Perfect summer evening for baseball, and so on impulse I rounded up some friends last night and headed for Raley Field to watch the RiverCats play the Salt Lake City Bees. Maybe it’s me, but … where did the fun go?
To be sure, you couldn’t fault the weather, Sacramento’s best: just a hint of summer warmth with an overlay of classic Delta breeze. Raley Field still looks as adorable as ever, with its center field neon and center-right view of the Tower Bridge lit artfully by both nature and SMUD power. The field itself is crisp and clean, with sharp white chalk lines as always striking against the dark valley loam. The food was great (no sense complaining about ballpark prices — they are what they are), the play was good and the ‘Cats beat the Bees, thanks to a lovely grandslam midway through.
So what was the problem?
Seen the show too many times, I guess. While the game itself is always fresh, the minor-league entertainment script has grown old. Look! It’s a bat race! Hey! We’re going to roll for Raley’s/Bel Air gift cards! Watch some schmoe catch three pop flies for $100 cash! Get excited about crap thrown into the stands by bored RiverCats staffers!
Or just stay home and watch “Bull Durham” (1988) where you also get all that plus great dialogue and the hottest sex scenes allowed in an “R” rated picture. Plus the knowledge that Susan Saradon (Annie Savoy) and Tim Robbins (Ebby Calvin ‘Nuke’ LaLoosh) went on in real life to go all Hollywood silly-political on us, Kevin Costner went on to made a string of lesser sports movies after the classic “Field of Dreams” (“Tin Cup“? “For the Love of the Game“? Puh-lease!) and that Robert Wuhl went on to greatness as super-agent Arliss Michaels in HBO’s “Arli$$.” (Did you ever see Barry Bonds on an early episode of “Arli$$?” He’s so skinny you can barely recognize him. If that’s not incriminating, I don’t know what is.)
But I digress. The fact is that everything about the RiverCats seemed to be just about going through the motions, and in slow-motion. Everything so predictable and perfunctory, even the ejection of the ‘Cats manager. (Harkening back to “Bull Durham,” we figured his ejection had something to do with a word you never use in reference to an umpire.) A woman in front of us read a trashy novel; one three seats down was knitting. Neither was watching the game at all. A wave barely made it around the ballpark despite multiple attempts, and I swear the fifth and sixth innings took 90 minutes to complete.
Yawn.
Maybe it was just an off-night. The place wasn’t much over half-full — a lot of people took off for the weekend, I figure — and that never helps. Or maybe it was us. We’d been thrown off-stride from the get-go on discovering the great shuttle service from the Westside Pub & Grill was gone, a victim of high insurance premiums and a dead minivan. Didn’t help that the cab driver didn’t know how to get from the Westside to the ballpark, either. (We happily hoofed it back the mile or so, which we would have done on the way over if we’ve given it a minute’s thought before letting Rose at the Westside call the cab.)
So … I dunno. Maybe some new ideas? Maybe some new songs on the ballpark soundtrack? Maybe a feeling that the whole thing is a little less contrived? Maybe it’s time to drop the K-Man, because honestly I’m even less likely to take a coupon to Hooters than I was to Mandango.
Or maybe I’m expecting too much, and should have been happy with a perfect summer evening, a little gem of a ballpark and seats right behind home plate. After all, that’s what made me a fan in the first place, when I used to drive to Stockton’s Billy Hebert field to watch the Ports. (Now THAT was a ballpark! Did you know Babe Ruth barnstormed there? OK, maybe you did. But I bet you didn’t know my dad played there in his minor-league career, or that the stands used to be wooden and covered for shade? I loved that place.)
Is the thrill of minor-league baseball gone for good? It was my refuge when I tired of the screw-the-fan attitude of the majors, the drugs, and the big mouths of the big bucks players. But now … where do I go? Get back with me later in the summer. I’ll let you know if the minors still do it for me. I hope so.
The Sac Rag 