getaway
games
Taking the ultimate baseball road trip—12 games, 12 cities, 12
68 SPORTSNET
days—to teach one Brit about America’s game By Brett Popplewell
SPORTSNET 69
baseball road trip big read
T
before we began
O
ur journey didn’t start here, standing over a pyramid of baseballs piled on a man’s grave. But when I retell it, this is where
I start, 1,176 km from where we began and 6,165 km from
where we end. The baseballs at our feet remind us we’re
not alone. Thousands have come here before us. Followed
the Bronx River north of New York City to this burial ground
for the rich and famous, climbed this hill, passed James
Cagney, Condé Nast, and Harry Houdini’s wife on their way
to this stone. I brought us here because I wanted to visit a legend, an unwanted orphan
who died 35 years before I was born. “They called him The Great Bambino,” I say. Everyone loved him, yet just 2,500 people showed up for his last outing at Yankee Stadium. “He
hit his first professional home run in Toronto,” I say. Folklore has it he knocked the ball into
Lake Ontario and it’s still out there, waiting to be found.
“He was the greatest batsman of all time, yeah?” The question rolls off my British travelling companion’s tongue without him realizing how foreign it sounds. He had never even
heard of Babe Ruth until a few weeks ago. Had no idea of his iconic status until I forced
him to watch John Goodman in The Babe on a laptop while I drove us to this spot. Yet, as
we stand here, I realize he now knows as much about the man beneath our feet as I do.
“What do you want to do?” he asks. I tell him I think we should do what everyone else
has done: Let the Bambino know we were here. I grab a pen and our only baseball from
the car and bring them to the Englishman. “You go first,” I tell him. He writes his name
on the ball. I follow and we place it among the others. Then we tip our caps and depart.
We’re still two hours from Philadelphia and we’ve got a game to catch.
70 SPORTSNET
o fully grasp why two men set
out to capture the magic of
baseball you have to understand who we were before we jumped
into a Volkswagen Beetle and put so
many kilometres behind us that had
we just kept steering straight we
would have reached South America.
But to understand who we were, I
have to take you to a funeral. This
one for my grandmother, an 88-yearold farmer’s daughter who got married at 21 and, over the next 12 years,
had four children. The first of whom
was my mother, a complete non-athlete who once owned a baseball glove
but lost it. The last of whom was my
aunt, Patricia, a Prairie girl who once
took a baseball glove halfway across
the world and left it there for her son
to pick up 21 years later.
Born in 1956, Patricia was a professional violinist who married an Englishman, moved to London and gave
birth to my cousin, Desmond Voullaire. Then she died four months later.
That was the summer of 1991.
In the spring of this year, Desmond
and I sat in a Manitoba church, listening to my mother eulogize our
grandmother with a story that hinted
at a family game, played in the grass
between a farmhouse and a wheat
field.“She pitched a ball the way she
danced,” my mother said. “From my
fielder’s position on our backyard
baseball diamond on a warm July
evening when I was a kid, I marvelled at her winding up and delivering a pitch that the batter never
saw.” I took this image and tinkered
with it in my imagination until it
played back like some deleted scene
from Field of Dreams. There were
ghosts on that diamond in my mind.
My grandfather. My grandmother.
My aunt.
Sometime later, Desmond (a.k.a.
Dez) and I got talking about baseball.
Having grown up in England, Dez
had developed a backward view of
the world. To him, a blue jay was nothing but a bird, a Yankee just another
word for an American and baseball
was something that looked like a
messed-up version of cricket. Then
he told me about his mother’s tanned
steerhide glove. Placed in a closet, it
hadn’t been worn since she died.
Suddenly, a new image formed in my
head. This one of the future. There
was Dez sitting in a ballpark. His
mother’s four-finger Cooper on his
hand. The sound of some slugger’s
bat echoing through the stands. Dez
rising to his feet, extending his arm,
catching a ball and connecting with
things he never knew.
