Michael's singles

I remember at some point in 1983 or early 1984 (really, who's gonna believe I can remember that far back?) looking at the back of the Thriller album and counting how many songs had been released as singles in the U.K. Twenty-five years later, with Photoshop and Wikipedia at my disposal, I got around to doing a chart. I've only looked at U.K. and U.S. singles cos one is my home country, and one was Michael's and it'd probably get very messy if I added Namibia and Paraguay-only singles. The opening song on all but Invicible were singles. I wonder what was wrong with the first track off that album..? Can't honestly say I've heard any songs off of that one. Note: the second bit of HIStory is represented here cos, of course, the first bit was a greatest hits.

Yankee Stadium

I went on Wednesday night, and I went last night. Up to the Bronx, to see the Yankees. In their new stadium. And, well, it brought up a whole bunch of strange thoughts and feelings. Maybe it's because going into these two games was full of anticipation. Maybe it's because the old Yankee Stadium is where I fell for baseball. Maybe it's because since the last time I saw the Yankees playing at home, I've been to fifteen other Major League ballparks; a decent amount of ballparks to compare it to. Maybe it's because the Yankees were playing the Mariners, a team I've seen quite a lot lately, both live in Seattle and on TV in Bellingham. Mostly, though, I think the fact that I've be leaving the States in a few days affected my enjoyment. These visits to Yankee Stadium were to be my last baseball hurrah for quite a while. The next games I'll watch will be streaming live on MLB.com in the early German hours of the morning.

After my interview regarding Flip Flop Fly Ball on a Yankees blog River Avenue Blues, one of their readers emailed me with an offer of a couple of cheap tickets. As the day approached, my pal Derick realised that family commitments would rule him out of going to the game, so we quickly scheduled in a game the night before. So on Wednesday, we braved the traffic and drove from Brooklyn to the Bronx. After the many reports about bad things at the new stadium, it made a little sad that the first thing I saw from the car window was the old stadium.



We parked, walked past the scaffolding surrounding the old stadium, crossed an enormous zebra crossing on 161st Street, and stood in front of this beautiful new, old-style building. It needs a patina of daily life (exhaust fumes, I guess) to make it less new-looking, but it's impressive. We picked up the tickets, and entered the pompously-named Grand Hall.



Lots of big pictures of Yankee greats. Plenty of space. Very nice. It's in this Grand Hall that you get the first example of the gouging that the New York Yankees organisation are guilty of. In a tackily-decorated beer fridge, there are tallboys of "Retro Beer."



Pabst Blue Ribbon is retro? Not in Bellingham it isn't. And, I imagine, not in many other U.S. towns. PBR is just a cheap, drinkable beer. They seem to have mixed up the price list with a list of oxymorons: Nine dollars for a PBR? This type of behaviour put me off spending money within the stadium. If they're so blatant about ripping people off, why should I be a part of it? My plan to buy a couple of t-shirts was quickly abandoned. I'm not giving you any more money than I need to to have a good time (ie. a few beers and some peanuts).

Inside the stadium itself, the concourses all have views of the field. On the lower level, where all the super expensive seats are, there's a ton of food and drink options. Wonderful smells of noodles, sausages, steak sandwiches all around. The unwashed can also peer into the fancy restaurant where the gout sufferers scoff down honey-glazed dodo eggs.

We took a walk around the field level. All seems fine. It's big. A lot bigger than other ballparks. I got to see first hand the annoying stuff that I'd read about (the obscured views from a couple of bleacher sections, the ridiculous concrete moat separating the rich people in the very, very expensive seats), and then we went upstairs to our seats. Our seats were in the disabled bit, where you get a movable fold-up chair. Neither of us were disabled, but I guess once the game day arrives, people who actually need disabled access will have already bought their tickets, and it seems that they just sold the rest of the seats to able-bodied folk.



It was a shitty place to sit. It wasn't a particularly windy evening, but it felt quite windy up there. We had to careful put peanut shells back into the bag to stop them blowing into the hair of people directly below us. And sitting near the employees, having to listening to one of them snort phlegm instead of blowing his nose all game was a bit distracting. One of those things where, the moment you start noticing it, you can't stop. And, really, when you spend $1.5 billion on a stadium, there is absolutely no excuse for obscured views like the one we had.



