BIB 2009: The Land of Lincoln Tour

Mark had arrived Thursday evening and procured a rust-orange rental SUV, one that looked vaguely like Mater, from the Disney/Pixar movie Cars, but with better dental hygiene. So when Gerry, Kevin, and Scott all showed up at the same baggage claim carrousel within 10 minutes of each other on Friday morning, it appeared that we would be off to an uncharacteristically efficient start.  Lest the world spin off its axis from such an unlikely event, Scott's luggage did take a good 20 minutes to show up, while Mark rode Mater around in circles outside.  Scott is our trip planner, our organizer without equal, the Maharishi of Mapquest, our Triple-'A'ngel.  His halo was dimmed only slightly when he hopped in Mater and announced "This day might be a little screwed up, so be patient."  Turns out he had booked us to be at both the Anheuser-Busch Beermaster Tour and St. Louis Arch at the same time. We’d have plenty of time to sort that out, though, since the day’s agenda was to start with a tour of Busch stadium.  On the way to the stadium, Scott revealed that poison ivy was gradually taking over his entire body.  Because we only meet once a year to share stories, the car conversation on these trips is always an exercise in one-upsmanship recapping the quirky, bizarre, and occasionally grotesque details of the last 12 months.  When you start right out of the gate with prospect that every square inch of surface area on your body could be oozing pus by trip’s end, where is there to go from there – I mean really?

The new Cardinals’ home, as encountered in the tour, is one of the classier of the nouveau stadia.  We got to see the Stan Musial statue that’s been moved over from “old” Busch Stadium, visit the radio booth, go on the field, sit in the dugout, see Fredbird’s nest (dressing room of the team mascot) and pass by what’s left of Marty Hendin’s Trinket City (Marty Hendin was the Cardinals’ VP of Community Relations until his death from cancer at age 59 in 2008; his collection of schlockly St’ Louis Cardinals memorabilia in his office had caused it to be dubbed “Trinket City”).  There are some subtle nods to the Cardinals’ history in the new stadium.  For example, the concourse has a yellow stripe painted on it that traces where the outfield wall of the old stadium had been (the footprint of the old and new Busch Stadia overlap somewhat).  There are also several displays, including the 10 flags to the right of the scoreboard, that acknowledge the cardinals’ 10 world championships.  Interestingly, every time these are mentioned on the tour, the host for that portion of the tour feels compelled to point out that St. Louis has more world championships than every club except the New York Yankees, who have 26.  Do we detect a bit of what Freud would have called “pennants envy”?

We opted to go on the Beermaster tour next, figuring we’d take our chances on getting new tickets for the Arch between the brewery and the ballgame.  And besides, the notion of sandwiching a trip in a catenary ferris wheel of gimbaled eggs to a confined space 630 feet above St. Louis right between two beer-drinking events seemed really, really smart.  This was especially true since Scott was promising to taste his first beer on the Anheuser Busch Tour.  We had no idea how he would react – maybe not at all, maybe it would take the edge off the poison ivy itch, or maybe he’d just launch into a Cirque de Spew-leil of projectile vomiting.  Regardless, it sounded like good sport.  We grabbed lunch on the outdoor patio of Big Daddy’s Bar and Restaurant near the brewery and then headed over to meet out tour guide, Amanda.   Amanda was a perky young thing, who, like Scott, had never had a beer in her life, or at least so she claimed.  The only other folks on the tour with us were seven guys from Boston [Ed. Note: there would have been 8, but apparently one had been arrested on some sort of felony charges] whose ringleader was a bartender.  It appeared that they were his best customers – Lord knows they were professional drinkers – and that he was taking them on this trip.  They were overweight, loud, chronically unemployed, and apparently devoid of any real skills – social or otherwise…in other words, everything we aspire to be.  The tour was a blast, we got our official Beermaster certificates, and Scott did indeed sample his first brew – directly out of the finishing tank.

And so we headed to the Arch, where we had no trouble at all getting tickets – unless you count the reaction of mildly-claustrophobic Mark when he saw how we would be penned up in the egg-scalator on the trip to the top.  He first suggested, and then demanded, that Gerry get only 3 tickets.  Mark would wait at the bottom.  We now understand where the term “vertigo” comes from.  Because when Gerry showed up with four tickets, Mark shot him a one-finger salute and told him “ver”-to-go and how to get there.  Turned out to be much ado about nothing, as Mark was just fine the whole way.

After the Arch, it was back to Busch stadium to watch an 11-4 thrashing of the Redbirds by the Colorado Rockies.  The wheels came off in a nine-run implosion by the St. Louis bullpen in the seventh inning.

Saturday morning began, as so many BIB mornings have, with a trip to Cracker Barrel.  Just to whet our appetites, Scott announced on the way that his poison ivy had worsened overnight.  Our first stop after breakfast was the Cahokia Mounds.  Though it sounds like a new Hershey’s candy bar, it is actually what’s left of the largest prehistoric Indian site north of Mexico.  It is in Collinsville, Illinois (part of the thriving Collinsville – Fairmont City metroplex).  Amazingly, a portion of the site had actually been developed as a subdivision in the fifties and sixties.  At some point a guy digging for a septic tank found a gazillion arrowheads, which must have gotten somebody to thinking that they may want to preserve the place as an historical site.  Never mind the 14-acre,100-foot tall “Monks Mound” across the street that didn’t seem to tip anyone off.

From Collinsville, we headed north toward Springfield Illinois, and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.  It seemed appropriate to pay homage to our 16^th chief executive on this, the 200^th anniversary of the year in which he was born.  The library and museum were constructed only four years ago.  That’s “zero score and four years”, in Abe-speak (and, coincidentally, an accurate way to describe the college experience of any one of the Brothers in Baseball).  The place turned out to be the kind of diamond-in-the-rough roadside attraction that we pride ourselves on discovering.  It had a treasure trove of Lincoln and Civil War artifacts, several theaters, reproductions of scenes from Lincoln’s life, and even a not-so-bad cafeteria with plenty of indoor and outdoor seating, but, appropriately for a Lincoln museum, no Booths.  The highlight had to be the “Ghosts of the Library” show, in which an actor playing a civil war soldier spends about 10 minutes onstage describing and interacting with various civil war relics and then, somehow, gradually begins disappearing from the feet up until he has totally vanished.  We still have no earthly idea how they did it. 

On the way out of Springfield, we stopped by Lincoln’s Tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetery on our way to Davenport, Iowa to see the Quad Cities River Bandits host the Clinton Lumberkings at Modern Woodmen Park.  Scott had somehow procured us seats in the first row behind home plate – so close that when a foul ball came straight back, there was enough give in the screen that if we weren’t sitting straight up, we could take one in the chops.  Scoring these seats was all the more remarkable because the “cities” weren’t the only thing “quad” on this night.  There were actually four separate promotions going on (gotta love minor league baseball!): 

1.       A post-game concert starring Superfly Samurai (did they name their band after a Japanese porn star?)

2.       John Deere night (evidently trying to give the Kansas City T-Bones’ “Mullet Night” a run for the money in attracting the low tooth-to-toe ratio crowd)

3.       CPR night (????)

4.       80’s night (we weren’t sure if that was targeted at Spandau Ballet fans or the geriatric set).

Davenport, Iowa captured our hearts in a Twin Peaks-esque sort of way.  There was the wait-staff (hey, we had seats right behind the plate, remember?).  Victoria, our waitress, was very sweet, if just a little intimidated by us.  Once she was frightened off, they sent in Andrew, a wisecracking waiter, who we promised we would remember in the annals of BIB lore…to which he wistfully lamented, “Look, I’m Asian.  We all look the same to you.”  Then there was the young couple (Andy and Erin) sitting just down from us who had that rare appreciation for the magical quirkiness that is BIB.   Erin proudly displayed the ring she’d recently gotten from Andy, but explained that they weren’t engaged yet, because they hadn’t found “just the right moment”.  Apparently, a ballgame sitting next to four beer-guzzling, hot dog inhaling, middle-aged man-children while being serenaded by Superfly Samurai sound-checks wasn’t “just the right moment” either.  About those sound-checks…they started around the top of the ninth, anticipating that the game, then tied at seven, would end in regulation.  It didn’t.  So we endured sound-checks in the 10^th…and the 11^th.  By the 12^th inning, Superfly Samurai was wearing down a little.  A two-run Clinton rally in the top of the 13^th put some spunk back into their “check…one, two…check”.  You could almost hear their little Superfly hearts deflate when the River Bandits came back to tie in the bottom of the 13^th.  By now, virtually the only people left were the John Deere crowd pounding Polish sausages and having belching contests in the Tiki Village beyond right field, and a few folks gathered nearby, anxiously anticipating a chance to strut their stuff in an all-out DEFCON-1 CPR situation.  Mercifully, Clinton scored a run in the top of the 14^th, the River Bandits were unable to match, and most of us could head home, while Superfly Samurai played a concert for their parents down the right field line and Scott announced that poison ivy had invaded his eyelid.

