The Boy(s) of Summer - Part II

In retrospect, perhaps May 2^nd was a little early in the season for Jimmy Buffet day.  I-Cubs game number two of the 2010 season was a Sunday afternoon game, with free tickets courtesy of participation in the JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes.  Someone somewhere decided that JDRF day should also be Jimmy Buffet day, with half-price admission for Hawaiian shirts, and a “Cheeseburger in Paradise” meal deal.  Now, I would have been up for that buy-one get-one-free Hawaiian shirt deal anyway, but free is better still.  We headed out to the ballpark on a beautiful sunny afternoon, high of 72, ready to cheer on the I-Cubs.

I’ll admit a bit of a soft spot for the Cubs franchise having grown up in the Chicago suburbs, but I still dislike it when minor league baseball teams take their parent club’s name.  As much as I love going to I-Cubs games, it makes me a bit sad that Des Moines couldn’t have been a bit cleverer.  The minors are where you find teams like the Quad Cities River Bandits, the Albuquerque Isotopes, the Montgomery Biscuits (a personal favorite), and the Toledo Mud Hens, just to name a few.  That’s what I think a minor league name should be like, and have ever since about third grade.

That was when I, like many other schoolchildren of my era, read Maniac Magee.  I don’t remember thinking a ton of it when we read it, but a tattered copy somehow made its way onto our bookcase at home, and I ended up reading it a handful of times.  It’s a good story about a kid finding out who he is and where he belongs, but the most vivid part to me was always when Maniac lived with old Earl Grayson.  Earl, the zoo groundskeeper, is a lonely old man who pitched for the Toledo Mud Hens but never made it to the majors.  As he and Maniac become friends, we hear more about his time playing baseball, but more so about his life and how it’s turned out.  For some reason the descriptions of the minor league games stuck in my mind and that part of the book always seemed beautiful.

Another place you see some name ingenuity is when expansion teams pop up, as two did in 1993.  I followed baseball ever so slightly at the time, so I wasn’t really familiar with the new teams.  That’s why, when we were shopping at the local Wal-Mart and my Dad showed up with a pair of caps, asking me which one I wanted, I didn’t exactly recognize them.  I distinctly remember replying, “The Colorado Rockies or an F for Fishing?  I’ll go with the Rockies.”  When my Dad explained the other cap was also an MLB team, I quickly had my mind made up.  With a name like the Florida Marlins, a picture of a fish on the front, and an awesome teal color, that was the cap for me.  I started wearing it all the time, and was pretty sad when I had to give it up because it was too small.

So my path has crossed with baseball more than a time or two over the years, from that first pack of baseball cards to the sundae helmets, a real Sox game, a book and a cap.  But all that happened when I was pretty young, and as I approached high school age, I had so many other pursuits that I pretty much stopped paying attention.  It’s not like baseball was a driving force in my life; it was an occasional diversion.  And with so many others, it got left by the wayside.

So, the final step in this saga occurred while I was in college.  I’d never really been away from home for an extended period of time before, so I wanted to try to plan something special for when I did get back.  I did a lot of brainstorming, spent many hours browsing the web for something to do with the siblings I hadn’t seen for months.  Somehow I lighted upon the Schaumburg Flyers baseball team, and on a whim, bought some tickets online.  I managed to keep it a surprise until we arrived at the ballpark, and I seem to recall a few skeptical looks once they saw what I had in mind.  Truth be told, I was a bit nervous that my big plans would backfire, unfamiliar as I was with the subject.

My fears turned out to be baseless, though, as we had a great time.  I quickly saw that a minor league ballgame is a great way to just relax and spend time together, with entertainment right in front of you all along.  We chilled and chatted, got hot dogs, watched the Flyers win, and got to see some fireworks at the end.  Oh, and I totally caught a bag of peanuts thrown into the stands.  Over the years it became a mini tradition that when I came home we’d go to a ballgame, and each one was a lot of fun.  The baseball was good, but so too was the camaraderie, and the laughs of the bat-dancer, the wolfman, and the much despised Birdzerk (inside jokes - probably better not to ask :).

And now that I live full-time in Des Moines, I’ve got a minor league baseball team right here in my own backyard.  We’ve usually gone to a handful of games per year, but this year we’ve really ramped up, buying “Mug Club” memberships and already having been to two games.  Oh, yeah, speaking of that…

Game two started off gorgeous out, but about five innings in, some very ominous looking clouds appeared out of nowhere to the West.  It started sprinkling; the game went on so we stuck it out.  It started to really rain; the players kept playing so we migrated further up the stands (under the roof slightly) and kept watching.  All around us people were leaving, but we decided to stay.  Until it finally started raining hard enough to pull the tarps over the field.  At this point the game was in the eighth, we hadn’t yet had “Cheeseburgers in Paradise,” and we were cold, wet and hungry.  The executive decision was made to bail and just get some Sonic burgers on the way home.

The I-Cubs eventually finished and lost that game, but we were long since home by that point.  Staying through the rain was fun in its own way, until things got out of control.  Besides, there are plenty of other games I plan to go to this year, so missing one inning doesn’t bother me much.  Other games, like next Thursday, May 20th.  It's a Mug Club night, I-Cubs against the Colorado Springs Sky Sox.  You know I’ll be there.