Catching a Ballgame with the Car Still in the Driveway

Elizabethton ballpark

Baseball is my game.  Not to play, curve balls were always a mystery to me, but to enjoy, whether in a ballpark or through a boxscore.  I avidly follow the football and basketball fortunes of my alma mater, but I’m more alive in the spring and summer when baseball is being played.

There’s something about the game that grabs hold of one and doesn’t let go.  I agree with Lowell Cohn of the Press Democrat about loving the sights, sounds, and smells of the game.

For years, much of my summer travel has directed toward minor league ball.  I’ve seen four of the top ten ballparks from this list in The Street.  (Although I think the list is too Midwest-centric and misses good ballparks near the three coasts.  The parks in Fresno, California, a jewel in a flawed setting, and Birmingham, Alabama, an urban catalyst in the making, quickly come to mind.)

I expect to visit one of the missing six this summer.  I also have a tentative plan to catch a ballgame of the Toledo Mud Hens, the favorite team of Corporal Maxwell Klinger, and a firmer plan to visit small town ballparks throughout Appalachia. 

Baseball has a complex relationship with urbanism.  On one hand, much of mythology of baseball is rural, with stories of fireballing pitchers like Bob Feller discovered in pastoral settings and farmers mysteriously drawn to lay out diamonds on land that everyone in the town thought needed to be planted in corn.

On the other hand, the game was first codified in New York City and first game of organized ball was played on a bluff above the Hudson River in New Jersey.  And, as the late commissioner of baseball, A. Bartlett Giamatti, was found of noting, the word “paradise” is derived from an Iranian word for walled garden, which is a spot-on description of an enclosed patch of an emerald green outfield in the midst of a city.

I embrace both sides of the divide.  One of my favorite ballparks, and one that I’ll revisit this summer, is in the small Tennessee town of Elizabethton.  The ramshackle park is tucked near the banks of the Watauga River, close to where the first government of European immigrants outside of the original thirteen colonies was established.  (With its 1772 founding date, the Watauga Association predated the first town government of my ancestral home, Marietta, Ohio, by six years.)

Sitting in the third base stands, I watched in 2011 as the Pulaski Mariners battled the Elizabethton Twins.  (For those who follow Major League ball, among the Twins that evening were Miguel Sano, Max Kepler, and Eddie Rosario, all of whom have played for the big league Twins this season.)  As the game played out in front of me, I could hear the quiet burble of the river behind me.  Even better, I could hear the sounds of children riding bikes along the river, enjoying a small town summer.

Greenville ballpark

But I also found the ballpark in Greenville, South Carolina to be striking.  A Fenway Park emulation, in keeping with the affiliation between the Greenville Drive and the Boston Red Sox, set within the downtown grid, and adjoined by office buildings, it has elements of the Giamatti ideal of a walled paradise.

So, with the game and my allegiance split between urban and rural settings, where does the future of the game lay?  I’ll suggest that it lays anywhere that can be conveniently accessed without the environmental and walkability impacts of private-owned vehicles and acres of parking, whether that means electric autonomous vehicles dropping fans at the front gate of rural ballparks before driving on or subway lines exiting at the rotundas of downtown parks.

With that vision in mind, let me share an expectation I have for the summer of 2018.  By then, SMART, the commuter rail system coming to the North Bay, should have opened its extension to Larkspur.

AT&T Park

During that summer,  I should be able to exit my front door, pat the fender of my car as I pass it by, walk a short distance to a bus stop for Petaluma Transit, realigned to better connect with SMART, ride a bus to the SMART station, take the train to Larkspur, with special attention to the lower Petaluma River where the train diverges from the freeway to snake through a setting of farms and tidal marshes, catch a ferry, feeling the salty breeze on the deck, arrive near the right center field corner of AT&T Park, enjoy nine innings in a walled garden, and then reverse the trip home.

What a marvelous outing to envision for the year I turn 65.  What a change to experience over the course of my life.  I only regret that it’s still two years away.

Play ball!

I’ve recently been pondering the complementary, but unevenly embraced, roles of visioning and execution.  I’ll offer insights when I next write.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Changing Views of Cars over Fifty Years

With a pair of friends, I take an annual vacation organized around minor league baseball.  With big breakfasts in the mornings, brewpubs in the afternoons, and minor league ballparks in the evenings, and with a few urbanist sightseeing stops thrown in, it’s a great week.  So great that this year, for our seventh iteration, we’re extending ourselves to twelve days.

Baseball Odyssey 2015 will begin and end in Birmingham, Alabama, with stops including New Orleans, Memphis, and Nashville.  To get myself in the mindset for minor league ball in the South, I cracked open “Southern League” by Larry Colton. 

Colton writes about the 1964 season of the Birmingham Barons.  In 1962, the Barons went on a hiatus because a local ordinance prohibited integrated sports.   With professional baseball insisting on full integration, a time-out was the only option.  But by 1964, the Barons’ owner, emboldened by the removal from office of strict segregationist Bull Connor and by the repeal of the ban on integrated sports, was ready to resume play.  However, the spectre of violence against African-Americans, almost casual in its cruelty, remained high.

Colton tells the story in a quiet, spare, and unadorned style.  He doesn’t need to add his outrage to the story.  The facts that he has assembled tell that story quite well on their own.  (Plus, any story that includes long-time Oakland A’s owner Charley Finley in a key role can’t be boring.)