Soon I was mapping out a road trip
that would lead two tall men to jump
into a small car and travel for 12 days
to see 12 baseball games. Next, I commissioned my grandfather-in-law
to carve me two custom bats. And
before I knew it, I was ordering vintage ball caps from the Baseball Hall
of Fame, printing T-shirts for “The
Ultimate Baseball Road Trip,” lining
up breakfast with some Ohioan who
found $3 million worth of baseball
cards in his grandfather’s attic, and
haggling with a Dodgers fan over a
three-finger Rawlings glove. And just
when my wife began questioning
what I was doing, I grabbed Dez and
jumped in that little car. Soon we
were barrelling down the highway,
chewing tobacco and listening to
“Bohemian Rhapsody,” about to cut
across one province and 14 states.
Guelph ont.
112 km from where we began
W
e came to Guelph to meet a
man who was old and wise
enough to explain that baseball wasn’t just a game about numbers. I wanted Dez to sit with a man
who remembered when Lou Gehrig
fell ill and who, a week earlier,
screwed two chunks of wood onto
his lathe and turned them until they
resembled Louisville Sluggers.
I’d tried to explain the importance
of respecting one’s bat even while
using it to hammer a baseball. Having
no memory of actually swinging a
wooden bat, I had no idea what I was
talking about. Yet, I had once been
moved by a teary-eyed Mark McGwire
who, prior to hitting his 62nd home
run in 1998, touched Roger Maris’s
SPORTSNET 71
big read baseball road trip
baseball road trip big read
15
hot dogs eaten
Over the 12 days,
the two men ate
13 ballpark franks
and two footlongs.
Oh, and 12 tacos.
And one helmet
full of nachos.
I
don’t really believe in magic. But
I’ll still clap for the magician who’s
trying to trick me. Someone tells
me a baseball has been floating in
Lake Ontario since 1914 and I know
it’s impossible. But I’ll repeat it
because sometimes I want to believe.
It’s a quixotic cross I carry as we
lunge toward Cooperstown, the place
where baseball was not born.
“Why is the Hall of Fame here?”
Dez asks me. “Because someone
lied,” I say. Long ago, when Great
Britain still dominated the world, two
men, one a Brit and the other an
American, got into an argument over
who created baseball. The Brit said
72 SPORTSNET
44
20
teams seen
The slate included
every ball club that
played in the World
Series between
1903 and 1983.
19
errors viewed
And one committed
on our duo’s only
chance to catch
a ball in the stands.
beers consumed
Approximately
21 L of beer was
required to wash
down the hot dogs,
tacos and nachos.
And peanuts.
Boston mass.
pulling
into boston
15 minutes
late for
the game,
my cousin
is upset
we’ve
missed
“kickoff”
1,076 km from where we began
T
.416
home winning
percentage
Of the 12 games
attended, the home
team won a paltry
five times.
91
driving hours
Driving an average
of 7.6 hours per
day, the road
trippers visited 14
states—or roughly
a quarter of the
entire country.
Photo credit tk
Cooperstown n.y.
652 km from where we began
it was an American bastardization
of an English game called rounders.
The American refused to accept that
narrative, so he hired another American to dig into the past until he
found a bogus story that baseball
was invented in Cooperstown back
in 1839. Its alleged creator: Abner
Doubleday, a Civil War hero who probably never touched a baseball.
“So it comes from rounders?” Dez
asks. “I think so,” I say. “But I don’t
know what rounders is.” Dez informs
me he played rounders in grade
school. That rounders does kind of
look like the game he’s come to know
via Bull Durham and The Babe. “But
we don’t wear gloves and the stick
is smaller,” he says. I look at him like
he’s the missing link. He understands
the game’s evolution better than I do.
We get out of the car and enter the
Hall of Fame museum, pass Doubleday’s portrait on the wall and 150
years’ worth of artifacts. I snap a
photo of Babe Ruth’s bat, Jackie Robinson’s uniform and the licence plate
from Lou Gehrig’s car. “These things
are like relics,” I say. Then I see the
commissioner’s trophy, the one that
was presented to the 1996 New York
Yankees after they defeated the
Atlanta Braves in the World Series. I
point it out to Dez, who admires the
flagpoles that comprise the trophy. I
tell him there’s one flag for every
team in the major leagues that has a
chance at the World Series. He looks
at me curiously. “You mean it’s not
the best teams from across the
world?” I’m stumped for a second.
