I’m really quite a bit more interested in rump’s Ukraine adventure, politics in general, social issues and such than professional sports. For that matter, I urge people to turn their backs on the big leagues. But even I’ll admit that a good NFL game is a great thing to watch. And we need to spend some time thinking about something other than those monkeys in leadership positions, don’t we?
So reading a wrap-up of last week’s NFL games (I no longer remember the source. A sports oriented website, I suppose) I saw that the Raiders had played what the author described as “presumably the last NFL game played on a baseball diamond”.
The calculation must have been: The Athletics aren’t getting into the post-season, the Raiders won’t play at home again until after baseball season has finished and the Raiders will be in Las Vegas next year. I haven’t double-checked these, but it would seem to be close to the facts.
I’ll miss the Oakland Colliseum. It’s a great baseball stadium. I’ve attended many Athletics games there. But it was a long time ago. The Raiders were in Los Angeles at that time. And if they’d still been in Oakland, I probably would have never been able to get tickets. I actually did have opportunities at the Oakland Invaders of the USFL there. But springtime football just didn’t inspire me.
Anyway……...it was a fine, fine baseball stadium and it always looked like a fine football stadium on TV.
But that was a long time ago. It was only about ten or twelve years old at the time. Just a baby. And maybe it’s aged into a decrepit old park by now? The Athletics and the Raiders both seem to think so.
For a few years now I’d been thinking that this is the last stadium that hosts both an MLB and an NFL team. And a melancholy feeling developed in me as a result. I’ll miss those NFL games that had a baseball diamond silhouetted on the playing field. Because those games were a sure sign that summer was ending and fall was beginning.
For background; I’m a Sun/summer hater. It’s my worst season, hands down. People like me are in the minority, I know. But I’ll bet the rest of you can still sympathize; autumn simply does kinda feel good, right?
When the NFL season starts up it’s still essentially summer in the midwest. Seeing football games with diamonds on the field is something of a reminder that it’s still early in the NFL season and summer ain’t gone yet. But when those baseball diamonds disappeared from NFL games? Oh, it was Heaven on Earth! Though it could be still a bit warm on many days, the edge had certainly been taken off of summer and there was no doubt that autumn was here.
Then you’d see the occasional NFL game with a baseball diamond even in October. When it was played at a park that was also hosting World Series games. It was actually feeling just a little bit late to see a diamond on the playing field. But not too unnatural, just a little bit out of sync.
When those last baseball diamonds disappeared, it practically made it official that the NFL season was getting into high gear, that we were headed into the best weather time of the year followed by the holidays and…………….for people like me…………..blessed relief from the darned Sun.
Now that the NFL baseball diamonds are a rarity, and apparently now fully extinct, it feels as though I’ve lost a ‘metric’ that makes the transition official. The transition is more fuzzy to me. I guess I can live with it. But I’ve been missing the NFL baseball diamonds and I’m sorry to see them fully gone.
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And I might as well reminisce, while I’m here, about something that’s kinda sorta tangentially related. Sporting events and weather, in any case.
Even those who’ve never had the chance to catch the San Francisco Giants at Candlestick Park might have heard that that was a cold, cold place. It’s almost comical just how true that was.
After sundown the wind would swirl through that place. In the stands, and no doubt on the field, it felt as though you were being hit by gusts from every direction, one after another. You got the impression of an atmospheric whirlpool. And maybe that’s just about what it was. It would often carry shreds of that fog that comes in off of the ocean most every afternoon. I sometimes had the impression of a stadium with a bunch of ghosts flying around and around and around. Add to it the fact that the stadium itself had kind of a bleak look after dark and the impression that the place was haunted was even stronger.
And that wind was cold. Though the actual temp would be welcomed in Chicago in January, there was still something terribly chilling about it. Maybe high humidity? That’s my guess. If you went to one of those games, you wanted more than a windbreaker. That’s for sure. You wanted a jacket with definite insulation and you wanted a hat and gloves at a minimum. Even in high summer.
I recall a television commercial showing a beer vendor up in the empty upper deck. He’s covered in frost, icicles hanging off of him and he’s hollering, “Get yer ice cold beer here!”. We laughed at the silly joke. But it was more than that. We felt his pain.
I went to a number of their games on weeknights after work. Largely because Frank Robinson was their manager at that time. As a kid who grew up with the American League…….and later with the AL East division…………..the Baltimore Orioles of the late 60s and early 70s gained my attention. They were a fearsome opponent, if nothing else. So I like Frank and I was glad to have him around.
But his time as manager was not a success. And I remember watching him in the dugout, talking with players and coaches on the edge, talking with pitchers at the mound, and so on. I don’t recall him ever looking happy. He always looked glum and angry. He always looked as though it was some sort of dispute.
I’m sure it was because he and the team simply didn’t seem to get along very well. But I sometimes wonder if he wasn’t just plain miserable in that cold…….very cold…..stadium. I don’t really believe that explains things. But maybe it played some small part.