            The final day of BIB 2009 began, as it traditionally does, with the appearance of Mark’s Zappa T-shirt.  Those civil war relics had nothing on this piece of BIB memorabilia, originally purchased by Mark shortly after we first met, circa 1990, in New York’s East Village.  Gerry, Kevin, Scott, Mark and Frank all headed to breakfast at Ross’ Restaurant in Davenport, home of the Magic Mountain (Texas Toast, sausage, gravy or cheese, hash browns, and scrambled eggs all piled high).  Andy (of Andy and Erin fame) had turned us on to this place and it didn’t disappoint.  The setting was right out of the BIB playbook: underneath an interstate overpass and right across the street from the QC Mart that proudly proclaims “Cheap Gas/Cash Loans”.  Laminated menus?  Check.  And not just laminated.  These menus didn’t just need a good wiping off – they could probably have used a good delousing.  And, of course, there was the obligatory 30-year veteran waitress (Jan, in this case), who was at once flattered that we wanted to take her picture and mildly frightened that we were serial killers who ritualistically photograph our victims. 

From Ross’, it was off to our final stop at U.S. Cellular Field (or whatever the heck it is that we call Comiskey Park these days).  Along the way, Gerry received an email from his brother, David, requesting admission to the Bothers in Baseball.  Informed that one of us would have to die first, he countered by asking if getting our story on CBS would gain him BIB Hall-of-Fame status.  Game on, David.  Flight schedules were such that none of us would actually see the end of the Sox’ game, but an 8-4 loss to the Cleveland Indians assured that visiting teams swept our 2009 BIB series.

Next year marks the 20^th anniversary of BIB.  Stay tuned to see where all the pageantry will unfold, who will be selected to throw out the ceremonial first wisecrack, and how far Scott’s poison ivy will have spread by then.

BIB 2008: Vegas Baby!

Charles Kuralt has nothing on the Brothers in Baseball.  We’ve been to the La Brea Tar Pits; Underground Seattle; the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa; the ruins of the Branch Davidean compound in Waco, Texas; the house used in the final scenes of the movie "Twister" in Eldora, Iowa; Vollis Simpson’s Whirligigs in Lucama, North Carolina; and museums for Louisville Slugger, Jello, and Dr. Pepper.None of these are places you’d likely visit without either a warped travel agent or a convenient excuse.  Welcome to BIB 2008, our annual convenient excuse to see quirky Americana…oh, and we caught some baseball too.

Scott and Gerry had already arrived in Phoenix a few days earlier, but Kevin and Mark flew in just a few minutes apart on Saturday, April 19.  Everyone met at the rental car pickup just a few blocks from Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks.  That would have been really convenient, but for the fact that, in true BIB fashion, our itinerary had us traveling those few blocks to the stadium by way of Tombstone and Tucson. 

We weren’t even out of the parking garage when Scott announced that he had a problem.  A family emergency was going to limit his participation in the trip to only the first day.  While having only three of us for a portion of the trip would still constitute a quorum and an officially sanctioned BIB event (as if that matters to someone somewhere), it wouldn’t be the same once Scott had left.  Without him, for example, there was the prospect of having no one to blame for our consistently poor trip planning…and Mark and Kevin were going to have to pick up the slack of harassing Gerry for his poor navigational skills  (not that anyone else in this fearsome foursome knows their azimuth from a hole in the ground).  Believe it or not, both Gerry and Kevin showed up with GPS systems for the trip.  Just what we needed – now we could get lost way more efficiently. 

Barely on the road, Gerry made the mistake of disclosing that one of his sons was doing a “semester at sea” this summer, and that it would contribute credit toward his international business degree.  This may come as a surprise to those of you unfamiliar with the distinguished Carnival School of Business at Royal Caribbean University.  If you’re intrigued by the “semester at sea”, check out the syllabi for their “doctorate at Disneyworld” and “bar exam at the beach” programs.

First stop on this year’s tour was Tombstone, Arizona, site of the shootout at the OK Corral. After a buffalo burger at one of the local restaurants, we stood in line for our tickets to see the daily reenactment of the shootout.  To say that the reenactment is amateurish wouldn’t do it justice.  It would have to improve dramatically to be amateurish. When the blank didn’t go off on one of the actors’ (and we use that term loosely, since we were pretty sure the same guy doing the acting had just served us a burger down the street) guns after a couple of tries, he actually yelled “bang you’re dead” at one of the other “actors”.  It didn’t help that several obnoxious kids sat next to us at the “amphitheater” (amphitheater in this case being a convenient term to describe a dirt area with metal bleachers stacked way too tight with tourists in the afternoon heat). The kids (Holly and her brothers, as we would later find out) were kids with huge mouths, tiny bladders, and no parents to be found.  It wasn’t enough to be incessantly climbing over us to go to the bathroom or retrieve the shoes they’d dropped under the bleachers, Holly managed to get herself into the show so she could share her charm with the whole audience...and climb over us yet one more time on her way to the stage.  After the show, as we wandered through town, we came across a copy of the April 18^th edition of the Tombstone News with the Headline “Actor Shot at OK Corral”.  Turns out one of the MENSA members in their acting troupe had actually injured another one by getting too close when he fired the gun with the blanks.  It’s probably just as well that the guns don’t always work – at least it slows down the rate at which the actors maim each other. Tombstone bills itself as “the town to tough to die”…which begs the question of why one of the top local attractions would be Boothill Cemetery.  That was our last stop in Tombstone…as it was, come to think of it, for some of the participants in the real shootout at the OK Corral. 

Our first ballgame was Fresno Grizzlies at the Tucson Sidewinders.  Kevin was particularly happy to see the game go 11 innings…ending at 10:35 Pacific time, a little more than 22 hours after he had gotten up for his flight from the eastern time zone.  The Sidewinders’ loss, before an eerily quiet crowd of 3,777, broke an 8-game BIB winning streak for minor league home teams.  Our home for the evening was a Country Inn and Suites on the North side of town, where we met our new best friend, Matt, the nervous desk clerk.  Matt took at least 25 minutes to check the four of us in.  It shouldn’t have taken that long to tuck the four of us in!  Our reservations were prepaid through Priceline, for crying out loud!  The Country Inn and Suites folks will be glad to know that he attributed the delay to the fact that “our systems are not set up to check people in efficiently.”  As if to try to make it up to us, we each got a personal call from Matt in our rooms at 11:30pm.Nothing like being jolted from your REM sleep by a tightly wound desk clerk checking to see if the in-room coffee maker is adequately stocked. 

Sunday, April 20, started with a hearty breakfast and a drive north to take in Biosphere 2, in Oracle, Arizona. There our guide, Nancy, explained that the eight Biospherians were forced to live inside this artificial ecosystem for two years, completely sealed off from the outside world, surviving mainly on beans and bananas.  Rest assured that if you stick the Brothers-in-Baseball in an environment with no meat for two days, let alone two years, it’s gonna be “Donner, party of four”. Somewhere between Oracle, AZ and Florence, AZ Scott realized that we were nearly out of gas.  Naturally, this is nothing to which either of the guys in the front seat would be paying any attention.The fact that these two thriving metropolises are more than 50 miles apart and the best we can do to describe where we were is say “somewhere between them” gives you an idea of just how much civilization exists in that part of Arizona.  Still stinging from having had to turn back just a few miles short of Mt. St. Helens nine years ago when we nearly ran out of gas in the wilderness, there was no stopping us now.We were damn sure going to make it to either Florence or to a spot in the 2008 Darwin Awards, whichever came first. Thankfully, we puttered into some generic-looking gas station (“Motley Fuel” or something like that) only moments before our SUV became a buzzard Lunchable.