“No, of course not,” I say. “And yet
they still call it the World Series?” he
adds. I get what he’s saying. He
grew up watching legitimate global
competitions like the World Cup of
soccer and rugby. He thinks it odd
that it’s called the World Series when,
on occasion, the series has been
nothing more than a contest between
the two best clubs from the same city.
I tell Dez to take note of the room
dedicated to the All-American Girls
Professional Baseball League. He
doesn’t understand why, but will
once he sees A League of Their Own.
Then we head to the grand hall to
Photo credit tk
bat and held it next to his heart. I
told Dez the Babe preferred hickory
and that Ty Cobb once called his
bat “a wondrous weapon,” while
another Hall of Famer, Richie Ashburn, took his to bed to help “cure a
batting slump.”
I wanted Dez to know our bats
could be as special as Robert Redford’s bat from The Natural. Inanimate objects, yes, but objects we’d
use to smack balls around Tiger
and Yankee Stadiums and into nondescript Ohio cornfields along our
journey. So I brought us here to sip
tea with a man who once bombed
Germany and spent his life as an
airline pilot before retiring to become
a hobby-woodturner.
Born during Babe Ruth’s first year
with the Yankees, John Higham, 92,
had never made a bat until he
stepped into his workshop on a hot
July day and created The Burnbank
Bomber, a 33-ounce maple bat named
for the Ottawa street on which I grew
up; and The Wimbledon Special, a
31-ounce ash bat named for the suburb of London where Dez was born
and raised. And so we sat, munching
on ginger snaps, talking of players
from yesteryear. Mickey Mantle, Ted
Williams, Jackie Robinson­— men
whom John had admired in his youth.
Then we got back on the road.
look at faces from the past. Dez goes
straight to the Babe’s plaque. He
spots Ty Cobb’s plaque beside it and
recognizes the hat on Cobb’s head.
It’s the same one that’s on Dez’s
head, a vintage Tigers cap. I bought
him the cap for this trip because I
thought it looked awesome and it
had a “D” on it for Dez.
We’ve been here for little more
than an hour and already Dez is done.
There’s no magic here for him. I tell
him though that I need his help. I
have to find Lou Gehrig to take his
photo for the man who made our
bats. And I have to find Stan Musial,
too. Who the hell is Stan Musial, Dez
asks. I tell him he’s “Stan the Man.”
And that I’ve got his glove.
about the
photos
Brett Popplewell
and his cousin,
Desmond Voullaire,
shot this story on
the author’s iPhone.
The photos were
treated in-phone
using a variety of
photo apps.
he fuel light indicates our car
is starving for gasoline as we
sputter into Boston 15 minutes
late for the game. Dez is somewhat
upset that we’ve missed “kickoff.” I
remind him there is no kickoff. We
park and rush toward the shouts
pouring out of Fenway Park. I had
wanted us to bring our gloves here.
To come into this 100-year-old ballpark, the oldest in the majors, look
at the Green Monster and its manual
scoreboard and then take our seats
in the right field bleachers near the
Lone Red Seat. The one in section
42, row 37, which they painted after
Ted Williams drilled the longest hit
in Fenway’s history. I wanted us to
place our gloves on that seat and
feel a connection to The Kid. Then I
wanted us to wait for a modern great
to drill a ball right into our gloves.
But we forgot them in the car.
It’s Sunday, Aug. 4. Our skin is
burning in 31-degree heat as the Red
Sox take on the Twins. There’s history here. It’s in the grass, the banners and the fans who scream
“Throw it back!” to those who catch
two Twins homers.
Dez is enjoying his first game. I tell
him baseball is a game of moments
and it’s okay to walk around when
you get bored. But he’s not the one
who’s bored. I am. I didn’t really
come here to see the Red Sox. I came
to see Fenway. As we start exploring,
I try to explain these are the “most
hallowed grounds in North American
sport.” He grabs our portable video
camera, walks down a flight of infield
stairs along the first-base line. He
gets 10 feet from the dugout when
Adrian Gonzalez sends a ball over
the Green Monster. The fans erupt
around Dez and he smiles.
