Good morning!
The rising sun had burned the morning fog off the South Carolina coastline and a sparkling vista of cherry blossoms and outdoor yard sales portended the early spring that’s slowly creeping northward.
My return from Florida included a side trip to visit my son Mat at a Rugged Maniac obstacle race at the Boone Hall Plantation near Charleston. Mat’s been with his friend Brad Scudder since he founded the inaugural Rugged Maniac race in Southwick six years ago. Today there are 28 races throughout the U.S. and Canada, and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has a piece of the company.
This is the busy season. In two weeks Mat flies to Phoenix and in a month he’ll drive to Dade City, Fla. His favorite stop is in Calgary, but that’s not until the end of July. His job reminds me of Jackson Browne’s tribute to roadies and stagehands called “The Load Out/Stay.”
Together with Deerfield’s Josh Elie and Christian Melnik, they build mountains, burrow tunnels and flood moats, creating obstacles that are challenging, durable and safe. Coupled with free beer, live music and back-slapping camaraderie, Rugged Maniac attracts several thousand runners to each event.
It was my first full day away from what had been a strange winter in Florida. There was nary a good beach day. Rip currents and high winds roiled the ocean and a string of cold fronts produced tornados and record amounts of rainfall. High water levels on Lake Okeechobee threatened the 110-mile dike that protects lowland residents from flooding.
Engineers released the overflow into the St. Lucie River and the ugly brown swirl of polluted water parted the clear blue ocean. “People from Michigan can see this!” exclaimed an angry restaurant owner.
Enjoy Florida’s warm temperatures but be ready for crazy drivers, $20 breakfasts and rotten tap water.
My gripes subsided with the advent of baseball, and my last two stops were to see the Mets in Port St. Lucie and the Pirates in Bradenton. The Mets play at Tradition Field, which is named for a residential development that nearly went under during the 2008 recession.
I paid a scalper $20 for a face value ticket, ignored the seat location and settled in next to a camera well in the last row of the third base grandstand.
No one from up north can go home without saying they went to a spring training game. For many it was their first step-climbing exercise of the winter. People paused in the aisles to catch their breath, balance their $9 beers and avoid dropping their $6 slices of “Ulti-Met” pizza.
After the 2004 World Series the Red Sox sold patches of grass from the outfield, proving people will do anything to show their fanhood. In Port St. Lucie, the Mets sold foul balls hit during a game at Yankee Stadium for $50 and baseballs that had been pitched in last year’s World Series for $300.
The only recognizable name in Detroit’s lineup was Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who struck out and singled. The former Red Sox catcher is battling for the Tigers’ backup spot and is batting .368 with three doubles and two home runs in 22 at bats.
The Mets won, 7-3, on home runs by Lucas Duda and Neil Walker, and 42-year-old Bartolo Colon gave up one run in three innings. The portly 2005 Cy Young Award winner has 218 career wins and is a fan favorite. On Tuesday he made headlines by hitting a batting practice home run that tore off a tree branch.
The oldest spring training ballpark in America is Bradenton’s McKechnie Field. It was built in 1923 and the Pirates have trained there since 1969. A boardwalk circles the outfield and fans can have a beer at the bar behind the center field fence. So far no one’s dumped any suds on an opposing player.
The stadium is surrounded by low income housing, garages and repair shops. On game days, residents stand on the curb waving fans down side streets and into their small yards to park for $5.
“You leaving early?” said a thin-framed woman named JoAnne. “You park in my driveway! You good to go!”
Smokie Norful was singing gospel music on her boom box, safe enough for me.
Inside the ballpark the heat oozed off the aluminum bleachers where I’d paid $20 to sit behind first base. It provided a perfect angle to see a Rays’ pickoff in the bottom of the first inning and a 4-6-3 double play that began when Rays’ second baseman Taylor Motter snagged John Jaso’s one-hop line drive, corkscrewed himself around and threw to the Rays’ shortstop Brad Miller.
Even the Pittsburgh fans stood and clapped, loyalists dressed in Ralph Kiner, Roberto Clemente and Andrew McCutcheon jerseys admiring a marvelous display of athleticism that did the home team no harm.
In the second inning a blonde-haired woman sat next to me. She was wearing a t-shirt, shorts and had pink toenails. We introduced ourselves, her name was Anne. “With an ‘e’” she smiled. Her favorite team had been the Rays until Joe Maddon left to manage the Cubs. “My husband and I are from Fargo, North Dakota. That’s close to Minnesota so I think I’ll root for the Twins this year.”
