I Don't Care if I Never Get Back

I went to a Mariners game a couple weeks ago, and as soon as I stepped into the ballpark and looked out onto the field, felt the sun, smelled the grass -- it made me nostalgic for the Eugene Emeralds.

The next week, I went to a Beavers game at PGE park. It was a fun time, but the park had a major league attitude, and the Beavers are not a major league team. And, there was no smell of grass. No grass at all.

So, again, it made me nostalgic for the Eugene Emeralds.

When I was a kid, probably starting around the age of 10 or 11 and lasting into my early teens, my Dad used to like to take me out to the old ballpark in Eugene to watch the good old Ems several times each summer. I've never been that into sports, but usually if I have someone to watch them with who is enthusiastic, it rubs off, and I can get into it. Also, as a kid, it was just something fun to do with Dad. The baseball provided nice atmosphere, but I was more interested in the other stuff:

First of all, the car ride was about 2 hours each way, since we lived in McMinnville. And, the games were usually in the evening, which meant we wouldn't get home until midnight the nights we stayed to the end. It was a chance to talk to Dad, and sometimes out of boredom we'd spin serialized stories about Old Rex, a world traveling German Shepard who smoked cigars and rode the rails. His sidekick was Alaskan pilot, "Amazing" Grace, who he met when he was prospecting in the Yukon.

Then, when we got to the park, there were all these great concession stands -- a row of wooden booths on a section of blacktop outside the stadium wall. Dad would always get a big, juicy chicken sandwich grilled by a gigantic chef on a gigantic barbecue in the sunshine. I'd get a mini-pizza from the Track Town Pizza stand. Sometimes we would browse the merchandise. I got an Ems hat one time that I wore every day for years. People would ask who the Ems were, and I'd explain that they're a minor league ball team out of Eugene, and people would wonder why, of all teams, of all sports, would I be an Ems fan?

Well, a big part of it was the ballpark itself. Civic Stadium was (and probably still is) about as old-timey as they get -- not a bad seat in the house, grass and dirt field, rickety bleachers, not a sign of the modern flashy technology that has taken over every other stadium in the U.S. When you went up the stairs into the ballpark, as you came out of the shadows and into the sunlight, the fresh green grass spread out in front of you, and it felt like you were stepping into the past.

Concession vendors prowled the stands, offering peanuts and beer. They'd throw the pack of peanuts up to you along with an empty tennis ball -- you'd stuff your cash in the slit of the tennis ball, and toss it back. Intermittently, you'd hear the voice of a woman bellowing, "GET YOUR ICE COLD MILLER BEER HERE!" Then, you'd see a stocky blonde woman with several pints of beer strapped to her, climbing the bleacher steps towards you. Sometimes Dad couldn't resist and had to buy a beer out of respect for her impressive wind pipes. And, sometimes he'd let me have a taste.

Dad usually bought the scorecard and kept score the old fashioned way, pencilling in what happened each inning. He'd show me how to do it, but I would usually only half pay attention because it was so much to keep track of. But, like making popcorn in a pot on the stove, which my Dad also likes to do and passed on to me, keeping score by pencil at the ball game seems to be a thing of the past.

The cool thing about being into a small team like that, in a small park like that, was that you got to be pretty close to your heroes. There were usually one or two guys on the team at any given time who were clearly going to go on to the majors. One guy I remember specifically was Joe Randa, who went on to play for the Royals, the Reds, the Padres and finally the Pirates. I got his autograph on a program back then, and still have it in the closet of the bedroom I grew up in back in McMinnville.

I used to bring my mitt to the games, but I never caught a ball. Something more unique happened, though: one time one of the players broke a bat, and as he was walking to the dugout, handed it up to me. I rubber banded it together and kept it in the garage for years. I'm not sure where it is now. I think he was from the opposing team, and I think he broke the bat before the game really started, so it's not quite as epic of a story as it could be -- but it seemed pretty awesome to me, at the time.

To me, the broken bat was kind of iconic. It reminded me of the baseball film, THE NATURAL. I remember at a young age, one evening, THE NATURAL was on TV and my Dad was so into it that we moved the television into the dining room so we could continue watching it while we ate. This almost never happened, back then. I was too young to really understand the movie, but the early scenes and the climactic ending scenes both have such iconic imagery and great music, that it was clear that something legendary was going on: the dad dies, the tree struck by lightning, the birth of Wonder Boy, the death of Wonder Boy, the blood on the uniform, the exploding lights.

And, aside from that, it wasn't often I saw Dad watching anything on television that he was that interested in. Well, that's not true -- both of my parents have always liked watching TV in their spare time, but it was rare as a kid and even more rare when I was in my teens, that my Dad would watch something he'd already seen before, especially a movie that was on TV. So it was clear that THE NATURAL was special, in some way.

To this day I still get chills when I watch THE NATURAL -- of course, it's designed to do that to you, which I guess is one of the reasons why it will never really be considered a bonafide "Great" film -- just a pretty good one. But, it's important to me, probably more important to me than it ever was to my Dad, I guess mostly because at a young age it gave me a window of insight into my Dad and becoming a fan of the film made me feel closer to him.

Anyway, those evenings at Civic Stadium were almost like being in THE NATURAL. And, they got me closer to Dad. That's why another baseball film, FIELD OF DREAMS, is so well-loved. Not because it's about baseball, but because it's about connecting with Dad.

Over the years, I've often thought about going back to see the Ems with Dad but for one reason or another we never quite got around to it. Finally, this upcoming weekend, we're going to make our return to Civic Stadium to see the Ems, thanks in part to the Mariners and Beavers reminding me for better or worse what it's like to sit in a good, old fashioned ball park.

This time, we'll be older. I don't know if our Old Rex stories will be as creative, or if the chef at the grill will look as huge, and I won't know any of the players, and none of them will hand me broken bats.

One potential advantage of age is that I'll finally be able to order an ice cold Miller Beer from the beer lady. Although, a drawback of the passage of time is the fact that the beer lady may have moved on. She may no longer prowl the Civic Stadium bleachers.

Still, I'm sure her bellow still echoes:

"COLD BEER HERE!"