As we dropped off Scott in Phoenix for his flight home, we realized that “gas gauge monitor” was another role that one of us would have to assume in his absence.  We didn’t realize until we got to Chase Field that “ticket custodian” was yet another.  We’d locked the car and started down the steps of the parking garage before we realized that we’d left the tickets in the SUV.  The irony of our ticket situation was that on our 2007 trip, Scott had inexplicably procured only 3 seats for each game.  This year, Scott had remembered to get one ticket for each of us, but now we had an extra.  Our choices were to sell the ticket or keep it and have a little extra room around our seats.  After careful consideration, we determined that net girth took precedence over net worth, so the ticket remained ours.

Chase Field is a little reminiscent of Minute Maid Park in Houston.  You can appreciate the retractable roof as you’re attending an Arizona day game, but it gives the place the feel of an enormous, imposing structure.  On the mound for the D-backs was another enormous, imposing structure: Randy Johnson.  On this day though, notsomuch, as he struggled with his control through 5-2/3 innings and took the loss in a 9-4 San Diego victory.  After the game, we headed over to Tempe, where Gerry’s middle son attends Arizona State University.  You have to believe he was really glad to see us.  Nothing says, “I’m a big man on campus” like hanging out with 3 pasty middle-aged man-children schleps on a Sunday night.  If having to go to dinner with us was purgatory, hell must have been the campus walking-tour where we kept pointing out coeds like safari participants spotting Cape Buffalo on the Serengeti.

Sunday was our last full day of this year’s trip, and we made it an (overly) ambitious one.  We got out on the road early (unBIB-like) and did a little canyon hiking among the red rocks of Sedona (very unBIB-like). In order to take in the Skywalk on the West Rim of the Grand Canyon, we needed to skip lunch (Did anyone else feel a breeze?  Was that hell freezing over?).  By the time we’d followed Route 66 to Peach Springs, AZ, it was becoming obvious that the route to the West Rim was, to say the least, rustic.  It was, to say the most, lunar.  Our first stop for directions was the Frontier Motel Restaurant, where the hostess-slash-desk-clerk-slash-farmhand explained that there were no roads to the west rim that were actually paved.  Realizing that we were in for 75 miles of dirt road, we went across the street to Truxton Station.  As soon as Mark saw the analog pumps ringing up gas at $6 a gallon and the attendant who looked like he’d eat his young, Mark was ready to take a knee on this whole West Rim Skywalk thing [note: for the record, there is no way that the Truxton Station attendant could really eat his young; he and the Frontier Motel Restaurant woman didn’t have one good set of teeth between them].  The attendant asked where we were going and what kind of “vee-hickle” we had.  When we told him, he looked up and down at our SUV and offered the following words of encouragement: “You might make it.”

Truth be told, there are actually a good number of people (and at least one longhorn steer) that brave the twenty-one miles from the nearest paved roads to the West Rim of the Canyon. In order to get to the nearest paved roads, however, we were going to have to drive 33 miles north from Route 66 on what would be flattered to be called dirt roads.  They were really more like tracks worn into the dirt.  For those 33 kidney-punching miles, we saw exactly no one coming the other way, and only some clouds of dust miles in the distance that hinted at human life besides our own.

When we finally reached the Skywalk, which is essentially a horseshoe-shaped glass floor that extends out into the canyon, it was every bit the acrophobe’s nightmare that one would expect.  It was also everything we’ve come to expect from the privatization of our national parks: overpriced tickets, long waits in lines, buses and helicopters polluting the natural landscape and tacky gift shops.  How this place hasn’t been captured in a National Lampoon Vacation movie is beyond us.  Nevertheless, we managed to spend enough time there that there was no way we’d make it to Las Vegas in time for the start of the home team “51’s” game vs. the Sacramento River Cats.  In true tribute-to Scott fashion, though, we raced like bandits back across the twenty-one winding miles of dirt roads, across the Arizona desert, over Hoover Dam and into Las Vegas, only missing the start of the game by a few minutes. The Las Vegas 51’s didn’t seem to mind our late arrival though, prevailing 5-2.

By the time we got to our hotel, which Scott had conveniently selected next door to the Hooters Casino, we were nearing exhaustion.  But this being our once-annual experiment in sleep deprivation, we made time for a late-night stroll down the strip.  We stopped at Bally’s for a final adult beverage (about the only thing adult about any of our trips is the occasional beverage) before heading our separate ways early the next morning.

BIB2007: The Capital Cities Tour

Mark sits in the driver’s seat. Scott or Kevin navigates from the passenger seat (neither has securely claimed the starting nod, so they continue to platoon at this position). Gerry sits in the back and fiddles with his camera. This is the established order of things. So when Scott drove from home to pick everyone up at the Raleigh-Durham airport and Gerry jumped into the passenger seat to navigate, there was a pretty good chance that it wouldn’t end well. Hell, it didn’t even begin well. We spent 10 minutes stuck in the “cash only” line to exit the airport parking lot, behind some guy who apparently had more trouble trying to locate a bill than Hillary does. 

First destination was Durham Bulls Athletic Park. It took the collective wisdom of the front seat occupants once past the place and an extra trip around the block to realize that park is a verb, too. Gerry’s initials are “GPA”. Any similarity to ”GPS”, a device which actually helps you get where you’re going, is purely coincidental. 

Once inside the stadium, you realize that the movie “Bull Durham” has made a legend of the Durham mascot. Not unlike capitol hill, the bull is everywhere. As we lined up near the front entrance for our own obligatory picture with Wool E. Bull, a voice from the gathered crowd yelled out “Hey, weren’t you guys in Batavia, New York last year?” For three of the four Brothers, this turned out to be a welcome reunion with Mark Brumbaugh, a former member of the Batavia Muckdogs promotional staff, now the Assistant Director of Media Relations for the Durham Bulls. For Kevin, who had brought shame upon himself and his family by taking a header on the Muckdogs’ warning track a year ago (see “Great Batavia Bellyflop”, 2006), notsomuch. Only two beliefs had kept Kevin from joining the witness protection program following the embarrassing incident: 1) no irrefutable photographic evidence appeared to exist and 2) he doubted anyone from Batavia ever ventured outside the cozy confines of western New York. To Kevin, this voice from the past might just as well have been a summons from the gates of hell, echoing ominously across the River Styx. 

Scott, on the other hand, seized the opportunity to correct a little planning boo-boo. For reasons known only to Scott, he had purchased only 3 tickets to each game. It was an understandable error – the four of us have only been doing this every year for the last decade. On a positive note, it opens up a whole new world of things we can get Scott for Christmas. He’s a Civil War buff, so maybe a copy of the Gettysburg address: “Three score and seven years ago…”. Perhaps a picture of his beloved Tony Gwynn rounding the baseball triangle – first to second to home. Or maybe some music memorabilia: a signed album cover showing the three Beatles: George, Ringo, and John-Paul. Since the ticket office wouldn’t let him exchange the 3 tickets held at will call, he was forced to purchase a fourth seat in another zip code. With a little coaxing, our new friend in the front office got us four seats together down the first base line. 

As if we hadn’t learned from recent years, scheduling a game in the South in August is a recipe for a fairly predictable game-time forecast: over 90 degrees with 100% chance of perspiration. The game itself was highlighted by a discussion as to which Durham Bull had the best adult film star name – Raul Casanova or Evan Longoria. Bulls won 3-0, with most of the offense courtesy of back-to-back homers by Wes Bankston and adult-film name honorable-mention candidate, Elliot Johnson. 

For our first evening of BIB 2007, Scott had booked us at the Residence Inn, North Raleigh. Given that he had reserved it on Priceline for something like only 40 bucks a pop, the only question was whether it was next door to a prison or a cemetery…or maybe built on top of one or the other. Turns out that not only was it a really nice place in a great neighborhood…it was right down the street from a Hooters restaurant! None of us could say for certain, but we thought we noticed that this confluence of good fortune may have brought a tear to Mark’s eye as we pulled up. The signage outside the Hooters even proclaimed “Same Day Service”. We weren’t exactly sure what that meant, except that somewhere inside was at least one smart alec…our kind of people. Here’s where it gets really weird. The wings were good…at Hooters…seriously…the chicken wings…they tasted good. Not in a “scenery-is-good-so-I’ll-pretend-to-enjoy-the-food-so-they-don’t-make-me-leave” sort of way. Fact is, the scenery wasn’t all that good. In fact, this was probably the first Hooters we’d ever encountered that appeared to be staffed almost entirely by soccer moms. A nice clean hotel on a BIB trip and good food at Hooters – two of the seven signs of the Apocalypse, if we’re not mistaken. 