Although I fully recommend the book, it doesn’t offer much of an urbanist connection.  However, there is one small set of details that impart an interesting urbanist insight.

To tell the story of the 1964 Barons, Colton focuses on four particular ballplayers, Blue Moon Odom, Tommie Reynolds, Hoss Bowlin, and Paul Lindblad.  It’s interesting to note what each did with a portion of their mostly small signing bonuses.

Odom, who was the most highly regarded as a prospect and who went on to become the most well-known of the four as a Major League ballplayer, spent $4,200 on a “brand-new, candy-apple red Ford Galaxy”.

Odom was so fixed on the car that Finley, the owner of the Kansas City A’s who were the parent club to Birmingham, helped facilitate the purchase, making sure that it was waiting for him, fresh from a Birmingham car dealer, when Odom arrived after signing his contract.  The delivery method later caused trouble for Odom when he couldn’t explain to the satisfaction of a white Birmingham police officer how a black man came to be driving a flashy new car.

Reynolds, who drove from his home in San Diego to spring training in Daytona Beach, used a portion of his bonus on a “’64 Chevy Malibu Super Sport, with its wire rims, aqua-green custom paint job, and front-seat console.”   Reynolds and the car had a difficult trip.  As a black man unable to stay at a motel in the Florida Panhandle, he tried to nap in a rest area, only to awake to find one front window shattered and the other painted with a bullseye next to his head.

Bowlin, who had grown up dirt poor in rural Arkansas, went more modest with his first acquisition, a “’56 Chevy with mud flaps and a brodie knob”.

Lindblad, already married with two children, chose a “’63 Chevy Impala”, also a more sedate selection, but still a new car and a big chunk of his bonus.

With those four examples in mind, let’s consider the 2014 example of Dodger outfielder Joc Pederson, starting leftfielder in last week’s All-Star Game, runner-up in the Homerun Derby, and Rookie-of-the-Year candidate.

Pederson completed his minor league apprenticeship with the 2014 Albuquerque Isotopes.  What wheels did Pederson, who received a $600,000 signing bonus, use to get around in Albuquerque?  A 1994 Buick Century that he bought for $1,000.

As described by the Isotopes after Pederson donated the car for a raffle, “The car, nicknamed “Little Chucky,” has only 166,000 miles on it and has at least one operable window, which is really all you need. …  Little Chucky will also come with two complimentary air fresheners and whatever else Pederson forgets to clean out.”

Quite a difference from the four Birmingham Barons of a half-century earlier and one that says much about the changing attitude toward cars.  And, as cars become less important, urbanism becomes more important.

One could argue that I cherry-picked these examples and they’d be half-right.  I wouldn’t have reported the anecdotes if they hadn’t supported my urbanist perspective.  But I didn’t go looking for these stories.  They floated across my desk for other reasons and I just happened to notice the information they imparted.

Also, I’m not suggesting that all professional athletes are driving 20-year-old beaters.  A quick look at the players’ parking lot at any Major League ballpark would quash that suggestion.  But Pederson does show that at least some players can be pretty casual about their rides.

The world is changing.

(Disclaimer: Through a mutual acquaintance, I came to know Colton back in the late 1990s, even playing a charity golf event or two.  We’ve long since lost touch, but I recall enjoying his company.  However, I’d recommend “Southern League” and his earlier books, particularly “Goat Brothers”, regardless of past golf outings.  He writes well on subjects about which I care.)

Next time, I have some good news from Napa.  It’s progress that I’ve long been advocating.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Accepting Change, in Baseball and in Land Use

Craig Calcaterra, a baseball writer with NBC Sports, recently wrote about the acceptance of change.  He was specifically writing about changes within the game of baseball, but his conclusions can be applied to other areas of human endeavor, such as land use.

The article runs moderately long.  For those on a time budget, I’ll summarize.

Baseball writers can fall into the trap of idealizing an earlier era of baseball, often the year when they were twelve years old.  It’s the age when burgeoning adolescence and an increasing awakening to the world makes all seem perfect and eternal in the world of sports.

(I understand the sentiment.  My favorite team won the World Series the year that I was twelve.  They rode dominant pitching, solid defense, and a pesky offense to the title.  To this day, that combination of team skills is my preferred brand of baseball.  I always prefer a well-played 3-1 game over a 13-11 offensive explosion.)

It’s okay to hold fond memories about an idyllic time of youth.  But it becomes a problem when fond memories give way to a pig-headed insistence on the need to return to that past, arguing that the game of baseball has only gotten worse over the intervening years.

In Calcaterra’s view, we learn something new every day, becoming a “new Craig” that replaces the “old Craig”.  That constant process of change and improvement is an essential part of embracing of life.

To reject all the “incremental Craigs”, or to never have allowed those “incremental Craigs” to be born, in favor of an often misremembered idyllic past is a form of death.

I concur with Calcaterra.  I remember the baseball of the 1960s with fondness, but can also acknowledge its flaws.  The lingering racial prejudices, the unreported abuse of amphetamines, the flawed game strategies, and the hagiographic press.  Baseball has made progress on all of those fronts since the 1960s.  Admittedly, the progress has often been accompanied by missteps, but overall the game is better played today than ever before.  And to dismiss that reality is to dismiss a fundamental act of living.

