Terry B’s Travelogue

 

Wednesday, June 17 (Forest Park, IL)

How odd it feels to write my “travelogue” from inside my own home, but we had a rain out in Joliet today, so with a free evening, I figured it was high time to resurrect this moribund log. Throughout the first month-plus of this Frontier League season, I’ve rediscovered my old friend lethargy. It’s really easy to find excuses not to do things, so that’s just what I’ve done: found excuses and not done things. But no more. The Bolts are on the road for the next week still, so I am going to commit myself to writing every day for the rest of this trip. That’ll get me through next Thursday, June 25. Please hold me to it.

OK, I’ll admit it. My lethargic realization wasn’t just about writing. I’ve also had a hard time keeping my marathon training going lately (but not my charity fundraising if you make a donation below!), so today’s rain out may actually have been a blessing in disguise for me. Shortly before Joliet called the game, the skies and the forecast began to clear, so by the time I got home this evening, it was actually one of the loveliest nights of the year weather-wise. In order to fully take advantage, I took myself out for a ten-mile run, the first time I hit the double-digit mark since my debacle in Evansville a few weeks ago. Trainer Tom recently warned me that I’m setting myself up for an injury by going long periods between runs then doing a long one, but he’s a baseball trainer, not a marathon trainer, so what does he know? And anyway, I’ve only been home for a few hours and I can already almost stand up again, so everything’s fine.

The last time I trained for a marathon, I tried to be more regimented with my running schedule, but time has been so limited this year, that I just go out whenever I can and run for as long as I can. I know this is terrible for my body, but I have found it to be fairly difficult to find time to create a running schedule when the team is on the road and darn near impossible when they’ve been at home. Today’s extended session was less about feeling the need for a ten-mile run than it was about it being a beautiful night. I finally got the chance to just enjoy being outside and exploring the Northwest side of Chicago as I used to but haven’t had the chance to lately. I kept running because I was enjoying it, not because I felt I needed to cover a certain distance.

I was looking forward to a ballgame tonight and part of me felt that I should have been annoyed by a rain out on a sunny, pleasant evening. And it was definitely weird jogging through parks where 16” softball and Little League games were going on, knowing that our team was given the night off, but it turned out to be a nice evening. I wish it were the start of my renewed vigor toward marathon training, but I’m sure it’s a one-off. Anyway, at least I’ll be writing more!

 

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Thursday, June 4 (heading out of Florence, KY by bus)

The last three games were maybe the craziest series of baseball I’ve ever seen. Tonight’s 20-19 loss certainly ranks near the top of games I’ll never forget. It says something when the details of a wild 13-12 loss yesterday are already hazy in my mind because I’m trying to work out what nonsense happened yesterday, what happened today, and if perhaps I actually dreamt all of it.

In the midst of today’s nutty contest, I got a text from skipper Tom Carcione, who usually doesn’t even carry his phone in the dugout during games. He had been trying to work out a trade with Ottawa for one of their star players but it required the Bolts signing a college catcher out of California and including him in the deal. Just prior to gametime, the catcher was still on the fence but as the game got going, success! He agreed to sign, only we had to get him a contract right away. Fortunately, this is the one trip that my broadcast partner, Zach, came along on, so I was able to hand the reins to him for an inning while I ironed out the paperwork.

This was the first time I can remember that I had a manager ask me to sign a player midgame, but it’s far from the weirdest place I’ve had to work out a deal. For the record, I have no say in player transactions, I just sign the contracts and do my best to make sure our roster is organized, but last season, there was one moment at least where I had to act as liaison between two managers trying to work out a postseason trade.

It was early September and our season had already ended, so I was back in college football mode and getting ready to work a game in Maryland. We had a free evening the day before the game, so got some sightseeing in around Washington, DC. My fellow broadcasters and I had made it to the White House when the skies opened and it started to pour. As I sought shelter futilely under a large tree, I received a call from an Atlantic League manager who was trying to trade for pitcher Nolan LaMere. The Atlantic League season extends later than ours and they wanted him for the stretch run. I called our manager, Toby Hall (who now manages Florence), to work out the details with him before calling the Atlantic League team back. All of this had to be done rapidly because they wanted LaMere in uniform that night and the daily transaction deadline was just minutes away. I had to race to make sure that all of the trade agreements were signed and sent on time, which wasn’t easy because I had to do it all on my phone, which was drenched from the rain storm. And again, all this was happening on the lawn right outside the White House. The whole experience was surreal, kind of like calling a 20-19 baseball game. Anyway, the trade agreement was processed on time, then the rain stopped and we took a walk to Ford’s Theatre, so it all worked out. Well, not for Lincoln, but you know…

 

Before I sign off, here’s my regular reminder to help provide one-on-one support to cancer fighters, survivors, previvors and caregivers. Donate to Imerman Angels!

