The Brothers in Baseball

BIB2019: The Not-Quite PC Tour

There’s politically correct (PC), politically incorrect (PI), and politically wrong/technical foul (PWTF). We encountered a little of each during the Brothers-In-Baseball 2019 Tour that began in Atlanta.  We decided to make our first stop the original Chick-fil-A restaurant.  For a place that seems to generate all kinds of controversy over the most nuanced details of its political and religious views, how is it that no one seems the least bit offended that the name of the original location, dating back to 1946, is the Hapeville Dwarf House, or that the main entrance still features a miniature arched doorway as an homage to its Lilliputian roots?  Never mind that on the drive there, we actually did pass a stroller-pushing little person near the restaurant that lent an air of Ozian creepiness to this first roadside attraction of BIB 2019.  Uncomfortable though it may have been, a quick perusal of the Little People of America website indicates that “dwarf” is not only an acceptable, but, in fact, a preferred term for people of short stature. BIB PC rating: Politically Correct (PC).

Two of the four of us chose to wash down our Chick-fil-A with Coca-Cola products, remarkably poor planning given our next visit…to the World of Coca-Cola.  There we had the opportunity to sample some of the hundreds of flavors of Coca-Cola products from around the globe.  Some were surprisingly tasty (Thailand and Madagascar), while others hinted at carbonating an infected water supply (looking at you, India and China). While the World of Coca-Cola goes to great lengths to discuss the history of its namesake beverage, it glosses over the fact that the original 1886 version contained trace amounts of cocaine.  However, at 4.3 milligrams of cocaine in a 6-ounce drink, that means that the original Coca-Cola was only about 2.5 one-thousandths of a percent cocaine by volume. For comparative purposes. Lindsay Lohan is a full 2.5 percent cocaine.

From Casa de Coke, we walked a few blocks to hop on an open-air electric car tour of downtown Atlanta and surrounding environs.  We saw sites like Georgia Tech’s campus, Centennial Park, and Martin Luther King’s final resting place.  Of particular interest, though, was Atlanta’s first planned suburb, an obviously affluent community of picturesque homes called Inman Park.  Coincidentally, on the June day we were there, a day of bright sun and temperatures in the 80’s, Dolly Parton was filming her Christmas special at one of the homes.  Understandable, though, that they would have to film it in the summer – no one wants Dolly Parton getting a chest cold.

Our electric car driver recommended Reuben’s Deli for lunch – a fine choice, if for nothing other than the opportunity to approach the counter and participate in the military precision of the Soup Nazi-esque ordering process.  From there, we walked to the College Football Hall of Fame.  One of the first exhibits you encounter there is an interactive one, where we each took out turns tossing a football at targets and trying to kick a field goal.  Gerry was a quarterback in high school, so he was at least graceful, if not always accurate. The rest of us, on the other hand, not so much.  Kevin trying to kick a football looks like an ostrich tripping over a pig.  Next we walked across Centennial Park to “Skyview Atlanta”, a 20-story tall Ferris wheel with enclosed compartments that combines Mark’s twin terrors of height and confined spaces.  With some time left before we needed to head to the ballpark, we figured Mark would have the opportunity to simultaneously blow both some time and his lunch.  

Good thing Mark kept it together, though, as he would need every bit of the Reuben’s Deli carb loading to sustain him for the walk from where we parked for the baseball game in Cumberland, Georgia to SunTrust Park or, more accurately, to the entertainment area surrounding SunTrust Park known as the Battery (Bat-tery, see what they did there?). There must surely be closer places to park (they do have handicapped people in Atlanta, right?), but most of the spaces seemed to be in garages interconnected to the Battery only by a human-scale hamster trail “across-the-garage-down-the-elevator-through-the-subterranean-tunnel-up-the-ramp-into-another-elevator-across-the-plaza-onto-the-bridge-through-the-construction-zone-into-yet-another-garage-down-the-steps-and-into-the-street-at-which-point-you-can-see-the-stadium-another-quarter-mile-away”.  13 minutes of walking at a pretty good clip to reach the park.  Leave the peanuts and cracker jacks at home, but don’t forget your hydration system and a Sherpa. 

Gerry somehow negotiated a table for us at a crowded bar called Sports and Social in the Battery.  It came complete with a waitress whose mildly-frightening Natasha Fatale fake eyebrows and thick accent just screamed vintage 1970’s Eastern European Olympic gymnast.  By the time we’d left, Mark had won a gift card from the DJ for traveling the greatest distance – well over 2,100 miles, not counting the walk from the parking garage.  The game itself was one of the more exciting we have seen, with the Braves coming back from a 7-2 deficit, twice down to their last strike in the bottom of the ninth, to win 9-8 on a Brian McCann walk-off two-run single.  As for the park itself, kudos for the shelf in front of our seats for setting food and drinks.  On the other hand, seating is enforced maniacally – an unfortunate development for four large older men with adjacent assigned seats.  Exacerbating the situation is that the place obviously draws well, so there weren’t even any upper deck outfield seats readily available to spread out.  And for a park opened just two years earlier, the number of concessions and width of the main concourse both seemed woefully inadequate for the number of patrons. And about those patrons…that tomahawk chop thing, even when you want to root for the home team, is beyond obnoxious. It would be one thing if they played it only at critical points in the game…but they do it after what seems like nearly every pitch.  Nothing like a stadium full of almost exclusively white fans incessantly bellowing war chants while making a motion reminiscent of the Native American practice of scalping.  BIB PC rating: Politically wrong/technical foul (PWTF, with emphasis on WTF).  

Our accommodations for Friday evening were at the Hilton Atlanta/Marietta Conference Center, originally the site of the Georgia Military Institute from 1851 until 1865, and a stately building with plenty of historical artifacts.  Breakfast the next morning was at the Red Eyed Mule.  Not quite as stately (building that looks like it may have been a converted bank branch in a light industrial area), its history dates all the way back to its founding during the Obama administration; and, while short on artifacts, its menu does feature such artery-packers as the Mule Basket, Feed Bucket, and Redneck Reuben.  From there, we set off on an ill-fated attempt to visit the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.  The only battle on this day, however, was for parking.  Scott made an initial charge for the visitor center lot, but was thrust back.  He circled the lot several more times, but was repeatedly rebuffed before sending Kevin into the visitor center as a scout to assess the situation.  Kevin returned with maps of the surrounding area that offered alternative lots that held the promise of fewer rival vehicles.  Scott attempted to outflank the hordes of affluent suburban Atlantans by approaching an alternative lot by way of an entrance we had passed on our way in, a gambit made riskier by Scott’s own admission that he “can’t simultaneously talk and drive”.  But alas, it was for naught, as we were forced to retreat toward Stone Mountain by way of Interstate 75.  Rest assured that Sherman’s March through Atlanta would not have gone nearly so easily had he been forced to take a suburban route on Father’s Day weekend and had to deal with thousands of water-bottle-toting, Golden-Retriever-walking millennials.

