A lot of people were dubious when the Minnesota Twins announced plans to build a new, downtown, open air ballpark. The pneumatic Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome is not beloved for it’s cozy architecture (it is still the home of the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings). It is,...
As a kid I visited my grandparents in suburban St. Louis every July. Gloriously free and grown up, I roamed about basically unsupervised day after hot, humid day. After doing a chore or two I’d head to the drug store in town and buy as many packs of baseball bubble...
The Golden Gate The first time I saw The Golden Gate I arrived by bicycle, from Poughkeepsie, New York. Two Vassar College friends and I spent the summer of ’72 riding through Canada and down the Pacific Coast Highway from Vancouver to Palo Alto, about 30 miles south...
Professional baseball in Washington D.C. has been a notoriously mixed bag. “First in war, first in peace, last in the American League“ was the old saw. And it was true, sort of. The first incarnation of the Senators/Nationals franchise came in last place 9 times in 60...
Paintings often contain a visible record of past lives. Underneath the finished work is a web of built up edges, bumps and daubs that were once on the outside; a color, a piece of the picture, a part of the space, that are now only visible as texture covered over by...
GO BEARS! The Korean Baseball Organization, like almost everything Korean, is surprisingly new. Founded in 1981, it is on a par with the Japanese Baseball League, which dates back to 1936. At the time of the KBO’s founding South Korea had a GNP less than Ghana’s. It...
After the euphoria of last nights’ come from behind victory, (down 9-2 in the 8th, the Phils plated 8 in the final two frames to walk off with a 10-9 victory over the Dodgers) the physical misery of Citizens Bank Park’s first game is a distant, forgotten memory. A bit...
When neighbor Curtis Richins commissioned a painting of Petco Park I was thrilled. That meant going to San Diego- amazing weather, great beaches, dynamic downtown, fantastic parks, and a pilgrimage to Ted Williams’ boyhood home. 4121 Utah , the house where Ted...
POST #1- Baseball, Painting and Me Rick Miller in Deep Center, Memorial Stadium, Baltimore, 1981 During the spring of my first year in graduate school I went down to Baltimore with a friend to watch the Orioles play the Red Sox at old Memorial Stadium. The light on...
Blog Entry 1 “Doubtless, there are better ways to spend summer days, summer nights, than in ballparks. Doubtless. Nevertheless, decades after a person has stopped collecting bubble-gum cards, he can still find himself collecting ball parks. And not just the stadiums...