Staff writer
LOUISVILLE - When-ever I meet someone I know around town, I generally am asked something like, “Staying busy?”
Most of the time I can say that, yes, I have been staying busy with one sport or another, traveling here and there around the state to bring back the stories of Grayson County athletes competing in their different sports.
This time of year though, with school out, things slow down somewhat, so I generally decide to take a week's vacation and get in some down time. That's what I did last week, staying home to try to whittle down the stack of books that has piled up on my shelves. To that end, I was fairly successful, finally finishing this huge book I had been carrying around for months, then reading three others in a space of four days.
I didn't have anything much planned for my vacation, but I did want to make a trip into Louisville on Wednesday. The Louisville Bats were in town and they were playing a day game that day against the Richmond Braves.
My boss, Gazette publisher Gary White, is a big fan of the Reds and the Bengals, having lived in southern Ohio before coming to Leitchfield. We generally kick around the happenings of both teams during the work week, and he had expressed an interest in going up to see the Bats, Cincinnati's Triple-A farm team, play a game. The week before my vacation started I asked if he wanted to go up with me and he decided that would be a great day to play hookey.
So, we headed north, leaving here a little after 9 a.m. so we could be there in time for the 11:15 game-time (that's 12:15 local time up in the big city.) Both of us were surprised to find parking a big problem. We didn't think there would be a big crowd at a day game in the middle of the week, but the streets around the park were filled with cars and school busses.
After a search that included a highly illegal U-turn on a busy city street, we found a place to park that was not too far from the park. Heading into the stadium, we determined it was a special day of some kind that involved thousands of kids in brightly-colored T-shirts. Turns out it was “YMCA and City Parks Day” and about half a dozen officials and kids took turns throwing out “first balls” before the game.
We had a beautiful day for a game, warm and sunny, but with lots of billowy clouds that tracked across the sun to cool things off for brief periods as the shade brought cool breezes across the seats.
We were stationed out in the left-field seats, just up from the Bats' bull pen. We were just about five seats too far toward left to take advantage of the shade cast by the overhanging upper deck, but that was fine with me... I had slathered sun block all over me before leaving home so I had no worries.
Both Gary and I had cause to notice that day games usually bring out any number of young ladies who are most pleasing to the eye, but one has to be careful not to gaze too long as a foul ball to the side of the noggin could be in the offing. One needs to keep one's eye on the ball!
I also had cause to note how things had changed since I was young. Watching the hundreds of kids in the seats off to our left I noted that very few of the youngsters had much interest in the game going on in front of them. They were in constant motion, going up and down the rows of seats and the aisles, visiting with their friends and generally causing mayhem for their stressed out chaperones.
It made me think back to the time I was their age and the Giants had just moved from New York to San Francisco. I remember going to the old Seals Stadium in downtown San Francisco and being mesmerized by the jewel-like park, with its emerald grass and crisp cutouts of the infield. The players walking on the field in their road grays or home, creamy whites were larger than life to me. I lived and died on every pitch and recorded every out on the score card that my dad had taught me to use.
It's a different world today, with kids having hundreds of channels of TV to vie for their attention and video games to hypnotize them and a slow-paced ball game with actual people playing it is nothing important to them. I personally think they are missing out on something wonderful, but I am just an old guy who is past his prime, so what do I know.
Gary and I both took the opportunity to spend more than $10 for either a hot dog or a bratwurst on a soggy bun, with a beer and some peanuts. What's a ball game without peanuts, I ask. To make the outing complete, the Bats won the game 4-2, with first-baseman Earl Snyder driving in all four runs with a pair of singles and a double.
We then drove down Main Street a few blocks and stopped in at the Louisville Slugger Museum and took a tour through the bat-making operation. We were both amazed that the plant was so small... actually not much bigger than the office we work in each day. It seemed incredible to me that a place with such a long history of being an essential part of baseball would be found in such nondescript surroundings.
We learned that in the old days a bat used to be turned by hand and was produced in about 30 minutes. Today, the template-driven lathes can turn out a perfect white ash bat every 30 seconds! There, you can still find the signature brands of some of the greatest names in the game... Cobb, Wagner, Williams, DiMaggio, Musial and Mantle.
As we were finishing the tour and getting ready to leave, we ran into a local girl, April Kinkade, who is going to school in Louisville and has been working at the museum as a tour guide for the past year. April played in the local softball league and was a member of the Cougar volleyball team. She said she absolutely loved working at the museum to earn the money to help make her way through school.
It was yet another highlight of a great day, playing hookey at the old ball game.
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