And, sitting there in right field, watching the Mariners play at Yankee Stadium, the comparison of the view one has in right field at the Mariners' ballpark was startling. I like sitting there at Safeco Field because of the good view of Ichiro. But this was my view of Ichiro on Wednesday night.



The seats, the phlegm, the view, the insanely distracting enormo-screen in center field, all combined to make it a disappointing experience. I found it difficult to get into the game. Last Friday, at the Mets' new ballpark, I really enjoyed watching the Yankees; but on Wednesday... even seeing a long A-Rod home run wasn't enough to jolt me into whole-heartedly getting into it.



Still, the Yankees won, and we saw John Turturro queueing for beer up in the upper tier with the normal folks. But the whole experience knocked me off-kilter a bit. The sunset was nice, though.



Back up to the Bronx on the subway on Thursday evening. I got my tickets off the guy, and had another good look around. My expectations were obviously not strictly expectations any more after being there the previous night. But I did feel a tiny bit better about it. I had a far better seat, even though it was higher up, but it wasn't so isolated, and there was plenty of noise all around.



One thing that does need saying about the upper level, though, is, for all the talk of better concessions at this new stadium, upstairs, it pretty much the same as usual. Hot dogs, peanuts, beer. Well, I say beer. But more or less all of the concession areas are serving Bud Light. I guess technically Bud Light is beer, but it sure doesn't taste like it. And on the side of the stadium I was sat on, the upper tier only had one small booth selling "premium" beer. That means eleven dollars for a Beck's or Stella. The queue at this particular booth was pretty big all night.



There was a thiry-odd minute rain delay where not a drop of rain fell. The big screen honed in on Jack Nicholson sitting in the front row.



He seems like a good sport. I guess it'd be easy to be super famous and want to be left alone at a sports event, but every time the camera focussed on him, he smiled, waved, flexed his muscles and even made a scary face when the wag operating the screen's output added a speech bubble to the image with "Here's Johnny!" in it. The camera also focussed on the two young women he was sat with. I dunno about you, but, when someone of Jack Nicholson's age is sat with young women, I find myself spending way too much time wondering if they are family or his dates for the evening. (While we're talking about famous people, later on, the camera zoomed in on Steve Earle, which I enjoyed.)

Aaaaanyway, it was a better view, a better experience on Thursday. I had a better view of Ichiro, too. Yay.



Sadly, a bunch of the fans sat around me felt it necessary to boo when Ichiro came to the plate. I realise it's not the done thing at a sports event to openly praise one of the opposing team's players, but I'd been clapping when he came up to the plate. He's pretty much my favourite player, and just because he doesn't play for my team, it doesn't mean I'm not gonna clap. But a bunch of dudes around me booed, which was annoying. I could understand it if he played for the Red Sox or Mets, but, c'mon, Seattle isn't a particularly hateable opponent. Later in the game, when Ichiro hit a two-run double, putting the Mariners 6-2 ahead, I found my reaction wasn't that of a Yankee fan seeing his team go further behind; it was that of someone who was glad that the dicks behind me would shut up.

The Yankees scored a couple more runs, but didn't give too much indication that they'd get back in the game, so the crowd started to amuse itself. People kept trying to get a Mexican wave going. I bet you can guess how I feel about Mexican waves.

I did see a good bit of verbal fighting, though. A couple of rows behind me, this woman had been quite gobby all night, and a dude in front of her called her on it. They then had a stand-up argument. He seem bemused by her (probably drunk-on-Bud-Light) ramblings and swearing. Eventually, a security guy came along, and took the guy away despite being told my strangers in our section that it was she not he that was being an idiot. He came back, and all seemed calm. A few minutes later, after going to get more beer, the woman started up another argument and ended up throwing a full $10 souvenir cup of Bud Light over the guy. She was escorted off. As she disappeared down the stairs, the cheering that from the section was replied to with a defiant and beautifully-timed middle finger. Moments later, he was inexplicable escorted away, too. He returned to great cheers from the whole section.