Philadelphia Pa.
1,636 km from where we began
T
he pilgrim trail between Boston and Philadelphia is long
with little changing but the
licence plates as we leave Massachusetts and roll through Connecticut,
New York and New Jersey before
descending into Pennsylvania. We
arrive in time for “The Star Spangled
Banner” and head to our seats near
the Phillies’ dugout. We’ve brought
our gloves with us tonight, and we’re
eager to catch a ball to replace the
one we left on the Babe’s grave.
We sit next to an elderly Vietnam
vet who spots mine and asks to show
it to his grandson. “That’s a hell of a
glove,” he says. He tells me he hasn’t
been to a game since 1976. He hates
the thought of paying money to a
bunch of overpaid athletes and says
we’re lucky to have met since he’s
only here tonight because his daughter asked him to spend time with his
grandson. Then he recants and says
maybe we’re not so lucky because
the Phillies suck.
On the field, Phillies pitcher Vance
Worley throws wild and into the dirt,
allowing Freddie Freeman to sprint
home and score. Later, first baseman
Ryan Howard finds himself with the
ball staring at the Braves’ Michael
Bourn, who’s trapped between bases.
Bourn has no choice but to sprint for
second and pray for a Phillies error,
which he gets when Howard launches
the ball into the outfield.
“The Phillies are comically terrible,” I say. “But isn’t this fun?”
Cleveland ohio
2,422 km from where we began
O
n May 1, 1891, a 24-year-oldOhio farm boy named Denton
“Cy” Young pitched the first
game at Cleveland’s League Park.
Thirty-eight years later, Babe Ruth
walked onto this field and hit his
500th home run. Then Joe DiMaggio
stepped up to the same plate 12 years
later and got the last hit of his
56-game hitting streak. Five years
after that, the Indians played here
for the last time. And in 1951, a demolition crew tore down the grandstands, leaving just a small section
of the old brick facade.
continued on p. 90
SPORTSNET 73
big read baseball road trip
continued from p. 73
Those ruins are still standing when Dez
and I arrive with a fresh supply of baseballs.
We step over broken glass and walk through
the wire fence that encases what’s left of
this ballpark. We kick through the outfield
grass, just like DiMaggio once did. Then we
start batting. I toss a series of 45-mph fastballs toward Dez. He drills them over my
head. When we switch, I struggle to hit
anything because Dez can’t throw anywhere near the plate. We call this round in
his favour and depart for the Indians game
where we have second-row seats along the
first-base line. The Indians fans see our
T-shirts and learn of our journey. “You must
try our hot dogs,” they say. “We’ve got
special mustard. It’s brown and tastes a bit
different than other mustards.” So we eat
hot dogs with special mustard and watch
the game. Dez, with his glove on his hand,
touches his face and realizes the last hand
to enter that glove was his mother’s. It gives
him pause. I look on and admire the Indians’
closer, Chris Perez, who, with his team just
one inning away from their first victory in
10 games, gives up three runs and gets
booed off the mound. Then I watch with
the rest of the Tribe as a lone drum echoes
from the bleachers encouraging the Indians’
last batter to do what cannot be done.
Detroit mich.
2,892 km from where we began
E
xactly 100 years ago, two ballparks of
equal merit opened to the public. A
century later, one remains a keepsake
affectionately preserved in time. The other
is Tiger Stadium. A cultural cornerstone of
Detroit, Tiger Stadium hosted the World
Series six times and earned its spot on the
National Register of Historic Places. Then
it was abandoned and razed to the ground.
Though the grandstands are gone, the old
diamond remains a gathering point where
families play catch before heading to the
Tigers’ new monolith up the road.
Walking onto the old field I decide, for
reasons I can’t explain, to toss a ball in the
air and crack it toward Dez who’s not even
facing me. I laugh, awkwardly, as it hits
him in the back of the leg. Then he takes
to the mound. Yesterday Dez couldn’t throw
anywhere near the batter’s box. Today, he’s
90 SPORTSNET
baseball road trip big read
throwing straight at me. I duck and jump.
