Us and Ten of Our Closest Friends

Nighttime at the Cove
Originally uploaded by Butch Wynegar.

The South Bend-Dayton game Tuesday night marked the first time we left a game early. There were several reasons for this, two of them primary: 1) The pitchers for both teams were making it hard to tell whether batting practice had ended, and at the rate runs were being scored, the game might have ended around 3 a.m.; 2) Spending the better part of two days in Columbus and South Bend had started to make Chicago seem like Oz, and it beckoned.

The crowd was slightly more human than the one in Columbus, though much more sparse (something we didn't think possible). Isn't minor league baseball supposed to be flourishing? Doesn't Sports Illustrated write a charming story about this every couple of years, about the small-town fervor and the crazy gimmicks meant to put butts in seats (fans milking cows between innings, etc.)? Based on our experiences Monday and Tuesday night, I was tempted to agree with Jeff MacGregor, who, in his excellent new book about Nascar, writes that -- and I might be paraphrasing here -- baseball has "crawled up under the house to die."

Fortunately, that bleak impression was obliterated on Wednesday afternoon in Chicago, but more on that soon.... --JW