 

Saturday, May 23 (Evansville, IN)

It’s been a wacky couple of days in Evansville. I guess wacky is probably the wrong word to describe last night. What would be better? Maybe… not wacky. We were rained out, which seems to happen every time we come here. It’s one of the worst places in the league to get a postponement because there is nothing around the hotel other than a Denny’s, so predictably, I spent the night at Denny’s (I guess if you like their grand slam, it’s really a great place to get a postponement).

 

Today, prior to our doubleheader, I decided it was time to stretch my running distances a bit. I had less game prep to do because there wasn’t a game yesterday, so I prepped instead to go on my first ten-mile run of the year. I’d peaked at nine before today and crossing over into double digits seems like a significant training milestone.

There are no sidewalks near the hotel in Evansville, so to go exploring beyond the Denny’s requires the willingness to walk on the side of the interstate. I’ve tried this before with terrifying results (note to assuage any concern: nothing that happened was terrifying; I was just terrified at every car that whizzed by at 70 miles per hour, 18 inches away from me). Still, I reasoned that if I was running, I would be spending less time on the road, and I was right. Unfortunately, that was the only part of the run that went to plan.

Coming to Evansville rather depresses me. I’m sure there are very nice parts of town, but we stay in the middle of nowhere (Denny’s excluded from criticism) and even after I braved the interstate and made it through to the town itself, I mostly found industrial parks and rundown houses. One of the few things I actually like about running is getting to discover new neighborhoods around Chicago and beyond, but this one left me wanting. Still, I made it what I figured was approximately five miles and turned around to travel the same distance back to the hotel.

I didn’t want to retrace my steps and see the exact same roads, so I took a different route back, which is probably not a good idea when I don’t know where I am in the first place. When I run, I like to keep myself free from distractions and my pockets free from jangling, so I never carry a phone or any sort of GPS or communication device. All I had with me was my hotel card key, so when I inevitably got myself lost, I was pretty much stuck.

One thing I’ve probably always taken for granted living in Chicago is that no matter how lost I get (and I get myself lost often) I can fairly easily find my way to some landmark I know or at least a street that’s familiar because we were built on a grid system (that’s why Chicago is better than all other cities). At very least, I always know if I’m going east/west or north/south and how far I am from State and Madison. Not so in Evansville. Some of these roads have slight curves in them that were imperceptible to me as I ran but occasionally, out of nowhere, I was going south when I thought I was going west. Or something like that, anyway. I don’t know. All that matters is that for a while, I didn’t have a clue where I was.

I tend not to panic, but there was a stretch where I legitimately thought I was going to miss the bus to the stadium even though I left the hotel more than four hours before it was scheduled to depart. Eventually, though, I did make it back to that main interstate, only I was about two miles from where I thought I was. In the end, I got back to the hotel only a little the worse for wear but having accidentally run 13 miles. My body isn’t nearly ready for that much yet, but I guess it fits right in to my slapdash prep for this November’s race.

 

The Bolts got swept in their doubleheader today. Here’s hoping for more success tomorrow…for all of us!

 

Friday, May 15 (East St. Louis, IL)

Although anyone who knows me or has been on one of my tours knows of my disdain for St. Louis, it is always one of my favorite road trips of the year. It’s nice to be in a city, any city, when you’re accustomed to staying in the middle of nowhere. Each year, when we’re in town to play Gateway, I make sure to find time to explore the city by foot. One year, we happened to be here for the grand opening of the Museum of Westward Expansion, so I was one of the first people ever to visit it. Another, I just happened upon the championship parade for the St. Louis Blues, who had won the Stanley Cup that year. It’s still the only championship parade I’ve ever been to (until the ThunderBolts go marching down Cicero Ave. this September).

This year, I took a different tack, journeying through the city on a jog rather than a walk. This allowed me to see a bit more than I usually do. Even though I was supposed to be training, I made plenty of stops on my run, paying visits to the St. Louis Library, the Old Courthouse and the Soldiers Memorial Military Museum. I also happened upon a protest in front of City Hall, which is a striking building.

I had to pull that picture off the Internet since I don’t carry my phone with me when I run, but the building really left an impression. No wonder St. Louis is so scary. Their mayor works out of a vampire’s castle.

Maybe all the residents are scared too (protestors aside). I ran into almost no one today, literally or otherwise. On my Chicago tours each week, I talk to guests from all over the world and hear lots of stories about downtowns that have gone silent post-pandemic. I’m not sure this one was ever all that vibrant, but it’s dead today, on a Friday, and that feels disconcerting.

Less disconcerting: the ThunderBolts won again today. That’s a 6-2 start to the season. I know they can’t keep up at this pace all season, but it’s nice to have these wins in the bank.

