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Modernism and baseball stadiums

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My colleague Dolores recently pointed me towards a springtime blog rant by long-time preservationist – and baseball fan – Clem Labine.  Entitled Hey Nick – Get REAL, the blog goes after New York Times architectural critic Nicolai Ouroussoff for panning the two new baseball stadiums in New York City by saying that “American stadium design has been stuck in a nostalgic funk, with sports franchises recycling the same old images year after year.”  Read it for the writing, if nothing else.  (Clem was the founder of The Old House Journal eons ago and you’ll see his way with the written word.)

Dolores and DJB at Kauffman Stadium
DJB and Dolores enjoy a game at Kauffman Stadium, the best modernist-style park in baseball

Camden Yards in Baltimore (photo at the top of the post) began the trend toward throwback stadiums. Having attended many a ballgame there (and in other similarly inspired parks), I agree with Clem that these ballparks work AND give the fans what they want.

But my recent trip to Kansas City gave me the chance to visit one of the first of the good modernist sports venues – Kauffman Stadium.  The architects here show how Modernism can be lovely and beloved as a baseball park.

The bottom line…give us baseball fans good architecture, whatever the style, that works as a ballpark!

More to come…

DJB

Image: Camden Yards in Baltimore

Northern Ireland Photos

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Northern Ireland Church WindowLate last month, Claire and Andrew took a trip to Northern Ireland with their youth group.  While there they walked the wonderful coastline of County Antrim and the Giant’s Causeway; visited sites of the National Trust of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland; met with groups focused on peace and reconciliation; and took lots and lots of photographs.

In looking at those photos, my mind went back a decade to my own trip to Northern Ireland for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  Like the children’s trip, mine was an eye and mind-opening experience.  I recently looked at my diary from that trip and enjoyed reliving my experiences.

So I’ll share Andrew’s (color) and Claire’s (black-and-white) photos from June/July 2009, and I’ll share a few diary entries from December 1998.

12/8/98 – I found Crom Castle most interesting.  As we arrived, Irish deer – with huge racks – stared at us from the deer park…had my first Irish whiskey of the trip.  Great for warming chilled bones!

Northern Ireland Coastline12/8/98 – We have a late afternoon stop at Florence Court, where we barely get a hint of the rococo plasterwork.  There is a fabulous view of an adjoining mountain from the garden from a bentwood shelter.  Very atmospheric on a gray, foggy evening.  Then back to Belle Isle for a hearty Irish dinner…the mincemeat pie is especially good.

Besides the Giant’s Causeway, the children and I also visited Dunluce Castle…just ten years apart.  The third and fourth pictures are both of Dunluce, which I wrote about on…

12/10/98 – The entire coastal drive (of County Antrim) is magnificent, with a constantly changing landscape….We see the ruins of Dunluce Castle, perched on a cliff and making for a very dramatic view.  We also visit the ruins of Earl Bishop’s Downhill Palace – very remote.  It is too wet to get near the domed rotunda library recently saved by the National Trust from falling into the sea.

Andrew's View of Dunluce Castle12/11/98 – Low tide forces us off the ferry and we drive around Strangford Lough to Castle Ward.  They are not expecting us and it is pouring rain, but we still manage a quick tour.  Bizarre house – one side is Palladian and the other is neo-Gothic.  The husband and wife couldn’t agree – and the argument continued inside.

12/12/98 – A wonderful trip and a great introduction to Northern Ireland – the same week when the Nobel Peace Prizes are awarded for the Good Friday Peace Accords.

Historic travel should take place during historic weeks.

Enjoy the rest of the pictures.

Claire's Dunluce Castle Picture

Andrew's View of the Northern Ireland Coastline

Claire's Detail

A late sunset in Northern Ireland

More to come…

DJB

Bluegrass in Nashville

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Playing with John and JodyThere’s an interesting article in last Monday’s Washington Post about bluegrass music venues in Nashville.  For those who live in the city, this report is old news.  For many of my friends and colleagues coming to Nashville in the fall, however, this will be important information you’ll want to tuck away for those times in between conference sessions.  If you want to find bluegass music in Nashville, you’ll want to visit places like the Ryman Auditorium and the Station Inn.

At the top of this post, you’ll see an old black-and-white photo of the author – in his college days – playing some bluegrass very near Nashville with good friends:  banjo-picker John Balch and singer Jody Kammerud.  Thought it would be fun to see those Tennessee pickers in their youth!

The article mentions the family band Cherryholmes.  Enjoy the video of the band.

