Like Winning the Lottery!

Usually things go "okay." It's not perfect; some things don't work as you'd like them, but it works out in the end. Of course, there are those hell days where if it can break, fail, show up late, be the wrong color, weight, style or flavor, it will.

As shoots go, I can say this most recent — my first gig as a freelancer since I was released from permanent employment — would go in that "okay" category, but perilously close to the "hell" category.

I don't wish to dwell there. For as bad as some parts were, the client asked me to see the project through its minimal edit the next day, which was an unexpected second day of work, and at a producer's rate, for which I bill $250 more per day!

No, the part upon which I wish to dwell came after I was finished with the shoot.

Because the client couldn't get either a reasonably timed flight or a reasonably priced flight to get me back home from Boston Thursday, I was stuck there for the night. I had contacted Mr. Schprock a day before my trip to see if he might want to get together, but he had unalterable plans (I'm guessing Thursday is sex night in the Schprock abode). Dee J Wave, my friend from Flashback Alternatives had commented that she lived only three hours away, but I would never ask her to travel six hours just to hang with me for two.

As I rode in the cab in a downtown section of the city, I contemplated my options for the evening. I was booked in the near vicinity of the airport at a Comfort Inn & Suites, which, often enough, are roadside motels with the slimmest of amenities, so it was a 50-50 chance that there would be a restaurant in the hotel. I considered just dumping off at the hotel the gear I was carrying and returning to the city for a meal and a stroll. I even considered another option as we drove past a strip club, but that would have just proved frustrating in the long run.

At one point, where the traffic seemed the thickest my cab crawled through, I saw a man standing in the street waving a triangular orange flag and pointing at a space between buildings. It reminded me of the scenes around Wrigley Field in Chicago on a Cubs home game day where guys hawk parking spaces near the venue where they will park your car for a steep fee, and where they'll park your car so tightly into their lot that you can't hope to leave until the last guy parked chooses to leave. The thought ran through my head, "We must be near Fenway Park. There's probably a Red Sox game tonight."

And then the thought hit me: "THERE'S PROBABLY A RED SOX GAME TONIGHT!" Suddenly a night baseball game seemed like an excellent idea! I checked my watch and it was only around 4:30. I guessed the game would start around 7:00. When I got to the hotel (where there does happen to be a restaurant on the premises!) I did dump the gear in storage, and I asked a young guy behind the counter about a game that night.

"You got tickets?!" he asked me incredulously.

"No," was my reply. "I'll see what they have at the gate."

He went online and checked, and indeed the Red Sox were playing at home that night. But, he told me, the Sox were playing the Toronto Blue Jays, and "those games are usually sold out." He also had told me of the plethora of places around Fenway Park where I could get a bite to eat. I figured I could head down to Fenway, see if I could get a ticket and, if I couldn't, then I would eat at one of the dozens of places I was told are there.

The guy was incredibly helpful. He pulled out a map of the Boston transit system, the "T," and showed me which train line to take, and which train terminuses I had to look for, where to switch lines, and the best place to get off the train for Fenway.

I left the hotel at 5:30, on the Comfort Inn & Suites complementary airport shuttle. I asked the bus driver about how to get back to the hotel after the Red Sox game.

"You got tickets?!" he asked me incredulously. Damn! Are Red Sox tickets that difficult to come by?

The shuttle took me to the "T" Blue Line Airport Station. A train came within a minute or two, and I rode it past four stops to Government Center, where I switched to the Green Line, where another train arrived within seconds of when I did. The trains on this line are more like big trolley cars, and they were packed with people, most of who were headed for the game, too. The throng on the train could have been a warning for me that my chances were slim for getting a ticket.

From the Green Line stop at Kenmore I walked with the throng headed for the game. People were boisterous, but they were very nice. No one talked to me, nor did anyone bother me. The crowd dispersed into the larger throng surrounding Fenway Park, and I located the "Game Day Tickets" booths. They were cordoned off with metal barricades manned by Fenway security staff. This could have been another omen.

I walked up to one of the security guys and asked, gesturing to the barricades, "So does this mean the game is completely sold out?"

The guy replied, "I dunno. You can go ask at the window." He told me it was okay to go around the barricade.

At the window the playful woman looked up single seat availabilities and told me there was a seat available in Section 25. A seating diagram taped to the ticket window showed the section to be about 50 to 100 rows back from the third base line, starting about ten feet down the line from home plate.

"Cool! How much?"

Fifty dollas was the price. That's not a typo, by the way.... I asked if there were any less expensive seats, and she said there were not.

Then she said there was also some singles available in Section 93, which the diagram showed to be an upper deck seat down the first base line and in right field beyond first base.

