A 60-minute tour of Boston

It would be a lie to say it was the last thing on my mind.

I already knew late last month that I would be connecting through Boston on my flight from Long Beach to Richmond late Monday into Tuesday morning. As the day approached, I thought it was too bad I only had about an hour and 15 minutes to change planes; had it been four hours or so I might try to get pictures of the Massachusetts State House since I did not see it the last time I was in Boston in 2001.

Little did I know that when Christina took me to Long Beach Airport on Monday night that I would, in fact, get that four hour layover, and that approximately nine hours later I would be freezing my rear end off on the Boston Common.

It all started when the flight from Long Beach to Boston was delayed an hour because the crew was coming in on a delayed flight from San Francisco. This inconvenienced people who were headed to Dulles, since it was their plane, as well as the Boston-bound passengers. Our plane was sitting at the gate the whole time, but there was nobody to fly it or serve beer.

At first, the delay was only expected to be a half an hour, so the jetBlue people said I should still be able to make my connection to the 6:30 a.m. flight. I was offered an opportunity to rebook already at that point, but I figured there would be another flight to Richmond by lunchtime, and the lady said if I did not make the morning flight they would take care of me there.

We landed in Boston at 6:15 a.m., so things did not look so good. When the pilot was unable to find an open gate, that made things worse. When he finally got to a gate, the jetway was stuck (it WAS 9 degrees at the time) so that further delayed matters. Still, they were giving out gate information, and reassured the folks who were heading to Fort Lauderdale that their flight was being held, so I hoped I would be similarly lucky.

Getting to the gate was a bit of an ordeal of fast-walking with occasional bursts of speed, weighed down by a backpack that contained my laptop and Christmas presents and further encumbered by my camera bag. But I kept going, because if they held the Fort Lauderdale flight then maybe, just maybe, mine would still be there.

Obviously the story would end right there if the plane had not already begun taxiing toward the runway. In fact, the sign at the gate even gave "taxiing" as the flight's status. So there I stood, at 6:35 a.m., with no place to go for four hours. I called my Mom to tell her not to bother coming to the airport until 12:30 p.m. and then I thought about my next move. After all, I could probably go SOMEWHERE as long as I was back at the airport by 9 a.m..

Luckily, Christina and I discussed this possibility on Monday night, and she had enough time to look up some of  the specifics before my flight left Long Beach. It was basically this: Take the free Silver Line bus from Logan Airport through the Ted Williams Tunnel to South Station, then take the Red Line two stops toward Alewich. It was then an 8-minute walk, according to the MTA, but as it turns out you can already see the statehouse when you exit the station on the Boston Common.

It had warmed up to 12 degrees and I had on clothes more appropriate for 40 or 50, but I gutted it out. I walked across the Common, got my photos of the statehouse (that's No. 33 on the list now), then took more photos of a live-shot Channel 25 was doing on the other side of the street.

When I pulled up Foursquare to check in, the statehouse was nowhere to be found on the list, but near the top was the Bull and Finch, whose exterior was used for Cheers (the bar) on "Cheers" (the show). Since it was only five or six blocks away, I figured I should go down there and get some photos as well.

Soon after that, I realized that "HEY IT'S 12 DEGREES," and maybe I need to get back on the T and return to the airport. I was probably outside for an hour in that temperature, but I seem no worse for the wear. I'm sure the feeling in my fingers will come back by they time I'm done with this blog post.

Back at the airport, the security lines were not too bad (at least by Logan's standards). They were bringing a couple of kegs through and one of the supervisors kiddingly asked the guy in front of me if they belonged to him. After they both chuckled, I said, "Actually, they're mine," and all three of us enjoyed the joke.

My new ticket said the flight was leaving from Gate 28, but when I walked past Gate 26 it had apparently been moved there. Five minutes later they decided we should go to Gate 33. JetBlue was nice enough to give me a voucher for breakfast or lunch, so I stopped at a Dunkin' Donuts stand for a sandwich, a doughnut and a coffee (eat your heart out, Los Angeles).

The flight to Richmond left about 20 minutes late, but was smooth. And it was great to see my mom again after nearly a year since my last trip home. But I was happy that I turned what could have been a distressing situation into a positive experience.

I've Been (Nearly) Everywhere

Often when I am on a sports assignment for the Orange County Register the Johnny Cash song "I've Been Everywhere" runs through my head.

