Baseball Place No. 69, Land Stadium; Alternative Place No. 69A: Victory Field

How important to a stadium is the view beyond centerfield?

Josh Pahgian taps a seaside park in San Diego for place No. 69 in his “101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out.”

Carroll B. Land Stadium is on the campus of Point Loma Nazarene University, built into the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Baseball America named it the most scenic ballpark in the country.

I’ve never been there, but I did get to what the Baseball America called the best ballpark in the minors.

That would be:

Alternative Place No. 69A: Victory Field

As Pat Zachary will surely tell you, it’s difficult to replace a legend. Yet that’s what the Indianapolis Indians Triple-A team tried to do when in wanted to replace Owen J. Bush Stadium in the mid-1990s.

Not only was Bush a classic, old-school ballpark, but was a movie star, too serving as the backdrop for "Eight Men Out."

But Victory Field does a fine job.

The Baseball Truth gang made Victory our Day 2 stop for the 2007 Executive Game the day after watching the Cubs smack around the Reds in Cincinnati.

We were impressed. Fans enter the brick ballpark through the centerfield gates, strolling around the grassy berm seating area before entering a two-deck seating area.

The view from the seats is spectacular, showing off the Indianapolis skyline and the RCA Dome. The park has room for about 15,000 people, but didn’t seem that large from the inside.

Located downtown, the ballpark opened in 1996 and is surrounded by the Indianapolis Zoo, the NCAA Hall of Champions, the Indiana State Museum and other cultural institutions.

It takes its name from the original ballpark, which opened as Perry Stadium in 1931 but was renamed Victory Field in 1942 to salute celebrate victory in World War II, which wasn’t over at that point. It was renamed after Bush, a former player, manager and owner, in 1967.

Will, Scott, Scott's daughter Leah and I arrived early – of course – and found some fun, playing baseball-themed carnival games and checking out the usual assortment of ballpark snacks.

We had seats in the upper deck along the first base side, and found them not too high at all, kind of like the old upper seating area at Tiger Stadium.

Leah got a little bored halfway through the game, so she and I went exploring. We managed to sit right behind the home dugout for a spell, watching coach Hensley “Bam Bam” Meulens interact with fans.
Scott and Leah had fun playing on the berm in the outfield -- a great place to see the game, too.


Then we mingled and posed with players in the bullpen, ran up and down the berms for a while, made it over to the other bullpen for more mingling and posing and finally caught up with Rowdie, the mascot.

Darned if I can figure out what Rowdie is supposed to be. He looked kind of like an opossum with a baseball for a nose.


We enjoyed a tight game, with the visiting Charlotte Knights beating the Indians 3-2,with Darin Erstad making a rehab appearance.

Sports Illustrated, too, called Victory Field the best minor-league ballpark in America. I don’t know if I’d call it that. I might opt for Holman Field in Vero Beach. But Victory sure was all that we’d hoped for and a fine way to close out another successful Executive Game weekend.

And I'm a little strange, but I'd rather see a cool skyline over the centerfield wall than the ocean.

Separate and not quite equal at U.S. Cellular Field

Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d type. The White Sox should take customer relations lessons from the Mets.

The Baseball Truth gang made U.S. Cellular Park the spot for our Executive Game 9 last weekend, watching the Sox beat the Orioles 4-1.

Will shows off the tickets as we head out to the game. Fans of the televison show "Leverage" will recognize Laurie, who had a big scene in the pilot and was praised mightily by the producers in the DVD commentary.

New Comiskey was the site of the very first Executive Game in 2001, and this was my first visit inside since then, though Will and I had fun exploring the outside just before 2005 World Series Game One.

The park was famously overhauled, and it does seem like a much better place.

The team trimmed some rows from the painfully steep upper deck, painted a lot of the grab concrete, added a neat deck area in centerfield and about a zillion more concession areas in the upper level.

Sadly, they try to keep you up there, too.

We took the train to the park, and after paying tribute to the former Comiskey, we entered the ramps, only to find the lower level blocked off with and an usher checking tickets.



Scott managed to race around all the people playing corn hole and score!
Cars now park on the spot where Tom Seaver pitched. Sigh.

When we got to the top, we discovered that people with upper deck tickets were not allowed in the lower levels at all. Outrageous. I’ve never seen such a rule.

You have to know that I’m one of those people who likes to get to games as soon as the gates open and explore every inch, even if it’s a place I’ve been to before.

I like ballparks. They’re fun places. And once I explore and purchase the necessary program, yearbook and Diet Coke, I can settle in and enjoy the game.