She said, "Let me check the seats." After a mere second or two she practically shouted, "OOH! You gotta take the seat in Section 25. It's row one! The guy in front of you, in the last row of the section in front of you, paid 90 dollas for his seat. It's a great seat!"

I complimented her salesmanship and dropped my debit card into the tray. I wandered into the bowels of the stadium and got my bearings somewhat. I was quite hungry, so before I even checked out my seat, I went on the hunt for food. A few minutes later, with a beer in one hand and an Italian sausage in the other, I went to my seat.


The pre-game goings on going on...

And what a grand seat it was! I was close enough to read the names on the players' jerseys, but not close enough to smell them. At 6:30 it was still an absolutely gorgeous day. The sun was still high enough in the sky to alight on the grass on the field, but the shadows grew longer by the minute. There were some festivities on the field, with some honored kids bestowed with the opportunity to pose for photos with The Big Green Monster character, a really great sounding high school(?) female quartet singing the Canadian national anthem, an equally talented Latina singing the US National Anthem, and a couple different people out to toss the ceremonial first pitch.


PLAY BALL!


The Big Green Monster!

The game commenced, and the first inning ended with a Red Sox run on the scoreboard. There was one home run in the game, many great plays, and the Toronto Blue Jays out hit the Red Sox, but the Red Sox emerged victorious in the end. It wasn't until the fifth inning or so, when I looked at the American League standings board at the far left field end at the bottom of the famous Big Green Monster, that I realized why everyone was so eager to know if I had tickets. I never knew that the Toronto Blue Jays were in first place in the American League Eastern Division, and the Red Sox were in second place, just a game and a half behind them! What I also didn't know was that this game was the final in the series in which the Red Sox had already taken two games. If you were a Red Sox fan, this was the. game. to attend!

What a perfect night! There was at least one ticket to be had; the people in the seats all around me were civil at worst, friendly at best; the weather could not have been any better — the temperature was perfect; the food and drink were tasty (I also had a big slice of pizza and another beer in the 6th inning!); the view was spectacular; I was in the second greatest ballpark in the nation (sorry, Beantown...nothing will surpass Wrigley Field in my heart!); and the home team won.

To borrow from Marc Cohn's great song "Walking In Memphis," had anyone asked me that evening if I was a Red Sox fan, my reply would have been, "I am tonight!"

It was a perfect brew of circumstances: time on my hands, a legendary baseball park in the vicinity, an unbelievably gorgeous day and evening, and the well-timed thought to give it a go and take the chance that I could get a ticket. I think Murphy was asleep that night and was unable to enforce his law.

Well, Murphy is Irish. Maybe he's a Boston Red Sox fan.




End note: The next morning I did get the chance to meet up with Mr. Schprock for breakfast, and I told him about the baseball game.

"You got tickets?!" he asked me incredulously.

I guess I'm a lucky, lucky man!




°

Bezbol? Yoo Bet!

So Tuesday night Mrs. Farrago said to me, “Wanna do something outrageous tomorrow?”

Immediately my thoughts jumped to Swedish folk-song karaoke, or nude skydiving, or going to church on the south side, but then I said, “Sure! What?”

“The Cleveland Indians are playing their next few home games in Milwaukee, until the snow stops falling in Cleveland. We could go see a night game!”

Mrs. Farrago has joined a Fantasy Baseball league over at Flashback Alternatives, and has become acutely aware of Baseball in general. One of her players is a member of the Cleveland Indians, and she thought it a good idea to go and keep an eye on her boy.

I thought for a moment – not exactly outrageous, but certainly spontaneous and fun – and said, “Sure!” I was taking the day off anyway for a dental cleaning appointment in the afternoon, after which was Mrs. Farrago’s cleaning, so we were getting free at about the same time. We briefly planned our moves for the day and made ready for bed. When I came upstairs, she informed me of Wednesday’s weather forecast: snow.

A brief aside here: we live in Chicago. There are a lot of people around here, in Chicago. They’re mostly all Chicagoans. Spring is an arbitrary word to mark a period of time set off by a fairly pagan observance called the Vernal Equinox, the day in March when sunrise to sunset takes the same amount of time as sunset to sunrise, on the way to longer days and shorter nights. The first day of spring does NOT magically convert the weather from nasty cold and rain or snow to birds chirping and flowers blooming. In Chicago that transition period can last into the first days of June. So yes. Sometimes in April it SNOWS, people! You (Chicagoans) KNOW this. It isn’t a surprise. So SHUT UP already!

Okay, snow. Not a big deal…unless you’re anticipating a 90-plus mile drive in it.

