Touring Oriole Park Part I

Being fans and living sort of nearby, we decided to take the tour of Oriole Park at Camden Yards. We walked in from the north, seeing the plaza by Gate H. The ball park was first used in the 1992 season, replacing the previous stadium.

Walking in to the stadium

On the tour, we learned that Camden Yards is named after the railroad station located in the area, which is no longer extant. The train station building is still standing and is the location of the Camden Station for MARC trains.

Camden Yards station!

The Gate H plaza has retired numbers from famous Baltimore Orioles players. My youngest posed in front of number five, third baseman Brooks Robinson's number. He played baseball for 23 years, all of them for the Orioles. He has the record for the longest time playing with one team and was a great baseman, earning the nicknames "the Human Vacuum Cleaner" and "Mr. Hoover." He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983.

By the Robinson retired number

Also in the plaza is a statue to George Herman "Babe" Ruth, Jr. The Babe was a member of the Orioles briefly and was born only three blocks from the current stadium. So he is a hometown hero, even if most of his heroics were for the New York Yankees.

Babe Ruth statue

Another view of the statue

An interesting bit of trivia about the statue: The sculptor was not a baseball fan and asked for props to be sent to her for sculpting the statue. Someone sent her a right-handed glove, though the Babe was a lefty. By the time the error was caught, fixing it would have doubled the cost of the statue. So the wrong glove remained.

Gate H leads into Eutaw Street, which is only for pedestrians and, during game time, for attendees of the game.

Pedestrian part of Eutaw Street

During the game, fans need to be careful because the street is just outside the outfield and home runs have been known to land there.

Warning for the unwary 

Several spots are marked where home runs landed!

Finding a spot

Spots all over

You will notice in the above picture one spot is not on the ground but on the wall of the warehouse building on the other side of the street.

The longest home run!

That ball wasn't hit during a game but during the home run derby during the All Star celebration in 1993. Ken Griffey, Jr., hit the ball 465 feet.

Proof!

The street has lots of vendors, including a barbecue joint named after an Orioles player, Boog Powell.

Vintage car for Boog's BBQ

The view of the field is quite nice from the Eutaw Street plaza.

Looking into the stadium

Our tour took us inside where we saw the bullpen where pitchers warm up.

Bullpen

They also have an area of extra grass in case the field gets torn up and needs patching. Since we visited in April, they only used a small section of the "backup" grass.

Backup grass

Just above the backup grass is the batter's eye--a section of the wall painted not-white so that batters can see the pitcher and the ball thrown without any distractions (especially whites that will blend with the ball) in the background.

Batter's eye

Just beyond the bullpen is a picnic area with statues of famous Orioles (many of whom had numbers in the other plaza). One statue is of Jim Palmer, a right-handed pitcher who played nineteen years for the Orioles and was inducted into the National Hall of Fame in 1990.

Jim Palmer statue

Frank Robinson was an outfielder for the Orioles who won MVP awards in both the National League (for the Cincinnati Reds in 1961) and the American League (for the Orioles in 1966). He was part of the Orioles for their first two World Series wins (1966 and 1970) and went on to be the first African-American manager of a major league team. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1982.

Frank Robinson statue

Cal Ripken, Jr., played for the Orioles from 1981 to 2001, having a 2,632-consecutive-games-played streak that beat Lou Gehrig's 2,130 run. He was a shortstop and third baseman with many defensive records. He joined the Hall of Fame in 2007.

Cal Ripken, Jr., statue

We went inside the stadium to the club level. This level has lots of the pictures and memorabilia from the team, along with the high-price suites. Our first stop was the Orioles Hall of Fame, which includes broadcasters, managers, and one fan. "Wild Bill" Hagy was a local cab driver who would get the fans excited in the stands by leading an "O-R-I-O-L-E-S" chant in the previous stadium.

The Team's Hall of Fame

The club level has lots of bars and casual seating for fans.

Relaxing, with a small view of the game on that little TV

There's a locker from the previous stadium that has memorabilia from the pre-1992 era.

Locker of cool stuff

We went into one of the suites, which was nice but probably never in our price range.

View from the suite

The club-level halls have all sorts of items, including some oversized signatures and a spot for all the Sports Illustrated covers that feature Orioles players.

Signatures

Cal Ripken covers

Another case has two of the World Series trophies that the team won (they won three times--1966, 1970, and 1983).

World Series Trophies

Closeup

Also on display is one of Brooks Robinson's sixteen Golden Glove awards. I guess with that many, it's easy to let one go on display! The tour guide told us that it is an actual glove spray-painted gold.

Brooks Robinson Golden Glove award

Other displays show MVP awards and Cy Young awards won by Orioles players over the years.

