Blogging the San Diego Padres… established 1997

The following is an excerpt from the Ducksnorts 2008 Baseball Annual, scheduled for publication in February 2008.

I learned about toll roads on this day. Specifically, I learned precisely how confusing they can be.

After checking out of my room in Syracuse, I cruised west on I-90, which runs past Rochester and Batavia, and into Buffalo. To drive along I-90 you need a ticket, which you get from — actually, I’m not sure how that works because I never got one.

I exited the interstate in Buffalo and came to a toll booth, trying to think of excuses. Thankfully the operator had encountered clueless tourists before and was very patient with me.

“Where’s your ticket?” she asked.

“Um…”

“You didn’t get a ticket? Do you have a pass?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Where did you get on?”

“Syracuse.”

“Did you come up I-81?”

“I think so.” (I had no clue, but figured that being agreeable might work in my favor.)

“Was there anyone at the booth?”

“Maybe.” I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry; this is all very confusing to me. I’m happy to pay whatever; I just — we don’t have these back home.”

“I understand. That’ll be $5.25. Here’s your receipt.”

“Thank you.”

Later I would drive past Jamestown, birthplace of Lucille Ball, and I liked to think that she would’ve approved of my exchange with the toll booth operator.

Meanwhile, I had a wife waiting for me at the Buffalo airport. Sandra and I had spent a week in Toronto a few years earlier; as part of that trip, we’d visited Niagara Falls, which now was tantalizingly close but which we wouldn’t be able to visit thanks to a baseball game in Fort Wayne, Indiana, tonight. Still, I managed to catch part of a Teagan and Sara interview on a CBC station based out of Windsor, and it brought back fond memories of our jaunt to Canada.

I picked up Sandra, who had taken the red-eye from San Diego. She immediately passed out while I drove and clung to the Canadian airwaves as long as possible before our route took us too far south.

We stopped in Erie, Pa., for lunch at Cracker Barrel. Grilled catfish sandwich, french fries, cole slaw, and diet cola. I’d been along this stretch of road once before, in August 1988, when a friend and I drove from Utica, N.Y., to Dubuque, Iowa, through the night after visiting Cooperstown. It was all new territory for Sandra, though, and I enjoyed watching her experience this part of the country for the first time.

We continued along I-80, straddling Lake Erie as we passed places with names like Ashtabula and Painesville. We zipped through Cleveland and saw Jacobs Field — another in a long line of places I’d have loved to visit had time permitted.

I remembered that Rush had gotten one of their early breaks from a radio station in Cleveland. I thought of Kevin Rhomberg, the former Indians outfielder most known for his unusual compulsion of needing to touch anyone who had touched him first. The mind will wander when it has the opportunity…

From Cleveland, we moved on past Lorain, Sandusky, and Toledo before eventually hanging a left at I-69 near Angola, Ind., and continuing on down to Fort Wayne. Northern Ohio and Indiana were sparsely populated, and after driving through those parts for much of the afternoon, Fort Wayne’s relative bustle offered a welcome change of pace.

We drove straight to Memorial Stadium. As had become my custom, I snapped photos from outside and then bought tickets.

Sandra and I sat just off the first-base line and got our first look at Padres center-field prospect Cedric Hunter. We also spent much of the game chatting with a gentleman who happened to coach baseball at a local high school. He and his family filled us in on the Wizards, who were playing (and ultimately losing to) the Beloit Snappers this night.

I mentioned that we’d been to Cooperstown for Tony Gwynn’s Hall of Fame induction and were on our way back to San Diego. Our neighbor nodded.

“I visited San Diego once in the ’70s,” he said. “Never got to see the Padres — it was them or the zoo; I went to the zoo.”

I assured him that he’d made the right choice.

After the final out, we said goodbye to our neighbors, who wished us well on the drive back home. I bought several sets of Wizards baseball cards (including the 2000 set featuring Jake Peavy, who would win the Cy Young Award following the 2007 season) on our way out of the stadium. From there, we grabbed a quick bite to eat, bemoaned the lack of Internet access at our hotel, and called it a night so we could get an early start to Springfield, Mo., the next morning.

Hey, it was only another 590 miles down the road…