More to come…

DJB

Wooden Bat League Baseball Makes the Big Time

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Big Train BaseballOur local college wooden bat league – the Cal Ripken, Sr. League – made the big time tonight when the DC/Baltimore regional sports network (MASN) carried the Wooden Bat League All Star Game between the Ripken and Valley League all stars.  Held in Waldorf, Maryland, this was a great showcase for a wonderful summer tradition.

Just like last evening’s MLB All-Star game, pitching dominated, with the Ripken All Stars taking a 2-1 win in a crisply played contest.  It was great to see Staunton Braves players, from our former home in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley, battling players from the Bethesda Big Train and the Silver Spring-Takoma Thunderbolts.

There’s still plenty of time to catch a Wooden Bat League game in your area…whether it be DC, the Shenandoah Valley, Cape Cod, Alaska, California…you name it!

More to come…

DJB

As We Approach the All-Star Break…

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BaseballRegular readers know that I like good baseball writing.  So on a night when the Nationals are uncharacteristically beating up the Astros with 13 runs and 21 hits in a laugher, it was a double treat to find a great story on ESPN.com by Jayson Stark.

Best, worst, and weirdest of the first half is a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of April – July 2009 in Major League Baseball.  Stark goes through his first half Cy Young winners, but he also calls out the Cy Yuk winner for the worst pitcher in each league.  Yep, you guessed it…former National Daniel Cabrera won that dubious award for the National League.  Cabrera got the boot…

…from a boss so exasperated by his work that GM Mike Rizzo actually announced to the Washington Post, right out loud, that he had to dump this guy because “I was tired of watching him.

There are little gems throughout, but the laugh out loud stuff comes in the “Injuries of the Year” section.  Here’s Stark’s take:

First prize: Another great moment in Cub-dom: Pitcher Ryan Dempster tried to hop over the dugout fence to go high-five it up after a win, broke his toe and stumbled right onto the disabled list. Dempster’s best line (to the Chicago Sun-Times’ Gordon Wittenmyer): “I guess it’s what I get for making fun of the guys who go on the DL for burning their faces in the suntan booth.”

Second prize: Reds outfielder Chris Dickerson knocked himself out of the lineup — literally — when he went mano-a-skullo with a revolving glass door at the team hotel in Pittsburgh. And lost. “My real story,” he quipped, “is I hit my head on the rim during a celebrity slam-dunk contest.”

Third prize: How did Blue Jays pitcher Ricky Romero land on the DL in April? He hipped and he hopped and he strained his oblique — by sneezing while listening to rap music.

Honorable mention: Royals reliever Kyle Farnsworth needed stitches in his hand after getting cut trying to break up a fight between his two bulldogs. … Pirates second baseman Freddy Sanchez strained his back getting out of a cab — and missed six straight games. … And Phillies reliever Scott Eyre proved once and for all that running from the bullpen to the mound is overrated. He strained a calf muscle on the way — and wound up on the disabled list. Tell that to the speed-up-the-game police!

Read the entire story and see if you don’t chuckle (at least) a time or two.

More to come…

DJB

Satchel Paige

Happy birthday, Satchel Paige

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Today would have been the 103rd birthday of Leroy “Satchel” Paige, the legendary pitcher from the old Negro Leagues.  Boston.com has a column about Paige by Larry Tye, who has written a well-received biography of the baseball star.

Tye’s column contends that Paige was a subversive to the Jim Crow laws of his era:

“But there is more to Satchel’s legacy than eye-popping records. While many dismissed him as a Stepin Fetchit if not an Uncle Tom, he was something else entirely – a quiet subversive, defying Uncle Tom and Jim Crow. He refused to play in a town unless it supplied lodging and food to him and his teammates, a defiance for which young civil rights workers later would get arrested.”

Paige is known for many things in baseball, but most remember him because of his turn of a phrase.  The Brainy Quote website has a host of Paigeisms, including:

“Age is a case of mind over matter.  If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.”

“Ain’t no man can avoid being born average, but there ain’t no man got to be common.”

And his most famous line:

“Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”

Happy birthday, Satchel Paige.

More to come…

DJB

Image: Satchel Paige

Happy July 4th

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July 4th on the Mall 2009We’re at the end of a busy July 4th celebration here in the Brown household.  The picture at left is a photo Andrew took this evening of the fireworks on the National Mall as viewed from the grounds of the National Cathedral (with a bit of a time lapse).

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Andrew and Claire returned from a pilgrimage to Northern Ireland  on Friday (pictures to come in the days ahead) which meant we jumped right in to the July 4th celebration.  They had a swim meet this morning, so Andrew and Claire left with Candice bright and early while I began to put the house together following a week’s worth of painting.