Stone Mountain’s granite relief of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall (anybody else see the irony in that?) Jackson, is, depending on your point of view, either an awe-inspiring work of art memorializing Southern history or a 1.57-acre testament to slavery and white supremacy.  We’ll simply point out that the grounds were well-kept and there was plenty of parking. Still, even some of the language that can be found on plaques around the park feel a bit cringe-worthy today: “They fought for a principle: the right to live life in a chosen manner.  This dedication to a cause drove them to achieve a moment of greatness which endures to this day.”  Ee-yikes.  As we discussed among ourselves, it’s easy to point an accusatory finger from the perspective of 21^stcentury sensibility, but context of the era matters. We’re sure there are a few people somewhere with Bill Cosby tattoos that seemed like a good idea at the time.  Still, the best we can give this is a BIB PC rating of Politically Incorrect (PI).

On our way from Stone Mountain to Columbia, South Carolina, we stopped for lunch at a place we saw advertised on a billboard (so it has to be good) called the Farmview Market.  Good food, crazy-long wait, but hey, they had Coca-Cola cake, so there’s that.  After a brief stop to see the University of South Carolina Campus, we made our way to Segra park to see the Columbia Fireflies fall 6-2 to the Lexington Legends. Despite the loss, we found Columbia to be one of our favorite minor league parks.  For starters, the park is erected on the grounds of the old South Carolina Mental Hospital, founded in 1821 as the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum. The building remains visible beyond the right field foul pole.  The last of the hospital’s patients was removed in 1990, and the only concession stand in the portion of the park nearest the building is a craft beer stand, so it remains a safe haven for fans with nut allergies.  We’ll just go ahead and call a political correctness foul on ourselves for that one.

The Columbia Fireflies are a marketing machine.  They especially play up the fact that they were once Tim Tebow’s team and trim virtually every piece of logo wear in glow-in-the-dark neon green.  Even the mascot is named Mason (as in the jar where you might keep glowing fireflies).  Mark and Scott each procured one of their caps from Minor League Baseball’s Copa de la Diversiónweekend, during which the Fireflies renamed themselves the Chicharrones de Columbia. Chicharrones, for the uninitiated, are a fried dish usually made with pork belly or pork rinds.  This now makes two minor league teams we’ve visited (along with the LeHigh Valley IronPigs) that have an alternative cap featuring fried pork products.

 

Scott selected Eva’s on Main in Summerville, South Carolina for breakfast on Sunday morning.  Namesake Eva passed away in 2011 at the age of 96, but Whitney and Ray assumed ownership, along with their daughter Mackenzie. How do we know all this?  Well, it started when our waitress noticed Kevin wearing a shirt with a Reds Spring Training logo and made the misguided leap of logic that he must be a ballplayer.  We can assume that the only major leaguers of whom she has actually seen a picture are Bartolo Colon (285 lbs), CC Sabathia (300 lbs), Dmitri Young (295 lbs), and Cecil and Prince Fielder (combined weight almost a quarter of a metric ton).  Kevin was having Scott, Mark and Gerry autograph a “World of Coca-Cola” baseball he’d procured two days ago.  So they were probably ballplayers too!  In order to soften the disappointment at not meeting any real celebrity ballplayers, we offered to let our waitress sign the ball too.  By the time we’d left, Whitney, Ray, Sarah, Tina, Taylor, and someone with really bad penmanship who stopped by to fill our water glasses had all signed the ball and the Brothers in Baseball were featured on Eva’s on Main’s Facebook site, right between the breakfast casserole and the liver and onions. We might have been the toast of Summerville, but for the fact that Monday’s breakfast special was Toast of Summerville.

Our next stop was Charleston, known for its cobblestone streets, horse-drawn carriages, pastel antebellum houses, and elegant French Quarter.  So naturally our first stop was a dungeon.  More specifically (as if there were a dungeon under every Starbucks in Charleston and we needed to be more specific), we visited the Old Exchange Building and Provost Dungeon.  Aside from serving the functions that its name would imply, it was where the South Carolina convention met to ratify the United States Constitution in 1788, and it saw slave auctions conducted just outside its north wall…not Key and Peele slave auctions, but real ones.  We also walked through Charleston Waterfront Park, including its famous Pineapple Fountain, then took our own driving tour past Rainbow Row, the Citadel, and Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, where the horrible shooting had taken place two years earlier, almost to the day – a stark reminder that the same type of cruelty associated with slave auctions isn’t purely the vestige of a distant past.

Our afternoon ballgame was the visiting Greenville Drive vs, the hometown “Holy City” Riverdogs, the Sunday moniker of the Charleston Riverdogs since 2016.  The Riverdogs apparently have a bit of an identity crisis, as they also go by the name “Charleston Boiled Peanuts” one game a year, to honor the official state snack, as well as late fan favorite Anthony Wright, a.k.a. "Tony the Peanut Man."  Our seats for this afternoon where the temperature reached 90 degrees with 74% humidity were conveniently just beyond the reach of the shade on metal grandstands in an area where we were protected from any cool breezes that might arise…an area we’ll just call Hell’s Humidor.  Fortunately, we didn’t have to sweat it out until the end of Holy City’s 2-1 victory, as we needed to leave after the sixth inning to catch our 4:00pm boat to Fort Sumter National Park.  However, we didn’t leave before Scott lost an embarrassing exchange with another baseball-crazed tourist.  This guy actually dragged his wife, 3 kids, and pink-haired mother from Jacksonville. We long ago acknowledged that we are four man-children with a few screws loose on this quixotic quest. But this guy was a whole new breed of lunatic.  He took Scott to the figurative woodshed in the baseball-geek equivalent of an Eight Mile rap battle.  In fact, it never really got off the launch pad.  After feeling each other out with a few cursory questions to mutually establish stadium-touring street cred, this dude asks Scott what should have been a softball: “What’s your favorite minor league stadium?”  Scott locked up like the engine on a ’71 Ford Pinto.  The only stadium that could even penetrate the fog of his senior moment was the previous night’s visit to Columbia.  Dude scoffed: “Pshaw!  I hate that stadium solely on the basis of their new clear bag policy.” Apparently, Segra Field’s 2019 limitation to a single clear bag, not to exceed 12" x 6" x 12", is insufficient for a guy that needs to placate his family with a backpack full of cheerios, a second topcoat of pink hair spray for Grandma (just in case the first one doesn’t take to the primer well enough), and at least a fifth of hooch for his wife, who is not so much a soulmate as a hostage.

