Tampa/St. Petersburg: Tropicana Field
The long and winding road.
PREAMBLE:1 I probably should’ve broken this installment up into at least two parts, maybe more. Maybe that way it wouldn’t have taken almost two months to hammer this whole thing out, stealing moments between family, friends, work, holidays, obligations and opportunities to jot down a random thought before being pulled away yet again. As such, this all may feel a little disjointed, a little unfocused, a little piecemeal. This is one big story composed of a bunch of smaller ones, strung together by a tired mind trying to connect highway lines as they pass.
Other than “what was your favorite ballpark?” the question I got most this summer was “how hard was it to plan this trip?” The planning part was never really the issue: I’ve got a decent mind for scheduling, budgeting and logistics. However, making a plan and executing a plan are two different things. The hardest part about executing this plan to visit all 30 Major League ballparks was always going to be the weeklong stretch in August where all I had on the agenda was driving from the west coast to the east.
After catching the Giants in San Francisco on a Saturday, a second Dodgers game in Los Angeles just for the heck of it on a Sunday and making up a date with the Diamondbacks in Phoenix on a Monday, the next game on my schedule was six days away, a Sunday tilt between the Dbacks and the Tampa Bay Rays on the other side of the continent. That’s about 2,200 miles via I-10 and I-75, or an average of 440 miles per day for five days. Seven hours behind the wheel every day, Tuesday through Saturday, damn near a full work week right there. Unlike the trip out to California where Scott was riding shotgun and occasionally taking the wheel through the Midwest and Southwest, I’d be making this return trek all by my lonesome.
6 a.m. MST, Tuesday, Aug. 13: After yesterday’s adventures, including a late night walk through downtown Phoenix for late night Cornish pasties at a place called — no joke — Cornish Pasty Co., I decided to blow past the 440 mile driving allotment which would’ve put me in El Paso for the night. I set coordinates for Midland to visit once again with my friend Matt, whom I caught up with briefly on the trip out while he was on duty at a Rockhounds game. Instead of six and a half hours behind the wheel, I was staring down about 11, plus a time change as I traveled from Mountain Standard to Central Daylight. To get to Midland at a reasonable hour, I had to leave early. I hit the surprisingly good complimentary hotel breakfast shortly after it opened, then hopped on I-10 East.
6:30 a.m.: Traffic on the freeway was at a complete standstill just outside Chandler. About a dozen emergency vehicles came screaming up the breakdown lanes on either side of the road. I was stuck behind a couple of semi trucks, so I couldn’t see what was going on, but it didn’t require a clear line of sight to know it was awful. Turns out an SUV blew out a tire and rolled over several times before being struck by a pickup truck, killing the SUV driver’s 11-year-old son. Cars are the second most dangerous form of travel2 there is, something we conveniently forget about as we base our entire lives around them.
7:10 a.m.: Highway patrol shut down I-10 East and rerouted traffic to I-10 West. I drove the Mazda 3 over the desert median and plotted my alternate route to Texas at a nearby gas station. The best option was to take U.S. 60 east to Globe, Arizona, then pick up U.S. 70 to Lordsburg, New Mexico where I’d reunite with I-10. Small consolation: this is quite the scenic route, driving through the passes of the Superstition and Pinaleño mountain ranges.
10:25 a.m.: Stopped at three separate post offices along Route 70 before I finally found one that had postcard stamps in stock. I guess not too many folks “wish you were here” around these parts. Also, quick shout out to the “Twice the Ice” self-service ice dispensers that I learned about on this trip. Having a big cooler full of food and beer in the back of the Mazda 3 these past five weeks, I’ve bought ice at all manner of places: grocery stores, truck stops, convenience marts, you name it. But when you’re in the middle of nowhere, need 20 pounds of ice and don’t want to talk to a human being, these giant vending machines have got you covered. Sure, every once in a while you’re going to dump 15 of your 20 pounds on the ground, but it’s worth it for the deal and total lack of personal interaction. A frigid introvert’s dream.
1:35 p.m. MDT: About halfway done with the drive, time for a lunch break. Scott and I saw a fair number of Blake’s Lotaburger locations as we sped through New Mexico, and while enticed by the impressive 1950s branding and signage, we never stopped to sample the fare from the Land of Enchantment’s premier patty purveyor. I ordered the Lotaburger New Mexico-style — two all-beef patties, American cheese, lettuce, onion, pickle, mayo, mustard and Hatch green chile3 — with natural fries and an iced tea to-go. I’m not a big fan of fast food: I got past that stage of my life when I stopped working a hybrid job where my office was two hours from my house. In a pinch, I’ll succumb to convenience, but I’m rarely happy about it. The green chile Lotaburger does it for me. Thankfully there are no Blake’s locations east of the New Mexico-Texas border because it would wreck my wallet.
2:15 p.m.: I got as close to the Mexican border as I was going to get, just 600 feet away as I buzzed down I-10 in El Paso. We were about 1,800 feet away on I-8 in the southern California desert on our way to San Diego two weeks ago, but this is a completely different vibe. Whereas there’s a 35 mile gap between border crossings between Calexico/Mexicali and Andrade/Los Algodones, El Paso and Juarez are essentially one big city split in twain by the U.S./Mexico border running down the middle of the Rio Grande. For as much over-the-top rhetoric there is about the border, the reality is that these two cities rely on each other in ways that the rest of America can’t or won’t understand.