One of the down sides of July 4th falling on a Saturday July 4th Parade 2008is that we have a swim meet and miss the annual 4th of July parade in Takoma Park.  We’ve been going for years, and love the quirky, small town sensibilities the parade provides in this unique community full of eclectic historic houses.  So I’ll post a photo to remind us of the great time we’ve had in the past – with the promise for more in the future.  If you live around Washington, consider adding the Takoma Park parade to your future July 4th plans.  Bring a lawn chair and your sense of humor.

Our neighborhood pool has a traditional 4th of July cookout and pot luck which we enjoy.  We ran into a friend we met at last year’s July 4th pool party, and spent the time catching up on our various lives.  It wasn’t long before we realized we’d spent two hours just relaxing, eating, and enjoying the company of our pool family.

Which brings us to tonight.  Picnics in tow, we met up with friends on the grounds of the Washington National Cathedral.  Hanging with the mass of humanity on the mall doesn’t interest me, but it was very civilized to join a few hundred people to get a view of the fireworks from the Washington National Cathedral.

To top it off, on the July 4th weekend the Nationals finally get a win AND National Public Radio has a great interview on Friday with the owner of the Chatham Anglers (used to be Athletics) in the Cape Cod Wooden Bat League.   Regular readers know of my love of Wooden Bat baseball, so I recommend the interview.

Ready to call it a day.  Happy Birthday USA!

More to come…

DJB

Exploring the Empty Nester Life

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Abe at Big Train Quick test:  What do leisurely strolls through Politics & Prose bookstore, dinner in Adams Morgan, two days in a row working out together at the gym, almost no time spent in the car, naps, no early Saturday morning swim meet, dim sum, and a racing President all have in common?

Answer:  Things we do when Andrew and Claire are out of town.

Friday afternoon we put Andrew and Claire on a plane with a group of teenagers from church and their chaperons for a week-long pilgrimage to Northern Ireland.  (I think my high school church group went to Opryland for our pilgrimage!)  While we’re not eager to see the empty nest years arrive, this was the first extended time when Candice and I were here and the children were elsewhere.  We weren’t sure how we’d react, but we’ve taken to it nicely.

After that stroll through our favorite bookstore (Candice picked up an Alice Waters cookbook while I bought the new Richard Wolffe book Renegade on Obama’s candidacy), we went to a Mexican restaurant in the Adams Morgan neighborhood – Mixtec – that we’d wanted to visit for a couple of years.  We’ve had their food at parties and wanted to try out the full menu.  It was great authentic Mexican food and we’ve added Mixtec to our list of favorites.

With two teenagers we often have evenings to ourselves, but having an entire Saturday without swim meets, teenage taxi, and multiple schedules was the real switch.  After the gym I was able to start whittling down a five-week backlog in my home in-box (who knew there were checks in there to be cashed).  But Candice pulled me away by suggesting we go to Oriental East, a Silver Spring restaurant famous for its dim sum.  You have to get in line early to snag a table when the restaurant opens at 11 a.m. on Saturday, but the wait was worth it.  We’d been talking for six years about going for dim sum (think small appetizer plates of wonderful Chinese food served from rolling carts passing through a very full restaurant) but never found the time.  We shared a table with a couple (he was a retired Navy Seal turned grape grower and she was Asian and a powerhouse – we suspect they met during the Vietnam War) and their friend (a National Trust member and lover of travel), who helped us navigate the various offerings.  Oriental East’s dim sum is famous (our table partners said you’d have to go to Toronto to get better), and we certainly were impressed.  Add another to the list of favorites!

Finally, after working around the house, I decided that I’d had only two live baseball games this week and needed a third…so we took off for a Bethesda Big Train game, complete with Abe, the Nats racing president (see photo at top).  I wrote about College Wooden Bat baseball earlier this month…I’m sure that’s why Bethesda had a full house last evening!  Unfortunately for the Big Train, my bad luck this week held out and the home team lost again.  Nonetheless, it was a picture perfect night, with the temps in the mid-70s and not a cloud in the sky.

Books, good food, baseball…While we REALLY miss the children, Candice and I have decided that we can survive the Empty Nester Life when it finally arrives in a few more years.

More to come…

DJB

Five in a Row Too Much to Ask of Nats

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Nats Fathers Day 2009After an amazing streak where the Nats won four in a row from the big bad American League East – including a shutout against the Yankees and two walk-off wins in extra innings against the Blue Jays – they reverted to form today in losing 9-4 in front of a Father’s Day crowd that included the Browns.  Yes, Andrew and Claire sprung for Nat’s tickets for the old man (well, there’s more to the story which I’ll get to in a moment) and we all went for a day of baseball and fried food at Nationals Park.