Sure, I had been out to Los Angeles to see my Dad on seven or eight trips since 1978, but the first chance to quantify some of the travel I have made around the Southland comes from the datelines of the football, basketball, baseball and softball games I have covered in the past 12 months.

Most of the games have been in Orange County, of course. I now know several ways to get around the nightly closings of the 405 near the 22 on the widening project that will probably be done sometime around 2022.

I'm pretty sure this list is comprehensive as of right now:

ANAHEIM
HUNTINGTON BEACH
WESTMINSTER
GARDEN GROVE
PLACENTIA
COSTA MESA
NEWPORT BEACH
IRVINE
LAKE FOREST
SANTA ANA
LONG BEACH
LOS ANGELES
TORRANCE
COMPTON
CARSON
ROLLING HILLS ESTATES
GLENDALE
PASADENA
CULVER CITY
EL SEGUNDO
MANHATTAN BEACH

Whew. Quite a list. I won't lie. I was a little concerned about going to Compton, but folks over there were great. And my Los Angeles entry came from a new high school in the south-central area, but, same thing. A great experience.

The non-league season has allowed me to stay closer to home, and save money on gasoline, but eventually I'll be on the road to Orange County again. We'll see how much that adds to the list real soon.

A nightmare on the 405

Okay, granted that this is nothing new, and all my friends back east are going to laugh about Southern California traffic because they always do, but the poorly advertised closure of the eastbound 22 ramp from the southbound 405 over the weekend, coupled with heavy traffic to San Diego, and then the somewhat usual nighttime road work, really made for a nightmare on Saturday.

There's a big project going on to improve connections between the 22, 405 and 605 in the Seal Beach area, and it is one that I am intimately familiar with since I am often in the area writing sports assignments for the Orange County Register, and one of my favorite places to play trivia is nearby. When I visited in August 2011, and drove to San Diego to see the Padres and Marlins, I had the fun of a three-hour drive down the I-5 that usually takes two hours.

I had noticed in passing that the 22 was going to be closed over the weekend, so with a little thought we could have avoided the bottleneck that started in the middle of Long Beach and stretched about about eight miles, but there is not much you can do when everyone in LA decides it would be nice to visit San Diego on a Saturday. Other than the eight-lane stretch of I-5, you cannot get around Camp Pendleton unless you drive 30 miles to the east and take I-15 south.

Christina and I were driving with our friend Dan, who is visiting from Calgary, to play trivia with LILJOL, who is so well-known in Buzztime circles that Ken Jennings mentioned playing with him in his book "Brainiac." I got a chance to play with Joel a few months ago, and had a lot of fun, so when Dan said he wanted to come out west following Triviapalooza 6.0 in Cincinnati, Christina and I were happy to make the return trip.

We got there later than we wanted, but still had a great time. Then, 13 games of Countdown later, it was time for us to head back to Torrance. We said our goodbyes, and just 90 minutes later we were already in Huntington Beach zipping along into....the mother of all traffic jams.

CalTrans, in its infinite wisdom, had decided that 11 p.m. on the Saturday of the U.S. Surfing Championships was an excellent time for a full freeway closure of the 405 at Westminster. This annual event draws several hundred thousand people to town (and is usually pretty peaceful, Sunday night's riot notwithstanding), and it should not have been a surprise that many of them were headed home after grabbing something to eat or drink after the competition.

So here we were stuck on the freeway with a lot of people who all wanted to get back to Los Angeles County at the end of a long day. And five lanes of traffic being reduced to one and then taken off on a poorly marked detour that was still four miles away.

Having seen similar, though less harrowing traffic,on the northbound 405 the week before, I exited early to make my own detour at Golden West Street, and that seemed to work well until we tried to get on the westbound 22 and saw that it, too, was closed at Valley View. The "nice GPS lady," as my friend Jim Heffernan calls her, was of absolutely no use as she would just try to put us back on the 405. Luckily, Dan is a highway buff and had an actual paper map in the car, so he found us a roundabout way that took us through Garden Grove and
Los Alamitos before getting us back to the 405 north and on the way back home.

I understand the need for overnight and weekend work, but I would think better communication between agencies could help reduce or eliminate a lot of this stress that seems to happen often. The message board signs all called attention to next weekend's 405 closure, but it was only at the Beach Boulevard exit where it was finally noted that they had closed the freeway RIGHT NOW. Too late to get in the exit lane, and they were still letting people onto the northbound 405 there. Also, especially on a Saturday, an 11 p.m. closure seems a bit early. I would say they could wait until midnight or even 1 a.m., and if it is closed until 9 a.m. Sunday they still get eight hours. On weekdays they need to open the lanes by 5 a.m., of course.