3:40 p.m.: About 85 miles from El Paso and another 85 miles before I-20 splits off from I-10, is the Sierra Blanca border patrol station, also known as the “Checkpoint of the Stars.” Willie Nelson, Snoop Dogg and Fiona Apple have all been arrested here on marijuana possession charges, sometimes threatened with a decade or more of prison time under Texas’ draconian drug laws. The local sheriff isn’t as interested in low-level busts over a personal stash anymore — if you’re caught with a little bag of weed, you’ll basically just have to surrender it before Border Patrol sends you on your way — as the bigger concerns are cartel activity and human trafficking. Every eastbound vehicle has to stop at Sierra Blanca, and after a license plate scan a border agent may wave you through or ask some questions. I got the latter. “Whose car is this?” the officer demanded, noting my Ohio plates about 1,500 miles from home. “It’s registered under my wife’s name,” I replied, expecting to be pulled aside and grilled more as the agent briefly stared into my soul to determine if I was telling the truth.4 Confident in my answer and that I didn’t have a trunk full of fentanyl, he waved me past. I remembered a few miles down the road that I had an unopened, California-procured vape in my laptop bag next to me in the passenger seat. Guess I’ll have to get famous some other way.
7:37 p.m. CDT: After almost 12 hours behind the wheel, I finally pulled up to Matt’s hotel to pick him up before we headed over to Tall City Brewing for a couple of beers. I didn’t even check into my own hotel first, a room that I had booked just a half hour prior at a truck stop west of Odessa. I hadn’t booked it sooner because, frankly, I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it all the way out here. El Paso — four hours behind me — would’ve been the reasonable place to post up for the night. I just felt the need to get the biggest chunk of driving through the desolate West done as soon as possible. I was heading home, by way of Texas, the Gulf Coast, Florida, Georgia and Appalachia, but home nonetheless.
9:12 p.m.: Matt and I were in search of dinner after Tall City closed, and some quick web searching pointed us toward The Bar. My cousin Sam’s husband, Jason, gave us a heads up about Midland bars when we were about to leave Dallas. “It’s a totally different world out there,” he said with no way of knowing that would register in my head as an enticement and not a warning. Here at The Bar, as is apparently typical of most Midland watering holes, cheap beer is cheap, the air is thick with cigarette smoke and it’s difficult to discern if a distant disturbance is friendly or a foreshadowing of fisticuffs.5 We parked my tiny Mazda 3 in a lot full of gigantic dually pickups, obviously out of place here. The joint was pretty packed on a Tuesday night, but we found a couple of barstools on the far end of the room. Unfortunately, the kitchen closed at 9 p.m. even though The Bar was open until 11. I had my heart set on a giant, cheap steak, inevitably cooked incorrectly, served in the dull haze of wafting tobacco and beer-branded neon light. Even if dinner wasn’t on the menu, I wasn’t going to waste this opportunity to take in Midland culture at its most pure. I ordered a Lone Star longneck and Matt got a Stella Artois on draft, served in a chalice, clearly the fanciest option available here. We watched as the regular patrons stumbled past us toward the exit, on their way to recklessly pilot their 1-ton trucks toward tomorrow, if they’re lucky.
9:58 p.m.: Matt was flying back to Phoenix the next morning and I had a five hour drive to Austin ahead of me, so we made one more stop in search of food at a place called Fair to Midland. This is the polar opposite of The Bar, from the actual witty name6 to being so bold as to check IDs at the door. Fair to Midland does deliver on its promise, with midway-style games, funhouse mirrors and an solid selection of fried food. Fully in keeping with the name, it was all, you know, fine. Maybe I would’ve been more impressed if I hadn’t been so tired. I was more than ready to sack out after an exhausting day.
10:15 a.m. CDT, Wednesday, Aug. 14: I took an opportunity to sleep in, no alarm, knowing that I had just a relatively short five-and-a-half hour drive to Austin ahead of me. It’s fascinating how comfortable I’ve become with the itinerant lifestyle in just a month or so, even convincing myself that any drive under six hours is “short.” I had finalized plans the night before to meet up with some folks in Austin, so I booked a hotel from my phone on my way out the door in the morning, loaded up the car and set out for some breakfast on the move. I’ve been to West Texas a few times in my life, usually for rock band stuff, and one of our singer’s favorite food stops7 is Rosa’s Cafe & Tortilla Factory. While he and I have had our disagreements over road food in the past — I have eaten Little Caesar’s pizza only twice in my adult life, and they were both in the back of a car Kyle was driving — he’s right about Rosa’s. I popped into the drive thru at the location8 nearest my hotel just a few minutes before breakfast service was scheduled to end. Three breakfast tacos and a hot coffee hit the spot, and I pressed the accelerator for the state capital.
3:30 p.m.: The landscape change from the desolate, wind-swept oil fields of the Permian Basin to the lush, green rolling hills and valleys of Central Texas is slow and gradual from behind the wheel on the winding state highways. I made great time getting to Austin and had about an hour to kill. Of course, I went in search of barbecue. Using Texas Monthly’s most recent list of the best BBQ joints in the state — a quadrennial feature that starts more arguments than it settles — I headed for LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue’s recently opened brick and mortar restaurant in South Austin. Rated fifth in the state on the 2021 list, LeRoy and Lewis honed their skills for seven years in a food truck before putting down roots in February of this year. Wandering into a barbecue place in the mid-to-late afternoon can sometimes be a dicey proposition: there’s an equal chance that the meat you wanted has sold out or has been drying out for hours after the lunch rush. I was greeted enthusiastically as I stepped through the door, a little road-weary and slightly overwhelmed by the avant garde takes on the typical Texas BBQ menu. The guy behind the counter walked me through it all, asking my preferences, explaining some of their more outlandish options and sharing his own favorites. With a little guidance, I settled on a couple of the house specialties: beef cheeks and flat iron, along with sides of kale caesar slaw and kimchi. I’ve eaten a lot of barbecue from a lot of places in my life, and I can say with no hesitation that the beef cheek at LeRoy and Lewis is simply the best bite of smoked meat I have ever tasted. The rest of the plate was stellar too. It didn’t surprise me in the least when I saw that they were recently awarded a Michelin star.
