Friday, May 07, 2004 |
A Minor Victory In A Green Country
Little Rock, Arkansas
Little Rock, Arkansas lies at 34.7 N, 92.3 W, Los Angeles, 34 N, 118.2 W, a latitude separation of less than a degree. The differences caused by longitude, though, couldn't be more extreme. The countryside here explodes everywhere with verdant growth much of the year. My in-laws' house, where we are staying, abuts a hillside arrayed with pine, hickory, and oak. Squirrels, myriad species of woodpeckers, titmouses, hummingbirds, deer, and foxes roam the hillside as well. Leave a field untended for ten years, they say, and it will become forest. Even downtown still has huge tracts of unbroken forest, with only the mowers of the state highway department culling the saplings out of the cloverleaf interchanges before they, too, succumb to the relentless march of the pines. Here, the Arkansas River joins the Mississippi to nearly double the volume of that already very large body of water; to an Angeleno's eye, it's a chest of endless riches.We come here now to visit in the few weeks of spring promised to Arkansans; the weather is so variable it's impossible to characterize it broadly, except to say that ice and snow -- the elements that have plagued my winter visits thus far -- don't generally occur in April and May. So far, we've had three perfect sunny days, with little humidity. But there's still plenty of water around, which means high times for bugs, particularly mosquitoes; the local weather report includes a mosquito forecast.
The place is not without its warts. Those with sufficiently long memories recall the governor Orville Faubus, a jackass with a penchant for rabble-rousing, a man who could rally the knuckle-draggers in a crowd; he got Arkansas a black eye it has yet to entirely recover from. And the weather can range from pleasant (about eight weeks a year) to nasty (generally, high summer is insufferable, with 90+ F temperatures and humidity readings in 50-90%) to deadly (owing to the confluence of weather systems from Canada and the Caribbean, tornadoes are a constant threat). But for all that, the place has its charms.
One of them is the Travelers.
The Arkansas Travelers
A team named the Travelers has been around Little Rock for over a century, the first such team forming in 1901. In the official history, the name came from the Arkansas Traveler, a traveling minstrel common to these parts, though the horse -- Robert E. Lee's famous Traveler -- jumping through the "A" on the team's caps seems just as if not more likely. The team is jointly owned by a number of locals, much as the Green Bay Packers are. Bill Valentine, the general manager, operates the club. As you go into the park's main entrance, you can't miss his candy-apple red Cadillac. He's been here for over twenty years. Like Arte, he overflows with enthusiasm for the game and his job. Little Rock being a small place, my mother-in-law knows him, if not well, then certainly not requiring introduction, either. (Of course, it doesn't hurt to mention here that she was a classmate of Brooks Robinson. But she knows everyone here, it seems.)The Travs' stadium, Ray Winder Field, was started in 1931, but construction had to stop because of the Depression, so it was finished in 1932. Everything here, it seems, is original equipment, or close to it, particularly the old green wooden seats in the higher stands. Ancient electric fans, turned off for last night's game, awaited the call to cool the crowd on hotter, more humid nights, perched just under the upper deck. The only evident changes: new aluminum seating for the season ticket holders, each of whom has their name engraved in the back of one of the seats. An ancient organ of unknown species rests at the very apex of the main stadium seating; above it, a catwalk to the broadcast booth. Near the dugouts, the players' wives congregated, some with strollers, most without.
Game Time
We arrived late for the game because I forgot my camera, which, as it turned out, was a complete waste anyway, since I was too busy scoring the game to properly attend to taking pictures. As a result, we missed the first half inning of the game, which meant I couldn't properly score the first three innings because I had no idea where we were in the Rockhounds lineup. Well -- no matter. The Travs eventually won the game, but the pitching on neither side was a thing of beauty; Tim Bittner, the Travs' pitcher, gave up nine hits and two walks over seven innings, while Midland's starter, Brad Weis, didn't last but four innings, giving up three earned runs and six hits.The hitting fairly glowed red hot, but not all alike; Callaspo reached base twice on errors, Tommy Murphy, Kotchman, Gorneault, Eylward, and Duncan each getting two hits, and McPherson and Mathis each picking up one, with Eylward collecting a three-run jack -- his first homer of the season -- in the process. Moneyball poster child Jeremy Brown assembled a couple good at bats, but nothing came of it; his slow start this year (.174 average) continues apace. Not-quite-a-prospect-but-not-yet-a-suspect Freddie Bynum -- who Baseball America says "won't ever hit for much power" -- surprisingly got the most hits, going 3-5, with Mark Teahen and 2B John McCurdy both homering.
Offense aside, the most embarrassing moments of the game belonged to Dallas McPherson, who threw away two balls, one on a routine ground ball, and one on a hot shot he was barely able to field. (Apparently the scorer overruled one of those and called it an infield hit later, because the official score only shows one error.)
All in all, a fine evening. We shall return Saturday for more.
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