Our last stop of the trip with Gerry in tow was Ft. Sumter, where we were able to watch the flag-lowering ceremony at the end of the day. As Old Glory came down, so did the curtain on BIB 2019.  Gerry did leave us with one tip as we dropped him of at the airport, and it was a dandy. He recommended dinner at a place called Lewis Barbecue.  You know a barbecue joint will be outstanding when the most prominent feature is an illuminated outdoor sign that screams “GET YOUR MEAT HERE”.  And so we did, while kicking around ideas for BIB 2020 and the 30^thanniversary of our first BIB season in 1990.

BIB2018: The Smoke Gets in your Eyes/Not Quite a Run for the Border Tour

The last time we visited the Pacific Northwest, in 1999, Gerry arrived a day later than the rest of us.  So when he showed up only hours late this year, we weren’t particularly fazed.  There was a good deal of cloud cover and smoke from nearby forest fires, so we attributed Gerry’s tardiness to the fact that Wisconsin-based aircraft are likely not equipped with instrumentation for anything less than perfect visibility.  In fact, it gave the rest of us a chance to find a place near Sea-Tac (shortened compound form of “Seattle-Tacoma”) International Airport for brunch (shortened compound form of “Brothers munch”).  And find a place we did, with the almost impossibly generic moniker of “Dave’s Diner”.  Even after a leisurely meal, though, we still had plenty of time to blow while we waited for Gerry’s Air Milwaukee Wright B Flyer to land.  Kevin did a little Googling for offbeat attractions and hit paydirt.  Jimi Hendrix’ final resting place was a mere 9 miles away in an otherwise unremarkable (i.e., nondescript) cemetery called Greenwood Memorial Park.  Luckily, there was an unlocked pfuneral home adjoining the cemetery, as Mark’s Jimi Hendrix Experience included a quick side visit to relieve himself. No “p” in funeral home, you say?  There was on this day.

Before we picked up Gerry, Scott disclosed that the rooms for our third night, in Vancouver, had been mistakenly cancelled due to some sort of credit card glitch.  He had called to reinstate the reservations, but the woman he had spoken with on the phone seemed as though she may have donated her brain to science before she was done with it.  A follow-up call would be in order.  Scott also mentioned in passing that the rooms would get nicer as the trip went on, implying that the first night’s rooms at a place called Hotel Ruby 2 in Spokane may not appear on the Condé Nast Readers Choice Awards.  Kevin turned to Yelp, where he found comments like “Great value hotel, super clean, friendly staff. Only con: close, very close (100 yards) to very active train tracks.” And “I would rate the hotel 4 stars except for the trains.”

Once we completed our foursome with a return trip to SeaTac to pick up Gerry, we were off on the first leg of the trip, a nearly 300-mile pilgrimage to see a minor league baseball game in Spokane.  It was Superhero Night at Avista Stadium.  Among other things, that meant that the first pitch would be thrown out by none other than Superman, looking resplendent in his red, yellow and blue leotards and cape.  The problem was that you half expected Superman to drive the catcher into the wall behind the plate with a 200 mile-an-hour fastball.  Instead, when this imposter let loose with an effeminate throw-from-the-elbow eephus pitch, he went from Man-of-Steel to SNL’s Stefon in the bat of an eyelash.  It sucked the manhood out of the entire stadium.  The stadium itself did exude just a little bit of machismo based on some of its vintage 1958 features.  Real men build stadiums that last 60 years (hey Atlanta, your slip is showing).  Most notably, fans enter through a concrete tunnel from underneath the stands.  Adding to the retro feel is the fact that it sits in the middle of a fairgrounds.  Two more quirky things about Avista Stadium warrant a mention.  First, a vendor with a bandage on the middle of his glasses and teeth so crooked it was like a dental funhouse in his mouth had us trying to guess all night whether he was really that nerdy, or playing a character as part of his shtick.  Second, virtually every one of the young female employees was decidedly not nerdy.  There is absolutely no way that they were selected from a statistically random candidate pool.  They had us wondering all night whether Spokane is made up of some sort of genetically superior gene pool, or there are some creative hiring practices being employed by the ball club.

A large, enthusiastic crowd saw the hometown Spokane Indians take a 3-2 win from the Everett AquaSox.  Adding insult to injury, the AquaSox were wearing controversial jerseys that identified them not as the AquaSox, but as the “Conquistadors”, part of a minor league baseball initiative to celebrate teams’ “fun-loving, multi-cultural fans.”  What the Everett folks must have failed to recognize is that the Conquistadors were mostly white Europeans who, according to La Vida Baseball, a web site produced in association with the National Baseball Hall of Fame to celebrate Latino baseball, “were the bad guys in Latin American history and U.S. Latino history — they were the ones our forebears fought against in seeking national independence. They were responsible for the death of millions of indigenous peoples from what is now the U.S. West and Southwest through Mexico into Central America and South America.”  Congratulations, Everett.  You gotta try pretty hard to make the Indians the second most offensive team name on the field.

The Ruby 2, as promised, came complete with more train sounds than Patrick Monahan.  Christina at the front desk tried to reassure us, through a faint Eastern European accent, that “Only rooms at the far end can actually feel the trains.  The good news is that thet air conditioning unit usually drowns out the train noise.”  Condé Nast, indeed.  Trains or not, we were tired and jet-lagged enough that we slept pretty well before waking up for breakfast and driving the short couple of blocks to Molly’s Family Restaurant, notable for its 6-egg omelets and its distinctive A-frame structure…that’s A as in antacid.

Before Bing was a browser, it was a crooner.  And his house still stands on the campus of Gonzaga University, where we visited it.  While it is true that the house was built by Crosby’s father and two uncles, there is no truth, as far as we know, to the rumor that he was named for the sound that the doorbell made.  We left a very light rain behind in Spokane and headed back west toward our second of four games, in Tacoma.  Along the way, we stopped for lunch at Twede’s Café, which served as the RR Diner on the show Twin Peaks.  The renowned cherry pie from Twin Peaks is only one of a number of pies we sampled, though none of us tried the “damn fine cup of coffee” for which the diner became famous.  The diner is only a short distance from Snoqualmie Falls, also featured in Twin Peaks, but equally well-known as a hotbed for Sasquatch sightings.  Years from now, those who were there that Friday will speak of coming face-to-face with the large, hairy, frightening species of primate known as BIBfoot. 