4:30 p.m.: I didn’t realize it when I pulled into the parking lot at Meanwhile Brewing, but after a month and a half of being on sabbatical I was actually starting to miss work.9 Sitting around a table in the taproom with my friends from the Texas Craft Brewers Guild, getting a debrief about their recent trip to Wisconsin to learn from our peers around the country, talking shop about gamifying membership and volunteer experiences, and absorbing more information about competitive watermelon seed spitting than I ever imagined I’d know, I could feel the shift in my mindset. The conversation dropped like an anchor: before I left on my journey, I was adrift without a compass, just hoping that the prevailing winds would carry me where I needed to go. Here in Austin, I had found a familiar port, trusted fellow seafarers, a reliable map and a reason to sail again.
10 a.m. CDT, Thursday, Aug. 15: I left my hotel near the Austin airport on a side quest to the place where I had the last best bite of barbecue I can remember. Flash back to the year 2013: at the spritely age of 34, I had just gotten myself off the dole after being laid off from the job I had worked for the past seven years. My sudden and somewhat unexpected career change launched me out from behind a desk and up on my feet in a bustling bar kitchen for the first time in ages. I dropped 40 pounds seemingly overnight, a drastic change spurred by a more active lifestyle, a schedule that decimated my beverage-centric social life, and a near complete loss of appetite brought about by an intense fear of fucking up and being discovered to be a total fraud. Anyway, when our band left for tour in August, an unpaid leave that I had negotiated a few months before when I was hired, we had a pretty solid “eatinerary” for the dozen cities we’d be playing. In Austin, that meant Franklin Barbecue, which had just a couple months earlier been named the best barbecue joint in Texas — and therefore, the world — by Texas Monthly. I had tried my best to save up as much as I could before tour so I could indulge a bit on the road, easier said than done at an hourly rate barely above minimum wage. When we rolled up the morning after our show, we were handed the sign indicating that the four of us were the “end of the line” and told we’d be waiting about four hours before we’d place our order and there probably wouldn’t be any brisket left when we got to the counter. We only had to drive to Houston for our show that night, so the time wasn’t an issue, but the thought of sticking out a four hour wait in the hot asphalt parking lot in Austin in August only to *not* get brisket was too much to ask. We ended up being first in line at Stiles Switch, about 15 minutes up the road from Franklin, soon filling our faces with perfectly cromulent barbecue. Still, we had set our sights much higher, and despite having just eaten a full meal, piled in the van in search of more and better. An hour later, we were in Taylor, Texas at Louie Mueller Barbecue, one of the most famous and highest regarded purveyors of smoked meat in the Lone Star State. Despite still being full from Stiles Switch, we ordered a couple pounds of brisket, a couple sausage links and an enormous beef rib to split among the four of us. At the time, I considered all three to be the best of any I had ever tried, but the beef rib was in a class of its own. Intensely smoky, insanely rich and comically large, the Louie Mueller beef rib dominated my mind whenever it wandered to the subject of Texas barbecue, which, as you might imagine, was often.
11:15 a.m.: Just before you get to the counter at Louie Mueller Barbecue, there are two crucial pieces of decoration on the wall: a menu written in permanent marker on white butcher paper, barely clinging to the greasy, smoky brick below courtesy of overworked, layered strips of blue painters tape, and a handsomely framed medal and certificate from the James Beard Foundation, proclaiming for all who wander through the doors that this Texas institution holds the high honor of “American Classic.”10 I don’t need to look at the menu. I know exactly what I want: a pound of brisket, one beef rib, one smoked beef link, a side of potato salad and an iced tea, essentially the same order that the four of us in the band split back in 2013. The nice lady behind the counter wanted to make sure that I knew that a single beef rib was going to come in somewhere between one-and-a-half and two pounds at $37 per pound. I tell her that I’d be disappointed if it didn’t. My lunch totaled up to $133, including tip, and I didn’t even flinch. Of course, I wasn’t going to eat all of that meat in a single sitting, so let’s call it three $44 meals, because that makes me feel better when I’m traveling on a budget. Brisket? Perfectly good, not the best I’ve had on this trip so far, but if this was the only brisket I had in Texas I’d be over the moon. Sausage link? Sneaky good, perfect grind and texture, great spice and flavor, well smoked but still juicy. The beef rib? Every bit as good as I remembered it. Nostalgia sometimes sets the bar too high for a beloved experience to clear, but Louie Mueller got over it with ease. An American Classic, no doubt about it.11
2 p.m.: I thought it would be a shame to leave Texas without hitting one more barbecue joint. I mean, it’s probably my favorite thing to eat, it’s absolutely better here than anywhere else, and I have no idea when I’ll be back. I used some unexpected stop-and-go construction traffic on U.S. 290 to do some research, only to find I had passed a two-time Texas Monthly Top Ten smoke shack just a few miles back. Off the highway just outside Brenham, Texas, Truth BBQ opened their first location in 2015, making the coveted top ten list just two years later. Two years after that, Truth opened a location an hour away in Houston. Two years after that, the Houston joint earned its own top ten slot. I peeled off a U-turn as soon as I could and hightailed it back to Brenham. I walked in not expecting much to still be available: it was three hours after opening and barbecue this highly lauded was likely to have sold out by the time I showed up. To my surprise, only a couple of offerings had been crossed off the board, so I didn’t have to settle when choosing my combo plate: sliced brisket, brisket boudin sausage and sides of collard greens and corn pudding. Y’all, I think I found my new #1 brisket. I don’t know what makes it magical, but these couple of slices did everything that you expect Texas brisket to do, but amplified in all the best ways. I’m not knocking the rest of my plate, which was all excellent, but I feel like this brisket fundamentally changed me.