When we switch, he cranks a ball low and
in my direction. I reach for it with Musial’s
glove but it breaks one of the laces. Dez
has his revenge. He drops The Wimbledon
Special in the sand of the greats and starts
running to first. We finish up and head out
to watch the Yankees humble the Tigers
12–8. And I note that New York’s Ichiro
Suzuki holds his bat in front of his face “like
a sorcerer’s wand” before every pitch.
Three hours, four hot dogs and six Pepsis
later, we’re back in the car. Heading south
into a midnight storm that lights up the
road between Michigan and Ohio all the
way down to Kentucky. We told the man
who made our bats we’d bring them to the
Louisville Slugger factory and show them
off among the men who make bats for the
big leagues. We’re determined to do so even
if we have to drive through the night.
St. Louis mo.
3,905 km from where we began
T
he Beetle has been begging for service
since we left Detroit. It’s empty now
and needs an oil change. I’m 11 hours
into an 18-hour day of driving. Dez is watching A League of Their Own on a laptop to
my right. He says it’s the best movie I’ve
made him watch because “it’s real.” I’m
chewing tobacco to stay awake, spitting in
an empty coffee cup and listening to the
Cardinals-Giants game over the radio. The
Red Birds are coming off a 15–0 loss, the
worst of any defending champion since
1950. We’ve got ground seats directly
behind home plate but we’ve already
missed 11 strikeouts and a home run when
we pull up to Busch Stadium, grab a bag of
popcorn and stumble through the afternoon
heat to our seats.
For the first time, we have a perfect view
of every pitch. It’s the bottom of the sixth
when we sit down and Madison Bumgarner,
the Giants’ starter, is tired. He’s throwing
garbage and the Cards are making him pay.
The view gives Dez a new appreciation for
the game as he watches pitches curve and
drop in mid-air. He asks how you throw a
curveball. I tell him I have no idea. I only
know how to throw fast or slow but when
I throw fast it hurts and still comes out slow.
After the game, we find Musial’s statue
by the main gate. I climb to the base of his
bronzed toe, put my hat and glove on his
shoe. “The real Stan never liked this statue,”
I tell Dez. “He said they got his coiled batting stance all wrong.” We’re about to leave
when an old man with a foam cardinal on
his head spots my glove. He had the same
one when he was a kid. “I lost mine,” he
says. “Never let it go.” I don’t tell him I
bought it a month ago off some guy in L.A.
Or that I chose it, not because I love Musial,
but because I was once asked to write a
profile about the 91-year-old great. I tell him
instead that I like its smell and omit that I
know nothing of its history. Later, as I drive
into a setting sun along a portion of old
Route 66, it occurs to me that no one ever
asks to see Dez’s glove. The one that actually means something to its owner.
Chicago ill.
4,394 km from where we began
H
alfway through our trip, I convince
Dez that if he doesn’t already love
baseball, he will after our next game.
We are going to sit in Wrigley’s bleachers,
into which the Babe hit his called shot during the 1932 World Series. But first we must
play stickball off the backside of the left-field
wall. We grab our bats and find a black box
painted on the wall by children who have,
for generations, done the same thing. Bunting balls into the street, we are joined,
serendipitously, by five Canadians on their
own baseball road trip. They offer to serve
as our outfielders. On our way into the stadium we speak with some local firemen who
tell us of the many curses to have befallen
the Cubs in the 104 years since they last
won the World Series. Dez’s favourite is the
Billy Goat Curse: the result of a man and
his billy goat having once been kicked out
of the grandstands. “Them Cubs, they aren’t
gonna win no more,” the man allegedly said.
Turns out he was right.
Dez downs not one but nine beers with
the Canadians during the game. I’m the only
sober man among us, the designated driver
who will take us to a White Sox game after
the final at-bat. Somewhere between the
first and second innings someone decides
we should all put a dollar in a cup and pass
it around. If you’re holding the cup when a
batter gets a hit you take the money. Dez
excels at this game and empties the cup
three times. “Magic,” he says, as he stuffs
wads of one-dollar bills into his pockets.