Saturday morning began with a hunt for a BIB-worthy breakfast spot. We started by driving around aimlessly in the area within a mile or two of the hotel. A place called Biscuitville initially caught our attention, but, after further inspection from the parking lot, was deemed too “fast-foody” by Mark. This set off a quest for something more fried-and-true: “Cracker Barrel”. We vaguely remembered seeing a Cracker Barrel on a map at the hotel, but would have to wing it with no printed directions. No worries – with Scott at the wheel and the modern-day Magellan navigating from the passenger seat, this would be a snap. Gerry even had the 21st century equivalent of a compass – a brand new i-phone. Didn’t know how to use it, but he had one. In fact, we were all admiring it as we drove right past the Cracker Barrel exit off of I-40. With the next exit 9 miles away, Scott took about 3 miles to decide it was time to do a little off-roading with the Honda Odyssey. We took an about-face across the median and were back in business. By the time we arrived, Scott was obviously shaken, as we’d barely gotten seated before he spilled water all over the place. 

After breakfast, Scott got a sippy cup to go and we pointed ourselves in the direction of Vollis Simpson’s Whirligigs in Lucama, North Carolina. In the general direction, that is. We really didn’t know where Vollis Simpson’s Whirligigs were…we only vaguely knew where Lucama was. Once we made it to Lucama, Gerry’s i-phone really came in handy…because when you’re lost in a small town in the middle of marry-my-sister, North Carolina, it sure helps to have a device that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no cell coverage. The best Gerry could muster navigation-wise was to yell out the van window at some poor woman walking with her kid in a park; she did a double-take, shielded her children and ran. We then found a guy in a red shirt walking and told him that we were looking for the Whirligigs. Once we convinced the guy that we meant no harm, he took his hands out of the air, put his wallet back in his pocket, and explained that all we needed to do was turn around, cross back over route 301, turn right at the stop sign, cross the railroad tracks, bear left at the double-wide, pass go, collect $200, and follow the crowds…or words to that effect. Shockingly, those directions didn’t work…but they did lead us about 3 miles away to a yard sale at what appeared to be the Clampetts’ place – before they discovered oil. Now what the point of a yard sale is when you’re the only yard as far as the eye can see we’re not exactly sure…other than to prove that one man’s junk is another man’s…well, crap. We sent Kevin in to seek directions one more time. Not because we expected Kevin to be any more effective than Gerry at gleaning directions, but because Kevin was wearing a goofy pink shirt and it just seemed like good sport. So here we were…Kevin in pink shirt, carrying on a conversation with three toothless yard sale attendants in a place that would make Green Acres look cosmopolitan. This couldn’t have had Deliverance written all over it any more if we’d had dueling banjos playing in the background. You can imagine our trepidation when Kevin came back with directions that sent us another couple of miles into the woods. 

We eventually did find the whirligigs, though. They were essentially a bunch of windmills. Most of ‘em were pretty big, maybe 30-50 feet tall, constructed by ole’ Vollis Simpson from all kinds of junk. It wasn’t lost on us that this could explain who the yard sale folks have been selling their crapaphernalia to. Vollis’ display, spread over several grassy areas where a couple of country roads intersect in what could otherwise be described as a forest, resembled an abandoned amusement park. You half expected the laughter of evil clowns to suddenly interrupt the creaking of the whirligigs in the Eastern North Carolina breeze. We decided to take a few pictures and go visit somewhere with a little less of a Blair Witch theme. The Belhaven Memorial Museum wasn’t it. 

We grabbed lunch at Fish Hooks Café in Belhaven, North Carolina, billed as the gateway to Pamlico Sound and the Outer Banks. Our waitress was plenty chatty, sharing the better part of her entire life story. A couple doors down, occupying a portion of the second story of the city building, was the Belhaven Memorial Museum. If the locals call it the “BM” museum for short, that would be not only more succinct, but probably more descriptive. When a place advertises its collection of items crafted from human hair, you know you’re about to peg the old creepometer. Need we even point out that we were the only patrons on this day? Come to think of it, the guestbook seemed to indicate that no one had visited in over a week. No small wonder - the museum experience begins with the creepy curator, utterly devoid of social skills, but full of useless minutia about items in the “collection”. Then come the two-headed kitten, 8-legged pig, pickled human tumors, jars of fruit from several decades ago, and, well, you get the idea. If you could preserve it and it was grotesque, they had one. 

Our last roadside stop of the day before seeing a game that evening in Norfolk was the Outer Banks of North Carolina and, more specifically, Kitty Hawk, home of the Wright Brothers’ first flight. We were able to view a model of the original Wright flyer, in which the pilot was on his belly, low to the ground. As a result, there was no need for the brothers to build a ladder in order to get into the plane. So there you have it – two Wrights do not make a rung. 

The game that evening at Harbor Park, Norfolk Virginia was itself was fairly uneventful, as the Norfolk Tides claimed their third straight home victory, 5-3, over the Richmond Braves. The park actually sits on the Elizabeth River and lives up to its name, with some excellent views of the harbor beyond the outfield fences. The Tides also have a big, fuzzy, blue blob of a mascot named Rip Tide, who is not shy about getting into it with opposing players and umpires. 

After the Tides game, we headed for Scott’s house in Richmond for the night. With our overnight stay there, all four BIBs’ homes have now been part of a BIB trip. It wasn’t an easy night for Mark, though, as he had to sleep in the room of Scott’s daughter. That meant that big bad Mark had to be alone with all of her dolls staring at him from the shelf. Maybe Mark had seen Child’s Play or Bride of Chuckie one too many times. Maybe it was lingering images from the Whirligig graveyard. Or maybe the Belhaven formaldehyde festival was getting to him. Suffice it to say, Mark had a restless night. 

The final day of BIB 2007 began with Scott introducing us to a local Deli, Boychiks, for breakfast. Uncharacteristically, this was yet another fine call by Scott. Service was good. Food was great. It would have been an unadulterated thumbs-up, but for a seating blunder. When we arrived, there were several booths and tables open, but for reasons unknown, they chose to sit the four of us in a freakishly tight booth. You know how you have to eat with those little alligator arms when you’re served a meal in coach? Imagine doing that with a full complement of dishes and condiments. Now imagine that the seats directly in front of you are turned around to face you…and that the two husky middle-aged men in those seats are not particularly attractive to begin with. Now imagine that the guy next to you looks like he could fall asleep drooling on your shoulder at any moment because he’s been up all night worrying about attack dolls. Bon appetit. 

The trip was to wrap up that afternoon with the Washington Nationals’ seventeenth-to-last game at RFK stadium. That gave us time for a little drive-around sightseeing in Washington Sunday morning. Gerry had a city map of Washington DC. Giving Gerry a roadmap to navigate Washington was like giving Davy Crockett a violin to defend the Alamo. After driving around in circles for a bit, we decided to spend the remaining time before the game at Arlington National cemetery. 

By early afternoon, it was time to head over to RFK stadium. We had really peculiar seats that were in an unmarked, enclosed area with a low ceiling that felt like a pressbox for dwarfs. We stayed there for a bit before opting for some higher seats along the third base line that gave not only a good view of the field, but from the top row, a nice view back at Washington, DC. Amid cheers of “Go Nats”, starting pitcher Shawn Hill kept the Nationals in the game through seven innings. That was long enough for us to see the Milwaukee Sausage-ripoff “President Races”. It’s a pretty funny ripoff, though, as presidential mascots with oversized heads race through foul territory (we were told that tradition dictates Teddy Roosevelt never, ever win). 

As soon as the Nationals’ bullpen wet the bed on their way to an 8-2 loss, we got an early start for the airport. Good thing, too, as Gerry saved his best for last. For his big navigational finale, Gerry accomplished a BIB first – he directed us to the wrong state on the way to the airport. We’re not talking wrong state of mind – he literally sent us to Maryland by accident. So it was that we got to take an unplanned driving tour of Alexandria, Virginia on our way to the airport. Fittingly, as Scott dropped off each of the departing brethren at their terminals, he bid a heartfelt farewell with two simple words: “Get out.”

BIB2006: The Great Batavia Belly Flop (a Day that will live in Kevin Infamy!)