3:45 p.m.: It’s rush hour in Houston. To an extent, it’s always rush hour in Houston, but it’s *really* rush hour in Houston right now. And here I am, just — doot-dee-doot-dee-doo — trying to catch I-10 and skip right through downtown in the middle of it. Wanna know how I know that this sabbatical is working out for me? I’m feeling fine, belly full of barbecue, just going with the flow.12
7:45 p.m.: These clouds ahead look ominous. The sun is behind me, but I’ve got my shades on because the reflection bouncing back from the top of the cumulonimbus cloud dead ahead is blinding. Minutes later, I make a one-handed switch to my real glasses just as the rain starts to pummel the windshield. I’m on I-10 in Jennings, Louisiana, just west of Lafayette, wipers racing right to left and back again as fast as they can, doing their futile, rhythmic dance as the rain washes the world away. I’m rolling slow, hazard lights blinking relentlessly, hoping beyond hope that the truckers I can’t see behind me will spot my warning beacon and do their best to keep from turning my Mazda 3 into a twisted metal pancake.
9:05 p.m.: Hey, I didn’t die out here, so I’ve got that going for me. Checked into my nondescript hotel south of Baton Rouge and checked out for the night. Election is on the TV.13 That’ll do.
9:45 a.m. CDT, Friday, Aug. 16: I packed about two weeks worth of clothes for this trip and it had been 11 days since I last did laundry, so I hit up the Suds & Tubs before hitting the road for the day. I had booked a hotel near Panama City, Florida right before I went to sleep just 10 hours prior, and was rewarding myself with a comparatively easy six hour drive versus some of the long hauls I had pulled earlier in the week. Before this adventure, I hadn’t been to a laundromat in something like 15 years. In college, it was one of my favorite places to sit and think, devoting an hour or so to people watching late on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, rocking the iPod — remember those? — and letting my mind wander, occasionally jotting down an intriguing thought or a shocking observation of the behavior of my fellow launderers. Slipping back into that creative habit, I knocked out a good chunk of my Anaheim report as my clothes tumbled in various machines. Maybe I’d be done with this blog already if I didn’t have my own washer and dryer at home now.
1:05 p.m.: THWACK! On I-10 into New Orleans — I decided it would be a huge mistake if I didn’t have lunch in one of America’s best food cities — out of absolutely nowhere, something fell from the skies and bounced off my windshield, leaving a small but significant spider web crack in its wake. Given that I was keeping something like a 35 degree difference between the cabin temperature and the ambient air, I knew I’d need to take care of this sooner rather than later, lest I hit a mild bump in the road and end up with a lap full of glass. But I wasn’t about to let a crisis get between me and a meal.
1:30 p.m.: I buttoned up a freshly washed short sleeve shirt and walked into the legendary Dooky Chase’s Restaurant, hoping I could sneak into a bar seat or a table for one without a reservation. Oh sweet summer child… perhaps unsurprisingly, the place was booked up and bustling on a Friday afternoon and I was politely but firmly turned away. Next time I’ll know better. I’ll also make sure to wear long pants as I’m pretty sure I wasn’t fully compliant with their dress code.
1:50 p.m.: Hungry and undeterred, I headed up the street to Parkway Bakery & Tavern, a Bayou St. John neighborhood staple that has been slinging the iconic New Orleans poor boy sandwich14 for nearly 100 years. I took advantage of their handy phone order and in-car delivery service so I could get myself back on schedule and wouldn’t have to endure the crushing Louisiana humidity. The lightning quick kitchen had my 10-inch dressed fried shrimp poor boy and a side of chicken and sausage jambalaya hopped out to my Mazda 3 in no time, and I was on my way.
3 p.m.: I made an online appointment with the Safelite shop in Slidell, just off I-10 on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain. Luckily, I caught their last service time on Friday afternoon, and I settled into a chair in the waiting room for my second hour-long maintenance detour of the day. An hour later I was all set to go, the shop tech popping into the customer lobby to ask where I got my po’ boy, as the unmistakable aroma had asserted itself despite the half sandwich remnant of my lunch being safely secured in the cooler back in the trunk. When I told him it was from Parkway and explained that it was in New Orleans proper, he said “we don’t go down there” with plainly obvious disdain and disgust in his voice. I didn’t have time to make the point that he was missing out on living in service of his own fear and prejudice.15 He’s going to get Raising Cane’s tomorrow and he’ll be perfectly fine with that.16
8:15 p.m.: The traversal of I-10 across Mississippi and Alabama’s coastal dangly bits was quick and uneventful. By the time I made it to Panama City, the sun had already set behind me, leaving my last hour or so of driving the two lane Panhandle highways eerily dark. I popped into the local grocery store — a Publix — to pick up supplies for restocking the cooler before settling into my hotel room for the night. The remains of my Louie Mueller beef rib never stood a chance as I polished that off alongside a pre-made grocery store salad. Gotta eat healthy out here, you know?
