Comment And They Will Come
Posted at 6:00 AM on April 12, 2010
by Dale Connelly
(42 Comments)
Radio Heartland has tickets to give away for a performance by Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas at the Cedar Cultural Center coming up this Friday, April 16th at 8pm.
Enter the drawing.
Obey the rules.
Good Luck!
Today's historic blog entry is guest written by Mark Manana, Secretary-General of the Future Historians of America - Planning Today for the Past of Tomorrow.
For local history fans, today's first regular season home game in the new outdoor ballpark in Minneapolis is a guaranteed historic occasion. It's not very often that a regularly scheduled event is assured a spot in the Endless Archive of Significant Moments, but this one is a good bet. Why? Because sports fans (like the poor) will always be with us, and their appetite for trivia is permanent, particularly when it comes to the game of baseball.For men and women on-the-street attending the home opener, it means you will have a rare Immortal Comment Opportunity. What you say to reporters today about the new field could be quoted 100 years from now if you take the time to make it useful to Future Historians.
Future Historians will comb the record for observations that seem humorous, ironic, humorously ironic, or vaguely prophetic. To meet those requirements, you have to be bold. Boldly wrong perhaps, but human fallibility is a lesson of history that never gets old, so an outrageous prediction could serve you well if the goal is to be remembered. In any case, it's important to lace your comments with a bit of cynicism and a hint of mystery.
For example, in 1982, when the Twins opened in the Metrodome, Dave Crane, a fan who caught the first foul ball hit in the building, had this comment for the Star Tribune:
"It's a beautiful stadium and it's more awe-inspiring than I imagined. It's really exciting when you get inside."
Nice comment, but it was preserved primarily because Mr. Crane caught that foul ball. Otherwise there's nothing memorable here except for his use of the term awe-inspiring, which may be the first and last time that phrase was used to describe the Metrodome.To assure future-referencing without the benefit of his foul ball theatrics, Mr. Crane could have made his comment more Future Historian Friendly by dropping it into one of the aforementioned useful categories.
Humorous:
"It's a beautiful stadium and it's more awe-inspiring than I imagined. It's really exciting when you get inside. And far more exciting when you finally get outside."
Ironic:
"It's a beautiful stadium and it's more awe-inspiring than I imagined. I'm certain the Twins will play here for 100 years."
Humorously ironic:
"It's a beautiful stadium and it's more awe-inspiring than I imagined. Everyone here is filled with awe. As long as crowds come here to watch baseball, I expect the place will always be considered awe full. "
Vaguely prophetic:
"It's a beautiful stadium and it's more awe-inspiring than I imagined. And I'm looking forward to that amazing play where the guy does the thing with the ball that wins the game. Though I haven't seen it yet, I know it will happen, and once it does I'll never forget it."
If Future Historians studied your collected utterances, would they find anything useful?
Comments (42)
good morning, All -
Dale - really clever peice of writing there. i'd like to see a collection of your writings in addition to your utterances.
i wouldn't want to see mine. pretty banal. :-)
out earlier these days; Alba joined Dream on the milking crew yesterday morning. should have named Alba "Dancer." uffda. she'll be fine in time.
everyone is looking good out there
happy day
"It's a beautiful stadium and it's more awe-inspiring than I imagined. But you know, the boys along the third base line and I have been dreaming. This weather in this danged state is just too weird for good baseball.
"Try to imagine this: you could have a stadium all wrapped in Teflon fabric and weather controlled! Think of it! You'd never have a rainout. Sweltering heat and snow would never spoil the game, and the ball would always bounce true off Astroturf.
"I know it sounds too good to be true, but after a few beers the guys sitting with me agree that the future of baseball in Minnesota is an indoor stadium where the weather is perfect every day!"
Welcome back, Dale! That was classic Connelly dry wit.
I have to say hello RHers and goodbye. In a few hours I fly to join my daughter and admire my first grandson. If MPR came up with the technology for it, I'd share baby pictures with y'all. I plan to take several hundred photos. Actually, at his size, I could put Liam right on a flatbed scanner and roll him around, getting images without a camera, sort of like an office Christmas party when people begin Xeroxing their bottoms.
Hey--remember the recent MPR "Wit" evening about ungrateful children? One result was this hilarious Julia Sweeney monologue on sex education:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry-LwxR746s
Have a great day, RHers.
Good Morning Fans of All Kinds,
I'm not feeling too witty this Monday morning. I think the best I can come with for a "memorable" quote to make at the new bal park is: "Wow, just what we needed here In Minnesota, an open air ball park. I don't know why we ever needed a domed one."