Four hours to San Diego and more than three to get back is not anyone's idea of a relaxing trip. Christina noted it was the worst jam she had seen in 15 years living in Southern California. I'm just glad we did not have to set up camp on Springdale Street and wait for first light to get out of there.

Tijuana beisbol is...wacky

A big crowd gathered at Esadio Gasmart in Tijuana for the Toros' game against Ensenada on June 8.

Minor league baseball can be wacky. My experience with entertainment from Mexico (mostly the Bee Guy from “The Simpsons”) has shown it to be wacky as well. So what do you get when you combine minor league baseball AND Mexico? That’s right, infinite wackiness.

Knowing how much Christina and I like minor league baseball, her friend Cynthia suggested that we might enjoy a visit to Estadio Gasmart for a Toros de Tijuana game. Cynthia has visited Tijuana a few times with Turista Libre, which runs day trips in northern Baja California.

The Toros play in Mexico’s Northern League, which is not to be confused with the AAA-level Mexican League. We were still trying to figure out the particulars, but it seems like this six-team league – with teams also located in Ensenada, Tecate, Mexicali, San Luis Rio Colorado and San Quintin -- plays at a AA level. The Tijuana roster included a few players who had been part of major league organizations here in the United States, most notably Reggie Abercrombie, who worked his way through the Marlins chain to play parts of two seasons in Miami, and also saw some time as a Houston Astro.

Still, a lot of this was unknown to us, so it was with some trepidation that we headed to San Ysidro earlier this month to meet with with Cynthia and about 15 other folks to seek out authentic Mexican cuisine and a Toros game against the Ensenada Marineros. We were met near the border by former Union-Tribune writer Derrik Chinn, the brains behind Turisa Libre, which he admits he started after having difficulty convincing friends from nearby San Diego to visit him and see the sights in Tijuana.

We parked on the U.S. side and walked into Tijuana.

The crossing into Mexico on foot was quick and before we knew it we were walking toward the spot where the bus would pick us up. We were waiting for two more groups who would meet us there and then we were on our way. Since this was more of an overall tourist venture, the group stopped for some authentic Mexican cuisine -- Christina had a tripe taco -- and then picked up some beer before continuing on to the stadium.

The bus driver had to take us on a couple of back streets to get around traffic, and it was already the fourth inning when we got inside the stadium, but we still had plenty of time to get a sense of what minor league baseball is like south of the border. 

Christina and I had just found seats a section or two past first base when Javier Brito, a former Astros and Padres prospect, and Abercrombie hit back-to-back home runs to give Tijuana a 2-0 lead. When Brito hit his homer, we noticed that everyone came out of the dugout, but his first congratulations came from the gorilla mascot, Chango 0.

Javier Brito got a furry welcome after his home run.

As it turned out, the mascots pretty much had the run of the place, with a chicken named Pollo Layo getting much more involved with the umpire at first base than the San Diego Chicken or Philly Phanatic would dare. The chicken even transitioned from the Ensenada side of the field to the first base line during one at bat. Toro Torin (the bull who serves at the main mascot), Pollo Layo and Chango 0 were seldom out of sight, and filled much of the 2 ½-minute changeovers with help from cheerleaders. During one of the skits the chicken came out dressed as a police officer but eventually ended up nearly naked. I am still quite shaken.

This was a little more over the top than the work of the San Diego Chicken or Philly Phanatic.

At one point, Pollo Layo ran from the Ensenda side of the field between pitches.

 

A nearly naked masot...still scary.

 Music was played between pitches during each at bat, including some tunes familiar to ballpark denizens in the U.S. At one point, the scoreboard showed people in the stands, such as a guy wearing a cowboy hat, and appropriate music was played to the delight of the crowd.

Another time, a guy who looked like Pitbull (thanks for clearing that up, Christina) was shown and they played a Pitbull song and would not leave him alone until he obeyed the request that he dance (“Que baile! Que baile!”) displayed on the scoreboard. Meanwhile, the public address announcer talked very fast and was quite boisterous; delivering the name of each Toros batter twice (JAVIER BRITO!!!! Javier Brito.) 

When they tell you to que baile, you'd best que baile.

These items were 50 pesos, or about $4.

 In the stands, the vendors got a workout, selling everything from plates of shrimp and meat to churros filled with several kinds of icing and even American ice cream.