The same thought process applies to land use.

I remember the neighborhoods in which I spent the 1960s.  Single-family homes on large lots fronted by expansive green lawns.  Wide streets well-suited for youthful games of baseball or football.  The ennui of long summer afternoons when the only friends in walking distance didn’t want to play.   Trips in the family car for any task, whether buying a quart of milk, picking up laundry, or going to a youth baseball game.

At the time, occasional youthful complaints aside, it felt like a reasonable way to live.  Indeed, I couldn’t have conceived of any other way to live.

But the cracks that only the most discerning eye could have spotted in the 1960s have consistently grown since then.  The municipal inability to pay for maintenance of those wide streets.  The growing environmental issues around the hydrocarbon use epitomized by those trips in the family car.  And now the water issues over those green lawns.

So, just as in baseball, I can remember the 1960s land-use patterns with fondness while also appreciating the better thinking that is now making inroads into land-use planning.  The increased focus on walkable urbanism, with its improved municipal finances, reduced climate change impact, and less water use.

But I don’t expect that urbanism is a finished product.  Every day, I awake eager to learn new nuances and to find ways to share that new information with you.  I hope to welcome each dawn as a “new Dave” for as many years as possible.

As Calcaterra acknowledges, we all eventually reach the day when new stuff begins to elude us, when we become curmudgeonly about new-fangled ways of thinking.  But the goal is to delay that day as long as possible.

I’m reminded of a story about long-time Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes on the day he finally stepped down from the Court at the age of 91.  A fellow Justice, concerned about the effect of the retirement on his old friend, stopped by to check on Holmes later the same day.  He was surprised to find Holmes deep into a book by Plato.

When his friend expressed surprise at the continued study, Holmes explained that he had to prepare himself for whatever would come next in his life.

I’m not Oliver Wendell Holmes, but I certainly hope to emulate him in how I view land use, baseball, and whatever else catches my attention in my remaining years of life.

In my next post, I’ll recount a recent on-line exchange with neighbors about how to better control traffic to a nearby high school.  It was a discussion of legitimate concerns combined with misunderstandings about the nature of car drivers.  It also gave some bittersweet insights into the changing of generations.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Arriving at the Turnstile by Public Transit

The official Opening Day game of Major League Baseball has already been played.  Over the next week, the other Major League teams and most minor league teams will also begin their regular seasons.  With college teams having already played twenty or more games, it’s a fine time of year for a baseball fan.

Every year about this time, I explore the connection between urbanism and baseball.  Last year, I mused on the extent to which urbanism and baseball were compatible.  A year before, I updated and republished a list of the Northern California ballparks that were within walking distance of urban settings.

This year, I’ll return to the ballpark list, but with a twist upon which I should have struck years ago.  As I pondered twelve months ago, ballparks can sometimes be too much of an intrusion on downtowns.  But neither should ballparks be located so that fans can only arrive by private cars.

Therefore, for many if not all communities, the ideal ballpark location is one that can conveniently reached by transit.  Indeed, much of the early history of baseball is tied to transit.   As baseball grew to its current form in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, teams could only survive if fans could reach the ballparks by streetcar or other transit options of the time.  It’s ironic considering that the their current ballpark has only become transit friendly in recent years, but the Los Angeles Dodgers  still carry a nickname from the early years when their ballpark adjoined trolley lines. 

Today, in a world where the dominance of the automobile is starting to wane, having ballparks with good transit access is a model that shows signs of returning.  Or, as this tabulation from Urban Design Associates shows, has already begun a comeback.

So, to celebrate the beginning of the 2015 baseball season, I’ll offer a quick tour of Northern California ballparks that I consider transit friendly.

But first, a couple of caveats.  One, while most ballparks may be reachable by local bus routes and extended walks, I don’t consider those to be transit friendly.  Instead, I’m looking for ballparks where the transit line deposits passengers close to the front gate and where the number of transfers or intermediate stops is limited.  In a related criterion, I prefer transit lines where fans heading to the ballpark are a sizable portion of the riders as gametime approaches, allowing the ballpark experience to begin early.

Two, living in the transit-limited North Bay, I can’t downgrade a ballpark because it doesn’t have a strong transit connection all the way into the North Bay.  The fact that a North Bay ball fan must take a slow bus ride or two followed by a BART trip to reach Evans Diamond on the Cal campus is a North Bay problem, not an Evans Diamond problem.

With that preamble, here’s my list, in order of distance from the North Bay.

#1 - Albert Field in San Rafael:  Albert Park is the homefield of the San Rafael Pacifics who play in an independent league, outside of affiliated baseball.  I’m cheating slightly when I open with this ballpark.  Although today it can be reached by Golden Gate Transit and a half-mile walk, I don’t consider that a strong transit connection.  But when the SMART trains begin running sometime before the 2017 season, fans will be able to ride a train to and from the ballpark.  Unfortunately, the half-mile walk will remain, but the walk will hopefully be in the company of other ball fans who also arrived by train.

#2 – Evans Diamond on the University of California campus:  I spent many spring afternoons as a student doing physics homework in the stands behind first base of what was then Evans Field.  Multiple upgrades since that time have made it an even better place to watch a ballgame.  And it’s only a couple of blocks from a BART station.

