As I mention from time to time in these articles, I live in Wilmington, DE but work in Baltimore. For those without your atlases handy, that is about 70 miles between my bed and desk, usually covered by a series of various transport methods, from door to car to parking lot, from parking lot to train station to train, from train to train station to light rail tram, and from light rail tram on foot to my office. I like the public transportation provided by Amtrak and the Maryland Transportation Authority not because I particularly care about the environment,* but rather because at heart, I am a lazy and untrusting man. I don’t enjoy driving extended distances surrounded by other people who are one piping-hot coffee spill from causing a hundred-car pileup, or one screaming child in the backseat away from choosing to take me and themselves into the guard rail. Being encircled by people woken up from dreams, confronted with cold reality and encased in 75 miles-per-hour deathmobiles is just not my cup of tea. Plus, my right foot has to constantly be working when I drive, and I have to pay a modicum of attention for sixty straight minutes. That’s just not the way I was built.
In spring, however, comes a new and better reason to love the planet, and fork over my travel money to a state-supported monopoly. Because when spring comes, and I step out of the light rail doors, I look at the greatest stadium in America and know that soon, it will serve its purpose again.
I am pretty lucky to work where I do. Not necessarily the Center for which I work, although they do very interesting stuff, but the geographic location. My office sits at the corner of Washington and Greene Streets, where Greene turns into Russell St., and a very long foul ball down the Left Field line could break a window.** So as other 9-to-5 suckers are trolling past run-down take-out places and mechanically identical office buildings before they reach their desk, I get to enjoy the best two blocks the city has to offer.***
My light rail stop sees Howard Street bisected by the beginning of W. Camden, a hilarious distinction, because there is no E. Camden Street. As I step off the train, to my immediate left stands a majestic courthouse-like building, the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards. Half of the Babe Ruth Museum experience (the other being his birthplace a few blocks away), the SLM does a very good job of covering Maryland sports, from the Bambino to the Blast, the Colts to the Ravens and every single significant sporting event in between. If you were ever so brilliant as to come to this city for a baseball game and had a choice between the Inner Harbor and the Sports Legends Museum for time spent before the first pitch, I would so quickly recommend the SLM that you might assume that everyone in the Harbor had some sort of communicable disease.****
As I walk slowly west down Camden, the next thing I see across the street is the ticket office, placed snugly at the opposite end of the warehouse from the offices every left-handed slugger has taken aim at, and the gated entrance to Eutaw St. with all the wonderment beyond. On game days, hundreds of people mill around the small courtyard in front of the office and the gate, waiting for friends, buying last minute tickets, having their pictures taken with the retired numbers and marveling at the svelte statue of the Babe. The plaza is also the first place you can smell the stadium, with Boog’s BBQ fired up just inside the gates, and the smoke blowing breezily towards salivating mouths.
Moving on reluctantly, I spy one of my favorite places in the park through the bars keeping ticketed personages in, and the unlucky unticketed out. For here, in Left-Center Field, is the bullpen area. Depending on the occasion, this area opens ninety minutes before the game, and those who have bought tickets (usually through some work- or student-group) can enter and begin gorging themselves on the classics of baseball: Hot dogs, hamburgers, popcorn, pretzels and all the cheap domestic beer you can drink. And while the taps are turned off and the food disappears when the first pitch is thrown, attendees may stick around and look out over the outfield and, better yet, the opposing team’s relief corps.
On one occasion,***** I was using the ages of time in the first inning to light into Mike Timlin (who seems like a nice guy, by the way), before a friend of mine from law school (and Red Sox fan to boot) pointed out that I looked very much like the Red Sox’ young relief stud. Indeed, when Papelbon finally made his appearance and turned our way, it was like looking into a mirror, except he had replaced my jeans and a polo with a major league kit. It turns out that Jonathan Papelbon is ruggedly handsome. Who knew?
Unfortunately, as I walk past the bullpen area and am confronted by the concourse, I look back to my side of the street. Modern-day economics and a city too weak to say “no” combine to punch me in the face, for here is the Skyline-swallowing, Bromo-Seltzer-blocking behemoth that is the new Hilton hotel. Taking up an entire city block, the hotel and attendant parking garage simply sits, waiting to suck a little bit of life out of my walk and slowly injecting the reality of the day before me into my veins. I force my head back to the other side of the street and countdown gate letters as I scurry past the new-age Overlook Hotel.
As I turn slightly to the Northwest to finish my morning walk and begin my day in earnest, I see one last haven from my glory days in this city, the three years where I roamed freely with not a care in the world. The catch-all for people leaving the game, but not yet ready to go home, this string of middle-class drinking establishments screams Baltimore, and the owners (not a few of whom I've met and talked Orioles with) do not disappoint. Sure, maybe there are a few too many lacrosse mullets ("the Baltimore Boy Cut") and ripped Pantera T-shirts, but these are good people, baseball-loving people, beer-loving people. They are my people. Even though Pantera and, to a much greater extent lacrosse, are the devil.
As Sliders, Pickles and the rest of the greasy joints and bars that served me watered-down beer and beer’d up fries slowly fade into my rear-view, I remember that Opening Day and baseball are as big a deal to others as they are to me. Livelihoods are made on these seven months; hotels are built for these seven months; entire sports networks were launched for these seven months.
I absolutely love these seven months. Enjoy your Opening Day.
* I guess I “care,” I just don’t care enough for that to be my deciding factor. As ever, laziness wins the day.
** For those interested in a Google Maps demonstration, here is the view from my office’s front door. I’m estimating that foul ball at approximately 1200 feet.
*** And miles, miles, miles better than Baltimore’s other famous “Block.”
**** And it turns, out, thanks to the aforementioned “Block” and country-wide highs in syphilis and gonorrhea, they probably do.
***** This horrific Daniel Cabrera disasterpiece.