right price. Some nights the promoter, a former
big-league umpire, let people in free.
I loved that old ballpark. Still do.
But times change, and they built this new brick
palace for the team, now an affiliate of the Los
Angeles Angels, to play in across the river.
Our old ballpark, once billed as “The Greatest
Show on Dirt” and a place where it “never rained,”
became obsolete, an eyesore overgrown with
weeds. the local University hospital bought the
land and planned to turn it into a parking lot.
I wrote an award-winning column that borrowed
from Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi and lamented,
“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
“
Obsolete. In the throes of great depression, I felt
the same way. I, too, was obsolete, past my prime
and out of time.
So I had a wild dream one night that me and that
ballpark would go out in a blaze of glory. I would
sneak in there one night, douse myself in gasoline
and set me and the park afire. Get rid of those
weeds and maybe at least they would memorialize
the stadium. I would likely be classified as just
another nutcase, but you don’t care. You’re gonna
be dead.
”
Kinda like the Adele song, Set Fire to the Rain.
Ease the pain. Or at least pass it on. I will expound
someday about how suicide, which took my sister’s
life and sent me into depression, isn’t the answer.