We had enough time before our game Friday evening to grab a drink at the Social Bar and Grill on Tacoma’s waterfront and become acquainted with Chihuly glass, which is featured at the Museum of Glass just a few feet away.  Chihuly glass was invented by Dale Chihuly, a Tacoma native, not to be confused with Jeff Gillooly, the goon who tried to take out Nancy Kerrigan’s knee in the 1994 Olympics.  Chihuly is associated with complex, multi-colored figures.  Gillooly is associated with simple rednecks.

Cheney Stadium, home of the Tacoma Rainiers, is nestled in the pines just west of downtown Tacoma. The field itself features a 29-foot tall wall 425 feet from home plate in straight-away center field.  A batter would have to really get ahold of one in order for a fan to Tacoma ball that’s hit over that fence.  An enthusiastic crowd of 7006 saw the Rainiers fall 8-1 to the Fresno Grizzlies, many of them sitting in private seating areas that seem to make up an inordinate percentage of the seats at Cheney Stadium.   Keeping the crowd stoked, as at many minor league parks, was a master of ceremonies who roamed the stands.  This one came with a twist, though.  He sported a suit and tie and Forrest-Gump-in-the-military style haircut.  Between innings, he would bark trivia questions at fans, give them about three-eighths of a second to answer, and when they inevitably froze up, would heap verbal abuse on them.  The whole routine gave off a Pee-wee-Herman-meets-Sam-Kinison vibe that was surprisingly entertaining and only mildly frightening.

Following the game, we knocked off a portion of the drive to Vancouver before bedding down for the night at the Marriott Towne Place Suites in Everett, Washington. It was less a hotel than a series of bungalows situated on a hill.  The BIB pecking order became a little more evident that evening as Scott had the only king-size bed among the group (he makes the reservations, remember?).  Kevin, on the other hand, was in the most remote building, far enough up the hill to require less a bellman than a Sherpa, and force a decision as whether to attempt the whole climb that night or establish a base camp half-way up and tackle the rest at daybreak.

Saturday morning started at Patty’s Eggnest Restaurant.  It is required that we begin each day with unhealthily large breakfast portions – call it binding carbitration.  We unanimously agreed that the first thing we would do upon arriving in Vancouver was to ride the comically misnamed “Hop-On, Hop-Off” bus.  The problem with the whole HOHO attraction is that it had far too few seats on the buses to accommodate the number of people who wanted to get on at each stop.  That meant that getting off to see anything – especially with a group of four - meant risking what could be hours until another bus with sufficient seating came along.  So we were essentially trapped on this cramped bus for the entire two-hour duration that it took to navigate around the city and back to the starting point.  Think maximum security prison, but without the structured recreational activities.  We decided to parole ourselves a few stops early and hoof it the rest of the way.  That afforded us the opportunity to grab lunch at Doolin’s Irish Pub and take the glass elevator to the top of the 553-foot high Vancouver Lookout.  The latter turned out to be a real coup, not only because it was an unusually clear day for viewing, but because we got to help Mark overcome his fear of heights.  Treating mild acrophobia with a glass elevator involves the same kind of tough love that might lead you to lock your germaphobic friend in a McDonalds playland. 

Saturday night’s game was at the Vancouver Canadians’ home, Scotiabank Field at Nat Bailey Stadium, built in 1951.  Two unique features of the field are a bullpen that protrudes into the playing surface, actually reducing the amount of playable outfield grass and creating a short porch in left field, and dugouts that are unusually far down the lines, not even starting until almost first and third base.  Another large crowd (6413) cheered literally every pitch of a 4-0 win over the Spokane Indians (the second time we’d seen Spokane in three days), a little surprising given that you would expect Vancouver to be more hockey than baseball crazed, but these folks were really into it.  We couldn’t help but take note of the 3-foot hot dogs available at the game, called – what else? – Yard Dogs (shouldn’t it be a Meter Mett in Canada?).  And for the second night in a row, we got a flippant emcee trolling the fans.  He shot back at a heckler, “When you’re doing your job, I don’t tell you how to flip the burgers.”  We also encountered an entertaining, if somewhat geographically conflicted, beer vendor wearing a maple leaf cap and Hawaiian shirt (Don Hoser?).  The beer, by the way, is served in small cups with lids you can sip through.  If they’re going to go that far, they might as well just include a straw and avoid any pretense of beer-swigging machismo: “Sir, I’ll need to see some ID for that beer and just drop your man card in the shredder at the end of the row.” 

The follow-up calls to the Vancouver hotel’s reservation agent revealed that she had a photographic memory, but with the lens cap glued on.  Long story short, we called an audible and wound up in another hotel with a perfectly acceptable location and reservation desk employees that hadn’t been left on a tilt-a-whirl too long as children.  Even better, it was convenient to Ricky’s Country Restaurant, British Columbia’s answer to Denny’s.  What could be more appropriate for a BIB breakfast north of the border than a Grand Slam with Canadian Bacon?  A 48-minute wait at the border crossing was punctuated by an attractive young female agent who hailed from Minneapolis and instantly established some sort of upper Midwest bond with Gerry.  Once she heard he was from the neighboring dairy state, we could have been carrying passports written in crayon and armed like the Frito Bandito and we’d have gotten through as long as she detected even the faintest hint of cheese curd wafting through the air from the back seat.

Safeco Field is beautiful.  The Mariners’ play was not.  The Dodgers whipped the M’s 12-1 in a game that was over before Seattle even came to bat.  LA scored 5 runs in the top of the first as Clayton Kershaw notched his 150^th career win without even breathing hard.  It was so bad that M’s shortstop Andrew Romine pitched the top of the ninth.  Dodger reliever Zac Rosscup finished off the Mariners with an immaculate inning in the bottom of the ninth.  The game got out of hand so quickly that the notoriously late-arriving Dodger fans must have been surprised to see that the game was still in the first inning as they took their seats.  Dodger fans are obnoxious when they are losing; they are unbearable when the Dodgers are winning big.  Nevertheless, Mark made a few friends among some Dodger faithful sitting in the row behind us (in the remarkably good seats that Scott somehow procured behind the plate).  In their drunken stupor, they seemed completely captivated by Mark’s explanation of our quixotic adventures.  Speaking of which, on a nostalgic note, the Mariners’ in-stadium historical museum (they’ve really missed an opportunity by not calling it the Room of the Ancient Mariners) featured a display describing the June 27, 1999 last game played at the Seattle Kingdome, also the last game that we attended as a group in Seattle.  