Steve -- have a FABULOUS time and I hope you take loads of pics. We'll have a custard toast to you on Saturday after TMORA. (on side note... I finally managed to get the InterLibrary Load system to work for me, so "Wolves" is on it's way... woo hoo!)
Morning Heartlanders!
uuhhh i don't know. geez dale to say sonething on the spot is hard to do. you have to like think of inportant stuff to say and stuff. like this stadium is gonna be like awesome dude. the m and m boys will do kirby proud man. harmon and tony and rod will be there to christen the ship as we go off to intergalactic oneness with the baseball gods in the paralell universe of that big diamond in the sky. calvin will look down and smile. he and kirby and the babe and the other heavenly baseball bodies are watching the new park and liking it better than we will ever know. and who knows maybe mark rosen and sid will be there huh? cmon orlando and jj and justin and joe and cuddy and thome and delmon and justin again (it was the 80s everybody was named justin) nick and brendan and denard and jon and alexi and scott and jesse and franscsco and matt and pat and kevin and karl and gardy what a crew what a season. our hopes are high . our dreams are alive and as we sail off into the unknown we will be cofomrted by the fact that we one with the voices of the ages in the aspirations of the baseball hereafter to be the best we can be and in this stadium, this fine edifice we will also be able to get a really good steak sandwich and peanuts.
do you think they'll print it dale?
Steve, congradulations on your first grandson. With a digital camera and the right program on your computer you could take a picture of your grandson and I think you might be able to get it entered into this blog. Of course, although I do have a digital camera and the right program, I have never been able to get this kind of technology under control so that I could do what I have just suggested.
steve, congrats, get liam's pictures to us somehow. make sure he gets a nap in so he can listen to the twins first home game in the new stadium. he won't remember but you can tell him he heard it and how much he liked this historic day.
jim , you may not be feeling witty but you are speaking the truth as we have all come to know it and love it.
Good Morning RH,
I agree with Steve-- that is some classic dale dry wit. If you flip dale and dry around and omit the space, you get drydale which is just one letter away from drysdale which, if memory serves, is the name of some historically famous ballplayer. This utterance of trivia could be considered humorously useful, ironically useful, prophetically useful, or even all three -- depending on how many grain belts you've belted down, in or out of the ballpark.
Lucky you, Steve!!
Tim - you forgot Dan Gladden.
Welcome back, Dale. Your clever and humorous blog entry added a bit of levity to the veal fattening pen, where I am once again installed on this fine Monday morning.
Pretty sure that none of my utterances are history worthy... or even particularly useful to the present.
Greetings, all!
donna, did you hear dan gladden as scotty ulger send jj hardy arounfd third yesterday to lose the game. it was pirceless. there are two out in the 9th and we need one run and jj hardy is on first and thome hits a long fly to left field and jj is flying around the bases and as he gets to third the ball is coming in from the outfield and instead of reporting the game as it is presented before his eyes gladden yelling no scotty no no no scotty scotty scotty what are you thinking. jj hardy was out and ulger should have stopped him. gladden was cetainly right but he is so like having a big kid in the press box. its great.
hey dale. thanks for another day of baseball celebration. do you have steve goodman coming up?
Aw shoot, Tim, I missed it! I was out shopping for shoes.
Fresh out of wit to add this morning - or at least fresh out of pithy utterances worthy of the Future Historians of America.
Congratulations, Steve, on the grandbaby! And happy Monday all!
Sherilee
Send Dale your email address, and I think he'll be kind enough to send it to me.
When I'm back from Portland, I'll send you a signed copy of the wolf book in its most recent edition (which is the third). No charge.
Morning! Have a son who lives downtown and is a Twins fan. He's already been at the stadium four times and loves it. We will be joining him to see the Twins play in May - he's already got some comments/suggestions for me:
"Mom - bring sunscreen, and don't forget your sunglassses for the first part of the game because if it isn't raining or cloudy the sun will be right in your eyes with the seats we've got. And bring your jacket, because eventually we will be sitting in the shade and it gets chilly. And bring your binoculars and your mitt - you don't want to miss any of the action and you never know about flyballs. Have you got a raincoat or an umbrella? Bring those too. I love the new stadium: open-air it is; climate controlled it isn't."
I am taking his suggestions to heart - I sure hope they let me bring my wheelbarrow of supplies into the stadium.