#3 – AT&T Park:  The Giants’ homefield is a fine example of a city ballpark.  Even better, the transit connections are strong today with the streetcar line and the ferry dock behind center field, and will become even better with the Central Subway now under construction.

#4 – O.co Coliseum: The O.co Coliseum is a poor ballpark.  Never a gem, it was undermined by an ill-conceived renovation for football and is now a dingy, dreary setting, enlivened only by the continuing underdog successes of the A’s.  However, the ballpark is readily accessible by BART, which may be one of its best features.

#5 - Raley Field:  Much like Albert Park, I’m cheating by including the homefield of the Sacramento River Cats on the list this year.  Raley Field is a fine facility, but its current transit accessibility is limited.  However, the cities of Sacramento and West Sacramento are working toward a streetcar system that would interconnect the State Capitol, Raley Field, the Amtrak station, and the growing urban communities north of downtown Sacramento and across the river in West Sacramento.  It’s a bold vision that would change the Sacramento region and make Raley Field an even more vibrant place.

#6 – Aces Ballpark: I’m going outside of North California to name this Reno ballpark, home to the Reno Aces of the Pacific Coast League, but the rail connection is too strong not to mention.  The front gate at Aces Ballpark is only feet from the Reno Amtrak station.    Furthermore, a casino hotel also adjoins the parking lot.  Once aboard an Amtrak train, one can do the full Reno experience of baseball and gaming without needing a car.

Those are my top six.  Let me know if I’ve missed a ballpark that I should have included.

Schedule Reminder

The Petaluma City Council will consider the possibility of a drought-related building moratorium at their meeting on Monday, April 6.  I’ll be there to reinforce the points I’ve previously made regarding a moratorium.

·         It’s past time to implement stricter water conservation standards to reflect the drought, the possibility of which was predicted two decades ago and has now come to pass.

·         If a moratorium of 45 or 90 days is required to implement the new rules fairly and effectively, I’m supportive.

·         If the possibility of a more extended moratorium comes under consideration, I’m adamantly opposed.  It’s time to adjust to the new normal, not to twiddle our collective thumbs while hoping for a meteorological miracle of a return to normal rainfall pattern.

The meeting will commence at 7:00pm in the City Hall at 11 English Street.

If you’re planning on attending the meeting and looking for a primer on the California drought beyond the limited concerns of Petaluma, I recommend this article from the New York Times.  As always, the problem remains that much of the water usage in the state is for agriculture and therefore under a different set of rules governing a drought response.

Obviously, agriculture is essential to the economy of the state, but the dual challenge will be to responsibly rein in agricultural usage and to build the infrastructure to deliver the newly conserved water to the other elements of the state’s economy that are equally essential.

Next time, I’ll touch one more time on baseball.  I’ll share an article that was addressed to folks who refuse to accept that baseball is evolving in ways that are mostly better.  I’ll accept the premise and then argue that a similar resistance to change affects urbanism.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Don’t Be a Vacuum Cleaner Guy

I’m going to wax philosophical today.  I’ve been writing this blog long enough to know that doing so isn’t going to change the world.  And that’s okay.  If I change the way just one person thinks about the land-use process, or about life, then I’ll have had a good day.

Many years ago, I was president and part-owner of a minor league baseball team.  It was a great experience.  Expensive, but a source of memories and stories that will make me smile forever.  Those in the North Bay may remember the Sonoma County Crushers who played in Rohnert Park until 2002.  My club was in the same league.

I rarely note my baseball experience in this blog because it has little pertinence to land use or to urbanism.  But once in awhile, I can find a way to connect some dots.  Today is one of those times.

During the life of the ballclub, we had one particular fan.  I’ve forgotten his name, so I’ll call him the Vacuum Cleaner Guy.  If I recall correctly, he had at least some college, perhaps even a degree, but he’d never found an office situation where he could be successful.  He’d tried a small business, but again failed.  By the time I got to know him, he was earning a living as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman.

But it wasn’t much of a living.  And his ballpark spending reflected his life situation.  He was always looking for free or discounted tickets.  And he never patronized the ballpark concessions, always sneaking his dinner into the park.

We didn’t mind having the Vacuum Cleaner Guy in the ballpark.  Every person in the stands adds to the ambience of the experience, which brings fans back to more games.  But Vacuum Cleaner Guy wasn’t a source of revenue.

Which was a shame because revenue is often scarce in minor league baseball.  An affiliated ballclub with good local government support can be financially stable.  Perhaps no one gets rich, but the operation can be sustained from year-to-year.

But we weren’t in those categories.  We were an independent ballclub so we paid the players ourselves instead of having a Major League club cover the payroll.  (The photo above is of the ballfield of an independent ballclub in Ohio.)  And the management team which preceded my time as president had burned a number of community bridges, so we weren’t getting any favors from City Hall or the Park and Recreation District.

We were discreet in talking about our uncertain finances.  Even if it was occasionally true, to say publicly that we were unsure of meeting payroll the following week would have damaged the turnstile count and the clubhouse morale.  But we often told the press that our ability to return for the following season would depend on selling more season tickets or securing more sponsorships.  The fans understood the cues we were giving.

In particular, Vacuum Cleaner Guy took our situation to heart, often waylaying me during ballgames to impart his wisdom, most of which was in the form of spending money to make money.  He was sure that rebuilding the ballpark restrooms would increase ticket revenue by more than the cost of the construction, that improving the beer selection would greatly increase sales, and that adding more vendors in the stands would increase concessions sales by more than the additional costs.