11 a.m. CDT, Saturday, Aug. 17: I took full advantage of not having a damn thing to do to sleep in and check out of the hotel as late as possible. However, I didn’t take the opportunity to tack on an extra hour to drive along the Gulf Coast, instead mindlessly following the Google Maps instructions to skirt around the northern edge of the Apalachicola National Forest. I’m sure I didn’t get the full grandeur of the preserve while barreling down state highways at 60-something miles per hour. In retrospect, I do wish I had taken the more southern route where I could at least catch the occasional glimpse of vast open water to my right before having to course correct on my way to Tampa.
2:43 p.m. EDT: I am officially sick of driving.
7 p.m.: My home for the next two nights is the Crystal Bay Hotel, originally known as the Sunset Hotel when it opened in 1916 on the western edge of St. Petersburg. The Sunset was the height of luxury in its prime, and a preferred destination of celebrities like Babe Ruth and Marilyn Monroe, both of whom have namesake suites in the Crystal Bay today. At 108 years old, the property lacks the glitz and glamour of its heyday, but is an affordable and comfortable curiosity despite not having all of the modern amenities. After checking in and not wanting to spend one more minute in the car, I took a brief stroll over the Treasure Island Causeway bridge to get a glimpse of my neighbors with their tony homes and boat slips where their backyards should be. I made sure to be out of their domain before sundown, as the last thing I needed after a weeklong drive across the continent was to have some old asshole call the cops on me for looking poor after dark.
9:30 a.m., Sunday, Aug. 18: It’s been six days since I’ve been to a baseball game, the longest stretch I’ve endured since leaving home in July to start this epic road trip.17 I don’t think I’m suffering from withdrawal, but I am definitely starting to feel like I’ve lost my purpose out here a little bit. We’re such creatures of habit, and over the past six weeks my entire life has revolved around going to baseball games, booking hotels in cities where I’m going to watch a baseball game, driving to those cities, finding things to eat, see and do while I’m there, and documenting it all. It’s amazing how quickly you can adapt to a new reality and notice when it’s disrupted, however briefly.
10 a.m.: The Crystal Bay Hotel is technically a bed and breakfast, albeit a large one. The lobby and front desk area definitely had that feel, decorated with historical photos of famous guests and equally dated furniture. The communal dining room was a little more spartan and utilitarian, save for a solarium seating section overlooking the property’s front lawn and Sunset Park across the street. I piled up a low-carb feast from the breakfast buffet, plopped down at one of the tables by the window and started looking for deals on tickets to the afternoon’s game. I’m sure I could have just sauntered up to the box office and asked for the cheapest seats available — the Tampa Bay Rays, despite several seasons of success on the diamond, just don’t draw fans very well — but instead decided to spend a little bit more as I was going to the game with my friend Andy. During our junior year of high school in Toledo, Andy picked me up on his way down from his home in Michigan every morning in his Mercury Topaz. I had purchased a parking pass prior to the start of the school year, thinking I’d be driving my mom’s old Pontiac Sunbird rather than getting up early for the bus. Alas, for reasons I can’t remember, I didn’t actually have my driver’s license by the time the first day of class rolled around. One day of riding the bus and I was over it: Andy told me he drove past my house to get to school, so I chipped in some gas money in exchange for a ride, which I “earned” by illegally subletting my parking pass to another kid who had a car but hadn’t purchased his own pass before they sold out. It was to be a temporary arrangement on both fronts, just until I got my license, which I assured all parties, would be happening “any day now.” I finally got my license on my birthday — senior year — about two months before graduation and a full 19 months after agreeing on our three-way pact.18 Andy and I, who mostly ran in different social circles, used our 20-30 minutes of daily carpool time to bond over Detroit sports, which I was growing into, and the modern rock that dominated the airwaves of 1996 and 1997, which I was growing away from. Did we go to Best Buy19 to pick up copies of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness the day it was released? You bet. Did we rock that double CD in the Topaz for like a month straight? Guilty as charged. After graduation, we went our separate ways to separate colleges, separate states and separate lives. Apart from some stray Facebook comments, we hadn’t seen or spoken with each other in 27 years. I thought a reunion like that deserved some discount club seats, at least.
11:30 a.m.: We had predetermined that 3 Daughters Brewing, just across the freeway from Tropicana Field, would be our meetup spot. I got there early to have a beer with my friend Sean, who — shock of all shocks — is a brewing industry trade association professional like me. We spent a bit catching up and talking shop before Andy arrived at noon. A quarter century of forging our own paths looks good on us: some might call them “dad bods” but between us only Andy has earned the title. He and his family are living in Jacksonville now after enduring a few too many harsh Michigan winters. Looking out the window as I write this in December in Columbus, Ohio, it would seem that you don’t have to go as far south to escape snow and ice anymore.
12:45 p.m.: Sean couldn’t come to the game with us, but his son works for the team and he gifted us free parking. Andy drove us — just like old times — to Lot 1 on the west side of Tropicana Field, though upon arrival it seems we were actually supposed to go to Lot 6 on the east side of the park. The Lot 1 attendant graciously let us through into the posh, premium parking anyway, likely owing to the fact that ticket sales were light, as usual.