 We recognized the cotton candy despite different packaging, but there were bags of other items we had no idea about. The vendors also sold $1 Tecate beers with paper cups dipped in a hot pepper powder. Hot dogs and hamburgers were available from stands throughout the concourse.

The vendors even sold plates of meat and shrimp in the stands.

 The atmosphere was amazing. As Christina noted, it was almost like something from a dream. The excitement was palpable, even if some of the baseball was a little less sound than one might like. (We got to see two rundowns between first and second base within 15 minutes of sitting down.)

A Toro player is erased at second base via a rundown.

Former Marlin and Astro Reggie Abercrombie

As the game winded down with the Toros up 3-0, I wanted to head down behind the Toros dugout because I had brought along two cards to be signed by REHHIE ABERCROMBIE (as the PA guy was calling the former Carolina Mudcat and Albuquerque Isotope). We got there just as the game was ending, and called out Reggie’s name. He stopped, and was nice enough to autograph the cards.

It was a great time, and going in a group with Turista Libre certainly helped allay any fears I might have had about going to the stadium, which recently underwent $2 million in renovations. The bus ride and game ticket was only $15 for each of us, so it was a great deal. 

 

Reggie Abercrombie signs cards after the game.

Christina and I had such a good time that we might go back, although the league’s season only lasts from May to July, so it would have to be next year.The parking lot had a lot of cars with California plates, and it turns out the stadium is not far from the border crossing at the 905, which is not quite as busy as the station right in downtown Tijuana. 

Reggie Abercrombie is congratulated after fourth-inning homer.

For those who wonder about these things, the businesses we went into and all of the stadium vendors and concessions accepted U.S. dollars at 12 pesos each, which is a good rate, and yes you need a passport even if you are only going to Tijuana. Most of the fans we encountered in the ballpark were friendly, even if we could not converse very well. The smile after a home run does not require translation.

The Zen of a Saturday morning at Dulles Airport

It might be because I still insist on using the walkway whenever there is enough time, or the fact that Gate A28 appears to be out of use, but whatever the reason, it's pretty darn quiet at Washington Dulles International Airport this morning. CNN is on the TVs, the donuts are fresh and the pace unhurried. In fact, there was no line at security. A quiet start might even mean the ability to get a little sleep on the plane. Right now, I just like the quiet. And my chocolate frosted donut.

Escaping The White Death

I didn't plan to spend part of this weekend at my mom and stepdad's place south of Richmond. But weather emergencies have a way of changing plans.

I woke up relatively early on Saturday and checked outside. Sure enough, the weather guys were right and there was snow sticking to the cars in the lot. I took a photo, pasted it on Facebook and made a phone call before I dozed off for another hour, with visions of a day of college football and decluttering in my head.

About 9 a.m., I was up for good and turned on the television, watching NBC4's coverage of Snotober. Or Ocsnowber, not sure which one of these will stick. I was falling back asleep again when the power went out. The way these outages go, if the power is gone for more than about a minute, it becomes open-ended. Could be back in an hour, or three, or seven.

With the snow still coming down, I figured Shenandoah Valley Electric Cooperative might just tell us we had to wait for the weather to improve before a crew could be dispatched. And the forecast called for the snow to continue until 6 p.m., so it would be a long, cold afternoon if i didn't take action.

So action, I took. I figured if I could make it over the Blue Ridge before things got too ugly in the Shenandoah Valley, I could head for Prince George, where there would be heat, power and company. So I had to hatch a plan to get out of the house as quickly as possible.

First things first. Stop trying to turn on lights. They do not work when the power is off. So I grabbed the "electric lantern" I have had since the Y2K scare, and put it in the bathroom. The water heater still had plenty of hot water, so I was able to take a quick shower. That thing about the lights? Well, the bathroom fan works the same way, it turns out.

There was plenty of light downstairs, and I only opened the fridge one time, so I could get milk for a bowl of Cap'n Crunch. Coffee would have to wait for Sheetz in Opal. Then I piled everything I figured I'd need for two days into the car and headed south.

As I expected, the first 30 miles of the trip was the absolute worst despite sticking to Interstates 81 and 66. It was a little hairy on U.S. 17 north of Warrenton, but the rest of the trip was uneventful, save for a near-death experience with a pair of snowbirds from Ontario who felt this was a lovely time to travel south for the winter. Those motorhomes don't do well in good weather, so when one of them decided to try to dislodge me from the right lane, I had to hang on tight.