Game over, Mariners win. And, I'm sad to say, I'll be glad to be getting back to watching the Yankees streaming on MLB.com, so I don't have the negative feelings about the stadium cloud my view of the team. I didn't feel like I was there to watch a game; I felt like the New York Yankees wanted me there simply to spend money. I'm not naive enough to think that every sports team doesn't feel like that, but at other ballparks it doesn't feel so blatant. At this new Yankee Stadium, I got the feeling that I was supposed to feel privileged to be in their presence. Going to a baseball game isn't a privilege. Obviously, it's not a right, either, but ultimately, it's just a sport, even if you are the New York Yankees.

O

On Tuesday, my pal Derick and I took a day trip to Baltimore. Neither of us had seen the Baltimore Orioles ballpark, so a quick tap tap tap on the Orioles website, and we'd got ourselves a pair of eight dollar tickets to watch them play against the Boston Red Sox. It's a three-ish hour journey from Brooklyn to Baltimore. I got to see some of the finer parts of New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland's freeways. We flicked through radio stations all the way, and when we got into Orioles territory, settled on a sports talk radio station where callers seemed resigned to a thumping in the evening's game.

Getting into Baltimore was really easy. Straight off the freeway into the Inner Harbor area and a car park. Lovely. After a lunch of really lovely crab cakes, we spent the afternoon wandering around in the 88°F heat. We had a look in the Babe Ruth Museum and the Sports Legends Museum, sauntered around the harbour, up to Federal Hill, and had a few beers in a local bar before game time.



Of the fifteen Major League ballparks that I've not seen, Oriole Park at Camden Yards was the one I was most looking forward to. The first of the new bunch of stadiums that have been built in the last twenty years. Oriole Park is lovely. A nice intimate park, with a huge brick warehouse running along one side. Plenty of space. And excellent food. Figuring that it'll be rare for me to visit Baltimore, I chomped down on a pulled pork sandwich, and later on, a pit beef sandwich. Both were fantastic. By far the best food I've had at a sports event.





There has to be a downside, though, and with the Red Sox being in town, Camden Yards was pretty much 50/50 split between O's fans and Red Sox fans.
And in the early innings, the visitors were making the most noise when their team took a 9-1 lead before some big clouds let rip with an hour long rain delay.



The rain, though, allowed for a bit of mingling with the locals. We were sitting in the upper level, and when I asked an employee on the concourse where the smoking section was, she said "You're standing in it!" A cop stood near her nodded and concurred, "Right here." After a bunch of ballparks where the smoking sections are hidden away, or even outside the stadium, it was very nice to be able to smoke just a short hop from my seat.

I got chatting to a couple of guys. Both Orioles fans, both into soccer, so we got to stand around and praise sports from our nations. We also got to the topic that I think a lot of British people wonder about: is The Wire accurate? Apparently so. I was told that, outside of a few downtown areas - the areas tourists might visit - there's a whole heap of truth in the show.

I also pulled the tourist card and took a few photos of people while we waited out the rain delay. Here:





Eventually, the rain slowed to spitting, and the game re-started. 9-1 down, bottom of the fourth. Two-and-a-half scoreless innings later, and the Red Sox got another run. 10-1. And then, in the bottom of the seventh, Justin Masterson pitching for the Red Sox, the Orioles started hitting. Suddenly, it was 10-6. Again, in the bottom of the eighth, the O's scored another five runs. Amazingly, the Orioles were leading 11-10. The Red Sox fans were quiet, the locals were having fun. Three outs later, and the Orioles had staged their greatest ever comeback in team history; the biggest ever comeback by a last placed team against a first placed team. Orioles manager Dave Trembley described it as "probably the best game I've been involved in." And for Derick and I, it was fantastic to be in a beautiful ballpark, watching a fantastic game.




Three hours of sleepy driving later, we were back home in early hours of the morning Brooklyn, looking for a parking spot, tired but still raving about a great evening.

Pigeon No.33

The thirty-third Pigeon is online over at Spreeblick. Archive. RSS.