For 2006's trip, the gang got started planning for this year's trip as soon as the major league schedules were published, but we ran into a snag trying to coordinate family schedules along with our annual pilgrimage. We originally hoped to catch the Beef Festival in North Carolina along with the Nationals and some of the great minor league action in the area. Gerry and I have freshmen entering college, so a late summer sojourn couldn't be worked out, and other conflicts arose with other options, so our North Carolina/DC swing could not be worked out. Our peerless planner, Scott, went back to the drawing board and we came up with a Buffalo-Toronto-Syracuse itinerary that worked for everyone. And, as long as we are so close, we included an extra day's side trip to Cooperstown--we haven't been there in over 15 years--and any one who has gone realizes that it ain't close to anything. So, without further ado, we present BIB2006: 

• Friday, Aug 4: Fly in to Buffalo late afternoon - Buffalo Bisons, 7:35pm - Stay in or near Buffalo 
• Saturday, Aug 5: Drive Buffalo to Toronto, 103 miles - Toronto sightseeing - Toronto Blue Jays, 4:07pm - Toronto sightseeing - Stay in or near Toronto 
• Sunday, Aug 6: Drive Toronto to Niagara, 82 miles - Niagara Falls sightseeing - Drive Niagara to Batavia, NY, see the Batavia Muckdogs (this has to be the BEST mascot name in Minor League history) - Drive Batavia to Cooperstown - Stay in or near Cooperstown 
• Monday, Aug 7: Baseball HOF - Drive Cooperstown to Syracuse, 96 miles - Fly out of Syracuse late afternoon 

We were about 5 minutes into the 2006 tour – had just left the Buffalo airport – when Gerry and Kevin had already started criticizing Scott’s planning job. Clearly too much driving had been left for the final day, and why would we be flying out of Syracuse anyway, when Albany is closer to Cooperstown, our last destination on this trip? We were about 10 minutes into the trip when we got lost for the first time (a new BIB record, it generally takes us a half-hour or more to get wrapped around the axle on our directions). Our destination and first stop on the Buffalo leg of our trip was the Anchor Bar, home of the original Buffalo chicken wings. Scott’s planning capabilities didn’t regain any credibility when the map he whipped out to set us straight was a state map of Hawaii. Letting Scott navigate is like letting William Hung sing lead in your choir. 

At the Anchor Bar, we were lucky enough to stumble upon “Rose, the Bar Maiden”. In the tradition of the mouthy waitress from the Broken Egg (Siesta Key, 2005) and the Frau Farbissina sound-alike drill-sergeant waitress (Montreal, 2002), Rose had apparently decided it would be a solid career move to forego the traditional greeting of “How may I help you?” in favor of “Back off. I’m busy right now.” She could have graduated from the school of Miss Manners…that is, the one where “Miss” is a verb, because she was missing all of them (summa cum loud-ass, nonetheless). Oddly enough, her full repertoire of assorted insults, barbs, and service-when-she-was-damned-good-and-ready was right up our alley. Rose, you had us at “Back off.” 

It was only a short ride from the Anchor Bar to Dunn Tire park, one of the largest ballparks in the minor leagues. A 7-6 Buffalo Bisons victory over the Norfolk Tide was overshadowed by the fact that you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a washed-up major leaguer in this game. Appropriately enough for a game in a park named after a tire company, the retread list included Jose Offerman, Jose Lima, Edgardo Alfonzo, Danny Graves, Michael Tucker, and Ken Oberkfell. In the eyes of his BIB brethren, Kevin redeemed himself in this game…twice. First, he caught a T-shirt that was rifled into the stands between innings, erasing memories of an ugly “drop” of same during a game in Appleton, Wisconsin some eight years ago. Second, Kevin was attending this game on his 16th wedding anniversary. Only a few years earlier, when Kevin could not finagle a single minor league game during a weeklong stay in Disneyworld that coincided with an Orlando Rays homestand (whose field is on the Disney property), the Brethren had suggested he just make it official and notify the Humane Society that he had been properly neutered. Opting to spend his anniversary weekend with the Brothers, rather than the missus, put Kevin in the same category metaphorically with some of the great home run hitters of all time. You will recall that following the really big achievements, Henry Aaron and Mark McGwire generally had their balls returned to them. 

On the way back from the Bisons game, Scott topped his own “lost within 10 minutes” record by actually leading us to the wrong hotel. Try as they might, the poor slobs at the desk of the Days Inn couldn’t get our names to come up on the computer. That’s because our reservations were at the Quality Inn. Technology has done wonders for our annual trips. With the advent of Mapquest, Scott can now get us to the wrong place 30% faster. 

Day 2 of BIB 2006 started off with a BIB favorite: Bob Evans. There we encountered a classic BIB irritant: the unjustifiably happy waiter. Great service and a toothy grin can’t hold a candle to crappy service accompanied by witty banter. Give us Don Rickles over Donny Osmond anytime. After breakfast, we left Buffalo for Toronto and a White Sox - Blue Jays game Saturday afternoon. Along the way, Dr. Gerry offered career and relationship counseling. It may have been good advice, but considering the facts that a prerequisite for BIB membership is to be in the twilight of a no-better-than-mediocre career and that we’ve already established that one of the Brothers had chosen to be on this trip rather than at home for his anniversary, it’s safe to say that Gerry’s seeds of wisdom for upward mobility and dating success did not find fertile ground. 

Crossing national borders with Mark is always an adventure (see “hot border guard chick causes flop sweat and loss of neural function”, 2002). For this year’s performance, he decided to forget his passport. Nevertheless, we were lucky enough not to be asked for passports and made it to Toronto with minimal trouble. We even had time for a little sightseeing. First we took the Rogers Centre (bogus corporate name for SkyDome) tour, led by our guide, Mike. Mike’s personality was far too intense for his job. If Barney Fife had been a tour guide, he would have been Mike. His best attempt at humor was to tell us to pick up anything we’d brought at our first stop on the tour, because we would never, ever be back there again. With each successive stop, he’d add another “never” or “ ever”, until by the end of the tour, we were warned that we would NEVER, NEVER, EVER, NEVER, EVER, EVER, NEVER, EVER be back here again. The guy clearly did not have both feet down in the endzone. By the time we were done with him, we were half-tempted to pay to take the whole damn tour over again just to prove the irritating twit wrong. Instead, we opted to go to the top of the CN Tower next door (the world’s tallest freestanding structure), where we had lunch and stood on their sphincter-tightening glass floor, 113 stories up. 

When we finally made it to the game, we got to sit behind some truly talented hecklers who had traveled from Chicago to follow their beloved White Sox. Their most creative cheer came in the form of a single word: an enthusiastic “Baseball!” that they would chant once or twice an inning. It appeared to occur at random, but somehow they all did it in perfect unison. We were several innings in before we realized that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the game. Whenever a good-looking woman walked by the aisle, it triggered the chant. Then they started doing derivative versions of the same thing. Girl under 18? “Minor League Baseball!” Well-endowed woman? “Double-header!” It was completely inappropriate and utterly sophomoric…well done! Long live the Chicago hecklers! 

After the game, we had dinner outdoors at a steak place called “Montana’s”. Over dinner, Scott regaled us with tales of his recent kidney stone. When you get right down to it, does anything make better dinner conversation than discussing medical issues? And what couple at an adjoining table wouldn’t want to have their romantic al Fresco dining experience peppered with terms like “catheter” and “urethra”? 

Day 3 took us to Niagara Falls. This provided a great opportunity for Kevin to call his wife and point out the irony of spending his 16th anniversary weekend at Niagara Falls, but without his wife. She may very well have encouraged him to have himself fitted for a waterproof barrel while he was there. Scott was a veteran of prior visits to the falls and suggested the next best thing: that we experience the “Cave of the Winds” tour on the United States side, wherein we could stand not just near, but essentially in, the falls. This was practical as well, inasmuch as it would assure that we each had showered at least once during the trip. All we had to do was get passportless Mark back across the border. You had to wonder if Mark had not noticed that border security had gotten just a wee bit tighter recently and that a passport would be a good idea. Or maybe he thought all those years of fluoridated toothpaste left him immune to a cavity search. This time around, the border guard had a couple of questions. She started with an easy one: “Where are you going?” Mark got through that one without touching off an orange alert at the Department of Homeland Security. Then she asked, “How do you know each other?” Mark misinterpreted the question. It was an honest mistake. He must have thought she said “Hey guys, the half-dozen cars behind you are in no particular hurry, so let’s gather round the hearth, I’ll put a pizza in the oven, we’ll have a few brews, and you guys tell me your life story, whaddya say?” Mark started telling her the unabridged version of our careers, and how it was that we came to meet in New Jersey at an internship, where our careers had gone since then, and was just about to launch into the really cool part about how we had our own website and everything, when the little border guard girl suddenly morphed into one of those Men-in-Black space aliens, leaned in real nasty-like and barked at him “I DIDN’T ASK YOU THE STORY OF HOW YOU MET! HOW DO YOU KNOW EACH OTHER?” Mark: “Business.” Guard: “Go ahead.” 