The Cubs lose 10–8 and we head south
toward White Sox territory. We perch ourselves in the upper deck where we meet
and befriend 28-year-old Rob Motroni and
his fiancée. Turns out Motroni was once a
pitcher with a 92-mph fastball. He was on
the cusp of signing with the Phillies, but
then blew out his shoulder and had to give
up his dream. Now he can’t even play catch
with his father. I ask him if he misses the
game. “This is as close as I can get now,”
he says. I feel like I’m sitting beside Moonlight Graham, the old man from Field of
Dreams who played one inning with the
New York Giants back in 1905 but never
got to test his skills at bat. I tell Dez that
Motroni’s story fascinates me more than
the game. He informs me this has actually
been an “interesting match,” which I suspect is true since it is won by a ninth-inning
homer I didn’t see.
Baltimore md.
5,712 km from where we began
R
olling through endless cornfields along
an Ohio highway, a kamikaze bird
explodes into a ball of feathers that
bounce off the bumper. The scene compels
me to tell Dez about the time a dove swooped
down in front of a Randy Johnson fastball
and exploded in mid-air. We push on past
farms and plows and fields all the way to
Newcomerstown, the small village in central
Ohio where Cy Young was born and died
and where a creaky old museum in the centre of town has a room in his honour. There
we are greeted by 82-year-old Gloria Johnson. She says she knew Cy Young, which
shocks me because I know the greatest
pitcher of the 19th century was born two
years after the American Civil War ended.
She takes us upstairs to a room filled with
oddities the locals have collected. There’s
the hat he wore in his dotage, the axe he
swung shortly before his death and the rocking chair in which he sat. “Do you want to
sit in Cy Young’s chair?” she asks. I love
this place. But it’s creeping Dez out. We say
goodbye to Ohio and head toward a red sky
over West Virginia that darkens over Maryland and turns completely black on the
outskirts of Baltimore, where it’s Eddie Murray Day. The former slugger’s statue is being
unveiled at Camden Yards.
It’s pouring rain when we reach our frontrow seats along the third-base line. We
huddle under Dez’s umbrella and wait. Midnight passes and we’re still in the sixth
inning. I get restless, and start heckling Alex
Gordon, the Royals left-fielder who is so
close I can see the bubbles he’s blowing in
his gum. Then I hear the crack of a bat and
I see Dez jump to his feet. It’s the moment
he has been waiting for, the one I foresaw
following my grandmother’s funeral. Dez
tracks the ball cutting through the sky but
loses it in the glare of the floodlights. When
he finds it again it’s curving to his right. He
leans out to grab it but it cuts under his arm,
smashes into the seat behind me and
bounces onto the field. “What happened?”
I shout. “I thought you had it.” He asks why
I didn’t get it. We look to the field at Gordon
who has retrieved the ball and is debating
who in the crowd to toss it to. I throw up
my arms. “Gordon, over here,” I say, hoping
he doesn’t recognize the sound of my voice.
New York n.y.
6,076 km from where we began
T
he dejection of Baltimore carries with
us to New York. We’re still several
hours away from the Mets-Braves
game so I tell Dez we’ll do some sightseeing.
He wants to wander through skyscrapers,
but I drag him instead to Brooklyn to search
for Ebbets Field. We find all that remains is
a portion of the outfield wall. I tell Dez that
the Dodgers changed history when they let
Jackie Robinson play on the other side of
that wall. Then I take off my Dodgers cap,
the one I bought because I preferred the
old Brooklyn “B” to the old Boston “B.” I
hang it on the wall for a photo. We proceed
to Central Park for batting practice, where
we are joined by two of my friends. One is
a 24-year-old Midwestern girl who, despite
being half our size, manages to hit balls
farther than either of us with our own bats.