As it turned out, Wednesday was mostly a cold, slushy affair. I headed out to Macy’s on State Street to buy some luggage (they’re having a sale! Have I ever mentioned here that I travel a lot?). I picked out a set of three pieces. We’ve never purchased a set before. Seems kinda silly to me, but then I thought, “What the heck! We’re a team; we might as well have team ‘stuff.’” The salesman went off to the bowels of the store to get it and then, ten minutes later, informed me that he didn’t have that set complete in red. I was about to be late for my appointment, so I asked him if he had a complete set in the black. He said yes, but he would have to go in back again to get it. I asked him to pull it and put a hold on it, and I would come back in about an hour and a half to get it.

Of course, coming back for it threatened to delay us in getting to Milwaukee in time for the 7:05 start of the game, but if I ran back to the store during Mrs. Farrago’s appointment, purchased the luggage, ran it to the car in the parking garage, and then drove the five blocks back to the dentist’s office building to pick her up, we could be on the road by 4:30.

On my walk to my 2:30 appointment Mrs. Farrago called with unhappy news: she was misled on the game’s start time. It’s 7:05 Eastern time; 6:05 central. We lost an hour of time to get there!

Now we had only an hour and a half to get there, the usual amount of time it takes just to make the drive from Chicago to Milwaukee. We were guaranteed to miss the start.

When I arrived at the dentist’s I was asked if Mrs. Farrago was on her way, as there had been a cancellation, and they could get her in at 2:30! We got our hour back! I called her, and she said she could definitely make it there by 2:30, and at 2:29 she walked into the office!

We got through our cleanings and were on our way back to Macy’s. The luggage had indeed been pulled, and we were on our way back out the door by 4:00.

We ventured out into the early rush-hour Kennedy Expressway traffic, which, in the downtown area was not bad at all. A couple miles out into the neighborhoods it slowed down, which was to be expected. Switching over to the Edens Expressway, the artery to the north, it was much the same, but, as usual, it opened up around Old Orchard road and the town of Skokie.

It was breezy for a while, despite the wet roads and the hesitant snowfall. Then we saw a traffic status electronic sign that gave a 61-minute travel time to Gurnee, Illinois, at a point where it should only take about 25 to 30 to get there.

There is no agony quite as acute as when you are on a time deadline and there is an unexpected slowdown of traffic. The cars are moving, but at 12 miles per hour you want to crawl out of your skin. I assumed that there was some sort of accident blocking a lane or two up ahead.

Traffic oozed and gushed in an accordion bellows fashion, crawling for a mile, and then spurting forward quickly for about two miles before grinding to a crawl again. This went on for about 45 minutes when, suddenly, we were in the clear. Without a massive exodus of cars from the highway at one or two exits, the congestion ahead of us was broken. No accident. No construction. Just people collectively brain-farting at the same place and causing a 15-mile logjam.

Finally, at about 6:00 we entered greater Milwaukee. Another electronic sign told us that Miller Park traffic needed to take the I-894 bypass in order to avoid a closed exit. There was some other information there, but it was too much to gather at 60 miles per hour. Really, they need several signs along the way to convey that much information.

Before you could say “wild goose chase,” it was quite evident we weren’t going to see any more signs about Miller Park. At the next exit we pulled off and stopped at a gas station for directions. A customer there told me she lives right near the park, so I trusted her words completely. I think she had red hair. I can’t remember because her cleavage got in the way. It’s a wonder I remembered the directions.

We arrived at the park around 6:25. Finally! We opted first to park in the $8 general parking lot, a seven dollar savings over premium parking. But the line into general parking was so very long, and I had just about had it with sitting in a line of cars and waiting. So we turned around and headed for premium parking. As it turns out, premium was only $8, too! And being about a quarter-mile closer to the park, saved us another ten minutes from missing more of the game, not to mention surely saving our bladders!

We found our upper deck, behind-home-plate-to-the-third-base-side seats…in the top of the third inning. The Angels were already ahead 1-0. Miller Park is a beautiful stadium, designed for baseball, with a retractable roof. The management of the park certainly knows a lot of tricks to keep people – especially kids – entertained when the game itself isn’t doing the job. However, the fans proved themselves capable of some entertainment of their own, as some on one end of the grandstands began a session of waves that lasted fully five minutes, with nearly everyone participating! The funniest part was when one section slowed it down, and everyone else followed suit for two passes of slo-mo wave!

So, 30 dollars for two beers, four dogs and a brat later, the game was over. Cleveland never caught up, despite the excitement of a solo home run in the sixth(?) inning. Mrs. Farrago’s boy wasn’t even in attendance, instead preferring to be with his wife as she delivers their baby. Was the two-hour drive worth it? Hell, there have been days my drive to work has been two hours. For a pleasant evening of baseball? You bet it was worth the drive!

Final score: Anaheim Angels 4, Cleveland Indians 1. And I don’t care! Any game where the Cubs don’t lose is a good game!