We left Niagara and, by the hand of God, were led to the Country Café for lunch, in Wheatfield, New York. Actually, the Country Café pretty much is Wheatfield, New York. From the laminated menus, to the young waitress mildly frightened by the notion of four strangers in the restaurant, to the limited selection featuring nothing but breakfast food (even though it was midday), to the homemade pies for dessert, this place was built for BIB. Back in the car, we headed for Batavia, New York. It turns out that Gerry had been holding out on us. Just about the time that you think you’ve covered all standing agenda items for our annual pilgrimage: medical issues, romantic interests, trips abroad, etc., Gerry unleashes a blockbuster development: he’s discovered that his son has a freakishly large uvula. And Gerry even has pictures! Uvula – you know, that thing that hangs in the back of your throat. Gerry’s kid can pull his out of his mouth! How cool is that?!? Well, Gerry whipped out a photo and it was just like a woman showing off a new engagement ring to her friends. Gerry instantly achieved BIB demi-god status for siring such a cool specimen. A few uncomfortable moments ensued as we considered whether this could force us to lift the ban on family-member participation in future trips. 

A brief stop at an ice cream parlor shaped like a giant ice cream cone and the Jell-O museum (why not?) and before we knew it, we’d arrived in Batavia, home of the Batavia Muckdogs. We were even a little early, which gave us an opportunity to meet their Director of Community Relations, Linda. Linda and Scott had been having an ongoing dialogue over the previous several weeks, as Linda had tried to coax us into going out on the field with the players before the game and playing a bunch of their games between innings – all things that 8-year olds would normally be called upon to do. Some would argue that between the four of us we don’t have the intellectual capacity of an 8-year old. We disagree. Between the four of us, we have exactly the intellectual capacity of an 8-year old. So it was that we all ran out on the field before the game as the PA announcer encouraged the fans to visit www.brothersinbaseball.com and follow the “zany antics” of the four of us (perhaps the first time that the phrase “zany antics” has ever been applied to anything but a sitcom). Somehow, Mark avoided further humiliation, but Gerry volunteered to serve as “Zweigle’s Sausage King” between innings. Linda explained that he’d simply have to where a cape and ride around the diamond in a golfcart, waving his sausage to the crowd (honestly, you can’t make this stuff up). For the record, we were all relieved to see that a 6-foot strand of silver link sausage came with the cape. Scott and Kevin volunteered for the Dizzy Bat Spin Race. You’ve seen this one. Both stand in foul territory near third base, Kevin closer to the infield, Scott closer to the warning track (which, we should note, was made up of what appeared to be small, jagged landscape rocks). They both put foreheads down on a bat handle with the barrel touching the ground, run around said bat until their equilibrium is completely toast, and then attempt to run about 70 feet or so to the finish line, near home plate. At stake was a $5 coupon at the concession stand. Scott, the brighter of the two (which is essentially like being deemed queen of the pigs), sauntered slowly around his bat. Kevin, on the other hand, took off spinning like a banshee. When the PA announcer said “go”, Scott stood up kind of dazed. Kevin, on the other hand, attempted to bolt for the finish line. Two problems. First of all, Kevin cannot “bolt”; he can “lumber”, at best. Second, though his feet were pointed toward home, his disoriented torso made a beeline for the dugout…through the coaching box, across Scott’s path, and, finally, tail over tea kettle - SPLAT! - onto the warning track. While the PA announcer bellowed “He’s down,” Scott strolled down to the finish line. Adding insult to injury, a female member of the Muckdogs’ pep squad helped Kevin to his feet, pointing him and his bloodied forearms toward the first aid room. After serious consideration and group discussion, the other Brothers landed solidly on the side of not having Kevin euthanized, though his stud value remains seriously in question.  Thus was born "The Great Batavia Bellyflop" that will ever live in BIB history.  But, unfortunately, there is no photographic record of Kevin's great accomplishment, as Mark, the Designated Cameraman, was laughing far too hard and couldn't even begin to snap any of the pictures. 

Amid vows that “we will never speak of this again”, the Brothers piled into their SUV and headed for Herkimer, New York and the “America’s Best” motel. It wasn’t. The theme continued into morning breakfast at the Herkimer Waffle House, which offered more flies than a home run derby. An inauspicious beginning to the final day of BIB 2006, but we knew it had to get better as we headed to the Mecca of BIB-dom, Cooperstown, New York. Near Cooperstown, Gerry introduced us all to Dreams Park, where his boys had actually played. It’s a picturesque park with 18 fields of major league quality, built exclusively for kids 12-and-under. Despite the age restriction, there is no limit on uvula size. After visiting the National Baseball Hall of Fame itself, we spent some time wandering the shops nearby. Cooperstown seems to have grown up a bit since the last time we were here together, some 15 years ago. None of us recalled seeing so many shops last time around. One of them had a batting cage, where Gerry demonstrated 10 times that he couldn’t hit an 80 mph curveball. He demonstrated it by swinging and missing 20 times at a 40 mph curveball. Waiting for Gerry to get done swinging at the air left us a little tight on time to get back to the airport in Syracuse. Not being able to find Route 28 North coming out of Cooperstown elevated our status to “concerned”. The minutes will show, however, that Scott redeemed himself by being the only one to successfully identify the whereabouts of Route 28. Suspiciously, though, his otherwise accurate directions included the phrases “big island” and “just past the volcano”. When a traffic jam on the way to the airport brought us to a near dead stop, we were in a full-fledged DEFCON 1 situation. Some fancy rerouting on the backroads and a fortuitously-timed thunderstorm to delay outgoing flights got us to the Albany…er, uh…Syracuse airport in time.

BIB2005: Floridays!

Are we nuts! Must be, to schedule a Florida schwing in late July...but do it we will! The Brothers In Baseball spent BIB2005 in the South of Florida, starting in Tampa/St. Pete and heading down to Miami, with a couple of minor league games thrown in for good measure. We managed to drive about a thousand miles in Florida without seeing a single beach or getting a glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean! Check below as Kevin just published the "full and official" BIB2005 Trip Report. 

But we did get plenty of Gators--watching gators behind a fence, watching gators next to our little airboat, holding gators, eating gators...enough gators for the rest of Scott's life! 

Gathering on July 29th, we headed over to Tropicana Field for the Friday night game between the Devil Rays and the Royals. We have never seen such a light crowd at a major league baseball game, considering it was a Friday night, hot and humid outside, and quite pleasant inside. On the 30th, we headed north a bit to check out the Ted Williams Museum, then headed out towards Orlando to the must-see GatorWorld. That night, we stopped in at DodgerTown in Vero Beach, but the tarp was still on the infield during a rain delay for the Vero Beach Dodgers game, so by 8pm with still no game, we piled in the car to St. Lucie and saw the Mets and Sarasota Reds first pitch, they themselves victims of a rain delay. Sunday saw us move on to Miami and the Everglades, where we took an airboat ride before hopping over to ProPlayer Stadium (or is it Dolphins Stadium now?) for the Marlins afternoon game with the Washington Nationals. 

We were impressed with the constitution of the common Marlins fan--there is virtually no shade in the entire stadium, and without a cloud in the sky, the 90 degree temps and sky high humidity just sapped our will to sit in the stands and watch a Marlins game. But thousands did, but if you wonder why it doesn't look like there are many fans at Marlins' day games, figure roughly half have taken shelter from the sun in the concession areas inside the concourses. Why Major League Baseball would have the Marlins play ANY day games was beyond us, by the bottom half of the first inning. Why, you ask, didn't we start in Miami with a Friday night game and end up in Tampa/St. Pete with a Sunday day game in the dome? Because Kevin had his family close to Sarasota for a vacation, and they left on Friday night out of Tampa, so the rest of us came in to Tampa on Friday afternoon to start the trip. 

Keep scrolling down for Kevin's always brilliant BIB2005 Trip Report! 

News! Kevin attends the 2005 Comerica Park, Detroit All-Star Game!

