Baseball Roadtrip

By Paul A Marsnik

Hit the road for a deep dive into baseball, the American pastime.

On a hot summer day in 1987, a group of guys who call themselves "The Amoeba" hit the road in a rented motorhome that they call "The Bago." Their mission is to experience the game of baseball the way it was meant to be, in the great outdoors on lovely summer aft

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Feb 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889266297

Book preview

Baseball Road Trip

Baseball Road Trip

Paul Marsnik

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2023 Paul Marsnik

All rights reserved.

Baseball Road Trip

ISBN

979-8-88926-630-3 Paperback

979-8-88926-629-7 Ebook

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1.

The Metrodome

Chapter 2.

The Road Trip Team

Chapter 3.

The First Leg

Chapter 4.

Royals Stadium

Chapter 5.

Postgame in Kansas City

Chapter 6.

Kansas City Thugs

Chapter 7.

Amoebas and Food Pills

Chapter 8.

The Amoeba Grows

Chapter 9.

Busch Stadium

Chapter 10.

Sportsman’s Park

Chapter 11.

The Local Tavern

Chapter 12.

Night Riders in the Bago

Chapter 13.

Waffle House

Chapter 14.

McCuddy’s

Chapter 15.

Old Comiskey

Chapter 16.

Empty the Pisser

Chapter 17.

The Wild Hare

Chapter 18.

Hamburger King

Chapter 19.

The Friendly Confines

Chapter 20.

Chicago to Milwaukee

Chapter 21.

Bago Blowout

Chapter 22.

Wally Wheelz Inn

Chapter 23.

Spinning Out of Control in Beloit

Chapter 24.

Re-entry

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Some of my earliest memories as a kid were at the ballpark. Dad used to take me to watch the Twins at Metropolitan Stadium. At The Met, I was introduced to Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, Mudcat Grant, Jim Kaat, and others. They would become my heroes.

I recall entering the massive parking lot in our 1963 Chevy Impala and seeing Metropolitan Stadium for the first time. As far as ballparks go, it was nothing special, but to a seven-year-old kid, it was like the Taj Mahal (if the Taj Mahal was filled with old men smoking cigars). To this day, whenever I smell a cigar, I am taken back to the old Met. My Dad would buy a scorecard and he taught me how to keep score. I still keep score at most games I attend. At the old Met, I was also introduced to Schweigert hot dogs, Big Dip frosty malts, and popcorn that came in a cone that could later be used as a makeshift megaphone. 

The ballpark was heaven—blue skies, green grass, and unlimited possibilities. With the dawn of spring each year, I was certain this would be the year the Twins would win the World Series. Then, one day in 1980 came a crushing blow, the announcement the old Met would be replaced with the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. My cathedral would go the way of the wrecking ball, and with it, part of my soul. 

I vowed never to set foot in that godforsaken hell hole called the dome. The old Met represented all that was good. The Metrodome represented all that was evil. A Teflon sky, the never changing temperature, no parking lot for tailgating, plastic seats, flat beer. I simply refused to watch baseball, football, or any other sport in that place. Never! 

Never lasted about two years. Although I didn’t watch games live during those two years, I did maintain a casual interest in the Twins as they began to put together the seeds of a ballclub that looked like a contender for the first time in over a decade. Young guys named Hrbek, Gaetti, and Viola along with a rookie named Kirby Puckett grabbed my interest, and I decided it was time to end the Metrodome boycott. 

My first impressions of the dome were pretty much what I had expected—dull, drab, and uninspiring with the stench of stale wiener water permeating the entire depressing place. But something was oddly intriguing about the place. Watching baseball in there was like nothing I had ever experienced. The capacity of the dome was about fifty-five thousand, yet rarely were there more than fifteen thousand in attendance.

The baseball bounced off the fake grass like a super ball. Infield grounders that would be a routine out turned into singles. Pop-ups would get stuck in the roof. The sound system would often play the theme from Ghostbusters, which was appropriate because the strangeness of the place made it rather spooky for the visiting team. What I didn’t experience in 1984, and would not experience until October of 1987, was the deafening roar of a crowd of fifty-five thousand cheering fans in there. That deafening roar would become a significant factor in the Twins winning every single postseason game in the Metrodome on their way to the World Series Championship in 1987. 