Staten Island Yankees

Another baseball-related post, so, y'know, I won't be offended if the Europeans go off to Boing Boing or whatever. Yesterday, I took the Staten Island Ferry to, well, Staten Island. It still amazes me that it's free considering the amount of tourists that take the ferry just for the heck of it. When you get off the ferry, there's a ballpark just a home run away from the ferry terminal. And that's where I was heading, to see the Staten Island Yankees, the so-called Baby Bombers, the New York Yankees' Single-A affiliate. A chance to see future proper Yankees. Current big boy Yankees Chien-Ming Wang, Melky Cabrera, and Robinson Cano all played here for a while.

The stadium's got a really long name, and includes the name of a bank, so I'll not tell you what it is. But, once inside, you have a lovely view of Manhattan. Well, you would have a lovely view of Manhattan were it not for the batter's eye (a dark, plain wall so that when the pitcher chucks the ball, the batter can see the ball easier) and a couple of dredger-type boats doing some stuff in the Upper New York Bay.



All went well for a while. I didn't have to get my ID out once to get beer, I had a good seat for $14, and it was lovely lovely weather. AND Vincent Pastore, the guy who played Big Pussy in The Sopranos threw out the ceremonial first pitch. (By the way, searching Google for "Big Pussy" when trying to find out how to spell the actor's surname properly doesn't bring many results about Sopranos characters.)



Then things went downhill. Now, I love me some minor league baseball. Small stadiums, players all trying to impress to get into the big leagues, the feeling that you're seeing the stars of tomorrow. The one thing that's mildly annoying about minor league baseball is how much extraneous crap you have assaulting your senses. Mainly stuff that's for the children. I fully appreciate that children need a little extra stimulation, and if that helps them get into baseball: fine.

But the Staten Island Yankees go way over the top. There are THREE mascots. All of them cows. There are two budding kids TV presenters who come out between EVERY half inning and start yelping about some crappy t-shirts or other prizes kids will get for whatever dumb spectacle they've got to partake in to get the prize. It feels very much like what it'd be like to watch a baseball game whilst sitting in the ball-pit at a McDonald's play area. I realise I can be a bit curmudgeonly at times, but the real reason people are at this stadium is to see a baseball game. I don't buy a hot dog for the ketchup and mustard, and I don't go to a Staten Island Yankees game to see kids in a sack race. Seriously, and I'll reiterate, I understand why this stuff goes on, but please: can you not show some respect to the people who are there to actually WATCH THE GAME!?

They also do the crappy things I don't like that happen at big boy Yankee games: the singing of "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch; "Cotton Eye fucking Joe," and "YMCA." And their announcer is a dick. Apart from all of the above, I had a good time. They didn't really deserve to, but the Yankees won in the bottom of the 9th after trailing for seven-and-a-half innings. Let's go Yankees.

Bellingham to New York

It's been a long week. It began with travelling from Bellingham, WA to Estacada, OR to see my friends Kraig and Barbara. Even though I'd been down there just a couple of weeks earlier, I didn't really want to leave the States without saying a real goodbye. They've been good to me, and I wanted to say thank you properly. We had a nice weekend, with a trip to the beautiful Oregon coast around Lincoln City (feeling a little bit of silly pride at being in a city named the same as my hometown, I bought the t-shirt), and to a really nice restaurant called Rendezvous which is kinda of in the middle of nowhere (about halfway between Portland and Mt. Hood). From the outside, it doesn't look like anything special - just a run of the mill, kinda crafty looking place next to a wine shop and a gift shop - but the food is delicious.






Tuesday, the comments shit storm went down while I was on the mind-numbingly slow train from Portland to Seattle. Not since the biggest flood of Minipops-related emails back in 2003, when a BBC Radio One DJ started talking about my work, have I had such a bursting inbox. It sent my head spinning, because in amongst the forty-plus comment notifications, and the regular emails, were a couple of hundred emails about my new baseball website, Flip Flop Fly Ball. My brain pulled me one way and the other. Stress, sadness, and anger on one side; joy and amazement on the other. It's been incredibly strange to see the reaction to FFFB. I've beavered away on this stuff for quite a while, mostly for my own enjoyment, thinking that one day, I'll get around to putting it online. Being a non-American, I felt (feel) like an interloper when it comes to baseball. I feel like I have the mental age of a 13-year-old in baseball years. The amount of time I've been into the sport would make me that age if I'd have got into it when most American boys get into baseball. And to suddenly go from that, to having serious baseball emails from people who've been following the game for decades is humbling.