Following the game, Seattle hosted a run-the-bases promotion for children in attendance.  It seemed to go on forever.  The announced crowd was 45,419, but there seemed to be more kids (and adults) than that that emerged from the center field wall and made their way to the basepaths over the 30 minutes or so that we hung around after the game.  Either kids were finishing up and circling back for multiple trips, or Puget Sound spontaneously emits children.

As if the Vancouver Lookout hadn’t provided enough knee-weakening heights for one weekend, we drove over to the Seattle Space Needle after the game.  Adding an extra bit of excitement to the 605-foot tall tower are a rotating glass floor and angled glass benches on the exterior that face inward, but lean their occupants backward into the nothingness below.  Only Gerry had the cajones to stand on one of the benches and lean backward.  With dusk setting in, we hopped on the Seattle Center Monorail near the base of the Space Needle and rode to a nearly empty Pike Place Market.  While it was entirely possible that the flood of visitors that would normally be there were all still rounding the bases at Safeco, we attributed the lack of tourists to the fact that it was Sunday evening and most of the shops and restaurants were closing down.  The Seatown Seabar was open for al fresco dining along Elliott Bay.  Luckily, Al had not claimed his reservation, so we were able to snag his outdoor table.  Scott settled for a cheeseburger and fries when he realized that the menu did not include his favorite seafood dish (fish and chips).  Gerry had what he purported to be his first raw oysters.  Given that oysters are known to enhance testosterone levels, one could question why he chose to try them on a trip with three other dudes.  It’s not like we were going to be impressed with his mussels.

A late-night drink at the Sea-Tac Marriott Courtyard and a final farewell over breakfast spelled an end to BIB 2018.  2019 beckons, with Miami and Atlanta, both nearly a continent away from the Pacific Northwest, as possible destinations.

BIB2016: The Pennsylvania Deja Vu All Over Again Tour

It should have been enough that Scott had driven the 250 miles from Virginia early on Friday to schlep Gerry, Kevin, and Mark around the Keystone State for the weekend like he had been banished to some sort of Uber driver purgatory.  But for reasons known only to Scott, he had even taken the time to thoroughly clean out his van for the occasion, the rough equivalent of putting on cologne at the starting line of a Tough Mudder.  With Mark arriving later in the day, Scott, Gerry and Kevin had the opportunity to tip back a beverage at a Chickie’s and Pete’s near the Philadelphia airport.  Unfortunately for the wait staff, Kevin chose to tip back his beverage when it was nowhere in the proximity of his mouth.  And, with that sticky mess, BIB 2016 had already hit its stride.  Think “3-year olds with cotton candy” and you’re pretty close.  Remove the adult supervision and you’ve got the complete picture.  Once order had been restored, conversation turned to Kevin’s season tickets to the Cincinnati Reds.  Scott was incredulous at the fact that Kevin’s tickets are, in fact, for the entire 81 home game season (Andy Dufresne didn’t have that much free time) and after a few quick calculations, decided that, while we all love baseball, Kevin could be spending his children’s inheritance on something more practical – like a set of spill-proof barware.

It turns out that Scott has developed a new rooting interest himself.  Once we had retrieved Mark from the airport, Scott explained that his frequent business travel to the United Kingdom had made him a fan of the over-performing underdogs from Liecester City in the English Premier League.   He even went so far as to explain that, despite its spelling, the name is pronounced “Lester”.  Scott’s newfound worldliness made us all just a little uncomfortable, as we wondered what ever happened to the politically incorrect NASCAR Scott we once knew.  You just know that somewhere deep inside, politically incorrect Scott wants to scream “less Manchester United and Mo’ Liecester”.

When we arrived at Citizens Bank Park, we told Mark that we were going to get our picture taken with “The Bull”.  We were referring to four-time all-star with the Phillies of the 1970’s and early 80’s and 1975 NL RBI champion Greg Luzinski, who hangs out at his own barbecue restaurant in the ballpark.  However, Mark apparently did not follow the Phillies of the late 70’s, and was visibly disappointed when we did not get to pose with the real bull he was expecting (or at least a mechanical one).  None of us opted for the barbecue, instead settling on authentic Philly Cheesesteak.  Mark, the discerning palate of the group, noted that he found the traditional cheesesteak with sharp provolone not quite as tasty as it might have been with cheddar.  Scott was more succinct: “the provolone tastes like vomit.”

The only thing that stunk worse than the sharp provolone was the play of Phillies third baseman, Maikel Franco.  From our seats near the field just beyond the third base dugout, we had a marvelous view of his two errors as the Phillies fell 7-1 to the lowly Braves, who entered the game sporting the worst record in baseball. 

 If the location of our lodging for the night near to the airport and next door to a Denny’s didn’t scream “BIB certified”, the flashing neon “OPEN” sign put it over the top.  Then there was the Abbott-and-Costello routine that took place between Mark and the desk clerk at check-in:

Mark: Do you have an airport shuttle?

Clerk: Yes, we have an every-fifteen-minute shuttle that leaves on the hour and half-hour (yes, she really said that).  What time do you need it?

Mark:  I don’t.

In Mark’s defense, he and Kevin would be returning to this same hotel a couple of nights later and would need the shuttle on their return visit.  But the already confused clerk didn’t know that and must have thought we were four crackpots touring the country checking out airport shuttle schedules for no particular reason.  Nothing could be further from the truth; we are four crackpots touring the country checking out baseball stadiums and quirky roadside attractions for no particular reason.

Despite the proximity of Denny’s, we opted for breakfast Saturday morning at Miller’s café, a fairly nondescript little joint of which the most distinguishing feature was a waitress with a weird combination Boston/Long Island accent that made her sound like the love child of Mark Wahlberg and Fran Drescher.

Saturday’s touring began with a trip to the Philadelphia Art Museum to see the famous statue of Sylvester Stallone raising his arms at the top of the museum’s steps in the movie Rocky.  The running time for Rocky is 122 minutes, or just slightly longer than it took us to find a parking space as Scott circled the museum like the Clark Griswold in European Vacation (“Big Ben, kids; Parliament…Big Ben, Parliament”).  Once we finally plopped down $15 for a spot in a lot across the street, Scott and Kevin ran up the steps of the museum and performed a remarkable reenactment of the lesser known  “I’m winded” scene that unfortunately was cut from theater versions of Rocky.