12:50 p.m.: The two Major League ballparks universally accepted as the worst and continually trading places at the bottom of ranked lists are the Oakland Coliseum, the moldering, multipurpose monstrosity opened in 1966 and playing out the string in 2024 before the Athletics pick up and move to Las Vegas by way of Sacramento, and Tropicana Field here in St. Petersburg, home of the Tampa Bay Rays. “The Trop” broke ground in 1986 and was completed in 1990, known then as the Florida SunCoast Dome, built basically on spec to attract a Major League Baseball expansion franchise. Passed over in 1991 — MLB granted new franchises to Denver and Miami instead — the SunCoast Dome hosted NHL hockey and Arena League football until MLB announced the recipients of their next round of expansion franchises in 1995: Phoenix and St. Pete.20 The team made its debut in the 1998 season, by which time four retro-classic ballparks21 had revolutionized the baseball experience: Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Rangers Ballpark in Arlington — replaced in 2020 by Globe Life Field — Denver’s Coors Field and Cleveland’s Jacobs Field, now known as Progressive Field. These new parks, with their impressive exteriors, scenic center field views and modern amenities, reinvigorated the soul of the game, nearly lost in the era of cookie-cutter doughnut stadiums that were all the rage in the 1960s and ‘70s. The Trop, a non-descript squat cylinder with an oddly tilted flexible fiberglass roof, looks like a big top tent being taken down while the circus is leaving town. Inside, the combination of filtered sunlight and stadium LEDs illuminate the artificial turf field like the layaway counter at a Kmart in the ‘80s. The spider web system of structural beams and catwalks that keep the roof from deflating hang low enough that special ground rules had to be instituted in case they were hit by a ball in play, which happened more than you would think. As a baseball venue, it was doomed from the start.
1:13 p.m.: What Tropicana Field lacks in aesthetics or classical reverence for the game, it makes up for in fun and quirky support of their hometown team. Andy and I stopped by the famous stingray petting pool beyond center field, which was crowded with families a half hour before first pitch. I sidled up to the rail and stuck my fingers in: I was going to touch a stingray, despite having a weird phobia about fish.22 Perhaps they could sense it, as a couple of them abruptly changed direction rather than let me make contact with them. We continued our lap around the main concourse, taking in the impossible-to-miss league and division championship banners, the exhibits of team history and impressive works of fan art dotted throughout the otherwise bland and outdated facility. It’s a fun environment, even if it isn’t the kind of baseball experience other teams offer. Despite that and putting a good product on the field — two World Series appearances and 12 winning seasons out of the last 17 dating back to 2008 — people just don’t come out to support the team. The Rays have ranked in the bottom four MLB clubs in home attendance for the past 14 years.23 Is it really just the ballpark, or is this a bad market for baseball?
1:33 p.m.: The old style of construction featuring closed concourses and vomitoria24 that dramatically expose the field of play as you walk through them is a magic trick that helped shape public opinion of the ballpark as the American cathedral. Tropicana Field was designed in this way, though likely more for budget than romance, and the end result leaves much to be desired. Andy and I got to our club seats a few minutes before first pitch and took a look around the ballpark for the first time. The artificial playing surface looked extra fake under the hideous, muted lighting. The roof, unlike my complaint with enclosed parks like those in Arizona, Houston, Texas and others, doesn’t make the place seem cavernous, but rather claustrophobic. Andy pointed out the holes that had been torn in the fiberglass roof over time. We wondered aloud how that might hold up under hurricane force winds, a devastating regular visitor rather than an anomaly in this part of the world. Little did we know we’d have our answer just two months later, as Hurricane Milton ripped the roof to shreds, causing damage estimated between $50-100 million.
1:46 p.m.: In the bottom of the first inning, Tampa Bay leadoff hitter Yandy Diaz was hit in the elbow by a pitch and forced to leave the game. Thankfully it was nothing more than a bad bruise, but the worst part of me started to consider the upside if rookie third baseman — and member of my fantasy team roster — Junior Caminero would be in line for more playing time as a fill-in on the opposite side of the diamond. Why am I like this?
2:24 p.m.: We were on a beer run after two and a half innings when Rays designated hitter Brandon Lowe launched a cut fastball over the right field stands to take an early 2-0 lead. My superpower was still intact: leave seat, miss homer. Just after the shot, a fan in the concourse stopped Andy to ask about his Montreal Expos hat. Bernie was originally from Montreal, and we chatted for a little while about some of the Expos legends we had admired growing up: The Hawk, The Kid, Rock, El Presidente and more. We exchanged numbers and still text back and forth about baseball, most recently after the passing of The Man of Steal, who never played for the Expos but did spend the last few months of the 1993 season north of the border in Toronto where he earned his second World Series ring.
3:25 p.m.: Rays opener Drew Rasmussen and bulk reliever Tyler Alexander had managed to keep the powerful Diamondbacks offense25 out of the hit column for the first six innings while their teammates built up a 6-0 lead. It would all come crashing down starting in the top of the seventh with an opposite field bloop single by D-backs outfielder Corbin Carroll, just past the outstretched bare hand of Rays shortstop Taylor Walls. Carroll would come around to score Arizona’s first run three batters later, and he would pop a two-run homer the next inning to cut the Rays lead in half. Taking advantage of the sparse crowd, Andy and I grabbed a pair of the many unoccupied seats in the lower bowl on the third base side and slowly moved our way forward every half inning. The ushers, much like the parking attendant a couple hours before, made no protest to our free upgrades.
4:02 p.m.: Diamondbacks all-star second baseman Ketel Marte, hobbled by an ankle sprain he had suffered a week prior, was called in to pinch hit in the top of the ninth inning with a man on first and no one out against Rays closer Pete Fairbanks. Marte stumbled to the ground on a check swing, aggravating his injury and had to be helped off the field. It would end up costing him three weeks of playing time during a key stretch while Arizona was in the hunt for a playoff spot. His replacement in the lineup, Joc Pederson, drew a walk. Two batters later, rookie catcher Adrian Del Castillo crushed a hanging slider over the right field wall to knot the game at six runs a piece. Twelve pitches later, Fairbanks motioned to his dugout for the trainer and was lifted from the game with two outs in the ninth. He suffered a lat strain on the pitch before it and would miss the rest of the season. Fairbanks was vital cog on my fantasy squad, and I couldn’t help but think that this was some nearly instant karma for my selfish thoughts a couple hours earlier.