To be sure, the White Sox added all kinds of stores and food concessions in the renovated upper deck concourse. But there were more stores on the lower levels, as well as all the fun in the outfield concourse.

I purchased a program at a concession stand, but there were no yearbooks to be found.

The team also has a new Fundamentals section, with neat interactive games for kids. I knew playing the games wasn’t an option, but I wanted to get photos of the activities, which were pretty elaborate.

I took a step into the upper deck Fundamentals area, only to have an usher stop me and say I couldn't enter without a child.

This was madness.

And I would not be denied, mentioning to friends that I would, in fact, get to the lower level at some point.

The scoreboard erupted after Carlos Quentin launched a bomb into the left field stands.

I approached an employee and told them I want to go to the lower level to go to a store and buy a yearbook since there were none available in the upper regions.

He told me to find the customer relations booth and ask for something called an elevator pass.

Finding this booth, I declared that I wanted a pass because I wantd to spend money in one of the stores, and that it was somewhat insulting to charge someone $30 for a seat in the park and restrict them to only one level.

The worker gave me a pass, reluctantly, noting that there were three people in my party and asking that I return the paper pass back to him upon my return.

Will, Laurie and I made a quick trip down. At one level, the elevator doors opened, and there, briefly, we saw a display case with the glorious 2005 World Series trophy.

But the game was about to start, so after a short walk we hustled back up to our seats.
Future Hall-of-Famer Jim Thome and closer Bobby Jenks in action.

In the third inning I did something I never do: left my seat for a walk around the yard. Will’s a former official scorer, so I knew I could fill in the missing spots in the program upon returning.

With my elevator pass — I did not turn it in — I slipped back down to the main concourse, wandering out to the outfield area, checking out the view from the party deck.

The Sox have always done a decent job of showing off their not-always-glorious history, and new in centerfield were a series of statues of Sox legends. Note to the Mets: This is a cool thing, and you have legends.

Billy Pierce

Nellie Fox

Luis Aparicio

Then I saw the lower level entrance to the Fundamentals area. Knowing the kid rule, I followed a family through the entrance, past the usher and up the stairs.

There were some neat things to see, like a cutout of Scott Posedenik running that sped along a 90-foot track. Youngsters tried to keep up, and the times of both were flashed on a scoreboard.

I checked out some stores — finally getting my yearbook — and headed back to the elevator. Once on board, I asked the operator if it would be OK to stop on the level with the World Series trophy and take some photos.

"Sure! You take all the time you want."

Finally, an employee who gets it.

Aside from the World Series and American League Championship trophies, the lobby had a display dedicated to former Tribune sportswriter Jerome Holtzman.


Photos, views and yearbook secured, I headed back up to the seats in the upper deck, missing two full innings. I assumed my cohorts thought something horrible had happened, since it’s incomprehensible that I would miss that much of the game.

Lame new rules aside, U.S. Cellular is a nice place to see a game. It was certainly the best-smelling stadium I've experienced. The upper deck concourse was lined with food stands, and the team grills onions with the hot dogs and brats, and the aroma fills the area.

The team had some pretty cool souvenir stands, too. I found two dedicated to items on clearance, and snagged an authentic World Series game cap for $10.

The exploding scoreboard is fantastic, and the team still does a nice job saluting its history.

Throughout the upper level, murals showed great players and events in Sox history, including a nice photo of Tom Seaver and a shot from his 300th win.

Hail Seaver!

We attended on a fireworks night, and the rockets started firing with moments of the last out.

Naturally, Chicago is too wild of a town to head right back home.
Scott and Tim hoist a Hudy. Not being from Cincy, I hoisted Diet Cokes.

Will and Scott are Ohio natives and Scott lives outside Cincinnati. Will discovered a Cincy-themed bar not far from his Windy City apartment, and we celebrated the Sox win the Skyline-style spaghetti and chili and they enjoyed Cincy-based brews.

The original Executive Board: Dave, Jim, Scott and Will.

Place No. 59: Reds Hall of Fame and Museum

The Cincinnati Reds have the best baseball museum not located in Cooperstown.

It’s not even close.

Josh Pahigian takes us to Great American Ballpark – more specifically, the team’s Hall of Fame and Museum – as spot No. 59 in the “101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out.”

The museum would be glorious enough just for displaying Tom Seaver’s jersey and his Reds Hall of Fame plaque. But the team created an interactive world that allows fans to learn about history and participate in it, too.

Great American was the host for the 2007 and 2008 BaseballTruth Executive Games, and earned a special place in my heart when the infamous Streak of Shame was snapped there last year.

We toured the museum just after it opened. It’s in a free-standing building next to the stadium, and admission was free with our ticket, though the team added an admission fee last year.

