell Imhoff.

The Beatles played here on August 19, 1964 and August 31, 1965, and Elvis sang here on November 13, 1970 and November 28 & 29, 1976. It was the site of Neil Young’s 1978 concert that produced the live album Live Rust and the concert film Rust Never Sleeps, and the 1986 Conspiracy of Hope benefit with Joan Baez, Lou Reed, Sting and U2. The acoustics of the place, and the loss of such legendary venues as the Fillmore West and the Winterland Ballroom, make it the Bay Area’s holiest active rock and roll site. 2600 Geneva Avenue at Santos Street, in Daly City. 8X bus.

In addition to the preceding, Elvis sang at the Auditorium Arena (now the Kaiser Convention Center, near the Laney College campus in Oakland) early in his career, on June 3, 1956 and again on October 27, 1957; and the San Francisco Civic Auditorium (now the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove Street at Polk Street) on October 26, 1957. This is also where the Democratic Party held their 1920 Convention, nominating James M. Cox, who lost to Warren Harding.

* SAP Center at San Jose. Formerly the San Jose Arena and the HP Pavilion, this building has hosted the NHL’s San Jose Sharks since 1993. If you’re a fan of the TV show The West Wing, this was the convention center where the ticket of Matt Santos and Leo McGarry was nominated. 525 W. Santa Clara Street at Autumn Street, across from the Amtrak & CalTrain station.

* Spartan Stadium. Home to San Jose State University sports since 1933, it hosted both the old San Jose Earthquakes, of the original North American Soccer League, from 1974 to 1984; and the new version, of Major League Soccer, from 1996 to 2005. It's hosted 3 games of the U.S. national team, most recently a 2007 loss to China, and games of the 1999 Women's World Cup.

1251 S. 10th Street, San Jose. San Jose Municipal Stadium, home of the Triple-A San Jose Giants, is a block away at 588 E. Alma Avenue. From either downtown San Francisco or downtown Oakland, take BART to Fremont terminal, then 181 bus to 2nd & Santa Clara, then 68 bus to Monterey & Alma.

* Levi's Stadium. The new home of the 49ers, whose naming rights were bought by the San Francisco-based clothing company that popularized blue jeans all over the world, is about to open at 4701 Great America Parkway at Old Glory Lane in Santa Clara, next to California’s Great America park, outside San Jose. ACE (Altamont Commuter Express) to Great America-Santa Clara.

The NHL will host a Stadium Series outdoor hockey game there in the 2014-15 season, between the Sharks and their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Kings. In February 2016, it will host Super Bowl L -- the 50th edition of the game. (It really should have been in the city/metro area of Super Bowl I, but the NFL is not currently satisfied with Los Angeles' facilities, either the Coliseum or the Rose Bowl.) And with the 49ers having gotten to the last 2 NFC Championship Games, winning 1, the chance is not bad at all for the 49ers becoming the first team ever to play a Super Bowl in their own house.

* Stanford Stadium. The home field of Stanford University in Palo Alto, down the Peninsula from San Francisco. Originally built in 1921, it was home to many great quarterbacks, from early 49ers signal-caller Frankie Albert to 1971 Heisman winner Jim Plunkett to John Elway. It hosted Super Bowl XIX in 1985, won by the 49ers over the Miami Dolphins – one of only two Super Bowls that ended up having had a team that could have been called a home team. (The other was XIV, the Los Angeles Rams losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers at the Rose Bowl.)

It also hosted San Francisco’s games of the 1994 World Cup, a game of the 1999 Women's World Cup, and the soccer games of the 1984 Olympics, even though most of the events of those Olympics were down the coast in Los Angeles. It hosted 10 games by the U.S. national team, totaling 4 wins, 2 losses, 2 draws.

The original 85,000-seat structure was demolished and replaced with a new 50,000-seat stadium in 2006. Arboretum Road & Galvez Street. Caltrain to Palo Alto.