Not surprisingly, they’d moved from Fargo to get away from the weather. “It’s flat and cold and it’s so windy that it snows sideways,” she said, reminding me of the Zamboni driver at Florida Panthers games who said he’d moved from Toronto because, “You don’t have to shovel the wind.”
“Do you root for the Fighting Sioux?” I asked.
“Yes! How did you know? I went to the University of North Dakota. They’re ranked No. 2 and the Frozen Four is in Tampa.
“They have 16 guys in the NHL this year,” she added. “Zach Parise, Jonathan Toews, T.J. Oshie …”
She knew her sports and I hated to leave, it felt rude, but it would be a long ride to Charleston.
“I’ll be rooting for North Dakota to be in the Frozen Four.”
“If nothing else my friends will come down. We’ll get together and drink some beer.”
Outside the ballpark I couldn’t remember where I’d parked. Luckily I’d jotted “6 St. West” in my notebook or I’d still be in Bradenton. I got in the car, turned on the GPS and drove past the Last Call Tavern toward I-75.
The next day Mat toured me around the obstacle course in his Chevy Tahoe while Scudder was busy keeping the insurance adjuster happy.
“You gotta check out this slave plantation,” said Mat, and he dropped me off close to the southern mansion that was straight from the set of “Gone with the Wind.” I walked along brick pathways past giant oak trees covered in Spanish moss, past elaborate flower gardens toward where a woman was telling tourists of the slaves’ perspective of life on a plantation.
Jackie Odom-Mikel wore a red cloth headwrap and was dressed in the same plain-clothed garb as when her great, great grandmother worked on the plantation. “Major John Boone brought slaves from Barbados. The brick cabins were for the cooks, the butlers and servants, the crop laborers lived in field huts. That wasn’t so bad because we are outdoors people.”
“We used cobwebs for stitches and ate off the low end of the hog. Intestines are good if they’re cleaned right, the chitlins. If the first bite of chitlins don’t taste good, don’t take another bite.”
She described her race as a culturally happy group. At weddings the husband and wife “jumped the broom.”
“Whoever landed on the other side first was the boss.”
“We wove baskets from sweet grass. You can buy them today but I will warn you, if you go to historic downtown Charleston you will pay historic prices.”
She ended with an upbeat gospel sing-along: “Gonna lay my sword and shield down by the riverside, down by the riverside…”
Back on the other side of the plantation people dressed as Wonder Woman and Batman and other eclectic outfits were crawling under barbed wire and over mountains of dirt. Mat was busy. We hugged and said goodbye.
My first stop was to buy a sweet grass basket from a woman at a roadside stand. It was crafted beautifully, circular and about eight inches high with a cone-shaped removable top. I paid $60 cash, but it was probably worth a lot more in labor and craftsmanship.
“It’s hard work,” she said, “but I like doing it.”
Traffic was light on South Carolina’s back roads. I drove over the Waccamaw and Great Pee Dee rivers into Georgetown. An International Paper plant towered over the landscape like a space station out of a science fiction movie. Near downtown a sign for the Yawkey Medical Park reminded me that the former Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey had inherited land in the Palmetto State.
“That’s correct,” answered Bill Gutfarb, who is a Trustee of the Yawkey estate. “The Yawkey Foundations helped build the medical center about 10 years ago and Tom helped build Georgetown Memorial Hospital in the late 1940s. We have continued to support the hospital and other local charities.”
He added that Tom and Jean Yawkey lived in New York City but wintered at what’s now the 24,000-acre Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center.
I continued on State Road 378 past Johnsonville where gas was $1.54 a gallon, but couldn’t find a decent local restaurant. The two that I tried — Buckshots and Big Dan’s Bar-B-Q — both served buffet-style dinners with fried food, grits and soggy coleslaw.
I settled for chicken and rice at a Cracker Barrell and bunked down at a Country Inn outside Emporia, Va. Back in Northfield the next day, I filled the sweet grass basket with Jordan almonds and gave it to my daughter April. My grandson Chase peered into it and said, “How come you get all the good stuff?”
April smiled. He’d have to wait for the Easter egg hunt. Meanwhile I can’t stop humming. Down by the riverside …
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley.