The Sheltering Sky

This is part six of the Summer of '04 series, chronicling my first serious baseball road trip.

Thursday, June 17
It's a short drive to Cincinnati for a day game versus Texas. I'm wearing my Soriano Yankees shirt, but I'm most excited about Griffey, obviously. I chat with the parking attendant about the shift towards a more team-oriented approach in building teams. An example is the improvement of teams like the Mariners and Rangers after their stars left town. He gives me directions to I-71 for after the game.

One of the Mariners' former stars is the headline attraction at this game, but somehow I have a feeling that's not who we were really talking about, especially considering I was wearing a Yankees shirt.

I think that's Griffey under the 499 sign.

Great American Ball Park is nice, but all the new parks are starting to look alike at this point.

I think what I really meant to say is that it's getting harder to tell the difference between a good new stadium and a great one. But, I'm sure I'll have more to say on this subject at my next stop.

Griffey doesn't hit his 500th. In fact, he fans feebly in his final at bat versus Texas lefty specialist, Brian Shouse. The Reds stage a nice little late rally to come from behind and win. That makes three out of four home teams who have accomplished that on the trip so far.

I'm pretty sure that's Griffey at bat. I'm positive that it's future Hall of Famer Barry Larkin leading off third base. Well, positive that it's Larkin, that is...not necessarily positive that he'll eventually get his due.

After the game, I drive from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh and pick up Brian at the airport just before midnight. By the time we get to the hotel and get checked in, it's a little after 1am. Much to our delight, the clerk at the front desk tells us that bars are open until 2, so we head to an Oakland neighborhood bar called Panther Hollow Inn and down three Iron Cities each before last call.

What is the plural of Iron City, when you're referring to the actual product? It just doesn't look right to refer to them as "Iron Cities." I guess technically I should have just gone with "Iron City beers" or "bottles of Iron City," but I'm sticking with Iron Cities.

On Deck: Pittsburgh Town

The Long Cut

This is part five of the Summer of '04 series, chronicling my first serious baseball road trip.

Tuesday, June 15 (Cont'd)
This game is just as exciting as Saturday night in Cleveland. Neither Morris nor Zito is on: Zito lasts only five innings, giving up three runs (two earned), while allowing seven hits and five walks. His pitch count must have been over 100. Morris starts off shaky, giving up two-run homers to Damian Miller in the 2nd and Mark Kotsay in the 3rd, but then cruises through four strong innings for the win (7 IP, 6 H, 1 BB, 5 SO, 4 ER). St. Louis scores five in the 7th off of Oakland's bullpen—Chad Bradford, Ricardo Rincon and Justin Duchscherer—coming back from 4-3 to win 8-4.

I end up at the Fireside again after the game, chatting it up with Angela (the bartender) and her sister—who once lived in Boston—while drinking two more Buds to add to the two beers I had at Pitcher's pre-game and two 32 oz. drafts at the park.

I didn't write it down, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that the two drafts I consumed at the ballpark were Anheuser Busch products.

Wednesday, June 16
I drive from Troy, IL to Middletown, OH (about a half hour north of Cincinnati). I'm on fire trivia-wise, listening to sports radio on the AM dial:

• "He's a rock 'n' roll star whose father is a sportswriter." (Neil Young)
• During broadcast of Reds-Rangers game: "Name the four Rangers who've won the AL MVP." (Jeff Burroughs, Juan Gonzalez, Ivan Rodriguez, Alex Rodriguez)
• "The only player, other than Texas's Eric Young to steal six bases in a game." (Otis Nixon)

I have to admit that the last one was multiple choice.

I watch the end of the Reds game from a sports bar called Bullie's in Middletown. I'm still rooting for Griffey to not hit home run number 500 tonight. The score is 3-3 in the middle of the 8th. I'm pulling for the Reds to score in the bottom of the inning, but for Junior to not get to the plate, then they can finish it out in the top of the 9th.

In fact, Cincinnati scores four. Griffey comes to bat, gets a couple good pitches to hit, but ends up grounding into a double play. I'm relieved...and excited. The Reds are up 7-3, should hold on to win, and I get to see him go for number 500 tomorrow.

I have a good feeling...

On Deck: The Sheltering Sky

Brouthers Field: The Sequel

In June of last year, I wrote about a day that I spent paying tribute to the two baseball Hall of Famers from the county I grew up in. One of them was 19th century star, Dan Brouthers. I discovered that day that a monument to Brouthers that was erected at a local Little League field was gone, as was the field.

After I notified him of this, my good friend and fellow baseball history buff, Joe, emailed the mayor of the Village of Wappingers Falls, where the field is located, to inquire about what happened to the monument. He never heard back, but I recently came across the photos I took when I initially showed Joe this field almost 20 years ago. So, I thought I'd share one of those with you.

It's unfortunate that I don't have more information on where the monument currently resides. It could be at the Sports Museum of Dutchess County, but I've yet to visit. I assure you, though, that I haven't given up and am still determined to eventually track down its whereabouts.

Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis

This is part four of the Summer of '04 series, chronicling my first serious baseball road trip.

Monday, June 14
I drive from Lima, Ohio to Troy, Illinois (20 miles from St. Louis). It's been a fairly uneventful day so far. I'm definitely not going to get anything besides a Bud or Bud Light in this town.

Tomorrow's game will be the first ever regular season meeting between the Cardinals and the Athletics. It's a nice pitching match-up as well: Matt Morris vs. Barry Zito. Neither has pitched particularly well this year, but I still consider it to be compelling. I predict one of them will throw a gem.

I spend the evening in Maryville, at a sports bar called the Fireside Inn, after eating a tremendous country style dinner—roasted pork w/ stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, salad and bread—for $6.90 (tax included) at a family restaurant called the Red Apple. I drink six Budweisers, for $1.75 each, at the bar, and chat with a nice, attractive bartender about Yankees-Red Sox, Cubs-Cardinals, rents in Boston compared to St. Louis, etc. She gives me directions to the nearest MetroLink station—“it’s like the T,” she tells me—so I think I'll go that route tomorrow, rather than drive to St. Louis.

I believe I decided on this trip, just as I did four years later, that St. Louis has the best looking women of all the mid-western cities I've visited.

Tuesday, June 15
I receive three phone calls from the front desk this morning...yes, I'm staying another night. Yes, I understand that you left the charges open yesterday! Yes, today I will pay for both nights!! This is the cheapest rate of the trip so far, at $38.85 per night, including tax.

I also recently unearthed the journal I kept during the cross-country trip that two of my college buddies and I took after graduation. Had I been writing this entry then—or had the 22-year old version of me been on this trip—I probably would have written something offensive about the people running this motel. But, this is 15 years later, and I had matured quite a bit.

Breakfast at Cracker Barrel...this place seems a bit overrated. The food is pretty good, but not a great value.

There seemed to be a lot of emphasis on value for my money on this trip.

I take the MetroLink into St. Louis. The bartender's directions are perfect. Only eight stops and I'm right outside Busch Stadium. I check out the area, take pictures of the arch, but don't go up—been there, done that—and stop for a couple beers at a bar called Pitcher's, where I talk to a Syracuse native who's a lifelong Cardinals fan. One of the beers I drink is a St. Louis brewed Schlafly Pale Ale: "A rich, amber-colored, medium-bodied, British-style ale with a smooth, mild hop character."

I'm not sure if that quote was written on the bottle, or if I later looked it up on their web site, but I certainly didn't write it myself, because here's what comes next:

Note to self: when ordering microbrews from towns not known for good beer, go for IPAs because if they're not good, at least they'll be strong and hoppy. Standard pale ales tend to be lame.

Interestingly enough, Schlafly's was one of the breweries briefly mentioned in the Beer Wars movie. This was the only time I've had any of their beers, and apparently I wasn't impressed. Note also that I referred to St. Louis as a town not known for good beer. That shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone.

I enter Busch Stadium in time for batting practice, and end up talking to a couple who are A's fans. I take their picture, and they take mine. They're really nice people, and we find a connection in that we're all previous residents of upstate New York. She once lived in Watertown, and he's from Schenectady.

On deck: The Long Cut

Beer Wars

About once a year it seems, I do a post about a movie, and this year a documentary about one of my favorite subjects earns the honor.

Beer Wars offers the viewer an inside look at the American beer industry, particularly from the perspective of two small-time brewers, Dogfish Head's Sam Calagione and Moonshot's Rhonda Kallman. These two are quite the contrast in terms of success, though, as Dogfish has thrived in its underdog role, while the film portrays Moonshot as on the verge of ultimate failure.

Not that I really needed any incentive to stay away from the products of Anheuser Busch and MillerCoors, but the film takes my dislike for the U.S.'s largest brewer to another level. At the risk of echoing every other bleeding liberal—which I'm really not, because I do believe in the free market system—who advocates for the little guy versus the evil of big business, this movie has me truly considering a boycott of Anheuser Busch and all of its brand names. That list includes Monster Energy, a company guilty of its own transgressions against Vermont's Rock Art Brewery.

Here's a little clip from the movie, in which Calagione discusses Anheuser Busch's frivolous lawsuit versus Dogfish. A spoiler alert isn't really necessary, because this is a documentary, after all, but this is one of the film's better examples of the corporate giant's anti-competitive practices.



The narrator refers to Anheuser Busch as a monopoly, which I don't think is technically true. Although approximately one of every two beers sold in the United States is one of their products, MillerCoors also has a market share of about 28%, so I think the characterization of Anheuser Busch as a monopoly is a bit of an exaggeration.

Also of interest is that both Anheuser Busch and Monster Energy have been unsuccessful in their lawsuits versus these smaller brewers. I'm not sure what came of the former's case, but I do know that Monster dropped their suit against Rock Art as a result of public backlash.

As far as I'm concerned, they can use advertising to pull the wool over the eyes of all the non-discriminating beer consumers they want, but when a company with 50% of an industry's market share tries to bring down a "competitor" with 0.002%, over something as trivial as how generic the names of their beers are, that's a slap in the face of capitalism. I also have no problem with the fact that Anheuser Busch makes terrible beer. It's their prerogative to do so, just as it's mine to not drink it, and their popularity is more than enough justification that their swill-producing business model is a successful one.

I'm sure it could be argued that all corporate giants are guilty of anti-competitive tactics, at least to some extent. But a major difference between Anheuser Busch and Coca-Cola, for instance, is the latter doesn't have to resort to such measures because, although there are folks who prefer Pepsi, Coke's products are actually good. There is no Dogfish Head of the soda industry, and the reason there isn't is because there's no niche for the little guy to make a superior product to the big guy.

But, we're not talking about soda here. We're talking about an industry that means a great deal to me, so it's one that has me considering taking a stand, which is harder than you would think. But, I'm not going to get into that right now. What I am going to do is recommend you check out Beer Wars: rent it, Netflix it, order it on demand. Or, if you're one of those people lucky enough to live near one of these locales, check out a screening:

• February 21 in Portland OR 
• February 28 in Portsmouth NH 
• March 25 on Long Island 
• June 27 in New York City

While we're on the subject, and since it is Friday, promise me that you'll enjoy a craft beer or two...or three...this weekend.