It always seems like we look at baseball — my favorite pastime — through a filter of time. It’s measured in terms of records, how long they stand, and the parade of aged heroes, revelling in the wonderful accomplishments of youth. And with the resurgence in throwback architecture in recently built ballparks, the haze of time is thicker than ever. Yes, new records are being set and broken, and re-set, and the heroes we’ll talk about seeing in their prime are still playing the game I love so much. The game, though, is a reminder that although there’s clock in baseball, baseball lives by the passage of time.

More baseball images tonight. From my bucket of borrowed baseballs, I built a little pyramid of baseballs. Lit from the side, I love the textures of the surfaces and stitching. They seem to just be waiting for the game to begin.

Every baseball season, the dust is shaken from the tools of the game — bats, balls and gloves. With today opening most teams’ seasons, it seemed appropriate to celebrate Opening Day.

Continuing with the baseball theme, I decided to take one of the balls from my borrowed bucket of scuffed up old soldiers, and turn my macro lens on it. I love seeing the stitching close-up, with the detail in the thread. It’s magic. A hint of what’s to come, and a memory of what’s passed, of plays made and missed, victories and losses, and this ball holds all the stories, silently held within the stitching.

As I’ve said before, I love baseball.

I love baseball. I always have.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t watch the game. When I was too young to play ball, I watched the game of the week. I started playing organized ball in elementary school, and loved putting on the uniform and getting out on the field. The tragedy of it was that I sucked. Couldn’t hit, couldn’t field. But I loved playing.

I remember my folks taking me to the field to play and practice. I remember walking three or four miles back from a game with my mother when her car wouldn’t start. I remember the feeling of wonder opening the innumerable packages of baseball cards I bought at ten cents a pack. I remember feeling like I was on top of the world in ’74 when I collected the entire set of Topps cards for that year.

Growing up in the South, we only had the Braves to watch. And in the 70s, they were bad. Really bad. But I got to see Aaron play. I saw Aaron! And my dad was there with me. Just as it should be, watching side by side. That’s the way baseball should be experienced. I wish he and I could share just one more game.

When I got to high school, I began trying out for the freshman team, chose girls over playing ball, and shut the door on my baseball career. It was probably for the best. I really wasn’t that good, and my passion started to drift elsewhere, to other hobbies, other pastimes.

But baseball was always there.

I suffered through watching the horrible Braves teams of the 80s. They were horrid, and no matter how I wished they were better, I continued watching. Watching and waiting. And then the 90s came, and the Braves started winning. And winning. And winning. I moved to what is probably America’s best baseball city in the mid 90s — St. Louis — and was at the old Busch Stadium in ’96, watching the Braves and Cardinals duke it out in the playoffs.

And over the years of living here, my allegiance turned to the Cards, and I’ve never looked back. I’ve watched McGwire and Lankford and Pujols and a host of other great players come through our stadium, and have enjoyed every season, finally living in a baseball town.

I’ve only been to one World Series game. It was the night the curse was reversed, and Boston took the fourth game of the ’04 World Series. I hated that we lost, but it was glorious to see history being made. That’s what this game is to me — a string of memories. Gibson’s homerun, watching the Cards win the Series in ’06, following McGwire and Sosa’s assault on history in ’98 while working in England, the strike, the earthquake during the ’89 Series, that crazy Braves’ game in ’84 that ended at 4am. It’s such a part of my history and my life, and some of the best memories I have are centered around sharing those experiences with my parents, wife and daughter.

And now, it’s time again.

The 2010 campaign begins this weekend, and I’ll be there. Cheering, watching, yelling at the TV. I’ll question the calls, revel in the successes, and cry over the losses. I’ll take the down times hard, and have to strive to keep my feet on the ground when times are good. It’s time again.

Play ball.

After the excitement of our tour of the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory yesterday, we decided we needed another dose. Actually, we remembered that one of Becky’s girlfriends needed a customized bat for her birthday, so that drove us back to Museum Row.

We got to the museum just as it was opening, expecting to be in and out, given the speed the Slugger folks turned out my bat yesterday. However, they were having computer problems today, and that meant we were delayed for an unknown amount of time. We’d been reading out the museums on Museum Row, and decided to visit the 21C Museum and Hotel.

The museum is billed as preserving the best of 21st century art. Given that we’re only nine years into the century, I’d say they’ve got a pretty good shot at that goal. I guess my roots are a bit more traditional. There were photos and sculptures of what appeared to be naked people of various ages — that doesn’t do much for me. There was a significant amount of space dedicated to experimental photography treatments. Those were sometimes enjoyable to look at, but didn’t really inspire me to go out and do anything really different. There was one interesting treatment that I saw, comprised of a traditional photograph, along with another print of the photo on translucent fabric stretched across the front of the frame. It gave a real dimensional quality to the image that I really liked.

They had a couple of interactive exhibits. One was a well placed camera that allowed you to be the art. Another was a series of videos (a la JibJab) that were political, humorous, and probably not in the best of tastes. In all though, the visit to the museum was quite fun. Beck and I have decided that we might stay there should we visit Louisville again… assuming they’re not crazy expensive!

We walked around the museum area, snapping photos of the area, and headed back to the Louisville Slugger folks to see if the bat was ready. It was, we said our farewells to the city, and pointed the Jeep home, satisfied with ending our vacation on a high note.

So what were the stats on the trip? We drove 3315 miles this time, and shot just a shade over 5000 images. On the first eight days of the trip (home, west, and back again), we had long drives six of those days, I was sick three of the nights, Beck was sick two of the nights, and we didn’t accomplish much of what we’d set out to do. However, adding on the trip to Louisville put a nice shine on the trip. And the trek west wasn’t a total loss. We learned some things about how to do that trip in the future, and we learned about the area, and will feel pretty comfortable back in the four corners area in the future.