That night at the Mets game, Dez says
he’s tiring of baseball. I tell him he’s probably just tired of the road and I buy him
some peanuts and beer. We’re sitting in the
upper deck among Mets fans who boo the
Braves’ Chipper Jones every time he steps
to the plate. “Why do they do that?” Dez
asks. “Because he’s a legend,” I reply. Dez
decides he hates the Mets and their fans
and begins cheering for Atlanta. I try to
teach him the Braves’ war chant, the one
that requires a ceremonial tomahawk chop.
But he doesn’t want to make a spectacle of
himself and leaves me chanting alone.
The following day we cram onto a train
and head to the Bronx. We arrive at Yankee
Stadium feeling like small-town folk lost in
a crowd of 50,000 Yankee fans. I’m somewhat
enamoured, but Dez hates the place. It’s
impersonal and loud and the employees turn
him off when they refuse to allow us to take
our picture near the field. We head to the
upper deck where, for the first time on this
journey, we are sitting among friends, including the Midwestern girl. I ask her how she
learned to hit so well. She says her father
taught her and coached her softball teams
growing up. He even gave her his old fourfinger Mickey Mantle glove and when his
team, the White Sox, won the World Series
in 2005, he ran up and down her street ringing a cowbell into the night. I’m paying little
attention to the game when Dez and everyone else around me jump to their feet. “What
the hell just happened?” I ask. He tells me
a Yankee just hit a grand slam.
Pittsburgh PA.
6,784 km from where we began
O
pting for a long-overdue oil change
before leaving New York, we dart
into Harlem and stroll through the
rundown neighbourhood that now stands
atop the old Polo Grounds where Willie
Mays pulled off “the catch” and led the
Giants to their last title before they left for
San Francisco. Turning north, we cross the
Harlem River to bat balls on the grass that
now grows over old Yankee Stadium. We
manage a few hits before rain forces us back
in the car and onwards to Pennsylvania.
Seven hours later, we are rejuvenated by
the sight of PNC Park, which rests on the
bank of the Allegheny River. We take our
second-level seats behind home plate and
admire the cityscape, which rises over the
outfield wall like a backdrop pulled from an
artist’s imagination.
I tell Dez this is a big game because the
Pirates and the Dodgers are potential rivals
for the NL wild card. We sit beside two
17-year-old Pittsburgh fans. “This has been
the best summer of our lives,” says one.
The Pirates have been losers since before
they were born. But this year the team has
filled them with hope. Then the Pirates get
beaten into submission. When they finally
lose 11–0, the stadium is already empty.
Toronto Ont.
7,341 km. Where we end
W
e’ve lost the magic by the time we
start heading back for the border.
We’re tired, we stink and we never
want to sleep in the same tent again. We
spend the morning in Pittsburgh at the place
where Forbes Field once stood. Of all the
old ballparks we’ve been to, it is the best
maintained. A manicured shrine with a ceremonial plaque marking the spot where
Babe Ruth hit his last three home runs. Yet
we struggle to find within this place the
sentimental value we picked up in Boston,
rekindled in Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago,
then lost between Baltimore and New York.
We pull into Toronto and go to the Rogers
Centre for one last game. The CN Tower rises
above us as we sit along the third-base line,
gloves ready and waiting in hope that some
batter, any batter, might knock another ball
in our direction. It doesn’t happen. After the
game, a ballboy reaches into the crowd and
hands a ball to a kid. I ask if we can borrow
the ball for a minute, and he says sure. I toss
it to Dez. He holds it for a second and smiles.
Then he passes it back to the kid.
The next morning Dez and I wake up
knowing for the first time in days we have
nowhere to go. Soon he will take his bat,
his mother’s glove and his newfound appreciation for the game back home. But not
yet. I ask Dez if I ever told him about Babe
Ruth’s first homer. The one he hit into Lake
Ontario. “They say the ball’s still out there,
waiting to be found.” Before long we’re
standing on Toronto Island, not far from a
plaque that marks the spot where the Babe
hit that ball.
“You go first,” I tell Dez.
He grabs his bat. I toss him a ball and
watch as he knocks it into the waves.
@b_popps
iPAD
VIDEO
BONUS
To provide a fuller
picture, Brett and
Dez shot hours
of video footage
while on the road.
Don’t worry, we
edited it for you.
SPORTSNET 91