5.7.01 LOUISVILLE RIVERBATS vs ROCHESTER RED WINGS
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My hopes for payback—slim to begin with, given the first-place status of Rob’s adopted home team, the Louisville RiverBats—diminished throughout the day, as the rains came and went, then came, and came some more. Despite thunderstorms that had put a premature end to our late-afternoon catch, the local TV sports guy was reporting that no decision had yet been made regarding tonight’s game, so we went out to the yard anyway and were a little shocked by the number of people who had done likewise.
Louisville, which I’d imagined to be roughly equivalent to Rochester in terms of size, scope, and general urban dynamism, appeared during my cursory visit to be considerably bigger and more happening than my new home, actually. And the RiverBats are a big deal here, it turns out, as evidenced by the crowd that had braved the rains and come out for what was quite obviously the remotest of chances to see a ballgame. Recently adopted into the Cincinnati Reds fold, the RiverBats play in year-old Slugger Field (surely the most agreeable corporate naming deal in baseball history) on the banks of the Ohio River, which, wet and gloomy as it was during our brief stay, seemed like it’d be a lovely setting for a ballgame under more favorable conditions.
Alas, we would not be seeing one. Some time around 7:30 an officious-looking gentleman came out onto the field and made a throat-cutting sign up to the press box, and a little while later the announcement came down that the game would be made up as part of a double-header tomorrow. Oh well. I’d been so looking forward to freaking out Red Wings players by shouting signature Recycleman phrases: “Dubba-dubba-dubba-dubba-dubba-dubba-plaaaay-aaay” (with a man on first), etc. My disappointment was allayed somewhat by the sight of an overexuberant groundskeeper using the infield tarp as a giant Slip ’n Slide, a function for which it was remarkably well suited.
Earlier in the day, it’s worth mentioning, Rob and his daughter Olivia and I paid a visit to the Louisville Slugger Museum. The museum itself was enjoyable enough, consisting not only of the expected displays of memorabilia, but also exhibits that allow visitors to pick up and physically compare the bats of guys like Babe Ruth and Stan Musial with those of Alex Rodriguez and Junior Griffey, and, most pants-shittingly, a wildly impressive pitching display that projects a film of any number of current aces onto a screen and syncs up their release points with that of a pitching machine hurling a real baseball at you at 90-plus miles per hour. You’ve been to batting cages before? You know how it feels when you step into the 70-mph cage after you’ve gotten used to the 60-mph one, and all you can do is just stand there frozen and watch the first pitch, stunned? I can assure you, you would not stand there in a 90-mph cage. You would run and hide.
What’s really cool about the museum, though, is that it’s not just a museum, it’s a working factory. And not just any Louisville Slugger factory, mind you; it’s the factory where the bats used by virtually every major leaguer are custom handcrafted to a set of precise and bewilderingly complicated specifications. In fact, aside from a few promotional-type bats and some non-custom jobs for minor leaguers, that’s all they do here. According to the seniority board proudly displayed at the factory’s entrance, all but one of the guys who work in the shop have been on the job for over 30 years. And when you tour the factory, you’re not just watching them work through a window. You’re actually touring the factory, looking over guys’ shoulders as they turn and stamp and finish the bats, walking past carts overflowing with sticks in various stages of manufacture.
It was one such cart to which Rob drew my attention, about halfway through. Sitting atop each pile was a piece of paper, a dot-matrix-printed work order. One stack of bats, mostly finished but waiting to have their handles turned, had Chan Ho Park’s name, misspelled, crossed-out, and handwritten correctly, on the invoice. Another stack would be waiting for Adrian Beltre when he returned to the Dodgers line-up. How freaking cool is that?
FINAL SCORE: GAME POSTPONED; NO SCORE (ERROR ATTRIBUTED TO ROB FOR THROWING OUR BALL INTO THE GULLEY)
FOOD CONSUMED: We were at the park long enough to keep the hot dog streak alive, at six days. Okay dog; bun a little dried out at one end. A beer.