Next up was a visit to the Mutter Museum in downtown Philly, run by The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and displaying examples of every conceivable medical oddity.  When a museum bills itself as “disturbingly informative”, you just know you’re in for a dog’s breakfast of barf-inducing BIB fun.  Just listing a few of the items available in the gift shop yields a good sense for what a creepatorium this place was.   You had your Siamese twin gingerbread cookie cutter, your “human organ for transplant” beer cooler, and the puke de ré·sis·tance, your mega-colon stuffed plush toy, a replica of the museum’s real mega-colon, which the gift shop literature describes as a “nine-foot-long diseased colon formerly owned by a very uncomfortable man who…died from chronic constipation at age 29 with 40 pounds of poop in his intestines.”  It goes on to point out that the plush toy “also doubles as an unusual in-flight pillow”.  I don’t know about you, but if the guy next to me in seat B is sporting an inflamed large intestine around his neck, I’m hitting the flight attendant call button, stat.  It’s fair to say that we all had our favorite exhibits, but Mark found it hard to narrow down to just one, settling on “anything involving syphilis”.

A visit to the Eastern State Penitentiary was next on our agenda, if for no other reason than to create a comfortable buffer between the Mutter Museum and lunch.  No longer serving as a place to house society’s less desirables (except for the one day that we visited), it was constructed to look like a castle the size of a large city block, complete with faux windows and turrets.  There were a number of parallels to Alcatraz, which we visited a few years ago: solitary confinement cells, a cell where Al Capone had once been held, and a daring escape many years ago by burrowing through a cell wall.  Unlike at Alcatraz, we were able to procure a senior discount for Mark by sharing his age at the ticket window.  Presumably, his raised middle digit was to let the salesperson know that he needed only one ticket.

For lunch, we followed up Miller’s Café with the equally generically named John’s Roast Pork.  This was one of those places that social media appears to have taken from well-known local hole-in-the-wall to gastronomical Mecca.   The result is an out-the-door-and-down-the-street line conducted with Soup Nazi precision that serves up what may legitimately be the best cheesesteak and roast pork to ever choke an artery.

On our way from Philadelphia to Allentown (home of the Triple-A Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs), we paid a visit to Valley Forge.  The suffering that occurred there is difficult for a modern BIB to grasp, what with legend having it that Washington’s troops sometimes had to go as long as 5 hours at a time without cheesesteak.

We had seats in the “Bacon Strip” at Allentown, a 2-row section playing off the “Iron Pig” team name in right field.  Unfortunately, we never actually made it to those seats, as we spent most of our time in Allentown seeking shelter from the steady rain.  We were in the stadium long enough to have a drink and watch the running of the Preakness on the stadium scoreboard, but beyond that, it was a rare BIB rainout…shades of the Ottawa Lynx.  In Ottawa, we found a downtown Hooters to bide our time.  In Allentown, it was the Tilted Kilt, where a perky waitress named Amber provided every bit as much entertainment as we might have expected had the Iron Pigs made it onto the field.  When we asked Amber’s permission to use her picture and first name on our web site, she offered her last name and telephone number as well – just in case we needed it.  For the love of Pete, we don’t even allow our own last names on this shady site!  We left the Tilted Kilt pretty sure she’d have offered her social security number and a couple of references if we’d told her we needed them.

Oddly enough, Amber didn’t even take Saturday’s award for “Most Likely to Exercise Bad Judgment in a Moment of Flirtiness”…not even close!    That title goes to the woman who inexplicably decided that rubbing Mark’s leg at the Abe Lincoln Hotel bar Saturday evening would be a good idea.  Fortunately, Gerry showed up on the scene before Mark tried to mace her.  Still a little unclear to Kevin and Scott, who didn’t actually see this unfold, was whether Gerry just gracefully cut in, or whether he and Mark went into full “Mitch and Cam” mode to scare her off. 

Sunday breakfast was at the Marvel Ranch at the corner of Penn and 4^th Street in Reading, Pennsylvania.   The address is important, because that’s the only way you’d ever find the place.  It has absolutely no signage and is neither marvelous, nor reminiscent of a ranch, except inasmuch as a ranch is fit for habitation by livestock.  The patrons could be described as “diverse” – in a Star Wars cantina scene sort of way.  Nevertheless, President Obama apparently visited the place in 2008, no doubt to sample something called the Marvel Mess, or its smaller cousin, the Mini Mess, an amalgam of ham, onions, green peppers, eggs, home fries, and cheese – sort of a mega-colon starter kit.

As we drove from Reading toward Centralia, Pennsylvania (more on why anyone would want to visit Centralia in a minute), Kevin thought he noticed us passing a restaurant that looked familiar.  Given that the GPS told us we were somewhere between Hicksville and Arse-End-of-Nowhere, that hardly seemed possible.  But sure enough, a few miles down the road, we found ourselves in lovely Ashland, Pennsylvania, home of the Pioneer Coal Mine attraction that caused a somewhat claustrophobic Mark to nearly soil himself five years ago. 

How we missed visiting Centralia in 2011, when it is less than 3 miles from Ashland, is a mystery.  We target strange places, and nowhere we’ve visited is stranger than Centralia, Pennsylvania.  It was a thriving town in 1962, when hot ash in the town’s dump-landfill ignited a vein of coal beneath it.  It wasn’t until 1979 that folks realized it was still burning…and it still is to this day!  In the intervening 54 years, the ground has collapsed here and there and toxic gases have been emitted, causing the permanent evacuation of the town by all but a handful of residents.  Just like that, a thriving town literally disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving behind nothing but a closed portion of state highway and street grids that now run eerily through what amounts to woods and meadows.  The buildings that once crowded the center of town are completely gone.  The post office even stripped Centralia of its zip code.  Although one TripAdvisor contributor describes Centralia as “a whole lot of nothing”, the BIBs nevertheless came in search of the so-called “Graffiti Highway”, the roughly three-quarters of a mile long stretch of Pennsylvania State Highway 61 that had to be closed and is now completely covered by all ilk of intermingled messages, art, and vulgarity.  The website centraliapa.org describes the Graffiti Highway as “one of the most popular locations to visit in Centralia”, which is like saying that fried chicken is one of the more popular dishes at KFC.  One option stands head and shoulders above a bunch of low quality alternatives.