Great music this morning, Dale and Mike. Thanks! Play ball!
Greetings! I really enjoyed the Nat King Cole song, "The First Baseball Game" -- witty lyrics!
I'm not a baseball fan, so it's just another day to me -- I have nothing interesting or witty to add.
However, I have a question for all baseball fans out there -- what is the best baseball movie? I love "Field of Dreams" for many reasons (besides learning a few things about the game). It's a cool movie with a lot of metaphysical stuff going on.
Anyway, congrats Steve on the new grandbaby to continue your gene pool. Have a great day all!
Steve - to get a photo of your grandson on the blog you can post a link to it if you have it on a website... or you could send it to Dale, but i warn you - he may morph it into something like a She-goat from space! :-)
welcome to the world, Liam! happy for you, Steve.
Tim, you make baseball sound like so much fun, to read the way you write about it.
and Jim, yes, indeed. (sorry all you Twins fans)
now i'd like to propose a stadium on the order of the Arthur Ashe in Flushing Meadows and that we seek the tennis open in August/Sept. huh??
About 25 years ago we were living in Winnipeg and decided to visit the Twin Cities. Since were were poor graduate students we decided to stay at the Curtis Hotel-faded elegance but not too expensive. We got very little Minnesota news in Canada, and when I phoned directory assistance for the phone number of the Curtis, I was confused to hear that there was no number anymore. I was convinced that the operator was mistaken, (how could there be no number for the venerable Curtis?) and insisted that she keep looking for the number. Finally, in exasperation, she almost yelled at me "Ma'am, they blew it up!" and proceeded to tell me that the hotel was imploded to make way for parking for the Metrodome. I was crushed.
Rain started here and radar shows a large slow-moving blob of rain and thunderstorms heading to the stadium. Cut my bike ride short.
So, it will take even less time I bet than I have predicted for people to demand a roof, as others have noted above.
Joanne--Bull Durham, Algels in the Outfield (old onme with very younf Janet Leigh), It hapens every spring, But they best supreme of them all, well, mayve tied with Bull Durham--Bang the Drum Slowly with a very young Robert DeNiro in his most over-looked role.
My favorite last line in any movie:
Henry Wiggen--"From here on in, I rag nobody."
Bang the Drum Slowly must be the only movie to mention Cannon Falls MN. It will also teach you how to play Southeastern Tegwar.
Glad to see the Future Historians getting into the act, Dale. I wish I could think of something worthy... As a narcissist, I sometimes copy my own posts, if they're stories I want to remember, into an M'soft Word file. (Geesh.) Then if I ever write my memoir, I'll have some material to start with. I don't think any of it is what the Future Historians would be interested in, though.
Found a site that lists and plays what they think are the top 10 baseball songs. #10 was "Catfish" by Bob Dylan. I have never heard of it. Does anyone out there know it? Their #3 was my #1 ("Centerfield" or put me in coch by John Fogarty of Credance Clearwater Revival.)
My favorite line from any movie, from "Some Like It Hot:"
"Well, nobody's perfect!"
(You have to understand the context for this one!)
i liked "A League of Their Own" - esp. Geena Davis (sp.)
Alba is in a league of her own, being the danciest milker in the world. uffda. i'm trying to remain calm and reassuring (as the triplet hoard is bleating as though they will surely keel over and die any second if their mom doesn't get in that pen soon.)
off to a busy day - hope it doesn't rain of first day - that'd be cold.
the natural and pride of the yankees are close ties at the top but bull durham and jimmy stewart in the straton story are favs as well. great trivia clyde, i'd forgotten bang the drum slowly. the forcast up here says let the rain come. they have enough fast food stands and beer gardens to keep everyone busy until the rain clears (predicted to clear at start up time of 3:00, and the turf is designed to do its imitation of a shower drain complete with heat (for the early spring late fall games) and reuse of the rain water. pretty good use of our 400 million i'd say. i love the outdoor element of this stadium (or have i said that before. i don't get to go until thrusday. i think i'll pop.
steve. the wolf book is fantastic. my son is a wolf maniac and he and i have been through it many times already. (i did get the check off to you didn't i?) have you gotten a chance to get to the new seatle stadium? they are trying to field a team and you could break liam into baseball there to be consummated in full when you get him here.
steve the julia sweeney bit you linked is hilarious. i love laughing out loud that hard that early in the morning. check it out gang.
my favorite line is from harvey:
Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.
not basebally at all but a great line.
i like your favorite line steve i remember the context. clyde i will check yours out and report in.