* California Memorial Stadium. Home of Stanford’s arch-rivals, the University of California, at its main campus in Berkeley in the East Bay. (The school is generally known as “Cal” for sports, and “Berkeley” for most other purposes.) Its location in the Berkeley Hills makes it one of the nicest settings in college football. But it’s also, quite literally, on the Hayward Fault, a branch of the San Andreas Fault, so if “The Big One” had hit during a Cal home game, 72,000 people would have been screwed. With this in mind, the University renovated the stadium, making it safer and ready for 63,000 fans in 2012.

The old stadium hosted one NFL game, and it was a very notable one: Due to a scheduling conflict with the A’s, the Raiders played a 1973 game there with the Miami Dolphins, and ended the Dolphins’ winning streak that included the entire 1972 season and Super Bowl VII. 76 Canyon Road, Berkeley. Downtown Berkeley stop on BART. (Remember, until the fall, it’s still being renovated, so it could be messy.)

Yankee Legend Joe DiMaggio, who grew up in San Francisco and later divided his time between there and South Florida, is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, on the Peninsula. 1500 Mission Road & Lawndale Blvd. BART to South San Francisco, then about a 1-mile walk.

The Fillmore Auditorium was at Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard, and it still stands and hosts live music. Bus 38L. Winterland Ballroom, home of the final concerts of The Band (filmed as The Last Waltz) and the Sex Pistols, was around the corner from the Fillmore at Post & Steiner Streets. And the legendary corner of Haight & Ashbury Streets can be reached via the 30 Bus, taking it to Haight and Masonic Avenue and walking 1 block west.

Oakland isn’t much of a museum city, especially compared with San Francisco across the Bay. But the Oakland Museum of California (10th & Oak, Lake Merritt BART) and the Chabot Space & Science Center (10000 Skyline Blvd., not accessible by BART) may be worth a look.

San Francisco, like New York, has a Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), at 151 3rd Street, downtown. The California Palace of the Legion of Honor is probably the city’s most famous museum, in Lincoln Park at the northwestern corner of the city, near the Presidio and the Golden Gate Bridge. (Any of you who are Trekkies, the Presidio is a now-closed military base that, in the Star Trek Universe, is the seat of Starfleet Command and Starfleet Academy.)

The Palace of Fine Arts isn't just an art museum, it has a theater that hosted one of the 1976 Presidential Debates between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter -- the one where Ford said, "There is no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe." 3301 Lyon Street. Bus 30.

And don’t forget to take a ride on one of them cable cars I’ve been hearing so dang much about.

While San Francisco has been the setting for lots of TV shows (from Ironside and The Streets of San Francisco in the 1970s, to Full House and Dharma & Greg in the 1990s), Oakland, being much less glamorous, has had only one that I know of: Hangin' With Mr. Cooper, comedian Mark Curry's show about a former basketball player who returns to his old high school to teach.

*

So, if you can afford it, go on out and join your fellow Yankee Fans in going coast-to-coast, and enjoy the Yanks-A's rivalry, even if it's not what it was back in the late 1920s and early '30s when it was Ruth & Gehrig vs. Cochrane, Foxx, Simmons & Grove. Or even what it was at the dawn of the 21st Century, when it was Jeter, Rivera & Co. vs. the Giambis and the Big Three.

How to Attend the Hudson River Derby at Yankee Stadium -- 2016 Edition

$
0
0
Last season, the 1st season in Major League Soccer for New York City Football Club, the New York Red Bulls won all 3 inaugural installments of "the Hudson River Derby":

* On May 10, 2015, at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey, the Red Bulls won 2-1.
* On June 28, at Yankee Stadium II, a match that NYCFC really hyped up, thinking that home-field advantage would give them the victory, the Red Bulls won 3-1.
* And on August 9, at Red Bull Arena, the Red Bulls won 2-0.
* Red Bulls: 3-0,winning 7-2 on aggregate.

The NYCFC fans didn't like that, and they tried to make something of it. They failed.

Now, the new rivalry begins again. Metro and "Man City NYC" play each other on Saturday, May 21, at Yankee Stadium II; on July 3, also at The House That Steinbrenner Built; and on July 24, at Red Bull Arena.

This has become a special circumstance, like Yankees vs. Red Sox, or a Philadelphia Eagles or Oakland Raiders game. Pay attention now, and be on your guard then.