The first thing we saw upon entering is the massive 1976 World Series pennant. If you listened closely, you could still hear the Yankees weeping from the four-game spanking the Big Red Machine dropped on the Bronx that year.

That’s a pretty good start. And then things got better.

The hall’s first temporary exhibit was called “PETE!” and my companions openly speculated it will still be the temporary exhibit when they bring their grand kids to games years from now.

The Queen City appears to be obsessed with Pete Rose, which is something considering he’s not allowed to enter the ballpark without buying a ticket.

And that’s OK with me. We all have our heroes, and sometimes they are flawed. Even Tom bounced his ceremonial pitch when he closed out Shea.

There was a nice collection of Rose jerseys, bats and balls and his story filled the whole lower level before walking you down a corridor to windows that show the Rose Garden. A white rose bush shows where his record-breaking hit landed.

Then we moved upstairs where things got exciting. Turning a corner we came to a section of outfield wall with a bin of baseball gloves. And not just modern gloves – you could try on a glove from just about any era, even some sweet fingerless models.

The idea, of course, is to pose for photos making spectacular Endy catches, which we did many times over.

A few more steps revealed a batting cage, then a pitchers mound where people threw toward a wall with a painting of an umpire.

Embedded in the wall was an umpire’s mask, and from the other side you could look through and decided whether pitches were balls or strikes. I took one off the mask, and it was pretty scary.

And, appropriately, near the pitching cage was the tribute to some of the greatest Reds hurlers. Shining like a beacon to all that is good in life was the glorious Seaver jersey.

We were standing in awe – well, I was standing in awe and my friends humored me by standing by – and a Reds fan walked past, looked at the jersey and said, “Look, it’s a ‘onesy’ like a baby wears.

”“What?”

“Look at the way it’s in the frame. It looks like it has leg holes like a onesy.”

If someone wants to have a little fun at the Rob Dibble display, I’m all for it. But disparaging remarks about the No. 41 hanging there was just unacceptable. He got “the look” then moved along.

After a period of recovery and extended reverence, we moved along to a dugout display, where there was a section of the bench from Riverfront Stadium and a statue of Sparky Anderson leaning on the rail.



Even more life-sized statues were a few feet away, depicting “The Great Eight” celebrating a win, with the three most recent Reds World Series trophies.

There were also displays to assorted Reds greats – like Johnny Bench – and individual achievements – like Tom Browning’s perfect game. A broadcast both allowed fans to make the call on a number of moments in Reds history.

Then came the actual Hall of Fame plaques, which was anticlimactic compared to the rest of the vibrant museum. There were just plaques suspended on wires from floor to ceiling.

Naturally, Seaver is a member. I’m still waiting for the White Sox and Red Sox to extend the honor.

The Hall leads you down a stairway into a gift shop dominated by a massive World Series trophy.

I was so hoping the Mets would do something like this when they opened Citi Field. Of course, they didn’t. But there’s plenty of space in that parking lot for a museum, and it took the Reds several years to get this gem open after the stadium debut.

Maybe the Mets will take care of business in time for Josh to update the book.

Baseball place No. 57: Forbes Field remains

All we have left of Shea is brass markers in the parking lot. That’s not much for future generations to savor.

Luckily, the Pirates did a better job when they left Forbes Field.

Josh Pahigian takes us there for spot No. 57 in his “101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out.”

And, for the first time in a while, I’ve been there, too. Will suggested we meet up there to kick off the festivities before Executive Game 5.

Will and Scott join me in admiring home plate.

It’s time for another glorious trip into the archives.

Any place where Yankees are humbled -- and goodness knows we need more of them -- is considered hallowed ground in my eyes.

Forbes, of course, is where Bill Mazeroski earned his Hall of Fame plaque by driving a stake through the Yankees' black hearts, winning the 1960 World Series with a home run in the bottom of the ninth.

How much did this hurt the Yankees? Let's go right to Mickey Mantle's autobiography, "The Mick."

"Nothing ever hurt as bad as that one.....Bottom of the ninth. Bill Mazeroski is at the plate, taking the first pitch, a high slider....And the most tearing moment of all, seeing Mazeroski's hard line drive heading for the left field wall. Yogi moves toward it, me backing him up, but it keeps going, going, going....There's a sick sensation in the pit of my stomach. There's that unforgettable look on Yogi's face when he turns around, grim acceptance, expressed by a slow shrug of his shoulders.

"We walked off the field, a mob of fans already streaming past, and as Mazeroski crosses the plate his hysterical teammates grab at his uniform.

