8.16.00
ROCHESTER RED WINGS vs PAWTUCKET RED SOX
I was in Rochester, New York for two days on a client's tab, attending the kind of meetings where terms like “leveraging,” “synergy,” and “action item” occupy the space commonly reserved for meaningful language, and scoping out the town for my wife, who will be coming here a week from now for a job interview. Which means, of course, that I'm scoping it out for myself, as well.
The Rochester Red Wings are the Baltimore Orioles' Triple-A team, and have been for forty years, the longest such affiliation in all of baseball (before that they'd been the Cardinals' top farm club for thirty-three years—it'd be fair to say this is a reasonably stable organization). Two years ago they moved into a beautiful new downtown ballpark called Frontier Field. Turns out Frontier is the name of a communications company, but I think we can all agree that “Frontier Field” beats “Qualcomm Stadium” any day.
I got to the park early, walked around the neighborhood a bit, found my way down to the lovely Genesee River which splits the town, and rather by accident happened upon the spectacular High Falls. A pleasant half-hour later found me back at the park entrance and in the throes of unfamiliar-ballpark-in-gorgeous-environs-induced bliss. Out past the right-field fence gleamed the downtown skyline, brilliant in the golden light of twilight; over left, the magnificent art-deco figure of the Kodak building, its red neon letters already glowing against the darkening sky overhead. We are talking serious, knee-weakening beauty here, folks.
With plenty of time before the game, I thought it might be wise to steady myself with some food. Now, typically at ballgames I stick with the standard fare, as a matter of principle as much as taste: hot dogs, peanuts, maybe Cracker Jacks; the excellent nachos at Dodger Stadium (extra cheese, no salsa) are about as far from tradition as I'm likely to stray. I'd begun to pick up on a peculiar streak of western New York regionalism, though, and was more than a little curious to explore it, when I noticed on the menu board at one of the concession stands something called a “Zweigle's Red/White Hot Plate” at $4.99. I had to ask.
“Well, it's a plate with home fries, macaroni salad, chili, onions, and either red hots or white hots,” the girl explained, then offered by way of clarification, “It's like a garbage plate.” Fortunately for us both, my pal Liz had filled me in on Nick Tahou's and the Rochester garbage plate phenomenon before my trip, so I was able to respond convincingly, “Oh! Well, then, I'll have one of those!”
Sitting at a table on the concourse, digging into my first garbage plate, I witnessed another first: a funny team mascot. Here was this guy dressed up in the usual big-bird outfit walking off with kids' drinks, sneaking up behind pre-teen girls carefully applying condiments to their hot dogs and pretending to squirt the dispenser with his arm/wing, going off where there was no one around and no one watching other than me and pretending to squirt ketchup out of the dispenser into his beak. During the game he would be seen tossing little Oreo cookie packets to clamoring kids between innings, and then, when the cookies were gone, tossing the empty box to them. There just aren't enough asshole mascots, I tell you!
Giving “Spikes” (the mascot's oddly pluralized name) a run for his money was Wasteman, a red-tights-clad superhero bearing on his cape the proud Waste Management Inc. logo. At numerous points during the game, Wasteman, perhaps the International League's only black, pot-bellied, forty-something superhero, raced around the stands leading the crowd in cheers, followed by a devoted cadre of ten-year-olds who called after him, “Hey Wasteman! Hey Wasteman!”
Late in the game, after the rains had come and gone, after the unseasonably cool temperatures had sent most of the crowd home and me into the gift shop to buy a Red Wings sweatshirt just to keep warm, and after the Wings had given the game away in the seventh, Wasteman tried to rally the few remaining fans. Standing just a few feet behind me, he bellowed over and over, “Here we go, Red Wings, here we go!” And I tell you honestly, it was one of the most wonderfully pathetic, beautifully plaintive sounds I have ever heard at a ballpark: my two hands—and only my two hands—clapping at the end of each chorus.
“Here we go, Red Wings, here we go!” […silence…] Clap, clap.
FINAL SCORE: PAWSOX 6, RED WINGS 3
MEMORABLE HECKLE: A towering foul ball bounced just inches from the wheelchair of a completely oblivious elderly man, whose straight-ahead gaze never wavered. “Good hands, Harvey!” cried a gentleman a few rows down.