I was visiting Heather and Andrew for a couple of days in Seattle. Old friends from Berlin. Andrew and I went to Safeco Field, where I could see one last Mariners game before I left the Pacific Northwest. An interleague game against the San Diego Padres. On my fifth trip to Safeco this season, I finally got to see future Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr. play; not only play, I got to see him hit a home run. The 619th of his career. I'll never be a Mariners fan, but I've really enjoyed going to their games, and as they rallied towards the end of the game, I found myself genuinely cheering them on. It wasn't to be, though: they lost 9-7. I also had the joy of seeing a guy I saw play for the Padres Triple-A team a couple of weeks back in Portland. It was nice to see that the guy I'd done the photo montage of - Josh Banks - had been called up to the big leagues.



But it wasn't to be my last time at Safeco Field. Wednesday, I went on the stadium tour. Nine dollars to take the hour-and-a-half tour. I was one of about thirty people being shown around by a couple of kindly old fellas. We got to walk a little bit on the dirt track - "not on the grass!" - and sit in the Mariners and visiting team dugouts. Apparently, Ichiro, the Mariners' awesome Japanese right fielder, always sits in the same spot on the bench, so all of the Japanese people on the tour had their photos taken sitting there. No clubhouse access on this tour, unlike the previous stadium tours I've been on in The Bronx and Oakland, but we did get to see how the other half lives; being shown around the fancy boxes where the rich people pretend to enjoy a baseball game by scoffing expensive food and watching the game on TVs. A brief stop in the press box, and the tour was over.




I sauntered north to the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum. I'm not a massive sci-fi fan, so I rarely paused in there, but it was nice to see some of Jimi Hendrix's guitars in the EMP; and the small-but-lovely Jim Henson exhibit is definitely worth seeing. There's a real Kermit in there! No photos allowed in the museum, so, y'know, no photos here.

I was nervous about flying on Thursday morning. Back in the olden days, I used to be scared of flying; but when flying to Miami in 2005, the plane I was on flew through Hurrican Katrina and since then I've taken any bumps or dodgy landings in my stride. This time, though, I had a different reason to be nervous. The I-94W visa waiver stub that I arrived with is still stapled in my passport. The expiration date on that was March 3rd. Even though I had receipts from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that tell anyone who wants to know that my application is pending and voids the expired I-94W, I was still nervous; mainly because you and I know that I'm not gonna be following that through.

My nerves weren't helped by the most ridiculously unorganised system at the Delta ticket desk. You have to use a computer thingy to print out your boarding pass, and then get in the throng of people to give them your bags. The Delta folks are shouting out surnames, which, over the noise of hundreds of people in the building, was kinda difficult to hear. The woman in front of me in the queue asked how we were supposed to hear our names, and we were directed to check the little sticker on each computer terminal, which told us to stand in a specific queue.

Bag checked, one last smoke, then to the security thingy. I'm one of those people who is kinda well prepared for the metal detector thing. I tend to take off my watch, iPod, belt, and shoes early. So when I finally get to the guy checking IDs, I'm more concerned about my trousers slipping down to my knees than him seeing my expire I-94W. Thankfully, he doesn't look at anything other than my photo and boarding pass. A little jump for joy. A jump that was cancelled out when, just as I was boarding the plane, and the Delta employee was scanning my boarding pass, the machine didn't make the "beep" it had made for everyone else, it made a "beepbeepbeepbeepbeep." My glass-half-empty self resigned myself that I was gonna be cuffed and dragged off the plane in front of everyone. Didn't happen, of course.

The self-appointed King of Pop popped his clogs, and as my pal Derick drove us to Brooklyn from JFK, all the cars on the road had one song or another coming from the speakers. We had a beer in a local bar, watched the Yankees beat the Braves on the TV whilst listening to a succession of Michael's songs as hipster girls and hipster boys danced nearby. It was a funny feeling seeing the Jackson reaction. I have a sneaking feeling that, in this "hottest thing on the web today, forgotten about tomorrow" era, aside from family and friends, a lot of people of my generation and younger don't care deeply about much in particular. We've never had a defining moment. Maybe that's different for New Yorkers, because they have had a defining moment this decade. But the reaction to Michael's death seems a little fake to me. It's nice to hear his music, to be reminded of the reason he was famous in the first place; but I'm not entirely sure if the rest of it is just a way to try and feel something.