Kevin becomes the second BIB to attend a MLB All-Star Game! Kevin has been to the South Atlantic League All-Star Game in Charleston, SC, and now he matches Gerry in attending the All-Star Game festivities in Detroit on July 8, 2005 on a "business" trip. And he gets a double by being the first BIB to see a game at the new Detroit Comerica Park. In other news, Mark, on a family vacation swing to San Diego, picks up another ballpark, San Diego's new Petco Park on June 24th, 2005 and Scott, our San Diego native, picks up Petco later in August.

To Go See Kevin's Pictures, Click Here!

News! Gerry attends the 2002 All-Star not-quite-a-full Game!

Gerry becomes the first BIB to attend a MLB All-Star Game! Kevin has been to the South Atlantic League All-Star Game in Charleston, SC, but it's not quite the same. In other news, Scott, on a family vacation swing into Florida, picks up another ballpark: the Juice Box aka Tropicana Field on July 15th, 2002 and Kevin picks up his third Cincinnati stadium by attending a thumping of his beloved Reds by the Padres at the new Great America Ballpark on April 25, 2003.

To Go See Gerry's Pictures, Click Here!

Our 2005 Trip

BIB2005: Floridays!

As if The Hell-a-Heat-and-Humidity tour of Texas weren’t enough two years ago, we decided that late July was the perfect time to circumnavigate the better part of Florida. Thus was born the BIB 2005 Tour: Floridays. 

Scott had the good sense to plan the trip starting on Friday night in Miami and wrapping up under the Tropicana Field dome on Sunday. With a minor league night game sandwiched between, he figured we could cleverly avoid the brutal July South Florida heat. What he didn’t figure on was Kevin inverting the whole trip to accommodate his family vacation which was wrapping up in Tampa the same Friday that BIB 2005 was starting. Aside from setting us up for the teeth of the Dolphin stadium heat on Sunday afternoon (more on that later), it did make for a comical scene at the Tampa airport. Kevin dished off his family and kids like a no-look pass to the Delta ticket agent and in one continuous motion enthusiastically gathered up the BIB brothers in the “soccer mom” van (a first for the Brothers) to head off to see the D-rays host the Royals. 

Tropicana Field was a pleasant surprise, with remarkable personality for a domed venue. Perhaps we should pause here to mention that, while waiting for Kevin and Scott to arrive at the airport, Mark and Gerry had spent the afternoon in Ybor City, Tampa’s “Latin Quarter” entertainment district. There they’d discovered their mutual admiration for fine cigars. As soon as they found out that Tropicana Field was home to the major leagues’ only Cigar Bar, they were like kids in a Cuban store. They disappeared around the third inning in a tobacco-induced haze and a bizarre discussion about the relative merits of “cutting vs. pinching”, while Mark was brandishing some sort of little circumcision-sized guillotine. Scott and Kevin didn’t track them down again until the ninth inning, and only then by following the trail of cigar remnants (“Excuse me, Mr. Usher, but can you help me? I’m looking for a piece of ash.”). Tampa Bay 6, Kansas City 3, Surgeon General 0. 

Checking the BIB Archives, we had attended a major league game with lesser attendance, but, then again, that the massive Tampa/St. Pete metroplex could muster so few fans to attend a Friday night game in an air-conditioned dome in the midst of south Florida’s heat and humidity and bugs is beyond comprehension. We have never been to a game that seemed so sparsely attended with such a lifeless crowd. Major league baseball needs to get the hell out of Florida—yes, Mabel, it’s nice for spring training, but they just don’t seem to support the real deal. 

After the game, it was about an hour drive through thunderstorms to the beach condo where Kevin had been staying with his family. This was convenient in that it was a free place to sleep for the night. It was horrifying in that it had only two bedrooms (one with a king, one with two twins) and a sofabed in the living room. There was awkward silence on the way as we each pondered who would have to share the room with the two twin beds. Kevin had been sleeping on the king all week and was pretty attached to it, so he declared first, leaving three guys vying for the coveted sofabed. Scott, began to vacillate between “gee, ain’t it great to be together again” and “if I have to sleep anywhere near one of these guys, I might just snap” looks. Mark tried to break the tension by making some joke about “spooning”, which served only to make Scott take on a “Billy-Bob-Thornton-in-Slingblade” sort of persona. At that point, Mark and Gerry signed up for the dual twin beds, rather than tempt setting off the Bipolar Express. Nothing like a night at the beach and the sounds of the Seasnore, eh Gerry? 

Saturday morning, we waived the usual laminated menu requirement for our breakfast establishment in favor of the relatively high brow (by BIB standards) “Broken Egg” restaurant in Siesta Key. The attraction here was that Dick Vitale lives nearby and frequents it for breakfast (lest you think we’ve gone soft and were really looking for quiche or something, Gerry did buy an autographed item or two). No Dickie V, but almost as much fun was a mouthy waitress who gave us a bunch of lip for trying to order things that weren’t on the menu. 

From Siesta Key, we hit the road to Hernando, Florida. If you’ve ever vacationed in Florida, you may have passed through Hernando…that is if you ever accidentally veered 100 miles off course from civilization and were looking for the perfect place to reenact a scene or two from “Deliverance”. The attraction was an otherwise nondescript building that calls itself the Ted Williams Museum and Hitters Hall of Fame. Once inside, we found memorabilia a-plenty and a film called “When it was a Game” that featured the Grantland Rice poem “Game Called” that Scott now insists must be read at his funeral. 

Following the museum, we were hungry, but time was now of the essence, as we still needed to get to Gatorland in Orlando before visiting Vero Beach for a game that evening. We could find nothing in Hernando [note that ending the sentence here wouldn’t be all that misleading] that simultaneously met the speed and volume requirements for this particular BIB lunch. 

In a rare move, the BIBs decided to delay a meal until we arrived in Orlando. This turned out to be a gross error in judgment (okay, that part wasn’t so rare). By the time we got to Orlando, we were both starved and short on time. The combination of the two left us in steamy-hot Gatorland, where the the most appetizing fare was alligator nuggets from a concession stand. For all of us but Scott, that is. Scott was partial to the alligator ribs. He must have been envisioning a reptilian version of Tony Romas. What he got was something you couldn’t get them to eat on Survivor. It was this creepy looking baby crocodile carcass with more cartilage than actual bone…and more bone than actual meat. Coupled with the almost unbearable heat and the fact that we’d spent our first few minutes in the park watching alligators devour dead chickens, it was a potentially barf-making trifecta. 

We did get to enjoy watching some professional gator wrestling (pronounced “ras-sling” by most who frequent this sort of thing) and some poor guy named Andy struggling through his second day on the job at Gatorland. Nothing like a little OJT handling a potentially lethal reptile. My first job was a crock too, but not literally. We were pretty sure he would have just chucked the whole thing, were it not for the fact that the only thing hotter than the blacktop pavement was his young female instructor. After a few hours in the mid-day heat and humidity, and confident that we were dripping enough sweat to show up on Doppler radar as an eight-legged storm cell, we loaded ourselves back into the car and headed for the east coast of Florida. 

On the way, thunderstorms began rolling through, threatening to rain out our visit to see the Vero Beach Dodgers. The weather wasn’t looking much better when we arrived and we sort of debated whether to actually buy tickets…that is, until Mark found out he could get a senior citizen discount, having recently turned 50. The desire to simultaneously maximize our BIB shenanigans and play this senior citizen angle to minimize spending had us wondering if Hooters might consider a 4:30 early-bird special. We immediately liked the intimacy of the stadium. The dugouts are literally just benches sitting in a three-steps-below-field-level trench on the field (we guess that’s where the term “dugout” came from)…no roof, so the players are out in the open. As the first delay in starting time due to rain was announced, Kevin settled in with some sort of “Death by Nacho” feast that carried him clear through to the second delay in starting time. Fortunately, we found the only half-dozen seats that were covered to wait it out…that is until the brother of the Dodger bullpen coach arrived with his party to point out that those were his reserved seats. 

Following that Goldilocks moment, we began to ponder our alternatives should this game never get underway. Scott remembered that the St. Lucie Mets had offered us tickets for a game that same night and were only 30 miles or so away. He had declined the tickets, but maybe we could weasel our way in if the weather there was any better. We called and, sure enough, they had their own thunderstorm delay but were planning to play in about a half-hour. Back in the car, as serious a discussion as we ever have arose around the appropriateness of “counting” the Vero Beach visit, particularly if we skipped out on it to visit another ballgame the same night. We decided it could count, since Mark HAD bought senior-citizen tickets, and immediately our minds started racing…then maybe we could watch half the game at St. Lucie, leave and catch the tail end of a game in Palm Beach. 3 games in one day (sort of)! A total of 5 in ‘05! 

