Opening Day Matters

At the end of the day I stood in silent reflection in an overcrowded train from Minneapolis to St. Paul. The Twins had put on a terrible show in front of over 40,000 people, and all I could think was that I hadn’t been suckered into buying one $9 can of beer. Truthfully, I really didn’t pay much attention to it even though it was all around me. I did have one moment where I saw a Bloody Mary pass me buy with a cheeseburger on it and I thought it looked quite refreshing. But then I thought of how much it cost, and how little alcohol was probably in it, and that if I took a sip, the disaster that followed would be the end of me.

I started my trip on at 11:00am by driving to work. Not to work, but to park in the lot and take the train. The ride there was pretty uneventful. There were a few fans heading in the same direction, but most people seemed to be going about routine business. When the doors opened after a cheerful voice told me I was at my destination, I got the chills. Not because I’d been waiting for this moment for years, but because it was fucking cold and fucking windy. I was an hour early for the official opening of the gates. I assumed there were activities on the promenade, or whatever they call the outside area. I was so wrong. So I stood in a line for an hour which fanned out when the gates opened, negating the need to wait in a single file line in the first place.

1:02pm, I’m in. I am handed a free Twins hoodie, and I immediately put it on for warmth. It worked. My friend, who was travelling with his sister from Mankato would arrive shortly so I wandered around, bought a hat and a soft pretzel and watched the White Sox practice batting.

My friend Eric arrived. I haven’t seen him since the day he left prison boot camp seven months ago. He, my other friend Mason and I became friends while waiting for our turn to go to boot camp. Moose Lake prison housed a variety of people and we made fun of them all. We bonded over games of Monopoly, Cribbage, and so many other terrible games with names I will never recall. It was so good to see him. I gave him a big hug. We caught up, reminisced, and watched legends Tony Oliva and Rod Carew throw out the ceremonial first pitches. We listened to a rather lackluster version of our National Anthem and missed seeing the F-14 fighter jet do a flyover because our view held no sky. We didn’t care, we were just happy to be there. Oh, we knew the jet had gone over because it sounded exactly like a jet plane passing by only a few hundred feet away. We could feel it.

Mason showed up a little late because his train was stopped by Black Lives Matter protesters. He was aggravated and said from what he could see, the protesters were all white, and the black passengers on the train were upset, just like everybody else, to be inconvenienced by the show. But he made it either way and we continued on.

It wasn’t much of a game, not for our offense anyhow. We talked pretty much the whole time so it went quickly. Around the sixth inning we went up to the very top of the seats in right-center field because so many people had left and we were tired of standing. Even up there we had a great view, and nobody seemed to care that we hadn’t been there until just then.

The game ended after three hours and five minutes with a 1-4 loss. I can’t wait to go back. I love baseball, and I love the Twins no matter what. They are my team, and that is my stadium. I will never boo them when they lose, and I will never leave a game until there are three outs in the final inning. Someday we will win.

I have a lot I wanted to write about today because I haven’t posted for a few days. I will be back to posting regularly as of today. Or in a day or two. It’ll be a fun little surprise for you people. Shit, I didn’t mean you people, that’s racist. I meant you, the reader, so calm down.  Until then…

Bon Voyage (Fort Meyers Part 6)

Our last few days would prove to be filled with misadventure, drunken laughter, and endless miles of walking with all of our belongings. We were only half way through our vacation when the urge for our favorite pastime became strong. We liked to smoke weed, but we were under the impression at the time that it was a felony to possess any amount in Florida. Now I know we were wrong, as any amount under 20 grams is simply a misdemeanor.

Anyhow, we happened upon a gentleman on our way back from a game that appeared to be exactly a drug dealer. We worked up a small amount of courage to talk to him and he said he could help us out. He walked back to our hotel with us and that’s where things started to get a little fishy. He started using the hard stuff right in front of us. I say hard stuff because I can’t remember what it was, only that it seemed like an odd way to do whatever it was. Something like smoking OxyContin off of tin foil. He began making a series of calls which we would later discover didn’t exist, and he worked out a deal to get us some grass. He left with our money and never returned. Fuck.

Later that night, while we were at the bar, I slipped out and went on a mission to find some. It took me, alone, about fifteen minutes to come back with a $20 bag of what the guy called the “Crippie”, which is supposed to be the best weed in Florida. Well, it was your standard Mexican schwag, but it was good enough for me so I went and informed Seth. We realized that we didn’t have the means to smoke so we had to get creative. I believe the apple came from the free breakfasts we’d been hoarding and we carved a couple ill-placed holes and it worked. We had found our happiness. Every night after smoking, Seth would take a small bite out of the apple to quell his munchies. By the last night, the apple looks as if it suffered from leprosy. End scene.

We waited outside the players exit after game two, hoping to get a ball filled with autographs. We waited, and waited, and we waited. Either the players had slipped out a more discreet exit, or they weren’t coming out. Until, a small man who would become legend to us came shyly out, carrying too much to handle in his hands, and quite happily began signing various wares. Ben Revere was with the Twins for only a short while but he made quite an impression with us with his outfield acrobatics and speed on the base paths. 

 Me holding the ball in anticipation of the only autograph we would get on the trip.

I don’t recall exactly how it happened, but the last few days while at the hotel, we spent a lot of our time with some guys that were staying there from Philly. They weren’t there for baseball, but for construction. They were vile, quick-tempered, dirty, and we loved them right away. It seemed as if every conversation would push them to the periphery of fighting. They loved drinking and getting high as much as we did, and they seemed to like our Minnesota nice, I’m sure a big change from their friends back home. We partied every night. We left our doors open to each other’s, and we wandered back and forth and enjoyed the company. I don’t remember their names, but I will always remember their hospitality. 

If you can't quite see it, the shirt says, "This shirt is only blue when I'm thinking about dwarves."

 

Our last day should have killed us. We packed our belongings and headed out to return our bicycles and walk to the stadium for the last game of our trip. They were playing the Cardinals, our rivals from the ’97 Series. So we began our adventure. We walked, and walked, and we walked some more… in the wrong direction. A small mistake that wouldn’t make us exactly late for the game, but our seats were, to say the least, obstructed. Behind a wall, actually. To be even more specific, it was standing room only, and our view was of a concession stand. We could hear the game. But I was so exhausted from a three hour walk with all of our possessions, that I didn’t care. I found a stool to sit on and I didn’t move for the entirety of the game. We lost and I didn’t care. I wanted to go home.

Our plan, to save some money, was to sleep at the airport like you see in movies, because airports don’t close, right? Well, sort of. We checked in for our flight 13 hours ahead of schedule. We sat at the bar and had a couple drinks, but didn’t buy any duty free liquor to get us through the night because for some reason we thought we might have a good night’s sleep.

Looking back, I can see the blue plastic chairs, something I would get accustomed to later in life. We tried all night to find comfort in different locations and positions, but sleep would not come. We were alone in the airport except for the night cleaning crew, and a lone security officer on a Segway. In principle, that airport didn’t close, but it was a long, lonely night, that I have since put out of my mind because it was a terrible end to an otherwise incredible vacation.