Before You Go. It's New York. It's a roadtrip, but it's not. You won't have to concern yourself with time zones, passports, Customs officials or exchange rates, and the weather's going to be pretty much the same as it is where you live -- currently projected at mid-60s for Saturday afternoon, low 50s for Saturday night.

Tickets. NYCFC averaged 29,016 fans per game last season, or 86 percent of what they say is The Stadium's seating capacity for soccer. Well, I went to the Real Madrid vs. AC Milan match there on August 8, 2012 (Madrid won, 5-1), and was one of 49,474, so they could sell more tickets if they wanted to. In theory, anyway: Now that the novelty has worn off, and the on-field product has proven rather underwhelming, I suspect attendance will drop.

Away supporters sit in Section 217. Tickets are $40.

Getting There. Flying is not necessary. Nor is Amtrak, nor is Greyhound. You might come into The City using New Jersey Transit or the Long Island Rail Road into Penn Station. If so,walk to the 8th Avenue end, and take the A Train to 59th Street-Columbus Circle, and switch to the D Train to 161st Street-Yankee Stadium. Or, walk out the 7th Avenue entrance, walk a block east to Herald Square, and take the D Train all the way up.

If you come into The City on a bus, Port Authority Bus Terminal is 1 stop further up the A Train than Penn Station, so follow those directions.

If you come into The City via Metro-North Commuter Railroad, take it into Grand Central Terminal, then take the 4 Train to 161st Street. Unfortunately, unlike for Yankee games, there's no special Metro-North train that goes directly to The Stadium for NYCFC games. This is the same setup that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has for Patriots as opposed to Revolution games at Foxboro, but it's not as bad, since you'll only have to take a $2.75 Subway ride from Grand Central, as opposed to the $18 cab ride from Walpole to Gillette Stadium.

If you're driving, take the New Jersey Turnpike to the George Washington Bridge, then get on Interstate 87 South, the Major Deegan Expressway. Take Exit 5 for The Stadium.

Once In the City. It's New York vs. New York. You live in the Tri-State Area. You already know this part. Let's move on.

Going In. When you come up the steps of the D station, or come down the steps of the 4 station, you'll be led onto 161st Street, which is also named Babe Ruth Plaza. Most likely, you'll enter Yankee Stadium through either the home plate entrance, Gate 4, or the right field entrance, Gate 6. These are connected by a Great Hall that includes banners of past Yankee greats.
The old Yankee Stadium, which stood across 161st Street, was home to many great events besides baseball. It hosted many championship prizefights, most notably in 1938, with Joe Louis defending the heavyweight title against Max Schmeling, the unwilling stand-in for Nazi Germany. In 1965, Pope Paul VI visited, and delivered the first Papal Mass anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. As for soccer:

* Glasgow Celtic, aware of New York's strong Irish heritage, came in 1931.
* Hapoel Tel Aviv, with New York's strong Jewish heritage in mind, came in 1947, not so much to play soccer as to raise funds for Israel's independence. When Israel's national team was formed, they played their first match at the old Yankee Stadium.
* In 1952, Liverpool played Swiss club Grasshopper Club Zurich, and Tottenham Hotspur walloped Manchester United 7-1.
* In 1953, shortly after being embarrassed by Hungary at Wembley, and 3 years after their World Cup defeat to the U.S., England salvaged some pride by beating the U.S. 6-3.
* In 1966, Pele and his Brazilian club, Santos, beat Inter Milan.
* In 1968, a local team, the New York Generals, beat Pele's Santos and lost to Real Madrid, while Santos beat Napoli there.
* In 1969, Barcelona beat Juventus, Inter beat Sparta Prague, AC Milan beat Panathinaikos, and a Milan derby was held, with AC Milan beating Inter.
* The original version of the New York Cosmos played their 1971 and 1976 seasons there -- for reasons I won't get into here, they bounced around the Tri-State Area before moving to the Meadowlands in 1977.
* And in 1976, England beat Italy there.