I managed to get to Prince George in time for the second half of the Virginia Tech-Dook game, and the visit went well, I had not seen my folks in a few weeks, and there was plenty of college football to watch and good food to eat. The power was restored in Winchester about 4 p.m., I am told.

But an unexpected trip home can be good for the soul.

’Appy to oblige

My minor league baseball adventures took me south and west of Winchester last weekend, taking of an opportunity to triple the number of Appalachian League teams I’ve seen in one day.

That’s right. Triple.

First, a little background. The Appy and the Pioneer leagues share the bottom rung of the climb to the majors. Technically, the Gulf Coast and Arizona leagues are lower, but their games are free-admission affairs played at noon on the back fields at the spring training complexes. That means the players who take the field in places like Missoula and Bluefield have begun their trek toward stardom.

But it’s still a long trip, and when you are a Mariner in Pulaski, 3,000 miles from Seattle, it can seem like an uphill climb. And it is, because Everett, Beloit, High Desert, Jackson and Tacoma all stand in your way.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Somehow over the years I had managed to see seven of the eight teams in the Pioneer (I’m coming after you Helena!) but only two in the Appy, despite the fact that the Pulaski Mariners are just 210 miles from here (yes, that IS closer than Idaho Falls). Steven and I stopped in Danville to see the Braves play the Bluefield Orioles eight years ago, and I had been meaning to see more of the teams that are spread between Tennessee, North Carolina and the Virginias, but never got around to it. Until Sunday.

I set out at 10 a.m., and managed to reach Princeton, W.Va., a shade over four hours later. The Rays were hosting the Greeneville Astros, and for $5 I got a box seat, and another $4 got me two slices of pizza and a can of root beer. Greeneville blew the game open with a hit-and-mistake fueled, five-run fourth inning. I had to hit the road at the start of the eighth, but the final score was the same 8-3 it was when I headed down I-77 to Pulaski.

There I found a gem of a ballpark that I cannot wait to visit again next summer. Sadly for the Mariners, they committed six errors in the first three innings, and despite out-hitting Elizabethton, the Twins managed an easy 11-3 win. I also got to see Cory Williamson, a former Winchester Royal, pitch two innings for Elizabethton, so there was a local element to the trip.

By the way, admission to Calfee Park was $4, and a bratwurst and a Coke set me back another $4. Since there was no parking fee at either venue, I managed to hit two games and get eats for $17. Now THAT’s a great price.

The gasoline for a 500-mile round trip on the other hand….

Missing AJ's

Stopped in at the Berkey Creamery at Penn State again over the weekend, and it got me thinking about the late, great AJ’s, which was on the campus of VCU during my time there in the mid-1980s.

Of course, the Creamery is a must-stop for a lot of folks when they are in State College. The lines can be legendary, which is why they must enforce rules similar to those of the “Seinfield” Soup Nazi to keep it moving. There are usually two dozen flavors available, and a cone or cup costs $3.25 these days, while a milkshake is $4. You tell the person at the cash register what you want, he or she repeats it back and then you pay, and go to the dipping station, where they will find the appropriate person to complete your order. It’s all fairly efficient.

And the ice cream is outstanding. They say it’s less than 24 hours from the cow to the cone. If I may recommend a flavor, I would say the Chocolate Chocolate Nut, which was called Palmer Mooseum with Nuts the first time I stopped in the old Creamery in 2004.

Mixing flavors is not allowed at the Penn State Creamery, and only one person has been successful in breaking that rule. President Clinton managed to get strawberry and Peachy Paterno in one order, according to legend. Contrast that to the Michigan State creamery, where they will mix flavors and the line backs up accordingly.

And contrast that to the chief charm of AJ’s, which was the mixing in of nuts, cookies, candy bars and all other kinds of matter on a cutting board. Today, Cold Stone Creamery does that everywhere, but 30 years ago it was the kind of radical thing you’d only find in places like Georgetown.

When I got to VCU in 1983, AJ’s was in the lower level of some building on Grace Street, half a block down from a Haagen-Dazs store that was right on the corner with Shaffer Street. I probably frequented that store for a while before I had heard enough about AJ’s to check it out.

What Cold Stone does these days was called a personalized cup at AJ’s. They started with ice cream made fresh in the store earlier in the day. One of the best flavors was Coffee Oreo, which actually negated the need to get a personalized cup. Occasionally, you could find an entire Oreo in the middle of a cone, although they usually chopped them up fairly well.