MVP awards

Cy Young awards

Retired jerseys are on display along with a banner showing all the post-season accomplishments of the team. Hopefully that will be updated soon, but probably not this year.

Retired jerseys

Oriole accomplishments

Our tour continues in the next post!

Book Review: Big Ideas: Rocket to the Moon! by Don Brown

Big Ideas That Changed the World: Rocket to the Moon! by Don Brown

After an extremely brief history of rocketry (starting with the discovery of gunpowder in China and getting to twentieth century in four pages), the book takes a quick look at the Cold War space race that inspired John F. Kennedy's interest in getting a man on the moon. Kennedy, at the beginning of the 1960s, challenged NASA and the country to get a man safely to the moon and back by the end of the decade. The book explains the various Apollo missions before Apollo XI, which landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the moon.

The book is faithful to the history while adding a comic narrator who has little to do with the story other than providing occasional jokes. The format is a pale imitation of the Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales books--the humor is weak and he doesn't provide any interesting insights into the situation. The book describes the other missions. I was amazed at how much of the moon got explored. The book does have a bibliography for further reading.

Slightly recommended.

Movie Review: The Foreigner (2017)

The Foreigner (2017) directed by Martin Campbell

Quan (Jackie Chan) is an immigrant father who runs a Chinese restaurant in London. His life is turned upside down when his daughter is killed in an IRA-inspired terrorist bombing while she's shopping for a prom dress. He tries to go through the system to get answers on who killed her daughter and if they will be punished. He gets all the way to Undersecretary for Ireland Liam Hennessy (Pierce Brosnan), who is as evasive and non-commital as everyone else. Quan doesn't take no for an answer. He steps up his pressure on officials to get answers. Quan is ex-military--special ops from America--so he is an expert at both hand-to-hand combat and improvising bombs. He realizes Hennessy has more connections and probably more information. Hennessy is ex-IRA, giving him lots of valuable contacts in Ireland to help the cause of peace. Also, he might be more involved than it appears at first glance. The conflict escalates as Quan pushes for answers and the pseudo-IRA terrorists plan another attack.

This movie is an interesting blend of slow burn and slow reveal of what's really going on. Chan gives a good performance with only occasional bursts of his usual martial arts action. The pace is pretty good. Chan is a little overshadowed by Brosnan, who gets more screen time and more range of emotions to play. The plot has some good twists and is tough in a good way.

This is a solid B-movie action/political thriller--not outstanding but not bad either.

Slightly recommended.

Book Review: Seven Dead Pirates by Linda Bailey

Seven Dead Pirates: A Ghost Story by Linda Bailey

Sixth-grader Lewis Dearborn has a bunch of problems. He's "terminally shy," meaning he hardly talks at school and has no ability to stand up to bully Seth. His great-granddad just passed away and left the spooky, rundown old house on the cliff to his parents. They keep the house only if they live there for six months. His parents are older and over-protective, so they are not enthusiastic about living in the moldy old fixer-upper. Lewis's reputation for being weird is only going to get worse when people find out he lives there. Lewis does get the bedroom at the top of the house's tower, which has spectacular views, old-fashioned toys, and the ghosts of seven pirates. They washed up on the shore after they were tossed overboard by evil pirate Dire two hundred years ago. At first, Lewis is frightened by the ghosts. Eventually, he learns to get along with them. His great-granddad's plan was that Lewis would help the pirates by reuniting them with their ship, which is now on display at the town museum. Can Lewis come up with a plan to get them passed the scary cars and potential onlookers?

The story is very charming. Lewis is a fun protagonist. His school problems are familiar and he handles them with varying degrees of incompetence. Other characters come to the rescue, especially the new girl at school Abbie, whose parents are just as weird. She gets by because she can talk to just about anybody. Lewis grows as a character in expected fashion. His interactions with the pirates and the other people in town (including his parents) are fun. He slowly grows into a more active player in his own life. The ending is action-packed and satisfying.

Recommended--a fun, light book for young and old.

Mount Vernon School Trip 2019

We visited Mount Vernon as a family last year. My son's fifth grade class went on a field trip this year and I was selected to be a chaperon. We saw a lot of the same stuff but also some new things. Here's some new stuff!

I was in charge of a group of five boys (including my son). We walked around for a bit visiting the blacksmith shop and other outer buildings before we had to go on the mansion tour. The tour featured some construction but was basically the same.

Outside construction too!

Somehow we went through early (i.e. before the rest of the class) and had the opportunity to sit on the back porch of the main house, enjoying the view of the Potomac. One of the docents said that George Washington claimed this was the most beautiful spot in all the country.

