4.4.02 SYRACUSE SKYCHIEFS vs ROCHESTER RED WINGS
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“Dress for half.” That was another thing we learned during our
first year in Rochester, after the first few games of baseball season. If
you were ballgame-bound and the ambient temperature was anywhere south of,
oh, say the middle 60s, or might possibly at some point later in the day venture
near said point, the rule went, divide the temperature by two and dress accordingly.
Otherwise, sitting still for hours on end in cold and unsympathetic winds,
you’d freeze your nuts off.
The dusting of snow on the ground when I looked out the window this morning
indicated that it was unmistakably a dress-for-half kinda day. No problem.
On went the long-johns and cords, the long-sleeve tee and wool sweater, the
heavy coat and woolen cap and boots that had served me well all winter long.
It was the socks that proved my downfall, I recognize now. Instead of wool,
or better still, a pair of my wife’s cashmeres underneath the wool,
I just wore my usual cotton ones. Just like I had all winter without incident.
Three-plus hours of 34-degree Syracuse later, I have a new rule. If the ambient
temperature is anywhere south of, say, forty, dress for minus.
I am absolutely not shitting when I say that I have never been so cold in
my life. And I’m the guy who’s always drawing dour glances from dinner companions
by suggesting that we walk to Dicky’s when it’s 20 degrees out. By which I
mean to say, I’m okay with the cold. It bothers me less than most people,
it seems. But this was something else altogether.
My friend Scott told me this past off-season about how, when he used to go
to Bills games in college, people would bring in huge stacks of newspapers
to place beneath their feet and butts in the hopes of staving off the relentless
cold that seeped its way up through the concrete stadium floor. It worked
for a while, he said. But only a while.
Like a lot of physical sensations, the experience of extreme cold is the
kind of thing that can be hard to fully apprehend when you’re no longer subject
to it. You can read about me being cold, for example, and you might recall
some personal experience you’ve had of being cold, perhaps even in similar
circumstances. Still, however vivid that memory might be, it remains just
that, a memory, abstract, removed, physically elusive. For that reason, I’m
going to suggest that you go now and find a bucket, ideally a metal one, and
fill it with ice. Now top if off with water, and stick your feet in it. In
about half an hour, you will have a pretty good idea of the sensation I am
talking about.
I was committed, though, on account of these very diaries, and I stuck it
out. What the hell those other five thousand-odd people were doing at this
hideously Astroturfed ballpark I have no freaking idea. How cold was it? It
was so cold, folks were eating ice cream to warm up. (Thank you.) It was so
cold, the players in the field wore hoods over their caps. It was so cold,
the players waiting to bat retreated to their respective clubhouses—except
for the managers, the dugouts were empty the entire time!
It was opening day for the International League though, and I was eager to
get a look at the Red Wings’ promising new line-up, featuring some familiar
faces from last year—Brian Roberts at second, Jose Leon at third, starting
pitcher Sean Douglass—and some new ones—Howie Clark at DH (.333
last year with the Mexican League Yucatán Leones, and a Red Wing from
1998 to 2000), Frankie Figueroa at first (.300 and 72 RBIs at Double-A Bowie),
and outfielders Darryl Brinkley and Ryan McGuire, each capable at the plate,
each bringing to the team the benefit of roughly a decade in professional
baseball.
Unfortunately, SkyChiefs’ up-and-comers Chad Mottola and Jayson Werth put on the more impressive display, producing two singles, two doubles and two runs (Mottola) and a single, a two-RBI double, and an RBI sac fly (Werth), and Chiefs starter Mike Smith held the Wings to just a couple of runs over five innings, notching a victory in his Triple-A debut. It couldn’t end soon enough.
FINAL SCORE: SKYCHIEFS
6, RED WINGS 2
LIFE DURING WARTIME: In what I desperately hope is not going to become standard ballpark practice, they played Lee Greenwood’s “I’m Proud to Be an American” over the P.A. prior to the game’s first pitch. I’ll have put a bullet in my brain by May if it does.