4:31 p.m.: Andy and I were in the second row behind the visitors’ dugout when Rays third baseman Jose Caballero beat out a fielder’s choice to get on first, then stole second and third to put the winning run 90 feet away with one out in the bottom of the ninth. Tampa Bay put on the safety squeeze, trying to use Caballero’s impressive speed to eke out a dramatic victory. Jose Siri’s bunt rolled quickly back to Arizona pitcher A.J. Puk, who initiated a rundown that erased Caballero. The Rays would fail to score, so we were in for some amount of free baseball, the fifth extra inning game I attended on this trip.
4:40 p.m.: As the Diamondbacks and Rays traded single runs in the 10th inning, I struck up conversations with the folks in the first and third rows. In front of us, a drunken Red Sox fan offered me his season ticket seats for the game I was planning to attend in Boston a week and a half later. “Left field line, real close to the action, halfway between third base and the Mawnstah. You want ‘em?” I told him I already had tickets for the game, but that if he couldn’t use them I might be interested. We exchanged texts, but maybe unsurprisingly, I never heard from him again. The guy behind us, Nick from Arizona, was there cheering on the Dbacks, saw me wearing my Serpientes jersey and asked why it said “ALL OF THEM” on the back, which is, admittedly, a great question because maybe that’s a dumb customization to spend money on? I explained that I was visiting all 30 ballparks, to which he replied that this game was his 29th park and he’d complete the circuit the next day in Miami, which is also where I was headed next. We exchanged numbers and made loose plans to run into each other the next night when the Diamondbacks took on the Marlins.
5:26 p.m.: I can’t really read people, but Andy seemed a little nervous. We were in the bottom of the 12th inning at this point, score tied at seven runs a piece. He has a wife and daughter to get back to before the three of them made their way back to Jacksonville, about a three-and-a-half- to four-hour trek across the peninsula. Up against the flamethrowing Arizona closer Justin Martinez, the Rays advanced the placed runner26 to second base via sacrifice bunt. Taylor Walls earned a base on balls, bringing mid-game replacement left fielder Dylan Carlson to the plate. Waiting for his pitch, he took two 100-plus mile per hour fastballs for a ball and a strike. When Martinez tried to backdoor an off-speed splitter, Carlson inside-outed the pitch softly to left field, driving home the winning run, prompting his Tampa Bay teammates to mob him between first and second base, showering him with wrapped bubblegum.27
5:45 p.m.: Andy must not have been that nervous about getting back home, as we decided to go for a post-game beer28 at Green Bench Brewing a couple blocks from The Trop. For the second time in a few hours, his wardrobe caught someone’s attention, this time one of the brewery beertenders who happened to be wearing the same Little Lebowski Urban Achievers T-shirt, albeit in a different color scheme. After knocking back our last round, we said our goodbyes, an unspoken agreement made between the two of us not to wait another 27 years to hang out again. Next time, I’ll drive.
10:55 a.m., Monday, Aug. 19: One last piece of business on my way out of town. Tampa is legendary for the Cuban sandwich, a staple of our dinner rotation at home, even if Erin doesn’t want me to put mojo roasted pork on it, which should be a deal breaker but I still like her alright. I asked Sean, a local, where I could find an authentic version: he suggested the Columbia Restaurant, an Ybor City institution in business since 1905. I made a reservation for three — myself, my mom’s bestie/my godmother Marsha and her husband Jack — for when the place opened at 11. Ybor is downtown Tampa’s historic Latin quarter, famous for its cigar rolling past and its killer party29 present. Columbia sits on the eastern end of the district on 7th Avenue, a thoroughfare that feels like equal parts New Orleans, college meat markets and state fair midway when you travel its length. It’s ornate and disordered, beckoning and sordid, reverent and nefarious all at once. But hey, I’m just here for a sandwich, not salvation. The sprawling Columbia Restaurant was practically empty when we were seated, but by the time our entrees arrived the first and second of its 15 connected dining rooms were bustling. Catching up with Marsha and Jack in any environment would be pleasant enough, never mind being surrounded by Spanish affectations, adjacent to a wine cellar bigger than my house and served tableside by a tuxedo-clad waiter. I ordered ropa vieja — “old clothes” in Spanish, beef stewed with tomatoes and sofrito, this version served with rice and fried plantains — and got my sandwich to go. After all, I had another day of driving ahead of me. And another. And another. And another.
NEXT GAMES:
Arizona Diamondbacks at Miami Marlins, Monday, Aug. 19, 6:40 p.m. EDT, loanDepot park
Philadelphia Phillies at Atlanta Braves, Wednesday, Aug. 21, 7:20 p.m. EDT, Truist Park
Toronto Blue Jays at Boston Red Sox, Thursday, Aug. 29, 7:10 p.m. EDT, Fenway Park
St. Louis Cardinals at New York Yankees, Friday, Aug. 30, 7:05 p.m. EDT, Yankee Stadium
Because what this monstrosity needs is a fucking preamble…
Behind only motorcycles, which are basically suicide machines.
The village of Hatch, New Mexico is about 40 miles northwest of Las Cruces and is home of the annual Hatch Chile Festival every Labor Day when 30,000 heat-seekers descend on the town in search of the finest, freshest green and red chiles on the planet. Someday…
I was.