Our next ballgame was at FNB Field in Harrisburg to see the hometown Senators take on the Bowie (Maryland) Baysox.  The place had a unique charm, if for no other reason than that it sits on City Island in the middle of the Susquehanna River.  The mid-river location might contribute to the other unique characteristic of FNB Field: it is frequently overrun by mayflies, pests that descend on City Island just long enough to be an irritant to regular fans of the Senators.  It is not lost on us that the same could be said of the BIBs.  We did encounter a little more than we bargained for when we asked one local fan to take a group photo for us.  He made Gerry and Kevin remove their sunglasses, told Scott to tuck in his shirt, and generally gave us what for.  We did get to see Harrisburg pitcher Jaron Long throw 6 innings of perfect baseball before giving up two runs in the seventh, on the way to what became a 5-4 13-inning win for the home team.  We had to take off after 9 innings, however, so that Scott could drop off the rest of us near the airport and get home at something that could be mistaken for a reasonable hour.

After Scott dropped off the boys at the same Hotel from two nights ago, he headed for home, while Gerry, Kevin and Mark toasted BIB 2016 with a pint and one last cheesesteak at Monaghan’s Irish Pub.  Gerry caught a cab to the airport, while Kevin and Mark headed for the flashing neon “OPEN” sign and made their reservations for the next morning on the every-fifteen-minutes-at-the-top-and-bottom-of-the-hour airport shuttle.

BIB2015: The Southern California Drought Tour

Scott, being a native of San Diego, assured us that “the morning fog always clears out by noon”.  It was the Friday morning fog that had diverted Gerry’s plane to Ontario (California, not Canada) while the rest of us, having arrived just ahead of the marine layer, entertained ourselves with a driving tour of Balboa Park and Old Town San Diego.  As the morning fog turned into afternoon fog, Gerry’s airline must have found just enough of a window to take off from Ontario for the fifteen minute flight to Lindbergh Field.  Gerry arrived in time to join us for Mexican lunch at El Indio.  Demonstrating that Scott’s local tour guide skills must be honed more to gastronomy than meteorology, El Indio turned out to be a great find.  And while the fog still lingered over our outdoor seating, it was a beautiful afternoon in the restaurant itself - not a cloud in the ceiling.

The fog yielded only marginally as we toured the USS Midway after lunch.  So many of the sights on-board were reminiscent of scenes from the movie Top Gun that our next stop could not have appropriately been anywhere else but Kansas City Barbecue, the self-proclaimed home of the “sleazy bar scene” from the 1986 movie classic.  We settled in for a late afternoon, pre-game drink, reasonably confident in the notion that – unlike many establishments - this was a place whose Mobil Travel Guide rating was in no jeopardy from a BIB visit.

Petco Park was only a short walk away.  Petco is the home of the San Diego Padres.  You can tell by the fact that about 50% of the people in the stands are wearing Dodger blue.  Petco is integrated into the fabric of downtown San Diego’s Gaslamp district more literally than any other park in the majors.  The Western Metal Supply Company’s warehouse, built in 1909, which means that it pre-dates the ballpark by 95 years, was left standing and now contains, among other things, the left field foul pole, part of the left field stands, and the Padres’ gift shop.  We saw Clayton Kershaw strike out 11 in 6-2/3 innings, surviving a 107 mph (according to Statcast) line drive to the hip off the bat of Justin Upton.  The fact that Kershaw went on to throw 117 pitches erased any notion of an Upton Funk (whew, that was a long way to go for that one).  The Dodgers won 4-3 in a back-and-forth game to send about half of the crowd home happy.  And, for the record, there still appeared to be fog in the area as the game concluded.

Saturday morning, we opted not to grab an early breakfast at the cartoonishly named “Hash House a Go Go” near the hotel, in favor of an authentic Mexican breakfast in Old Town San Diego.  Old Town San Diego, however, in a display of remarkable prescience given our history of wanton gluttony (motto: no-spam-left-behind) and questionable treatment of wait staff, was closed until late morning.  Just outside of Old Town proper, however, we found the equally cartoonishly named “Café Coyote”, home to, if not discerning standards for their clientele, at least some mighty fine Huevos Rancheros.

From breakfast, we headed downtown to “Another Side of San Diego” Segway Tours, which (and, really, do you think we would make this up?) happened to double as the Chabad Jewish Community Center.  I doubt any of us ever thought we would hear in one sentence “Pick out a helmet and feel free to use the restroom in the back…but try not to interrupt the Shabbat observance.”  If the bizarre dichotomy of Jewish Sabbath and “tourists on wheels” didn’t strike you, the fact that two of us had chosen to wear red shirts and the other two black might have.  It must have been an odd sight, because even strangers who saw us rolling by were yelling things like “Hey, Team Red and Team Black”.  When we’d congregate in a circle, we must have looked like a human roulette wheel.  It didn’t help that we were about as graceful as elephants on bowling balls, either.  When we tried to line up close to each other for pictures, we’d inevitably bump into each other, triggering a sort of Keystone-Kops-meets-Monty-Python moment where it was all we could do not to knock each over like a row of middle-aged dominoes.

After a couple of hours touring downtown, we traded our wheels for meals at - extending the prairie carnivore theme from breakfast - the Coyote Ugly Bar.  When your moniker includes the word “ugly”, you’ve set the bar appropriately low for the quality of the food - maybe just a tick above Kansas City Barbecue’s “sleazy”, but still not as good as one might expect from a highway truck stop with “EATS” emblazoned on the roof.  While waiting for our food to arrive, we began reminiscing about classic BIB meals of the past.  Just how discriminating our palates actually are was captured in a single phrase uttered by Scott, who recalled “a really good pile of something we had for breakfast in Quad Cities”.

Following lunch, we headed north to Yorba Linda and the Richard Nixon Presidential Library.  We were already a little short on time, so a myriad of traffic-jams-for-no-apparent reason along the way was absolutely maddening.  Traffic would come to a halt or near-halt, we would crawl along for 5-10 minutes, and then accelerate to highway speed until we encountered the next bit of congestion.  What should have been less than a two-hour drive to the Nixon Library wound up being closer to 3 hours…not counting an 18-1/2 minute gap in what we can recall.  We were left with only about an hour to tour the library and museum.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the introductory film, produced while Nixon was still alive, paints a fairly sympathetic view of our 37^th President…even going so far as to say that he knew nothing of the Watergate break-in (a notion rendered laughably naive by the public release of hundreds of hours of Nixon's tapes in 2013 and 2014).  Beyond the film, there were several areas of interest in and around the site, including Nixon’s boyhood home, the helicopter from which he bid farewell to the White House, and the grave in which he now lies (no pun intended).