Of course, there were many reasons to discount his advice.  To begin, his own career path didn’t provide any grounds to value his wisdom.  For another, he didn’t have the capacity to spend any more money at the ballpark than he already did, so he was assuming behavior by the general public that wasn’t consistent with his own situation.

But the most important reason to set aside his suggestions was that he never made an effort to learn about the finances of minor league baseball.  I wouldn’t have told him everything.  It wouldn’t have been appropriate to share salary information or to provide updates on litigation risks elsewhere in the league, but there was much that could have helped inform his opinions.  However, despite being generous with his suggestions, he never once asked about percentage of revenue that came from gate receipts, the structure of beer vendor arrangement, or the impact of workers’ comp insurance.

It’s awfully hard to value the opinion of someone who makes no attempt to understand the parameters of the problem.

(Coincidentally, a second illustration of the same point also comes from my baseball years.  Another of the co-owners, and perhaps the best friend of my adult years, began a career in politics during that time.  He soon reached a position of prominence in the state budget process.  Citizens from across the state would seek time with him to lobby for funding priorities, often in the field of public education.

Whenever someone began a conversation about education funding, Ben would ask what percent of the current state budget was dedicated to education.  If he received the right answer, which was close to fifty percent, he would take the conversation seriously and engage in an extended give-and-take over budget priorities.

But when he received the wrong answer, which he often did, with most folks putting the percentage far below fifty percent, he would judge that his time was being wasted by folks who hadn’t done their homework and would cut the conversation short.)

And this brings us back around to land use.  In my role as a commenter on land-use practices, policies, and realities, I chat with many folks about North Bay land-use issues.  I’m not surprised that many don’t understand the give-and-take of the process, or the underlying realities of zoning codes versus raising capital versus construction costs versus impact fees versus absorption rates.

But I’m very surprised when so many have no interest in learning about these topics.  Instead, the attitude is frequently, “I don’t need to understand the process and the factors that affect it.  I only need to say what land uses I want and expect them to appear.”

I’m not going to defend the way we do land use.  Anyone who has read this blog over the past three years knows that I have many issues with how the system has evolved, from the implementation of CEQA to the calculation of impact fees to the risk aversion that is often driven by banking regulations.

But to complain about the results of the land use process and to advocate for other solutions without deeming the understanding of the process as worthy of one’s time is akin to letting go of a china tea cup in mid-air and then protesting bitterly about gravity when the cup shatters on the floor.

(By the way, I’m also not setting myself up as some fully-informed land-use savant.  I’m constantly studying and learning, and hope never to cease.)

Unable to overcome the ill-will left behind by the earlier management team, we eventually shut down the baseball team.  It was a sad day, but we were out of options.  Even if he’d bother to educate himself, I don’t think Vacuum Cleaner Guy could have helped save the day.  The hole we inherited was too deep.

But nobody is going to shut down North Bay land use.  Instead, if it continues on the path it has followed for the past seven decades, it’ll just keep digging a deeper hole.  If that future isn’t appealing, now is the time to become educated and to make a difference.  No one should be a Vacuum Cleaner Guy.

Next time, I’ll tackle a question recently raised by a reader, “Is there such a thing as bad urbanism?”  The question forced me to reassess some definitions I’ve been using.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Clinging to the Past

As I publish this, I’m in the final days of a vacation.  Every year, I meet friends for a week of minor league baseball, regional food, and enjoyable beverages.  (The friends also humor me by agreeing to look at cool downtowns and walkable neighborhoods.)

This year, we traveled to New Mexico where most of the professional baseball teams are in the independent Pecos League.  The week of independent baseball caused me to think back upon my years in independent ball.  In particular, I recalled a story that illustrated an urbanist moral.

We had a season-ticket holder whom I’ll call Bridget.  (The actual woman was in her 70s and in failing health when I knew her nearly twenty years ago, so has likely passed away.  But I’ll let her rest in peace by using a pseudonym.  Otherwise, the story is fully true.)

Bridget was the kind of season-ticket holder who is important to lower level minor league ballclubs.  She could barely scratch together the cost of her season ticket and never patronized the concession stands, so she didn’t make much of an impact on club finances.  But she was eager to help the club in other ways.  In particular, she often undertook sewing tasks such as stitching commemorative patches onto jerseys and mending torn uniforms.

Her mending duties led to a conversation that illustrated a bit of her character.

We had a center-fielder, Marco, who was a player, in every sense of the word, both on the field and off.  One evening, Marco tore his baseball pants, requiring overnight repairs.  About twenty minutes after the game ended, with the primary stadium lights turned off and all but a few fans long gone, I spied Bridgett waiting in the shadows near the clubhouse.

Not knowing about the mending task that we’d asked of her, I asked her if she needed help.  She replied, “I waiting to get Marco out of his pants.”

“Bridget, I’m shocked!”

She shook her white hair, pursed her thin lips, and admonished me, “You know what I mean!”  But she couldn’t hide the small hint of a grin at the naughty suggestion that she might still have something to offer a 24-year-old athlete.

But Bridget really showed her colors on the Star-Spangled Banner.  Like many ballclubs, we had a choice of playing the same scratchy recording of the Star-Spangled Banner for 45 games each season or inviting local musicians to audition for a chance to play at one of the games.