In 2012, the new Stadium hosted Chelsea vs. Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid vs. AC Milan. In 2013, Chelsea vs. Manchester City, inspiring Man City to partner with the Yankees to create New York City FC (they also bought Australian club Melbourne Heart, and changed its name to Melbourne City), and Ireland vs. Spain. In 2014, Man City vs. Liverpool. I saw the Madrid-Milan match, and there really isn't a bad seat in the house.
The pitch, which is natural grass, will be laid out from left and center field to first base. There really isn't a bad seat in the house. My seat for Madrid-Milan, in the upper deck, which would have been way up in left field for baseball, was right over one of the goals, and I got to see Iker Casillas make some sick saves for Madrid. (And I got to see Cristiano Ronaldo score 2 goals, and Kaka get cheered by both sets of fans, for both of whom he'd played.)
Food. At the old Yankee Stadium, back in the good old days, the food wasn't great, but at least it was overpriced. As the team moved into the Nineties and got better, to his credit, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner demanded that the fans get a better food experience. A few specialty stands went up. And the new Stadium has chain restaurant stands, including Nathan's Hot Dogs, Johnny Rockets, Brother Jimmy's Barbecue, Famiglia Pizzeria, Carvel Ice Cream, and others. There's a Hard Rock Café, and a restaurant called NYY Steak.

Pretty much anything you get will be expensive, but it'll be good. Think of it this way: It would cost the same as movie theater food, but it’s better, there’s more variety, and the show is better than most movies, and longer, too. Both the show on the field and the show in the stands will be better.
One of the few things that Yankee Fans and Red Sox fans can agree on -- the putridness of the Mets and their fans is another -- is Dunkin Donuts. Finally, after putting in stands at both Fenway Park and Citi Field, Dunkin has put one in at Yankee Stadium.

Team History Displays. Ha! NYCFC are the opposite of the Yankees: They ain't got no history!

Stuff. There are team stores throughout The Stadium, but it's all Yankees stuff. NYCFC gear may be available at smaller souvenir stands. And, since they ain't got no history, there's no team books or videos.

During the Game. For the 1st 19 seasons of MLS' existence, the league kept a close on the potential for hooligan confrontations. As a result, such issues were few and far between. Last year, NYCFC fans decided they wanted to, as the old saying goes, make something of it.

First, there were neo-Nazi chants in Yankee Stadium -- the successor building to the one where Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling and the Israeli national soccer team played its first-ever game. Then, there was an incident at the 1st Hudson River Derby to be played at the new Yankee Stadium. Then, before the next Derby, at Red Bull Arena, some NYCFC morons decided to fight the Red Bulls ultras on their home turf, on Market Street in Newark. To put it mildly, this was a gross, and very stupid, miscalculation.

NYCFC fans also started something with New York Cosmos fans during a U.S. Open Cup match on Long Island. And got their heads handed to them by a team in America's 2nd division. Maybe they should just stop, before they embarrass themselves any further.

Nevertheless, these dipsticks are trying their damnedest to cross what they see as traditional soccer hardman menace (English hooligans, Italian fascists, South American barras bravas) with pre-Giuliani New York violence (including the kind we saw in The Bronx, that kept many baseball fans away from the old Yankee Stadium), to create the ultimate 1980s sports nightmare.

So if you can't get tickets for Section 217 (behind 1st base/south goal), the designated away supporters' section, get tickets anywhere but...

* Section 235, home of Brown Bag SC (in this case, standing for Social Club, not Soccer Club or Supporters' Club) and NYC 12 (the 12th Man).

* Section 236, home of the Third Rail, the biggest NYCFC supporters' group, named because, like the third rail in the Subway system, they want to "power" the team to victory.

* Section 238, home of Hearts of Oak, a largely-black group named for a renowned supporters' group in the African nation of Ghana.

These sections are all in the left field bleachers, behind the north goal. So you should probably also avoid Section 237, in between 236 and 238, in order to avoid unnecessary unpleasantness. (Is there such a thing as "necessary pleasantness"?)

Kearny, New Jersey native and former U.S. national team star Claudio Reyna is NYCFC's "sporting director." Former Arsenal Captain and France World Cup winner Patrick Vieira is their manager. They have legendary players such as Frank Lampard (Chelsea), Andrea Pirlo (AC Milan and Juventus) and David Villa (Barcelona), and current U.S. national team star Mix Diskerud. But, on the whole, they are truly an average team. They went for big names who turned out to be well past their prime. So far, this strategy isn't working any better than it did for the Mets in the early 1960s or the New Jersey Devils in the early 1980s.