 

Tuesday, May 12 (Avon, OH)

Aside from announcing baseball games and training for a marathon, I’m trying to spend as much time as I can this summer giving walking tours around downtown Chicago. Since Monday is our only team off day, that’s the only day of the week I’m able to partake in that particular activity. This is actually the third straight year I’m giving every Monday tours, which is a lot of fun but does lead to certain problems. Problem number one is that being a tour guide on my one day off each week means that I don’t actually have any days off. In fact, from mid-April to mid-September (later if the Bolts go to the championship), I have exactly two days that I don’t have to work: May 31 and June 9.

That’s exhausting but I can’t complain because I enjoy my work. The bigger problem is that our travel schedule, while not exactly taxing this year (see yesterday’s post), features an awful lot of day games, specifically road day games. The first of those was today at Lake Erie. Playing a morning game to start a series means we have to travel the day before, which also means I’d have to cancel my Monday tours to take the bus with the team. I wasn’t too fond of that idea, so decided to drive myself to Lake Erie for the first road trip of the year. Another issue: we go straight from Lake Erie to Gateway, a nine-hour journey that I’d rather not have to haul myself on. So, how do I transport myself to the first half of the trip but make it easier to get on the bus for the second trip? Frontier League Deputy Commissioner Matt Shepardson had the solution. He suggested I take the overnight train to Elyria, Ohio and catch up with the team from there. Brilliant.

I hopped on the Amtrak at 9:00 last night for a trip that got me to the Cleveland area by 5:00 this morning. The train ride was uneventful and almost entirely populated by Amish, a single sick woman and the sucker who had to sit right next to her (me, in case you hadn’t figured it out).

It occurred to me when I arrived in Elyria this morning that I hadn’t actually done any research on the part of my journey that would take me from the train station to the ballpark for our 10:35 game. I think I assumed there’d be an all-night coffee shop right outside the train station where I could park myself and get my game prep done before hitching a ride to the stadium.

Why would I have assumed that?

The streets of Elyria were completely empty. And dark. And it was cold out. So, I did what I always do when I don’t have a plan. I just started walking. Eventually I would find something, right? About a mile down the road, I came upon a McDonald’s that had just opened for breakfast. That seemed like as good a place as any to hunker down for a few hours.

I grabbed an Egg McMuffin and a booth and got to work on my game notes, and I apparently wasn’t the only person who had the idea of spending the morning there. A handful of old folks were scattered at other tables, reading the morning paper or just hanging out. It was kind of weird. They all seemed to know each other and I had the feeling that I was in a small town diner from an old TV show. The waitress knew everyone by name (McDonald’s has waitresses???) and she kept checking up on me and refilling my glass of water. All in all, I don’t think I could’ve picked a better spot to spend the morning.

The only place better, it turned out, was the baseball field. The Bolts won their road opener 9-0. And after catching a 15-minute ride to the park, I was there to see it all. Let’s call day one on the road a success.

 

Monday, May 11 (Chicago, IL)

Last season, the ThunderBolts went on the longest road trip in franchise history (maybe league history?). We traversed over 5,000 miles, mostly by bus but occasionally by plane, on a journey that lasted two and a half weeks. It was the craziest trip that I had been a part of and so, felt the need to chronicle it. Afterwards, I got so many compliments on my travelogue (maybe as many as two or three and only one was from myself) that I decided I had to listen to popular demand and bring back the practice for this season.

We don’t have any such crazy road trips this year. In fact, this is one of the most comfortable road schedules I’ve ever experienced in my 12 years of traveling with the Bolts. With that in mind, this blog should be a lot less rambling and scatter brained than last year’s was (should be).

In looking back at last season, I think I gained a different perspective on the season through chronicling my adventures on the road, so I thought it might be fun to try to give it a go for the full summer this year.

I don’t think I’ll be keen to write about every one of our 51 road games, so this won’t be updated every day, but I’ll do my best to post regular updates, once per series at minimum. Since I’ve already tried my hand at covering the daily ins and outs of a road trip in last year’s travelogue and I’ve narrated an entire season once before (in the extremely popular book, A Wonderful Waste of Time about the 2017 ThunderBolts), I think this year’s writing will be a little more free flowing. Some days I might talk about my favorite lunch spots or tourist destinations on the road, others I might opine about the latest hot button baseball topics and sometimes, I might just use this space as a running log.

That brings me to the real purpose of all this. This fall, I’ll be running in the New York Marathon and, in so doing, I’m trying to raise at least $5,000 for Imerman Angels, an awesome charity that offers personalized one-on-one cancer support for cancer fighters, survivors, previvors and caregivers.

I’ll post periodic reminders, but it would be amazing if you can find it in you to offer any donation at all to this great organization. You can click this link to donate.

This will be my third marathon but I’ve never tried to train for one while also traveling with a baseball team, so that could get interesting. In any case, I’m excited to be on the road with the ThunderBolts for another season, and just like last year, I’m excited to look back on this when it’s all over to figure out just when I lost my mind, if indeed I ever had it. Thanks for coming with!