Baseball and Back Roads I: September 2009

I guess one shouldn't call Interstate 90 a back road but to tell the truth, there is not much difference between the two lane 'blue highways' and the Interstate, at least here in Montana, though the two lane highways are often better paved. The heavy trucks are probably the reason the interstates wear out so quickly, another reason we need more and faster rail lines. The picture to the left was made a few months ago.

'Blue highways' are in quotes because in the olden days when gas stations would give out highway maps for free the national highways were in red and the state highways in blue. In those days there used to be a difference in that the state highways were more often purpose-built to go from one real place to another, say from Billings to Miles City, and the route usually went through real places, like Huntley Project, and thus on the map they tended to be a little squiggly. The national highways were often boondoggles from on high, an early form of 'stimulus' before we thought we needed 'stimuli,' often going much straighter from say Montana to Denver.

I started from Billings about mid-morning, just in time to tune in to Rush Limbaugh for an hour or so to get my head straight and receive my marching orders, then it gets time for CDs even around Bozeman and Butte. I like driving on the 90 here in Montana and Washington too for that matter though I usually switch over the Highway 2 around Spokane because I like nice two lane highways. I've forgotten what it looks like in South Dakota but I vaguely remember that their speed limit is too low. After some splendid Cantus choral singing, sorry ladies I like these guys, then I switched to some Berlitz German lessons in preparation for next year in München and Oberammergau. I mentioned München because of the unlaut u which is the way our surname was probably spelled before we hit this side of the Atlantic. But why didn't they spell it 'ui' instead of 'ue'? That is what that umlaut u sounds like to my ear.

Did you see that bird's nest on a pole in deep right center in the above picture? Here is a better picture. It looked empty on Wednesday night, but the regulars here told me that during the season one could often see the ospreys flying over the field holding a fish.

Since Billings's summer heroes had done so badly at home I thought it would be worth a couple of days to Missoula and Great Falls to follow OUR MUSTANGS and maybe do a little cheering for them. Oh sorry, after the game at Ogren Park Allegiance Field on Wednesday night I had almost been persuaded that one always yells the name of your home town baseball team and especially the individual players in apocalyptic tones and to never turn your microphone off once you have a captive audience. So I must apologize to the guy who does the announcing at Dehler Park. He is not nearly as bad as the one at Ogren Park.

Where do these clowns, with all due respect, that do the public address announcing for the Pioneer League get the idea that they need to be talking or playing some music or other sound effects every second of the game, between innings, between batters, even between pitches. I guess we fans are tolerant of lots of things besides bad play.

This is a nice park, been open for three or four years: somewhat like Billings' Dehler Park in that the field is sunken and well taken care of. It is in the middle of a partly developed park in a partly developed part of Missoula, which is growing more quickly than Billings these days. Now that I think about it, the sunken aspect is even better than Billings because they have about 13 or 14 rows of seats and the pitch is at least several inches better or steeper than ours. By that I mean that you don't have to look around the lady in the seat in front of you, or ask her to remove her hat, because you can see over her and her hat and the horse she rode in on. Kind of reminded me of the old fashioned theatres that pitch up steeply and you look down, even from the balcony, surprisingly close to the stage. The distances down the foul lines are a little chintzy, 309 ft down the left field line and less than that down the right field line. So they built them up with signs from eager advertisers. Late afternoon sun could bother the right fielder and maybe the right side of the infield though they didn't seem to have trouble this night.

The crowd was said to be around 2400 but that looked like something of an exaggeration. I would have thought that a team that was on their way to the play-offs—they start in Missoula on Saturday with Great Falls their first opponent in a best of 3 game series,—and this was, after all Fan Appreciation Night, that they would have had a few more fans present. Then Thursday morning I saw the paper and remembered where and when I and it was. President Obama had given his final commands to get everyone on board in his address to the Congress—I wonder, did they invite him or does he get to say I'm #1 whenever he feels like it?—so I wasn't surprised that a lot of the yuppies would be glued to their TV sets that night. And some of them do come to a civilized game now and then. But not when their Leader is giving orders. That's right, some of the ballplayers were handing out pictures to the fans entering the gate.

My favorite hotel in Missoula is the Best Western Grant Creek Inn, just off the 90. They take animals and have the best breakfast in town, maybe in the state. And they have a good swimming pool and exercise room too. And it is near to a couple of good restaurants. Last time we were impressed by the new Montana Club, out near the Interstate on Reserve St. This time I thought I would try The Stone of Accord, 'where the Gaelic meets the garlic' according to their menu. See the stone in their entranceway to the right.

The soup was something called Colcannon and was excellent gruelly Irish stuff with potatoes and meat and cabbage etc. Irish spring rolls caught my eye on the appetizer menu, cabbbage and meat and something else too, not sure. Too many for one and very spicy. Of course I started sweating but I liked the contents if not the slightly thick and tough pastry around them. I think this place could be a winner.

The game was surprisingly low scoring. I guess the Osprey had bombed the Mustangs so badly for three nights in a row that either they were tired from swinging the bats or they felt sorry for Billings. They must have some pretty good pitchers as they presented a check from some car dealership for about $3200, which was the total for all the strikeouts of opposing players in Missoula at $10 a pop, and that didn't count the ten or fourteen that struck out on this night. The average number of strikeouts must have been close to ten per game. The Mustangs came up with a run in the top of the eighth on a Tyler Stovall single, and another in the ninth on doubles by Josh Garton and Yen-Wen Kuo; and then our pitchers held their big boppers in the bottom of the ninth to win 3-2. Didn't happen very often this year.

I note in passing that a Mr Bobby Stone, of the Missoula Osprey, rookie league farm team of the Arizona Diamondbacks, I mean BOBBIEEE STONNNNNE, hit his 16th home run of the season. I was a little surprised to find that our Sean Connor actually had hit 6 of them, must have been mainly on the road. A few others on our team had 2 or 3 but nothing to write home about. Did Cincinnati send all of their just-signed sluggers to some other team?