Angel Stadium was only a few short miles from the Nixon Library.  Upon arriving at the stadium, we somehow finagled our way into the Schock Top Brew Pub on the club level down the first base line.  The atmosphere at our “real” seats in left center field was almost identical to that of the pub – except for the spacious tables with nice place mats, waiters and waitresses catering to every whim, and beautiful panoramic view of the entire stadium.  Nevertheless, we managed to hang out with the club-level aristocracy for quite a while before taking our rightful place among the great unwashed. Ironically, the only run of the game, a first-inning Albert Pujols home run, landed pretty close to our seats among the proletariat, but before we ever actually made it to that location.  Once we did arrive, it was tough not to recognize the contrast between first-class and steerage, as a guy seated behind us kept banging the seats around him incessantly and yelling “huddle, huddle, you’re in trouble!” (yeah, we didn’t know what it meant either) to no one in particular.  Try that kind of garbage in the Brew Pub and there’s a good chance you’d get your sushi and kale salad privileges taken away…or worse yet, left to drink some light beer swill instead of a proper local craft IPA.  The evening ended on a solid note, though, as we found some more peaceful seats in the upper deck, perfect for viewing dualing fireworks displays, as the post-game pyrotechnics happened to coincide with those of nearby Disneyland.  While we didn’t make it to Disneyland ourselves, through the magic of Priceline, we did find ourselves staying at the Knott’s Berry Farm Hotel for the evening.  Nothing like staying down the hall from a bunch of slobbering juveniles on vacation…said everyone unfortunate enough to get a room near us.

8:00am Sunday morning was not only the time that we planned to meet for breakfast.  It was also exactly 24 hours from when Mark’s Southwest Airlines flight would be leaving for home.  In order to ensure “Group A” seating on the flight (which, based on Mark’s maniacal attention to check-in time must be the only seats equipped with oxygen masks and flotation devices), Mark would need to access his mobile app at precisely 8:00am Naval Observatory Time.  Luckily, Mark had gotten a rental vehicle equipped with the cesium beam atomic clock option, so we were good to go.  And go we did, to the Sunrise Café, home of locally legendary banana pancakes, for breakfast.  We appeared to be the only patrons in the restaurant that were not permanent residents of Buena Park, California.  The fact that they don’t get many out-of-towners may have had something to do with why, when we asked the waitress what she would recommend on the menu, we got an extemporaneous speaking performance worthy of Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Nathan Jessep.  Perhaps she attended French Toastmasters.

Back on the road after breakfast, Scott made the mistake of disclosing that he prepares many of his meals out of something called the Pioneer Woman Cookbook.  If you can get past the fact that the title sounds like somewhere Hannibal Lecter would get his recipes, you are still left with the disturbing image of Scott cooking possum stew.  If you can get past the possum stew, you are still left with the disturbing image of Scott in an apron. 

It is fair to say that we visited a more alluring roadside attraction this time around than last time we were in L.A.  Of course, the Le Brea Tar Pits had set the standard at “20-acre latrine”, so not a high bar.   By comparison, the Watts Towers, concocted in large part from shards of soft drink and milk of magnesia bottles held together by steel rebar and wire mesh, were downright charming.  Upon exiting our vehicle in Watts, we were serenaded by the sound of nearby sirens and barking pit bulls – just enough to remind us that this 2-1/2 square mile area had twice been home to six straight days of rioting – once in 1965 and again in 1992.  The place has experienced less genuine harmony in the last few decades than the Milli Vanilli fan club.

From Watts, we headed to downtown L.A.  Outside the Staples Center, we took some pictures with the bronze statue of Los Angeles Lakers broadcaster Chick Hearn who, it turns out, much to our disappointment, is not a chick at all.  Just across the street, a line had formed around 3 sides of the Microsoft Theater in anticipation of the World Nintendo Championships.  Get a life, lonely, pathetic, people…said many of those waiting in line who saw us posing with Chick Hearn.  Our reason for coming downtown, the Grammy Museum, would not disappoint; it was dedicating an entire floor to a temporary exhibit called the “Taylor Swift Experience”.  While, Mark refused on principle to step foot on the Swift floor (dude, “Shake it Off”), there was actually much to be learned from the exhibit…like how the blonde femme fatale chews up and spits out old boyfriends by making them the target of ill-spirited song lyrics.  Note to selves: “Do not date Taylor Swift.”  Thank goodness we toured that exhibit and now know to dodge that bullet!

We had some time to blow in oppressively hot San Bernardino before the game between the visiting Visalia Rawhide and the Inland Empire 66ers.  After allocating the better part of an hour for Kevin to find and apply several coats of SPF 50, we still had enough time to visit the McDonald’s Museum on the site of the original restaurant in the Route 66 Business District.  Not since 2004 (when we met Chuck, the caretaker of the Twister House in Eldora, Iowa and his dog Buddy, who he claims had rescued him from a diabetic coma), have we come across the owner of a roadside attraction who seemed quite so unnaturally happy to see us.  In this case, it was Albert Okura, founder and CEO of the Juan Pollo restaurant chain in Southern California, and self-proclaimed “Mexican Colonel Sanders”.  In fact, he virtually held Scott hostage while he located and signed a copy of his book of life lessons: Albert Okura, The Chicken Man with a 50 Year Plan.  One can’t help but wonder why a successful restaurateur would be so interested in entertaining 4 schlubs like us…or for that matter why he chooses to work out of an office surrounded by pictures of the original Ronald McDonald (a beyond-creepy demonic-clown-on-crystal-meth looking beast), a life-size Grimace costume, and all manner of crème de la crap from over a half-century of hawking Big Macs.

The game at San Manuel (Spanish for “no shade”) Stadium was, in a word, hot.  That’s really all any of us remember.  Not 100% certain, but we think we may have caught Kevin brushing his teeth with sunscreen in a desperate attempt to ward off spontaneous combustion.  Mercifully, Scott suggested that we go try another game starting a little later less than an hour away: San Jose Giants at High Desert Mavericks.  Why not?  After all, how ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Adelanto?  Mark was especially enthusiastic, until we clarified that it was “High Desert”, not “High Dessert”, and that no hemp-laced brownies would be involved.  So, we left the oppressive, shadeless 87-degree furnace of San Bernardino for the 99-degree, sustained 14 mile-per-hour wind tunnel of Adelanto.  The wind is, in part, a by-product of the barren moonscape for miles in every direction around Heritage Field, and explains why the ballpark holds the distinction of giving up more home runs per game, 2.94, than any other park in professional baseball.  We saw our fair share – three - in the Mavericks’ 7-5 victory.

Our last night in Southern California was spent at a hotel on the main road into LAX.  With runway approaches on both sides of the hotel, one got the sensation of sleeping on a double-yellow line at rush hour.  No worries though – plenty of time to rest up before we kick off our second quarter-century of BIB tours in 2016.