Eventually, the Haagen-Dazs closed and AJ’s took its spot at the corner of Grace and Shaffer. It was a good place to slip away in the middle of my photojournalism class on Wednesdays. After all, there is only so much you can do in a five-hour class.

AJ’s eventually opened a location at Cloverleaf Mall around the time I moved to Luray, and I’m not sure when it disappeared from there or campus. If I had to guess, it was sometime in the 1990s.

That wasn’t the first time a Richmond ice cream institution disappeared. I still remember moving to the city in 1971 and Dad taking us to the Clover Room on

Broad Street

.

While many of these places come and go, others, like the Berkey Creamery, endure. Just make sure you know what you want when you get to the counter.

Yeah, I was in Indy for 15 minutes

I’m blaming this on Topper Shutt, although it’s certainly my fault.

Less than 24 hours ago, I drove past one of my favorite ballparks, a place I haven’t been in eight years, but skipped the chance to go to a game.

After spending an awesome extended weekend in Cincinnati, making friends with a bunch of trivia players from across the country, I had a free day before I needed to return to Winchester. What to do?

As soon as it became apparent that I was not going to have to ferry anyone back to town, I figured I’d find a game somewhere on the way home. Of course, most maps are not going to show Indianapolis as being on the way back from Cincinnati, but hey, Victory Field is awesome, I have never seen the AAA Pirates at home (the Indians were a Brewers club in 2003) and, what the heck, I still make the decisions around here.

The run up Interstate 74 was remarkably smooth and I pulled into Indy just after 1 p.m., an hour before the game. Drove past Lucas Oil Field, got closer to the baseball stadium and saw lots of people headed to the park, and plenty of guys who would be glad to give me a place to put the car for five bucks.

I also saw a black sky. I mean, a REALLY black sky.

OK, I got this one figured out. I drove past the stadium and turned onto the road that front the Indiana state Capitol. Having just been in town last year, I remembered where I had parked at a meter, and this would give me a chance to check the radar and make a few phone calls.

First up, check the weather. My phone has a nifty app from Channel 9 that includes a really good radar. When you start it up, the smiling face of chief meteorologist Charles “Topper” Shutt greets you. I had to swipe across the screen a couple of times to get from Washington to Indy. The colors west of the city included lots of red and purple, and some others I can’t properly describe. I was pretty sure one was black. And this IS tornado country. Strike one.

I called a buddy who I often get minor league sets for. “What do you need from Indianapolis, because that’s where I am,” I asked. He needed nothing, just picked up the 2011 set at a baseball card show a couple of weeks ago. Strike two.

I was still undaunted, that is until the wind kicked up. And the rain started to pelt the car.  I started thinking about a trip to Toledo earlier this year, which included two hours in a pregame rain delay followed by no game. And no chance to use the rain check. Did I really want to plunk down $5 to park and another $12 for a ticket to cower under cover for an hour or two, only to find out there would be no game and I was still nine hours from home? Strike three.

I briefly considered a couple of options. Go to the Speedway Museum. Find a mall and wait there for a bit to see if the weather would miraculously clear. But as I got on eastbound Interstate 70, it poured and poured, and I had no idea where I was, so the safest thing was to stay on the road home.

Which is why I cringed a half hour or so later when I found the Indians’ local radio station. They started the broadcast with all of the other International League scores from a handful of games in progress, then went on to the majors, and they don’t do that if they are getting ready for the first pitch.

Twenty miles outside of Indy, still in the pouring rain, I hear the guy say, “They are taking the tarp off the field and they hope to be playing here shortly.” What?

I stopped for a paper, looked at the radar again and somehow all that color west of town had disappeared, draining from the screen the way it did from my face. I’d just gotten out of the worst of the storm and would have to drive back through it if I even entertained the idea of going back. And if I’d go back, who’s to say the game would still be played? So I continued east as the play-by-play guy talked with the official scorer to fill time, putting up with static on my radio every time there was a bolt of lightning. And there was a lot of lightning.

I could still hear the game by the time I got to Richmond, Ind., and the kid for Indy had a no-hitter going into the fourth or fifth. When I got home, I checked the web. He didn’t manage to keep the no-no, but got a 3-0 win over Rochester in a game that was over by 5:30 before a crowd of better than 8,000. Thanks to modern technology, poor decision-making and, yes, Topper Shutt, I wasn’t one of them.