Of course, we choose the latter.  Not only did we hope to sell tickets and concessions to the friends and family of the musicians, but we hoped some of them would enjoy the experience enough to return for another game.  (It may sound mercenary, but balancing the books in independent ball, not to make a profit but just to keep the gates open,  requires being mercenary.)

As might be expected, with 45 local musicians for 45 games, some of the musicians weren’t particularly good, or had renditions that diverged substantially from traditional, or both.

Several times a season, after a particularly inventive version, Bridget would feel obligated to berate the owners for the sacrilege.  As she slowly worked her way down through the stands, the other owners would find refuge in the press box or think of urgent cell phone calls that had to be made at that moment.  But I was often willing to chat with her.

“That was wrong!  The Star-Spangled Banner needs to be played as it was written.”

“What do you mean, Bridget?  The words were written as a poem.  Do you mean that we should recite the poem?”

“No!  You know what I mean.  The music should be played the way it was written.”

“But the melody was written as a drinking song for a London social club.  Do you mean we should import slightly inebriated Brits to sing the song?”

“No!  It should be played the way it was when I was a girl, when my daddy first brought me to this ballpark.”

“And when was that, Bridget?”

“1936.”

“So, in the entire history of the Star-Spangled Banner, the way it was played in this ballpark in 1936 was the only way it should ever be played?”

“Yes!”

“Okay, I’ll advise the general manager.”

“You do that.”  And she would stomp back to her seat while the fans within earshot tried to stifle smiles.

I t appreciated Bridget’s passion and her commitment to the ballclub.  But her insistence that 1936 was the apogee of the Star-Spangled Banner was silly.

However, her contention, as ridiculous as it may have seemed to those in earshot, is unfortunately similar to the attitudes that many take toward land use.  And it’s an attitude that’s ultimately harmful to our future.

Trying to preserve the 1980s form of land use is a bad idea, particularly because of what we now know about the financial and environmental impacts of that land use configuration.  But trying to preserve the 1890s land-use pattern is just as bad.  We’re a different people now, with different lifestyles, and our land use needs to reflect that.

Some try to disparage urbanism by claiming that it’s a foolish attempt to recapture the past.  But that’s a strawman argument, falsely attributing a characteristic just so it can be criticized.

No, urbanism is about taking the best of all past practices (admittedly, there were more good ideas before World War II than after) and applying those ideas to who we are today.  Urbanism isn’t about walking around in top hats; it’s about walking around in cargo pants, using our phones to navigate through a city that is environmentally and financially sustainable.

I still appreciate what Bridget did for the ballclub two decades ago.  And if she wanted to complain about the occasional electric guitar riff in the middle of the Star-Spangled Banner, then I was willing to listen to her in good humor.  But if she, or anyone else, were to take the same rigid attitude toward land use planning, then I’d be unhappy.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Debating the New Normal

Like many cities across the country, Petaluma may put a proposed tax increase on the November ballot.  The great recession took a big chunk of the municipal budget and the economic recovery, although stronger than many had feared, hasn’t provided adequate revenue to address backlogged needs, some of which date from before the recession.

Following my personal policy of “We built this stuff, we really should take care of it”, I expect to support any proposal that the City Council puts on the ballot.  And I’ll likely encourage others to do the same. 

But I reserve the right to dissent from how the City is framing the debate, which is based around the question, "Will today's Petaluma become the new normal or do we want to return to the Petaluma we all enjoyed just a few years ago and improve upon that?"

Wikipedia defines “false dilemma” as an “informal fallacy that involves a situation in which limited alternatives are considered, when in fact there is at least one additional option.”  I suggest the City’s question is a textbook false dilemma.

To begin, the question draws a silky gauze of nostalgia over the Petaluma of “just a few years ago”.   To refresh our memories, concerns about potholes and other municipal deficiencies began more than a decade ago, long before the recession and far more than “just a few years ago”.

Also, levels of personal and public debt, used to finance “the Petaluma we all enjoyed”, have been increasing steadily since the 1970s and may be reaching unsustainable levels.   To think that we can return to a halcyon time and even “improve upon that” with a tax increase is a false hope.

Nor does the implicit alternative, that rejecting the tax increase will result in the current Petaluma becoming “the new normal”, stand up to scrutiny.   We’re barely treading water now.  To hope that we can keep treading indefinitely is unrealistic.  It’s more likely that the tax measure will be needed just to maintain the status quo as the new normal.

And a black cloud of further distress may be looming just over the horizon.  I recently chatted with a North Bay city manager about municipal finances throughout the North Bay.  I noted the hypothesis of many that the recovery from the recession was managed perhaps too skillfully, with the result that many of the structural deficiencies in the economy, which are often scrubbed out by a long recession, remain in place making us prone to another recession.

I asked the city manager what would happen to his city in the event of another recession.  He pondered for a moment, shuddered, and then said “I hope I’m retired by then.”

I don’t intend for this post to be a jeremiad about the inevitability of civic distress.  Indeed, I don’t believe that municipal fiscal collapse is inevitable.  But the best path is neither placidly accepting the current reality as the new normal nor trying to improve upon a past that never was.  It’s passing the tax measure and using the financial infusion to restructure the city to a more financial sustainable model.  And urbanism must be an essential element of that restructuring.