I wrote this sentence for Matt. He knows why.
The etymology of the phrase “fair to middling” is cloudy, but its usage and popularization is undeniably Texan.
Kyle liked this place so much he named a cat after it.
There are more than 50 Rosa’s Cafe locations, all in Texas save for the one just over the border in Hobbs, New Mexico.
“Miss” in the sense of being uneasy with its absence, not “miss” as in “it’s been six weeks since you last clocked in.” I lean on this Office Space joke *a lot* in everyday life, so I felt the need to clarify.
My home state of Ohio has only two American Classic winners: Cincinnati’s Camp Washington Chili — which folks from Texas would decry as “not fuckin’ chili” — and Sokolowski’s University Inn in Cleveland which sadly closed in 2020, just six years after receiving their James Beard award.
If you’re really wondering how the potato salad was, first, I salute your attention to detail as a reader. Second, I found a copycat recipe for this a few years back and it is pretty much my go-to potato salad anymore (except I omit dill relish and add onion.) My palate is finely tuned to this potato salad, so I was excited to try the original and see if I had been hitting the mark. Louie Mueller’s version goes heavy on the mustard, so much so that the relish didn’t bother me at all. I have strong feelings about pickle relish in potato salad. Maybe I’ll write an entire other book about that.
The flow is reeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaally slow, though.
Don’t click that link if you’ve never seen the movie. Just watch the movie. Trust me.
The spelling of this classic seems to vary from person to person: “po’ boy,” “po-boy” and “po boy” are all acceptable contractions fit for the accented speech of “N’awlins.”
I’m writing this as details are emerging about the violent attack on New Year’s revelers in the French Quarter. While some, like the Safelite guy, may use heinous incidents like this as proof of why he’s right, the truth is that there’s no safe haven from terrorism and violence anymore. If you’re going to get murdered anyway, you may as well eat the good sandwich.
This sentence is not at all an indictment of Raising Cane’s, which I believe I have expressed my love for in this blog at least twice.
I’m counting the Door County League amateur game I went to in Wisconsin. Erin and I paid $5 each to watch it, packed in our own snacks and Spotted Cows, and watched a bunch of seasonal bartenders and former local high school ballplayers keep up a Sunday afternoon tradition that dates back a century. Our town nine, the Sister Bay Bays, won that game en route to their second straight DCL regular season title and a playoff takedown of last year’s champ and cross-peninsula rival, the Kolberg Braves, to earn the ‘ship.
It only took about a month before the school caught on to the side deal I cut on my parking pass. They decided that there shouldn’t be a secondary market for a commodity they created and forced me to either take the pass back or transfer it to my friend permanently. I chose the latter, because, hey, I’m a nice guy and an honest dealer.
It wasn’t until the next year that I came to the realization that there were actually good record stores where you could buy music in Toledo. Cut me some slack, jack…
Interestingly — to me, at least — all four of baseball’s most recent expansion teams initially chose not to name themselves after their home cities: Colorado Rockies, Florida Marlins, Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Florida has since rechristened themselves the Miami Marlins while Tampa Bay seemingly found Jesus and dropped the “Devil” from their moniker. As negotiations for a Tropicana Field replacement have gone on, the city of St. Petersburg at one point threatened to withhold funding for a stadium project if the team didn’t change their name to the St. Petersburg Rays. The team, to their credit, held their ground, though the city and county have gone back and forth on their support for a new ballpark for various reasons for more than a year now.
Turner Field, former home of the Braves, was built during this timeframe as well, but began its operating life as Centennial Olympic Stadium, the 85,000 capacity centerpiece venue for the 1996 Summer Olympics held in Atlanta. It was immediately retrofitted for baseball use in 1997, reducing capacity to around 50,000, still quite large given the trend toward more cozy, intimate ballparks at the time.
I’ve never been comfortable with live fish in my entire life. My dad used to take me fishing with him and they always kinda creeped me out, fighting for their lives on the hook, suffocating out of the water, wriggling and writhing in a futile attempt to earn their freedom. A few years ago, I went to the Denver Aquarium with Erin and had a full scale panic attack surrounded by all of these captive monsters, some with decidedly human features. The final boss at that aquarium was a stingray petting tank, which I could not bring myself to put my hands in.
Technically, 2020 was a 30-way tie for last as no fans were permitted in any ballparks for the COVID-shortened 60-game season.
If I learned nothing else from this trip, I at least know how to use this word correctly now.
Arizona finished the 2024 campaign with the second highest batting average in Major League Baseball. They also missed the playoffs due to a tiebreaker scenario between them, the Atlanta Braves and the New York Mets, who all finished with identical 89-73 records.
I hate this rule, putting a runner on second base automatically in extra innings, a holdover from the 2020 COVID season where the league felt it advantageous to keep the games and the players’ exposure to each other as short as possible. Can we go back to real baseball please?
Home teams are now 16-12 on the journey so far.
The ballpark stopped selling beer at the end of the 7th inning, about two hours prior to our arrival at Green Bench. Maybe the only downside to extra inning games.
The nightclub district is name checked in no fewer than four songs by The Hold Steady.
You and Nick can bond over your mutual love for the Blake's Lotaburger New Mexico style burgers next time we hang out.
What are the odds that two people in my life have an extreme discomfort with fish (you and Steph)?! Sorry I made you catch walleye on that board retreat 😳
Preamble? More like Pre-ramble am I right?!*
The little details absolutely made this post. The window glass guy in Slidell hitting his "we don't go over there" just so, the chaotic ceiling of the Trop, the exhaustive but still interesting Barbecue interlude all added something.
I'll See myself out