Tim. I'm glad you enjoyed it. What is cool is that when my daughter got word about the birds and the bees and what they use to make more birds and bees, she had an almost identical reaction and conversation with us. Too funny! I think Sweeney's monologue is probably word-for-word what really happened.
Tim: I'm glad you like the wolf book.
Just send a check that covers my postage. I've just found out I'm impoverished, so payment for the postage would be nice!
"I rag nobody" isn't my favorite line; just my favortie last line. Bang the Drum, like all good baseball movies, is about something else as well, this time about male culture and how men treat each other, in the way the League of Their Own (Yes, barb, good baseball movie) is about how women treat each other, in small part.
"Nobody's perfect" is a last line, too I believe. I am not a big fan of Some Like It Hot, but I have been to that hotel, in San Diego, worth seeing, indeed.
Went back and re-read this all; kind of rushed through it as I cam in from the rain.
Dale--indeed nice wit. My favorite Metrodome quote comes from, and I do not believe I am saying this, Gov. Jesse. On Monday Night Football right after he was elected. One of the announcers asked him if he was going to work to replace the metrodome, he said "This building is 18 years old, we don't replace schools every 18 years."
If I were interviewed at today's game, I would say "I have just started a facebook group called "It's time to start on a new Twins stadium' or 'welfare for the rich'."
Yes, tim, I did hear Dan Gladden's call, while bike riding. Biking and listening to a game is a little risky for moments like that. I think John Gordon should be called John Two-Plays-Behind Gordon. I am not referring ONLY to his play-by-play.
Clyde - loved Jesse V's quote! So what happens to the Metrodome? Are the Vikings stuck with it now -- they probably don't like it either. Welfare for the rich, indeed ...
When I think about the stadium and everybody walking about "finally" playing outside, it reminds me of Tommy Lee Jones' quote from Men in Black "Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow." We should have known about the outside part of baseball already!
This is pretty off topic, but my favorite baseball story - (it actually belongs on Tim's blog from Friday, but I wasn't home.)
My dad lived his whole life in Iowa, and since Iowa never had its own major league team, he adopted the St. Louis Cardinals. (The Twins weren't there yet.) When I went home to Iowa fall of 2006 to help out in the last month of his life, I started watching the World Series games with him. The hospice nurses had given him a Saints cap and some strings of red white and gold beads, so he and Mom would put on the beads, I’d wear the hat, and we spent several cozy evenings in front of the tube, cheering the Saints on. Now, the Saints were not at all favored to win, but we’d watch them pull it out game after game. I got to know all the guys names and had my favorites, I'd remember them if I saw them now.
I swear it seemed like the Saints won that World Series for my dad.
Barbara--great story. The Cardinals win that year was miraculous in lots fo ways, getting and then dominating was not expected.
The best baseball song of the day for me was "When Jesus Throws the Ball," if I got that title right. Reminds me of "Dropkick Me Jesus Through the Goal Post of Life," whih was supposedlu originaly written as a serious Gospel song.
Dale and Mike--I had to listen again to hear the line about putting three bills in the offering and for the sake ecumenicism to make them three different sized bills. I should have used that line.
This big rain cell went north for awhile then turned east. And now suddenly went south. I think Target field is going to be missed. But Dale is right--a bit of a rain delay would be perfect. It is beautiful here and everything is getting much greener as I watch.
Off-topic update: remember my wife's tea party last Friday that my daughter and I gave her? It was perfect. She has talked about it ever since and it did not take too much out if her. Our 6 year old grand daughter Lily sat at the other end of the table from her grandmother for 2.5 hours smiling the whole time and talking to everyone. My wife walked in and looked at the group and said it was perfect set of friends except for one from AZ whose husband is in bad shape. Just thought I would follow through on it. I always want people to follow through on such things they talk about on here-goats or humans.
Clyde... I'm so glad the tea party went well. Hope the cucumber sandwiches were delish!
Had six tea sandwiches, but no cucumber. Even though it is the traditional one, we decided to drop them from a menu designed for among others 12 women between the age of 65 and 92.
Glad the tea was a success Clyde! Love the visual of the granddaughter at the event.
my hip hip hooray for the success of your wifes birthday party. very nice. i am glad she was able to enjoy it. if you can gat a 6 year old engaged 2 hours is a heartbeat for all involved. often people don't have time to chat at the 6 year old level with chores and agendas to look after,it is ideal when the entire goal is to have a nice social chat for the day.
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