A nice relaxing Friday, a bid for tickets on eBay later, Derick and I were heading to Queens, to Citi Field, the new Shea, the home of your 2009 New York Mets for the first game of the "Inaugural Subway Series" at their new stadium. It's the first time I've seen the Yankees away from Yankee Stadium, but when we got there, it didn't really feel like that. While there definitely were more Mets fans there, there were still a good 30-40% Yankees fans around.

The new Shea is a very nice stadium. We had tickets in the "Promenade" section; their fancy name for being right at the top. As we watched the Yankees doing their batting practice, the clouds looked ominous, and shortly afterwards, as I smoked in the smoking section (you could still see a big screen from the section, so didn't have to miss any of the action), an employee informed my fellow smokers and I that it was about to get rainy, so we should get under a covered part of the stadium.



And rainy it got. Lashing in, getting us wet even stood about twenty feet away from the uncovered area. I scoffed a tasty grilled hot Italian sausage covered in peppers and onions, chugged down some Beck's, and we waited it out.




Nearly an hour after the scheduled start, we took off our caps and stood for the national anthem. Then the local anthems began: "Let's go Yankees!" "Yankees suck!" Let's go Yankees!" "Yankees suck!" Let's go Yankees!" "Yankees suck!"

We noticed straight away that both teams were paying tribute to Michael Jackson when on the field, by wearing just one glove. Nice touch. Anyway, the Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia was fairly dominant through four innings, long enough for some Mets errors to give the Yanks a 4-0 lead. And aside from a Gary Sheffield home run for the home team, the Mets put up very little fight, eventually losing 9-1. The star of the show, though, was the sky that followed the thunderstorm. Stunning orange mammatus clouds. All the better for being up high in a stadium where half of what the eye can see is clouds. More photos on my Flickr.




I've got another week or so left in New York before returning to Europe. I'm gonna soak up as much baseball as possible. Starting this afternoon, with a trip to Staten Island to see the Staten Island Yankees, the Single-A affiliate of the big boys in the Bronx.

Mammatus clouds

Beautiful sky over Citi Field, the Mets' new stadium. Yankees won 9-1, yet still the locals chant "Yankees suck." Clearly not. Anyway, a larger version of the picture here. There's a few other pictures of the stadium and clouds, too.

24 hour vigil

My mate Mark suggested this; I can't take any credit for it: a 24 hour Billie Jean animation vigil. Watch it below or on its original page: http://www.flipflopflyin.com/24hourbilliejean



I'll be watching it wearing just one glove and occasionally hiccuping. I was on a plane when the news came out, and it was amazing how the news rippled down the plane from one person's Blackberry when we landed. The woman next to me told me; the guy across the aisle heard; then the people behind, and on and on. I'm in New York right now and, I don't know if it is the same everywhere, but you can't walk down the street without hearing some Michael coming from a car radio. Is this what it was like when Elvis died? I was six years old back then, and I can vaguely remember it being like this.

Umpires room

I went on a tour of Safeco Field - the Seattle Mariners' stadium - today. It was a nice tour. Along the way, I couldn't resist taking this photograph. Surely writing the words "umpires room" in Braille is inviting some very obvious jokes, right?

Stuff: follow-up

I'm sorry about what went down yesterday. Had I not been on a train without Internet access while the comments section was exploding, I'd have knocked it on the head a lot sooner. I'm not going to address the allegations, as it'd be a long bullet-pointed list of the other side's opinion. It'd just be he said/she said. It is very tempting, though, because - as I'm sure you'll understand - I didn't enjoy being the subject of so much vicious hatred. So, yeh: sorry you had to read that, especially those of you that are gay. I never ever imagined that this blog would have homophobic comments popping up. I'm leaving the comment moderation on for the time being.

Thanks,
Craig