Even the Nats reverting to their old ways of bad starting pitching, bad relief pitching, and untimely disappearances at key moments by the team’s 3-4-5 hitters couldn’t put a damper on a very nice Father’s Day weekend.

I saw my “celebration” of Father’s Day actually beginning on Friday, when Andrew did some community service work at the Whitman-Walker AIDS clinic and then met up with Claire for time with friends.   I picked them up on Friday evening and we had a fun conversation about life on the drive home.  Saturday brought the first dual meet of the season for the Gators.  Andrew and Andrew Out of the Blocks in the Left LaneClaire swam a bunch of races and did okay – although the late night with friends didn’t help when they hit the pool at 8:30 on Saturday morning.  Claire was in a relay that finished first and they both dropped time but both said later they felt the effects of the damp weather and high humidity.

Saturday evening the fun continued when we had three couples over for pot luck dinner and home made music.  It was great fun and even though the players came from various backgrounds (folk, rock-and-roll, bluegrass) the music came together surprisingly well.  Having a great blues harp player and a solid acoustic bassist in the bunch sure helped!

Which brings us to today’s game…and the story of the tickets.  We’ve given the twins credit cards (with their picture ID included) for their use when they travel later this week to Northern Ireland with their youth group.   They’ve become pretty good at using them only for essentials, but they decided to go online and buy the Nats tickets themselves.  They chose what looked like great seats, paid for them with their credit card, and then proudly presented the results to Candice.  She gulped when she saw the price and asked me how much baseball tickets should cost.  I told her there was a wide range and her eyebrows just rose silently.

When we arrived today and were escorted to the “stadium club” level with its private dining areas, nice clean bathrooms, and cushioned bottom seats, I finally understood Candice’s comment.  It later dawned on me…Claire goes to Nats games with a very good friend whose family has season tickets right behind the dugout.  The last time I took Andrew, we were guests through work of Bank of America and enjoyed one of their suites.  These seats were just in line with what they were use to!  Oh well, we’ll have a little talk (after Father’s Day is over) about how baseball games look just as great from the half-price seats.  But the sentiment meant a lot to me and we simply decided to laugh and have a great time…which we did.

And if five in a row is too much to ask of the Nats, it still has been a fun week to be a Washington fan.  Next up:  the Red Sox on Wednesday when I’ll go (in much cheaper seats) with a group of die-hard Boston fans from work.  Goooooo Nats!

Few things could be more wonderful to this father than to see his two beautiful and talented children healthy and living lives where they grow, learn, and contribute to the world around them.  I’m lucky that I get to see that every day, but it was especially nice to have the chance this weekend.  Then, to get to play music AND enjoy a baseball game with the family – that just made this a terrific Father’s Day!  It is a good reminder that I”m a lucky man.

More to come…

DJB

Bluegrass Nights at the Ryman

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Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky ThunderNext week begins the summer Bluegrass Nights at the Ryman series at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium.  Known as the Mother Church of Country Music and the home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 through 1974, the Ryman bills this series with the line, “Experience the best in bluegrass on the very stage where bluegrass was born over 60 years ago.”  That would be the evening where Earl Scruggs stepped on stage with Bill Monroe.  Here’s how Richard D. Smith describes that night in Can’t You Hear Me Callin’:  The Life of Bill Monroe:

For Earl’s first night on the Opry, Monroe picked out a fast number that would show off the newcomer’s dazzling style – “White House Blues,” an old song recounting the 1901 William McKinley assassination.  It was a perfect selection.  Scruggs stepped up to the microphone with apprehension, knowing that nothing like this had been heard to date on the Opry or even over WSM radio.

Use to the banjo as a country comedian’s prop, or hearing it picked or strummed in one of the quaint old styles, the audience was totally unprepared for the speedy, leaping avalanche of notes that issued from the five-string in the hands of the twenty-one-year-old from North Carolina.

They went wild.

For those in middle Tennessee, there’s a strong line-up for this year’s Bluegrass Nights, including Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, Ralph Stanley, Jim Lauderdale, Rhonda Vincent, Dan Tyminski, and more.  For those coming to Nashville for the National Preservation Conference in October, the opening plenary will be  held at the historic Ryman, which has a great preservation story.  Both events come highly recommended.

Thanks to the Bluegrass Blog for the note about the Ryman series.

More to come…

DJB