Early in that magical 1987 season, my friend Jack and I hatched the idea for a baseball road trip (BRT). We gathered a group of guys, which we would later label the amoeba, rented a motor home we called a bago, and set out to experience baseball the way it was meant to be experienced, in the great outdoors on summer afternoons and evenings. We made it to six ballparks—Metrodome, Royals, Busch, Comiskey, Wrigley, and Memorial—in five days and a tradition was born. Thirty-five years later the BRT tradition lives on. Over the years, the BRT has been to 127 ball games at ninety-seven different ballparks, many of which have since been bulldozed like the old Met. As the bulldozers demolished those old ballparks, they no doubt took with them pieces of the souls of people like me. Each year we add a ballpark or two and try to put our hand on the pulse of another couple of cities or towns with their unique ball game experiences. 

This book aims to bring you along on the baseball road trip—inside the bago, with the amoeba, at the ballpark, and in the bar before and after the game. Although most of the stories in this book are based on real occurrences, the book is fiction. Names have been changed and stories have been embellished or made up. Be forewarned, this is not really a book about baseball. You won’t find long descriptions of dramatic baseball games or analytics about great players. You will find the story of a guy and his friends who hit the road in search of the ultimate baseball experience, but along the way they find something very different and much more valuable.

Chapter 1:

The Metrodome

Jack and Pern were not sitting in section 204 to get a good view of the game. They were in 204 because tickets were four dollars, and they would have ample room to stretch out. Less than twenty other fans were sitting in section 204 on this early May evening in 1987. The total attendance at this game was less than nine thousand. The Hubert H. Humphry Metrodome (also known as the dome) was a utilitarian monstrosity designed to host baseball, football, and even basketball games indoors while shielding spectators from the harsh Minnesota weather. For Jack and Pern, who had grown up watching baseball in outdoor ballparks, the dome was a joke, a travesty, a mockery of what a ballpark was supposed to be. 

Pern was in seat number one on the aisle and Jack was in seat number three. From section 204 in the upper deck in center field at the Metrodome, home plate appeared to be miles away.

Jack and Pern had developed a well-orchestrated routine for the Metrodome games. On this night it was Pern’s turn to bring the beer. He arrived home at about 6 p.m., after a day of building houses in the hot sun. He took six beers from the refrigerator, usually Budweiser but sometimes Old Style or Grain Belt Premium, and put them in the freezer. Then he took a shower to rinse off the sawdust and construction grime from his weary body. Pern wrapped the nearly frozen beers in a paper towel and aluminum foil and put them in a plastic bag. He grabbed his wallet, a tin of Copenhagen, and a windbreaker, and he was off to the Metrodome. 

Jack and Pern met outside gate H with windbreakers draped over their arms as they purchased tickets. With tickets in hand and beers securely stashed in the windbreakers, Jack and Pern confidently proceeded through the turnstiles. There was no bag check. There was no body scan. There was nothing but a tired Metrodome employee sitting on a chair, and the employee had no intention of checking to see what Jack and Pern had inside their windbreakers.

It was a warm spring evening in Minneapolis. A perfect night to watch baseball or do anything, outdoors. Unfortunately, a Twins game at the dome was anything but an outdoor experience. As Pern nudged his way through the turnstile, he left the clean crisp outdoor air and was overwhelmed by the disgusting smell of wiener water. Pern was accustomed to this olfactory assault by now as he had been to dozens of baseball games since he decided to lift his boycott of the dome several years before. 

When the dome opened in 1982, Pern vowed he would never set foot in that place because it represented the end of all that was good. The decision to build the dome meant the tearing down of Metropolitan Stadium (the Met), a place where many of Pern’s fondest early memories resided. At the Met, he was introduced to his heroes: Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, Jim Kaat, Mudcat Grant, and Rod Carew of the Twins. The Met was where the Twins almost beat the Dodgers in game seven of the 1965 World Series. In the vast parking lot at the Met, Pern and his high school buddies would organize elaborate tailgate parties before and after Vikings games. Pern recalled jumping over the wall and storming onto the field with his buddies at the Met after the Vikings won the NFC championship. They were among the drunken throng that toppled the goalposts.

The Vikings would lose four super bowls in those years, but Pern was always hopeful the next year would be the one where Bud Grant and the Mighty Norsemen would make it to the promised land—until 1982, when hope died for Pern. The old Met fell to the wrecking balls and bulldozers, and the Vikings would never again enjoy the home-field advantage that came with playing on the Frozen Tundra. Pern shed a tear when he went to the last event at the Met, a Vikings game in December of 1981. At that point, he made his vow to never enter the dome for football, baseball, or anything. The boycott lasted until 1984 when for the first time in two decades, the Twins appeared to have put together a ballclub that could contend for a pennant. Pern decided watching baseball indoors was better than not watching baseball at all. 