That’s the option that Petaluma omitted in the false dilemma formulation.

The City will host a Town Hall Meeting on Tuesday, May 13 to discuss the question.  The meeting will convene at 6:00pm in the Petaluma Community Center.  Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend.  I’ll be on a long-scheduled trip to Stockton.  (I’ll be there only to watch baseball games, but will still feel like I’m sticking my head into the jaws of municipal fiscal dysfunction.)

Even though I can’t be there, I encourage everyone to attend the Town Hall Meeting.   I hope what I’ve written above provides a lens through which to view the discussion.

Schedule Notes

The monthly Petaluma Urban Chat meeting was scheduled for Tuesday the 13th, the same evening as the Town Hall Meeting.  By vote of Urban Chat participants, we’ll forego the May meeting in deference to the Town Hall Meeting and in the hope that the Urban Chat folks will instead attend the Town Hall Meeting.  The next Urban Chat meeting will be on June 10.

Also, I earlier wrote of my plan to make baseball gameday visits to seven North Bay and Greater Bay Area teams.  All ballclub schedules are now published, so I can pick my visits. 

San Rafael: Friday, June 13 – Pittsburg Mettle at San Rafael Pacifics, first pitch 7:05pm

Alameda: Sunday, June 15 – Sacramento Spikes at Neptune Beach Pearl, first pitch time not yet announced

Healdsburg: Monday, June 16 – Sonoma County Chili Gods at Healdsburg Prune Packers, first pitch 7:00pm

Walnut Creek (actually Orinda): Sunday, July 6, Neptune Beach Pearl at Walnut Creek Crawdads, first pitch 12:00pm

Sonoma: Sunday, July 27 – San Rafael Pacifics at Sonoma Stompers, first pitch time not yet announced

Vallejo: Saturday, August 2 - San Rafael Pacifics at Vallejo Admirals, first pitch 5:05pm

Pittsburg: Saturday, August 30 - Sonoma Stompers at Pittsburg Mettle, first pitch 7:00pm

My plan is to arrive in town a couple of hours before each gametime, giving an opportunity to look at the downtown or another interesting walkable urban district.

I’ll attend all games regardless of whether others join me, but others are certainly welcome.  If you’d like to catch a little baseball and urbanism, let me know.  We can make arrangements as the games approach.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Combining Baseball and Downtowns in 2014

I intend to fully celebrate the connection of baseball and urbanism in 2014.  I hope readers can join me for a game or two.

Every spring I struggle with how I feel about baseball versus urbanism.  On one hand, baseball takes up a lot of space for a small number of participants, unlike let’s say basketball.  And low density isn’t good for urbanism.  On the other hand, baseball can be played most days, so doesn’t leave a neighborhood bereft of pedestrians for weeks on end, unlike let’s say football.

For me, it comes down to roots.  Baseball evolved on the grassy open spaces of New York City, not far from where the famous Flatiron Building now stands.  The first recorded game was played directly across the Hudson River in Hoboken.  And I still thrill to the reports of city dwellers congregating in the streets of the early 20th century, awaiting reports on how their team was faring in the World Series.  And those facts are enough to make baseball an urban game.

(Cooperstown is a lovely village, but its connection to the origins of baseball is nothing but a fairy tale told by a xenophobic old man who refused to believe that baseball could have evolved from a European game.)

Luckily for us, there are many opportunities to combine the enjoyment of baseball and urban settings here in the North Bay and nearby.

Through the spring, the local high schools provide entertaining options.  (I’m often tempted to stop at the high school ballfield in my neighborhood.  The sound of bat meeting ball is a persuasive seductress.)  Sonoma State and Santa Rosa Junior College also provide opportunities to dawdle away warm spring afternoons, as do youth baseball programs.

But the real stars of the baseball universe are the teams that allow us to lean back and enjoy a ballgame on a summer evening, surrounded by the sound of infield chatter and the aromas of popcorn and grilled hot dogs.

A year ago, I wrote about the San Rafael Pacifics and Vallejo Admirals of the independent Pacific Association.  This year, those two teams have been joined by the Sonoma Stompers and Pittsburg Mettle.  Rather than flying to Hawaii for some games as the Pacifics and Admirals did in 2013, the four teams will play a summer-long round-robin in the North and East Bays, offering a pair of games on most nights.

(Note: For four years, I was the part-owner of a team in an independent league, so have a particular affection for that level of play.  It doesn’t offer the skill one would find on a Major League diamond, but there is something compelling about young men so attached to the game of baseball that they’ll devote another summer or two of their post-college days to chasing the dream, even after they weren’t drafted by a big league club.)

In the same post of a year ago, I mentioned the college summer league clubs in Walnut Creek and Alameda.  Although in a different league, the Healdsburg Prune Packers also play college summer baseball.

For 2014, I’m committed to attending home games for all seven of those baseball teams.  And I’ll schedule my outings to include time to wander around the downtowns of San Rafael, Vallejo, Sonoma, Pittsburg, Walnut Creek, Alameda, and Healdsburg.

I had hoped to provide dates for all seven ballpark visits in this post.  However, some of the ballclub schedules haven’t yet been posted.  Within a couple of weeks, I’ll announce the seven dates.  I hope that many readers will be able to join me for a game or two.

