All posts filed under: Baseball

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.) 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 …

Wooden Bat League Baseball Makes the Big Time

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Our 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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Regular 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: …

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 …

Happy July 4th

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We’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 is 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 …

Exploring the Empty Nester Life

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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 …

Five in a Row Too Much to Ask of Nats

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After 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 …

Wooden Bats and Summer Nights

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One of our joys of summer is watching and supporting college wooden bat baseball.  This is baseball for college players to help them learn to hit with wooden bats after years of hitting with aluminum bats.  (Don’t you just hate the “ping” of the aluminum bat on ball?) We’re lucky to have one of the top wooden bat leagues in the country here in the DC area – the Cal Ripken Sr. Collegiate Baseball League – with two teams within easy driving distance.  We’ve had season passes to the Bethesda Big Train for a number of years and we also catch some games of the Silver Spring-Takoma Thunderbolts. Candice helped organize a special event for her employer – Christ Episcopal School Night – at the Bethesda Big Train game on Friday.  It was great fun.  Some 80 CES parents, staff, and students came out as part of a 700+ crowd on a beautiful summer night to see the Big Train absolutely crush the Alexandria Aces.  When we left after 7 (we had children to collect), …

Tiger Stadium Going, Going…

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Yet another baseball icon may soon be history.  The City of Detroit began demolition yesterday on the last remaining – and most historic – parts of Tiger Stadium.  This in spite of the fact that the city had agreed to maintain the stadium until an appropriate adaptive reuse of the stadium or a viable new use of the site was in place.   Neither has happened.  With the city’s commencement of demolition, Detroit is moving towards having yet another vacant piece of land with no plans for redevelopment in place. A court injunction is in place this weekend, stopping the demolition for a short time.  To read the story – and find out how you can contact the City Council and Mayor’s Office in Detroit to oppose the demolition plans – visit PreservationNation’s blog. Tiger Stadium was built in the same year as Fenway Park.  While Boston figured out how to save its iconic ballpark and make it one of the most beloved places in America (except to Yankee fans), Detroit went with the allure of …

Great Day for a Ballgame

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Check one more off the list of MLB ballparks visited as I joined several friends and colleagues to take advantage of our work trip to Kansas City and catch the Royals at Kauffman Stadium on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  Barb, Dolores (pictured with DJB at left), Barb’s husband Rob, and Royce joined our hosts the Kempers for a great day at the ballpark.  Kauffman, built in 1973, is one of the earliest of the new modern baseball-only stadiums that helped turned Kansas City into a mecca for sports architects.  They just completed a major $250 million renovation before the start of this season.  The clean, modernist design has held up well and helped end the era of cookie-cutter multi-purpose stadiums. With two architects and the rest preservationists in our group, we spent a lot of time talking about the architecture.   But we primarily spent the day having a great deal of fun.  From the beginning, the Royals have come up with some great activities that make you smile.  It was Kids Day at the ballpark and kids …