Considering the Home Opener

Last night I went to the home opener for the 2011 season.  If you know me, you might be thinking “You were in Boston?”.  Nope, I went up to Phoenix to catch the Diamondbacks’ home opener. It was my first trip to Chase Field to watch a ball game.

We were a little late getting to the game.  Traffic in Phoenix was predictably lousy.  The signs for the park actually took people the longer way to the field.  We wanted to get there on time because they were having a fly over by some F-16s.  When you have a pilot in the car, that is an even greater priority than usual.  We did see the fly over, sort of.  We saw the planes heading toward Chase Field while we were still dodging traffic.  We did get numerous fly overs from commercial jets leaving nearby Sky Harbor.  Some must have been D’Backs’ fans since they flew unusually close.

Once off the highway, it was fairly easy to get to Chase Field.  Finding parking was another matter.  Actually, it wasn’t very difficult aside from the fact that the light rail kept us from getting to some of the parking lots.  Word for those deeply in love with light rail as the solution for numerous woes.  It can create traffic hazards.  Just factor all that stuff in.

This was the first time I went to a ball field in which the field was below the entrance.  Usually the field is on the street level.  Our seats were pretty easy to find even though we were distracted with the game having already begun.  They were facing the Cincinnati Reds for the first home series of the season.  It wasn’t looking good at the outset.  The D’backs had a rough season last year.  They made lots of changes, but the Reds are essentially the same team that took their division.  Ian Kennedy was on the mound for the D’backs, which did not instill lots of hope.

We found our seats in the left field bleachers.  We were in the lower level, not too far from the bull pen.  It had been awhile since I’ve been in the bleachers.  They were bench seats, but fairly comfortable.  Except for the cup holder which I kept hitting with my knee.  That is until the guys next to me left around the 7th inning.

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Considering Game Six

A great game deserves a great book

It was perhaps one of the greatest baseball games ever.  It was definitely the greatest World Series game ever.  That game was game 6 of the 1975 Series between the Red and the Red Sox.

I was only 9, and wasn’t able to stay up all night.  I recorded it on my DVR from MLB Network before going in vacation, only to have a lightening strike wipe it out.

Mark Frost’s book Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series: The Triumph of America’s Pastime is long overdue.  I hope that helped him gain perspective on the game that only time can provide.

It reminds me of The Perfect Storm in many ways.  Frost takes on a variety of meaningful tangents to explain the background of players and current events.  Some of those tangents include things like Cuban-American relations (since El Tiante & Big Dog Perez were Cuban), the history of the reserve clause, the Boston busing maelstrom and more.

At first it was annoying.  He would talk about a play, and then tell a story (often interrupted by the next pitch).  Then I got it.  It was like the TV announcers for a real game.  He was writing like a real game, as if a play-by-play man and analyst.  Quite ingenious actually.

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