We decided that even we weren’t quite that shameless as we arrived in St. Lucie. At the ticket window, Scott was able to resurrect the free tickets we’d denied earlier (the conversation was the rough equivalent of “yeah, I asked out a prettier girl, but she stood me up, so you’ll be okay after all”). We made it to our seats just in time for the first pitch against the Sarasota Reds and were all toasting our good fortune. Kevin was feeling like he had “traded up”, since the St. Lucie Mets fitted cap he’d be adding to his collection was much cooler than the dorky Vero Beach Dodger cap. While purchasing said hat, however, he was approached by what he described as an “unnaturally friendly” middle-aged woman dressed completely in pink from her shoes to her baseball cap. We thought Kevin had conjured up an “imaginary friend”, ala Mark (see Canadian border guard, BIB 2002). However, Gerry encountered the same treatment when he went to snag one of those snazzy St. Lucie Met caps. Unfortunately, Gerry found that while Kevin had left him the crazy lady, Kevin had snagged the last cap in the right size to fit his and Kevin’s freakishly large heads. Sitting down low along the first base line, we tried like hell to buddy up to the Sarasota Reds’ first baseman, Joey Votto, so that he’d throw us a ball at the end of an inning. But alas, he had no balls for us. Henceforth, he shall be memorialized on this web site as Joey “no balls” Votto (let that be a lesson to the rest of you minor leaguers who dare defy us). Mets, 7-4 in a come-from behind win. 

After a short drive from St. Lucie, we spent the night at a Doubletree Inn in Palm Beach. Doubletree! We know what that means…free chocolate chip cookies! Except not this night. They were all out. When Scott nearly broke into tears, the guy at the desk offered to provide cookies the next morning at check out…never dreaming, of course, that Scott would be back to collect not only his, but a pair for each member of the party. 

Breakfast Sunday morning was at a more traditional BIB venue, Cracker Barrel, before heading out for Coopertown. Not Cooperstown. Coopertown. Singular—just one Cooper down there in the ‘Glades. Home of “the original” Everglades airboat tour. It was way-the-hell out of the way and as we arrived at the shack that passed for a gift shop, it was taking on all the earmarks of a BIB debacle. Then our guide showed up: sun-leathered skin, fingers-in-the-electrical-outlet hair, and an orthodontic amusement park in his mouth. At least the airboats themselves looked reasonably well-maintained, so clinging to that one thought; we hopped on with a half-dozen other unsuspecting tourists. We pulled away from the shore just in time to hear that we’d be delayed a few minutes, since the path ahead was blocked by a boat that had broken down yesterday and was being towed back. While we sat there, watching several four-to-six-foot alligators come right up to our boat, we realized that Scott’s courage around crocs was limited to situations in which a fence separated man from reptile. Beyond those scenarios, Scott is a gator-hater. 

Eventually, our guide told us he’d be cranking up the fan on the back of the boat and to hold on to our hats. We figured he at least had a sense of humor when he said the best he could offer if we let our hats get away was to “sort out the colors” on the other side of the fan blade. The airboat ride actually turned out to be quite an adventure, particularly for Kevin, who decided that being “in” the Everglades wasn’t good enough and took up our guide on the offer to actually get out of the boat and get “IN” the Everglades up to his knees (this on the promise that “alligators hardly ever come near this part”). Afterward, everybody took turns holding a small live gator for pictures (except Scott, figuring if our friend Andy from Gatorland could hardly stand to touch the little monsters for pay, he sure as hell wasn’t going to do it for free). 

After Coopertown, we applied a couple more coats of SPF99 and headed to Dolphin (formerly known as ProPlayer, formerly known as Joe Robbie) Stadium to see the Marlins play the Washington Nationals. The Marlins’ home field, as it turns out, has all the charm of a Turkish prison. First you get to run the gauntlet of five separate security people at the gate, one of whom asks you to doff your cap so they can see what’s under…for most of us, it’s a lot less hair than in years gone by. In all the post-9/11 hysteria, this had to be the first time anyone has ever checked for “baseball cap bombs.” Then you are confined to only the section of the stadium where your seats are. Once you reach your seats, you discover that those bright orange seats reflect the Florida sun nicely and that exactly zero seats are in the shade. So, the Brethren had a contest—who could stay in the Dolphins Stadium broiler the longest. Mark and Gerry bailed by the bottom of the first inning, seeking an air-conditioned gift shop or cigar bar; Kevin lasted another half inning before seeking shelter; Scott held on through the third inning, winning the battle but losing the war. 

Want to visit the gift shop? Be sure to enter only through the “enter” door and exit only through the “exit” door, lest one of the “customer service” agents chase you down and file charges. And here’s a personal favorite – there are “regular” concessions and “employee only” concessions. Signage? Of course not. So you get to wait in the employee-only line for 10 minutes before finding out that you must get your bottled water elsewhere. With all this lovely ambience, small wonder that Scott’s alligator riblets chose Sunday afternoon to come back to haunt. While Scott and Kevin, who himself feared for third-degree sunburn, took shelter at a picnic table underneath the seats, they struck up a conversation with Robert, a stadium employee whose second most interesting trait was that he ran a memorabilia business on the side (the first being, of course, that as a stadium employee, he could get bottled water wherever he damn well pleased—which was good since Scott was suffering from heat stroke by then). Robert was a talkative sort who started by taking Kevin to school on Cincinnati Reds history and regaled Scott and Kevin with his knowledge of historical (not just baseball) memorabilia. He made the visit to Dolphin Stadium almost bearable by producing a cancelled check signed by Virgil Trucks, who pitched for the Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Browns, Chicago White Sox, Kansas City Athletics, and New York Yankees between 1941 and 1958 (including two no-hitters in 1952). He let Kevin keep the check for the official BIB archives. 

The seat Nazis finally gave up constantly browbeating everyone over their seating, and by the 7th inning we were able to sit in the top 3 rows of our section that had FINALLY got into the shade, and we settled in to watch the game! By then, we were impressed with the constitution of the common Marlins fan—there is virtually no shade in the entire stadium, and without a cloud in the sky, the 90 degree temps and sky high humidity just sapped our will to sit in the stands and watch a Marlins game. But thousands did, but if you wonder why it doesn't look like there are many fans at Marlins' day games, figure roughly half have taken shelter from the sun in the concession areas inside the concourses. Why Major League Baseball would have the Marlins play ANY day games was beyond us. 

Aside from the stadium itself, there was plenty of wonderfully tacky activity around the game to hold our attention. There were the Marlins’ cheerleaders, the “Mermaids”, wearing long black pants that were unnecessarily hot (take it however you wish). And there were the Nationals’ fans who had made the trip chanting incessantly “Go Nats!” 

After baking in the heat (Marlins 4, Nationals 2, but who really cared when your brains were cooked by the third inning?), the final insult foisted upon the Miami fan was the “team ball” give-away. Of course, BIBs being BIBs, we cut through the line and pushed our way past little kids and pregnant women to snag our souvenirs in front of most everyone else, but we were lucky, we had the right tickets. Ah, yes, the seat Nazis had their final revenge! They positioned themselves at the bottom of the big corkscrew exit ramps at the stadium, handing out the precious souvenirs, BUT, and this was a BIG BUT, you had to have the right ticket for the exit you were using! Of course, pushy us had the right tickets and snagged out balls, but people right behind us were denied the similar goodies because they didn’t have the right section for this exit, so as we rode off in the heat and the haze, paying customers were left arguing with the workers, with masses of humanity backing up the corkscrews, waiting for their balls. 

It was time for the 4 hour trek back to Tampa and our morning flights. But first, it was “BIBs, don your bibs” for a stop at Shula’s steak house for some damn fine steak, complete with dessert and all the trimmings. In the oddest feature of this entire sweat-fest, we managed to drive about a thousand miles in Florida without seeing a single beach—although Gerry did get close to a beach at the Siesta Key condo at 4am to avoid his happily snoring roomie—or getting a glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean! 

So it will be up to Scott to propose the official 2006 BIB itinerary, but the early favorite is something on Scott’s home turf in Virginia. If things line up right, we may be able to take in the sufficiently quirky Amelia County Beef Festival, Camden Yards, and the Washington Nationals in their second season at RFK Stadium. Go Nats!