Jack quickly found a vendor and bought two small Metrodome beers in plastic cups. The Metrodome beers, priced at $4.75, were always disgustingly flat and just slightly cooler than room temperature. Pern and Jack drank their flat Metrodome beers quickly and now they each had a plastic cup in which to pour their ice-cold Old Styles.

Pern looked around to make sure no security personnel were nearby, and he set his can of Old Style on the floor between his feet. Popping open the can, he let out a fake cough to mask the sound, and he carefully poured the contents of the can into the plastic cup. It was a perfect pour with about one inch of frothy head and just a little bit of foam trickling down the outside of the plastic cup.

Jack completed his Old Style transfer just a few seconds after Pern. His pour was equally perfect. Once they each had a legit beer in hand, Jack and Pern touched glasses in a wordless toast—part of the ritual. Prepare the beers, smuggle the beers in, drink one flat beer, pour one legit beer, the wordless toast, and enjoy the game.

The Twins’ opponent on this Tuesday night was the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles jumped out to a 2–0 lead in the third on a homer by Jim Dwyer. It caromed off the vertical seats and back onto the field. They extended the lead to 4–0 in the sixth on a homer by Eddie Murray. Murray’s blast was a bomb to right field, soaring high above the right field wall, which was not really a wall but a forty-foot-high plastic sheet known as the baggie. The baggie and vertical seats were just two of the many oddities in the dome. With seatbacks facing straight down, the vertical seats could be moved into a horizontal position for Viking or Gopher football games, but for baseball, there they were, facing the ground as a sort of reminder this place was not a ballpark but more of an ill-conceived abomination.

By the bottom of the sixth, Jack and Pern were finishing Old Style number two. The score remained 4–0 through the seventh as Jack and Pern cracked and poured their third and final Old Style.

After the Twins went down one, two, three in the seventh, Pern turned to Jack and said, Look at this place. It’s disgusting. What the fuck are we doing watching baseball in this godforsaken hell hole? 

I hear ya, man, said Jack as he gazed at the Teflon sky. This ain’t how it’s supposed to be. This ain’t baseball. This is bullshit. Teflon sky, the stench of wiener water. This place sucks.

What was it like going to ball games on the south side of Chicago when you were a kid? inquired Pern.

Nothing like this, said Jack as he waved his hand toward the baggie. My dad would take me to games at old Comiskey. What a beautiful ballpark. I loved those days. Dad would tell stories about the go-go Sox of 1959. They made it to the World Series with Luis Aparicio, Nellie Fox, and Early Wynn.

Did you go to Comiskey with your buddies when you got older? asked Pern.

Oh, hell yeah. Nothing like a Sunday doubleheader. We’d spend a whole glorious summer day drinking beer and basking in the sun without a care in the world. God, I loved that shit.

Pern finished his beer, tossed the cup to the ground, and asked, "When was the last time you watched a major league game outdoors, the way it was supposed to be? 

Long time, said Jack, still staring at the Metrodome roof. Too long. We should do a road trip to Chicago where we can watch the grand old game in the great outdoors.

I’d be down for that, said Pern. We could hit a game at County Stadium in Milwaukee on the way there or on the way back.

Hell, we could swing through St. Louis and catch a game at Busch Stadium on the way to Chicago, said Jack.

If we did that, we might as well catch a game at Royals Stadium in Kansas City on the way to St. Louis, said Pern. Hey, maybe we could get like six or eight guys and rent one of those Winnebagos like we did with the rugby team back in college when we went to New Orleans.

Those Mardi Gras bago rugby trips were insane, said Jack. A bago trip to see outdoor ball games. I like it! I just wonder if we could get any of the lads to do it."

Neither Jack nor Pern had any idea they had planted the seeds of a tradition that would span five decades.

The Orioles added one run in the top of the ninth. In the bottom of the inning, the Twins staged a rally. Steve Lombardozzi singled in Greg Gagne for the first Twins run, and Kirby Puckett hit a three-run homer to make the score 5–4. As Puckett’s blast landed in the left field seats, Jack and Pern erupted, chanting, Kir-bee, Kir-bee.

Jack and Pern were the only ones left in section 204. The other fans had left to do something more important on a Tuesday night, perhaps get home in time to watch anchorman Don Shelby and the ten o’clock news on channel four. Less than five thousand