It's The Same Old Song

Yes, it is. But what song is it?

That is your assignment for today, class. What is the theme song of the 2005 Minnesota Twins?

Possible suggestions, as of 5:30 this morning:

“Too Much of Not Enough”?

“Thin Line Between Love and Hate”?

“You Ain’t Goin’ No Where”?

“My Favorite Waste of Time”?

“Bases Were Loaded”?

“Stranded”?

“One Step Forward, Two Steps Back”?

“Pink Has Turned to Blue”?

“You’re Gonna Change (Or I’m Gonna Leave)”?

“From a Whisper to a Scream”?

“I Bought A Headache”?

“Hopeless Blues”?

“Living on a Thin Line”?

“Walking the Floor Over You”?

“Is That All There Is?”

Or, in the wishful thinking category: “The Night Chicago Died.”

And now –and I think we all could use a little diversion about now– here’s Patrick Donnelly’s latest dispatch from the road:

San Luis Obispo
July 20, 2005
San Luis Obispo Stadium

Leaving Fresno around noon, I stumbled onto a rare treat when I turned on the radio. The Giants were hosting the Braves in a weekday matinee, and the signal from KNBR was coming in loud and clear, allowing me to catch a few innings as I drove southwest to San Luis Obispo.

I’d almost forgotten what a pleasure it can be to listen to a major league radio crew calling a game. Driving through the dusty terrain as I made my way to the central coast, John Miller (sans Joe Morgan, another bonus) painted a brilliant picture of a sun-kissed Wednesday afternoon by the bay. “Here’s Omar Vizquel,” said Miller, and I could see the diminutive shortstop digging his cleats into the manicured dirt of SBC’s left-handed batter’s box. I could feel the intensity of Braves pitcher John Smoltz glaring in for the sign. I could once again smell the garlic and sea-salt winds, and hear the hecklers and vendors echoing throughout the seats.

What I didn’t hear was a litany of in-game spots for various broadcast sponsors. I didn’t hear every agonizing detail of a Double-A game played the night before, halfway across the country. I didn’t hear hokey anecdotes and catch-phrases and missed pitches and meaningless statistics read straight out of the game notes prepared by the team’s media relations staff.

I did hear an announcer describe the action as it was happening, instead of sputtering and fumbling for words, then providing a recap of the play after the dust settled. I did hear a brief, throwaway story about some doughnuts missing from the press box, and it didn’t drag on for two innings. And I did hear a very cool spot between innings from Giants pitcher Scott Eyre, who talked about his earliest baseball memory, going to a ballgame with his dad at Dodger Stadium when he was about nine or ten. Eyre said he was raised on Vin Scully and bled Dodger Blue, and that night he saw Fernando Valenzuela pitch a no-hitter.

Many years later, he recalled, Eyre mentioned his memories of that night to his father, who replied, “We listened to that game together on the radio.” Such is the power of baseball on the radio, in the hands of a skilled narrator like Scully — you’re not just listening to it, you are there. I weep for future generations of Twins fans, who will remember more about the New Britain Rock Cats and your local Kinetico dealer than Johan Santana or Torii Hunter.

On to San Luis Obispo, an oasis after the heat of Fresno. This little college town, located on the coast halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, is as scenic and welcoming as you could ever hope, especially with a guided tour from my old friend Tim, who moved there with his wife Bonnie a year and a half ago and have quickly taken deep roots. It’d be hard not to, with “seventy-five and sunny” a year-round mantra for the local weather forecasters.

After a scrumptious meal of fish tacos at “the best Mexican restaurant on the Central Coast” (according to Tim, who would know), we made the brief trek to San Luis Obispo Stadium, parked for free, coughed up a mere seven bucks a head and settled into our lawn chairs behind the first-base line. The San Luis Obispo Blues are the spawn of a relatively recent development of wood-bat summer leagues for college players who might be pro prospects. These leagues used to be limited to Alaska and the Cape Cod League, but now they’re springing up everywhere, including the Upper Midwest, where you can watch a similar level of ball in St. Cloud, Rochester and elsewhere.

The Blues feature players from universities as far away as Georgetown and Tennessee, and as nearby as Sacramento State and the local Cal Poly SLO squad. And they put on a decent show against the Santa Maria Indians, with both sides pitching well and playing outstanding defense. Unfortunately for the home team, my streak of bringing good luck to the visitors continued as the Indians scratched out a run early and held on for a 1-0 victory.

The backstop at the stadium is ringed by five rows of bright orange seats from dugout to dugout, about 800 in all, but many of the fans brought their own chairs or spread out a blanket and watched the game from the grassy hill just behind the box seats. Kids chased each other while they weren’t chasing foul balls (each one earning them a Jamba Juice gift certificate, redeemable at the concession stand), friends greeted each other and the PA announcer called out the name of a fan who made a nice catch of a foul popup, and the atmosphere was as small-town friendly as any town-team amateur game in the hamlets and burgs that dot the Minnesota landscape.

Even the stadium had its small-town features, including trains (actual, working trains, not fake ones like in Houston) running behind the outfield fence, which itself was bedecked in advertisements for local merchants. My favorite was the sign for ABC Bail Bonds (apparently Chico’s has an exclusive deal with the Bad News Bears). We heard another ABC sponsorship late in the game — when a Santa Maria player was thrown out at second on a stolen base attempt, the PA announcer (after playing a snippet of “Been Caught Stealing” by Jane’s Addiction) piped in, “Been caught stealing? Call ABC Bail Bonds! Their slogan is, it’s better to know them and not need them than need them and not know them.”

The other highlight of the night for the crowd involved, as it often does, cheap beer. Each night the announcer designates a “patsy” from the other team, and each time the patsy strikes out, fans get fifty cents off a Blue Moon Ale at the Peach and Frog, a downtown SLO pub. Wednesday night’s patsy got the hood — three strikeouts — and the buck-fifty off Blue Moon after the game likely sent the owners of the Peach and Frog scrambling to bankruptcy court the next day.

The seventh-inning stretch appears to be a special ritual here, as a vendor they call “Rudy the Rocket” — who spent most of the game hawking raffle tickets to help cover the team’s expenses — grabbed the microphone and led the crowd in a rousing rendition of “Baseball’s National Anthem, Take Me Out To The Ballgame!” (See what years of listening to John Gordon will do to a guy?) The other musical entertainment came from a live, four-piece rock band, The Bootleggers, who were set up behind the third-base stands and filled the air with tight covers of classic rock staples from the likes of The Who, David Bowie, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. They didn’t have a singer, but they did have a bassist with great hands — he snagged a foul ball on the fly in the ninth inning as they were tuning up for their final set.

I didn’t have to hear it on the radio to know that I’ll remember San Luis Obispo for a long time.

Thursday: Bakersfield