Readers may note that I haven’t yet mentioned either of the Bay Area Major League ballclubs.  I have nothing against Major League Baseball.  Most evenings, I have a Major League ballgame playing in the background as I work on a blog post or other task.  And I’ve been enjoying outings to Major League ballparks for more than a half century.

But I’ve had even more fun at minor league and amateur games.  At this time, including the outings describedabove, I’m scheduled to attend 29 ballgames this summer.  And not one is a Major League game.  I’ll watch several games in downtown Stockton, within a community struggling through its municipal bankruptcy, and another handful of games in downtown Reno, surrounded by casinos and music venues.

I’ll see games at the new ballpark in downtown El Paso, home of the newly-named Chihuahuas.  I’ll see a couple of games in Taos, New Mexico, home of the Blizzard in the independent Pecos League.  (Is there a more evocative league name than the Pecos League?  It sounds like cowboys will stop by with herds of cattle enroute to market.)

If I end up in O.Co Coliseum or AT&T Park, that’d be fine.  I’m sure I’d have a good time.  But I expect to have better times in Alamagordo, Albuquerque, and Healdsburg.

Downtowns and minor league baseball is a tough combination to beat.  I hope you’ll agree with me before the summer is over.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Cornfields Not Always the Best Ballparks

I love the movie “Field of Dreams”.  Many consider it overly sentimental, but I put it up there with “Bull Durham” as one of my two favorite baseball movies.

Much of the allure of “Field of Dreams” is the setting in an Iowa cornfield.  For the movies, baseball in a cornfield is fine.  But I recently saw several ballgames in a Midwestern cornfield and found it distressing.

Faced with the need for a new ballpark five years ago, the Omaha Triple-A ballclub, now known as the Storm Chasers, left their old location near downtown Omaha to build a new ballpark fifteen miles away.  

Not only is Werner Field remote from Omaha, it’s remote from pretty much everything.  It’s mostly surrounded by cornfields and hayfields.  Except for a row of homes on a ridgeline beyond the rightfield fence, one other residential neighborhood, and a few industrial buildings, the ballpark is four miles from anything.

Nor are there good ways to reach the ballpark except by car.  There’s no transit to the park.  There is a bike lane on the rural highway leading to the park, but the lane hadn’t been cleaned in awhile.  For the three games I watched at the ballpark, I didn’t see a single bicyclist or pedestrian either on their way to the park or going anywhere else.

To be fair, the park may someday be adjoined by other non-agricultural land uses.  There were signs describing the ballpark as the first phase of a development planned to eventually include residential, office, retail, and industrial uses.  And the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area is growing enough, roughly 100,000 between 2000 and 2010 with a similar rate expected to continue, to absorb the new development.

But a good urban plan would have allowed the downtowns to accept 100,000 new people.  And even failing that, there are many cornfields closer to Omaha and adjoining existing development that could have been converted into a ballpark.

Werner Park is the worst kind of drivable suburban sprawl.  Indeed, calling it suburban is a stretch.  It’s drivable rural sprawl.  It’s a nice ballpark, but in a horribly wrong location.

To make the situation worse, there was an available urban alternative.  The park from which the Storm Chasers moved was Rosenblatt Stadium, which also served as the long-time home of the College World Series.  Rosenblatt was aging and a new venue was required.  So the Storm Chasers moved fifteen miles to their new 8,500-seat ballpark in a cornfield.  And a new 24,000-seat ballpark, TD Ameritrade Park, was built in downtown Omaha for the College World Series.

That’s right.  Two largely comparable but separate ballparks, with a combined construction cost of $164 million, were built simultaneously fifteen miles apart.

I asked a number of folks why the functions of the two parks hadn’t been combined.  Two reasons were given.  First, the College World Series would have required the Storm Chasers to take an annual two-week roadtrip.  Second, 24,000 seats are too many for a Triple-A ballclub.

As a former minor league ballclub owner, I understand the latter concern.  If too many seats are available, fans don’t have a reason to make advance purchases.  Instead, they can plan on buying walk-up tickets.  But if they don’t have tickets in hand, they can easily make gameday decisions to skip the game.  It’s the reason that many new Major League ballparks have 40,000 seats, compared to the 55,000-seat stadiums of three decades ago.

So the scheduling and capacity issues are legitimate concerns.  But were they sufficient to justify building two ballparks, one of which is the definition of sprawl?  Not even close.  The issues are challenges to be overcome, not roadblocks.

Schedule-makers must regularly accommodate special scheduling concerns.

And making a ballpark that will function well at 24,000 seats for two weeks and at 10,000 seats for the remainder of the year is a design criterion which architects would love to tackle.  Perhaps the upper sections could be blocked off except during the College World Series and a second, less grand, entrance provided for the Triple-A games.

As an architect friend noted when I told him about the dual ballparks, “I understand the constraints, but they don’t justify that solution.”

And the rewards for solving the challenges would have been significant.  Attendance for the Storm Chasers would likely have been higher in downtown Omaha.  Watching a ballgame would become available to those who rely on transit.  And the streetlife around TD Ameritrade Park would receive a boost.  It’s a nice neighborhood, but one that would have benefited from several thousand Triple-A ball fans going to and from 72 ballgames a year.

For “Field of Dreams”, baseball in a cornfield is fine.  But for real life ballclub in a world where we should be more aware of using our assets wisely, it’s a huge blunder.  In baseball terms, Werner Park was a whiff.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)