NYCFC tends to have New York-based celebrities sing the National Anthem. With the costumes worn by some of the "Bleacher Creatures" in left field (opposite from their counterparts at Yankee games, who sit in right field), they neither have nor need a mascot.

Among the chants used by the NYCFC supporters is a reworking of the 1962 Bruce Channel chart-topper: "Hey... hey, baby... I wanna know... if you're NYC!" And a reworking of a KISS classic: "I... wanna Diskerud all night... and party every day!" (Yeah, I know: Truly lame.) To "Hey Jude," they sing, "Na, na na, na na na na... na na na na, New York!" To "Mrs. Robinson": "Here's to you, NYCFC, New York loves you more than you will know!" (No, it's less.) They are one of many teams to adapt "When the Saints Go Marching In," none of which (except Southampton, long known as the Saints) do it well.

Lamest of all, to the tune of "You Are My Sunshine":

He's David Villa! He drinks sangria! 
Came from España, to bring us joy!!
He's 5-foot-7, of football heaven!
Please don't take my Villa away!!


Actually, no: Their lamest song is doing Taylor Swift's "Welcome to New York." It's no Billy Joel "New York State of Mind." Hell, it's not even Jay-Z and Alicia Keys doing "Empire State of Mind."

After the Game. Since there's already been 2 incidents between RBNY and NYCFC supporters (both started by the latter), and especially since it's on their ground, follow the instructions of the Stadium ushers, the Stadium security, and the NYPD. Especially the NYPD: From their experience with Yankees vs. Red Sox and Yankees vs. Mets, these men (and a few women) are seriously trained, they know what they're doing, and they do not kid around. If you follow their instructions, you'll be able to get both in and out of the Stadium area safely.

Stay out of Stan's Sports Bar. This legendary Yankee Fans' bar is where Brown Bag SC goes after the game. This is not, as they would say in England, an away supporters' pub.

If you came by Subway, your best bet is to get back to Midtown, and do what you want there. If you drove in, get to your car, follow the traffic instructions, and get back to where you started out from, and then chow down there.

If you're a fan of a European team, you probably already know where your team's supporters gather on matchday. Since the off-season for these teams (except for the FA Cup and Champions League Finals) is upon us, it won't matter anyway.

Sidelights. This is the part of the trip guide where I talk about other sports-related sites in the city's metropolitan area, and then move on to other noted tourist attractions. But this is New York, and you already live in the Tri-State Area, so you know this stuff already.

*

Be on your guard. Cheer your team as hard as you want. But try to avoid contract with NYCFC ultras. Remember: It's better to be an injured coward than a hospitalized tough guy.

Some Good News as Yanks Take 2 of 3 From Pale Hose

$
0
0
The Yankees came into this home weekend series against the American League Central Division-leading Chicago White Sox needing wins. Beating such a team would send a solid message -- to themselves, as well as to the rest of baseball.

But the pitching matchup for the Friday night game was not encouraging: Luis Severino was 0-5, and Chris Sale was 7-0. And Severino got hurt, and didn't get out of the 3rd inning, allowing 7 runs. He goes on the Disabled List.

Chase Headley hit a home run off Sale (there's an upset), his 2nd homer of the season, but that was it: Sale went the distance in a 7-1 ChiSox victory.

WP: Sale (8-0). No save. LP: Severino (0-6).

Hopefully, the care he gets for his injury will allow Sevy to return, and be as good as he was late late season. If he isn't, then the Yankees are in trouble.

*

The Yankees really needed a good pitching performance in the Saturday afternoon game, and Ivan Nova did his part, getting into the 6th inning, allowing just 1 run on 4 hits and a walk. The rest of the way, Dellin Betances, Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman allowed just 1 baserunner.

But Jose Quintana also pitched well for the Southsiders. Indeed, he had only 1 bad inning. But it was enough. With 2 outs in the bottom of the 2nd inning, he walked Headley. Cliche alert: Those walks'll kill you. Aaron Hicks nearly hit one out, and Headley scored on the double. Didi Gregorius singled, scoring Hicks.