"In the locker room, all of us are wandering around in a trance, muttering, 'What happened?' I'm slumped in a stool, feeling so low I can hardly peel off my uniform."


Now that is something to savor. The problem with the Yankees, well, one of them, is that they think they are entitled to all the World Series championships, not just an occasional or even frequent trophy.

And the 1960 loss was so traumatic that the team fired legendary manager Casey Stengel two days later.

The Pirates played their last game at Forbes in 1970 and gave the site to the University of Pittsburgh, which had the good sense to know that it was treading on sacred ground.

A good chunk of the outfield wall remains carefully preserved, ivy and all, as well as the center field flag pole, which was in play.

Home plate rests almost exactly where it was, but it is encased in glass in a first-floor hallway of Posvar Hall, an otherwise drab building.

A row of bricks outside traces where the outfield wall stretched, and there's a plaque at the spot where St. Maz's ball crossed the fence, so all right-thinking fans can stand and reflect.

I caught up with Will and his brother Scott at outfield wall, which is slightly covered by trees in a nice, park-like setting.

After posing with home plate, we opted to pay homage by playing catch in what was right field, where Roberto Clemente once patrolled.

Forbes, which had been home to the Pirates since 1909, also was the site of Babe Ruth's last three home runs on May 25, 1935.

But it was Maz's blast that elevated Forbes to hallowed status. We remarked that 45 years later, the you could still catch a scent of Yankee shame lingering in the air. Of course, it had just poured buckets and all the trees were in bloom, which might have had something to do with it. But I prefer the former.

Baseball Place No. 45: Joe DiMaggio's Italian Chophouse; and 45A) Montgomery Inn

There’s no truth to the rumor that we tried to open the frame holding a Tom Seaver Reds jersey at the famous Montgomery Inn so we could rub our hands on its polyester glory.

Oh, sure, we contemplated it. That was back in 2002 at we embarked on our second BaseballTruth.com Executive Game, taking in games in Dayton and then Riverfront – OK, Cinergy Field, if you insist -- in its final year.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Josh Pahigian is taking us to Joe DiMaggio’s Italian Chophouse in San Francisco for spot No. 45 in his “101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out.”

Damned if I know why.

It’s not like DiMaggio ever set foot in the place. He died in 1999, and the restaurant opened in 2006.

The company owns it specializes in celebrity themed restaurants. Josh says this is the most upscale of the company’s places. It sounds like the memorabilia consists of old photographs.

Snore.

I’m starting to doubt Josh’s cred as a Red Sox fan. He seems to be bending over backward to list Yankee shrines, even pretend ones like this.

Naturally, I have no intention of checking out this place, so I’m offering up:

Alternative Place No. 45A) Montgomery Inn, Montgomery , Ohio

Like I was saying, we headed to Cincy for our second Executive Game, and Will noted that it would only be proper to start our adventure at the most famous rib place in the state.

And while there are several Montogmery Inns now – and even concession stands in Great American Ballpark – Will insisted that we needed to dine at the original, where Ted “Rib King” Gregory first concocted the amazing sauce to coat the pork.

After picking up Scott, we headed over to Montgomery, a Cincinnati suburb. The restaurant is kind of unassuming on the outside. But the interior is a spectacular show of wall-to-wall framed jerseys, most of them signed.

It’s almost hard to hold a conversation in the place because my eyes were constantly drifting some new treasure revealed above someone else’s table.

The waitress came and took our orders, and both Will and Scott requested a side of Gregory’s special sauce and suggested I do the same. Don’t the ribs come covered in sauce?
We dined at the Montgomery Inn concession stand at Great American last year. This is a pulled-pork sandwich, with an extra container of sauce, of course.

The side cup was for dipping, they replied. Of course, they were correct because that sauce is amazing. I was dipping the chips and bread, and would have probably dipped my salad, too, had I saved some.

The one slight disappointment was that I didn’t see a jersey for the greatest played every to step on a mound wearing a Reds home uniform, and that would be Tom Seaver. Everyone else was there.

But why would I doubt? Tom was in a place of prominence, a high-traffic area near the door. Alas, it was well-protected from out sauce-stained fingers.

We had a great time in Dayton, and I don’t think any of us hit a concession stand for food after our Montgomery Inn visit.

And Cinergy/Riverfront the next day was a thrill. It was looking almost Shea-like with its outfield seats removed and the new park rising just beyond the wall.

There was much joy when I discovered bottles of Montgomery Inn sauce in my local supermarket.

I confess that when I’m grilling at home, I fill a little cup with sauce and take it out to the grill with a slice of bread, dipping away as dinner cooks.

The Executive Board gathering in 2002: Will, Scott, me, Steve and Jim.