Potomac view

We walked down the hill to the Washingtons' tomb. We saw the old tomb on the way, which is basically a mound with a brick entrance overlooking the river. In George's will, he directed that a larger tomb be built for the family. It took several years to complete, so the family used the old tomb before they moved into the new tomb.

Tomb of Washington

We had a special tour later in the day that took our whole group back to the tomb for a wreath-laying ceremony. Jacob's best friend was selected to help with the ceremony. They brought out a wreath and then led the class in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Wreath-laying ceremony

The boys in my group chatted with our tour guide about the slavery memorial and burial ground. It's not far from Washington's tomb, so she offered to take us there. The memorial in the middle was set up by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, with a design by student from Howard University.

She also showed us the excavations on the site where archeologists have been looking for graves. They dig down to the level roughly equivalent to Washington's time and look for signs. The most obvious sign is a rectangular yellowish patch of soil. When someone is buried, the dirt is taken out and put back in, causing the color to change slightly from the surrounding, undisturbed dirt. The archeologists are only locating graves, not removing the contents.

Hard to see the yellow dirt on this picture, but it was definitely there

They've found eighty graves so far and have been marking them with stone piles. Unfortunately, the most obvious piles were hidden by a fallen tree limb. Also, I was fairly reluctant to take pictures since I was on chaperone duty.

As we headed back for the shelter of the air-conditioned museum (which has plenty of videos to watch), we heard a fife-player walking to a corner of the bowling green. We followed the musician as if he were the Pied Piper. He had a nice presentation on music from the time of George Washington, focusing mostly on military songs. Then he drafted a bunch of the kids to carry flags and wooden rifles. They practiced marching in regular and quick time. He used his drum to make sure they'd march to the beat.

Leading the march

After one round of marching, he recruited a parent who knew how to drum. A second march ensued with fife and drum leading the way.

Increasing the ranks

Marching at us

He then asked if the soldiers get paid. People actually had different answers about that. The musician said he had good news and bad news. The good news was that soldiers did get paid. The bad news was that today was not payday! He relented pretty quickly and handed out fake, oversized one dollar bills to each of the kids.

As we walked back to the museum, one of the boys conveniently remembered that he forgot his water bottle at the fife and drum/marching demonstration. We walked back to get it. Then he jumped in for another round of marching, which meant another dollar of pay!

We finally returned to the visitor center/museum to watch a few of the films and take one last bathroom break before getting back on the buses.

The day was long but very informative. My daughter will be a fifth-grader next year, so I may get to go again.

Cute Kid Pix May 2019

More photos that didn't make their own blog post...

While the eldest was out camping, my two younger children went to the Maryland Science Center and had a ball doing some experiments, watching an Imax movie, and playing in the water.

Young scientists extracting DNA

Wonderful water play area

The library had a story time called, "Who is Steve Jenkins?" Well, he's no relation to Leroy Jenkins; Steve writes books about animals and their amazing abilities. He uses painted paper cutouts to make the animal images for his books and does a great job. The children colored their own paper and the librarian used a special machine to cut out animal shapes. The children then glued them on a background, making a fun and different craft much like the author's work.

Coloring paper

Water-themed craft

My oldest son had a simulated congressional hearing at school. The students practiced testifying before a panel of judges. They discussed various constitutional issues and historical events from the 1800s.

SCH with my son (second from left)

He's also been camping about once a month with his Scouting BSA troop. I had to drop him off at the campground so I got to see the beginning of the campout. I didn't stay, though I suppose I will get to eventually.

Camping with the Scouts

I guess it's been a slow month for smaller activities. Maybe we'll be busier next month with school ending...

Book Review: I Kill Giants by J. Kelly et al.

I Kill Giants written by Joe Kelly and art and design by Ken Niimura

Barbara is a fairly unlikeable kid who is rude and inconsiderate to both her fellow students and her high school teachers, even the school counselor. She feels justified in her behavior because she has a higher calling--she kills giants and is going to protect everyone from the giant headed their way. No one believes her and she has no friends at school, though she manages to make one friend out of a newcomer. Her home life is equally bad. Her older sister cooks and cleans and works while her brother does little to help out. Barbara doesn't really help out either. She is doing a lot of research (mostly through Dungeons and Dragons manuals). Her attitude does shift as she deals with her new friend, the school counselor, and some school bullies. But not without some cost.

The book successfully blends Barbara's adolescent fantasy with her actual reality. A lot more is going on in the story then the first few chapters let on. She does come to a better place by the end of the book, but I almost quit reading after the first few chapters. I already knew about the secret (I haven't seen the movie version but heard enough to be spoiled) so I toughed it out and did come to admire the story. It reaffirms a rather obvious truth but does so sincerely. The art has an adolescent feel that works with the story.

Mildly recommended.