That was it: Yankees 2, White Sox 1. WP: Nova (2-1). SV: Chapman (2). LP: Quintana (5-2). For the 1st time this season, the Yankees had scored fewer than 3 runs, and still won. Up to then, they had been 0-15.

This concerned me: So many times since late in the 2012 season, the bats have gone cold. This time, the pitching was just good enough to make what little the bats could do hold up. This is a very good sign.

*

Yesterday, it wasn't great pitching the Yankees needed, it was great hitting. Masahiro Tanaka did not get the job done, allowing 4 runs in only 5 innings, throwing 102 pitches. Not surprisingly, and justifiably this time, for reason that went beyond the pitch count, Joe Girardi went to the bullpen for the 6th inning, and Kirby Yates pitched a scoreless 6th.

But this time, the Yankee bats gave the arms something to worth with. Jacoby Ellsbury led off the bottom of the 1st inning with a single, Brett Gardner singled him over to 3rd base, and Carlos Beltran got him home with a sacrifice fly. In the 3rd, Gardner singled, Beltran and Mark Teixeira drew walks (neither of them intentional), Brian McCann popped up, Starling Castro singled to score Gardner and keep the bases loaded, and Dustin Ackley drew another walk to force home a run. Cliche alert: Those walks'll kill you. 3-2 Yankees.

The Pale Hose made it 4-3 in the 4th, but the Yankees struck again in the 6th. With 1 out, Ellsbury reached 1st on a throwing error by his former Boston teammate Brett Lawrie. Gardner's groundout got him to 2nd. And then Beltran hit a home run, his 8th of the season, and the 400th home run of his career, making it 5-4 Yankees.

Babe Ruth (659 of his 714), Mickey Mantle (all 536) and Lou Gehrig (all 493) are the only players to hit 400 home runs with the Yankees. Other players to have hit 400 home runs and played for the Yankees include Alex Rodriguez (the only one besides Ruth with 600 in his career, currently on the DL, but has resumed running), Reggie Jackson, Gary Sheffield (all with at least 500), Dave Winfield, Jose Canseco (wasn't a Yankee for long, thankfully), Jason Giambi, Alfonso Soriano, and now Beltran. Mark Teixeira has 397 and should join them before the end of the month.

Girardi sent Betances out for the 7th, and he blew the save, allowing a game-tying double to our old friend Melky Cabrera. But the Yankees got the run back when Gregorius drew a 2-out walk (cliche alert: Those'll kill you), and Headley, who seems have gone from 0 to 60 in a matter of days, doubled him home.

Andrew Miller pitched a perfect 8th, and McCann added an insurance run, his 5th homer of the season. Chapman pitched a perfect 9th.

Yankees 7, White Sox 5. WP: Betances (1-2: While he was the current Yankee pitcher when they took a lead they never relinquished, it doesn't seem right for the win to go to a pitcher who's already blown a save.). SV: Chapman (3). LP: Matt Albers (1-2).

*

The Yankees took 2 out of 3 from a potential Playoff team. This is good news. They got pitching good enough to compensate for weak hitting on Saturday, and hitting good enough to compensate for weak starting pitching on Sunday. Also good news. Cliche alert: Great teams do what they have to do to win.

Headley has woken up. So has Beltran. A-Rod is coming back soon. Nova has been a pleasant surprise. Chapman has performed as advertised thus far. And we may have an explanation for Severino's struggles. All good news.

But Tanaka's struggles worry me: He's either brilliant or just not quite good enough.

So, 6 weeks into the 26-week MLB season, the Yankees are 16-20, still in last place in the AL Eastern Division, 7 games behind the Division-leading Baltimore Orioles. But we've won the last 2, and 7 of the last 10.

As Susan Sarandon used to say, before she went senile and started preferring Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton, "It's a long season, and you've got to trust it."

Also, the Mets have dropped 6 of their last 10.

The Yankees now head out on a Western roadtrip, visiting Phoenix for an Interleague series with the Arizona Diamondbacks, and the San Francisco Bay Area for a regular AL series with the Oakland Athletics.
Viewing all 4259 articles
Browse latest View live