With a couple of days of rest behind us, and a bit of wanderlust still in our veins, we decided to extend our roadtrip a bit, and add another unplanned stop on the trip: Louisville KY.

Why Louisville? Bats.

For years, I’ve wanted to go to the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory. I’m a baseball junkie, and have been since I was a kid. As I told Beck, there are three baseball meccas for me: Cooperstown, Field of Dreams and the Louisville Slugger site. This was the attainment of one of my baseball dreams.

Louisville is a quick drive from The Lou, and seemed like a easy place to add to our roadtrip. We left early, and hit the road — this time, eastward.

The drive across Illinois and Indiana was really uneventful. There’s not much to see, and few places to stop with much civilization. We decided to stop for lunch just west of Louisville, and that was the most entertaining stop of any we’d had on any part of the trip. Just across the parking lot from our lunch spot was an incredibly decked out van towing an old VW bug.

We parked the Jeep, and took a look at this weird combination of vehicles. They were touring from Art Car Agency in promotion of a film called Automorphosis. The California Fantasy Van had almost any kind of brass object you could imagine, along with about $15,000 of change riveted to the body. It was definitely eye-catching! The VW that was in tow, named Pico de Gallo, was musically themed and had all kinds of musical instruments and contraptions attached to it. There was even a stage atop the bug.

We watched a dozen or more people stopping to look at this strange configuration of vehicles while we were there. A few people were photographing them too, but most people just swung by for a look, shook their heads, and drove on. For me though, there was so much to photograph. I think you could spend weeks photographing the widgets on the California Fantasy Van alone.

Eventually, we hit the road again, and continued on to the Louisville Slugger site. The building is an old-style looking brick building in Louisville’s museum row, and has a gigantic Louisville Slugger bat leaning against the building. There’s no missing that. In fact, if you look on Google Maps and zoom in close, you can see the bat:

We went inside the building, and bought our tickets for the factory tour. While we were waiting for our tour to start, we looked around the museum a bit. I looked at a bat from Babe Ruth, which was amazing to see. But the biggest thrill was getting to hold a Mickey Mantle bat. There’s a special section where you can don some white cloth gloves, and hold a game-used bat from one of a few major leaguers. I had to go with Mantle’s bat, and it was awesome to hold a piece of history like that in my hands.

Our tour was pretty cool. They wouldn’t let us photograph inside the factory, but we got to see the whole process, including the carving of bats, both retail/minor league bats (about 30 seconds each) and major league bats (about 40 seconds each). We watched the application of signatures to some major league bats, and learned about the different wood and finishes authorized by Major League Baseball. It was a great tour, and taught you just about everything you’d need to know about baseball bats.

We ended our day with a stroll through the gift shop, where I arranged for my own bats! If you look through the photos from the trip, you can see one of them as it is processed and engraved. The other bat will come in a couple of weeks. That one’s a signature bat, and apparently it takes them a little while to get my signature on it. Can’t wait for it to show up!

The visit to the museum and factory was wonderful — I learned a bunch, and was in awe of the sense of history in the place. Definitely worth the drive!

A real football game, depending on what part of the world you live in, is being held at Wembley Stadium in the UK, and I’m sure that lots of folks are getting to watch it. It’s the first regular season NFL game held outside the US. However, if you’re in St. Louis, you’d better like infomercials, ’cause that’s all that’s on Fox.

See, the Rams can’t seem to sell out their home games, which means we don’t to see them. Not a big deal — with no wins on the season, there’s not much to watch most Sundays. But apparently, that means we are also excluded from seeing any of the games Fox is showing in the early timeslot. Which means that St. Louis gets to miss out on watching a history-making NFL game.

I don’t get the politics of broadcasting and sports. It’s almost as though the NFL is saying, “St. Louis, since you can’t sell out your own game, we’ll show you and not let you see any game during that slot. Bwaaaah-haaa-haa-haa.”

Good thing there’s a NASCAR race today!

On my way in to work daily, I usually listen to KOA out of Denver. For some reason, that station beckons to me, much the same way that that part of the world does. When I was a kid growing up in SE Tennessee, I tried to listen to far away AM radio stations, and KOA was always on my list. High powered, I’d always thought it’d be an easy mark, but I don’t remember ever being able to grab it.

Now that I’m in the midwest, it’s an easy catch once the local religious station on 850 drops off the air at sunset.

Anyway, I’ve been listened to the folks in Denver rave about their Rockies, and the fantastic ending to the season they experienced. Really storybook kinda stuff. However, I believe the media isn’t exactly treating them well. When they went to a one-game playoff with San Diego Monday night, none of the national sports networks showed the game, despite it being the only baseball game being played. Admittedly, both of those markets are considered “small” by network TV standards, but the reports of the game lead me to believe it’s one of the better games this season, regardless of who was playing.

So, with the Cardinals out of the mix for the postseason, I’ve become a Rockies fan for the duration of their run. Maybe all that listening to radio waves from the mountains has me rooting for the underdogs. Or perhaps I have a “Rocky Mountain High” mind trapped in a “Devil Went to Georgia” body. No matter the reason, I’ll be cheering for those guys in purple….

That’s how much Michael Vick of the Falcons is being sued for. Not by the Feds, or any other comparatively sane entity, but by a prisoner in South Carolina. From what I gather from the story I heard on the news, and the story over at Fox, the inmate in question believes Michael Vick stole his dogs, his identity (to buy dog food), his name (to sell merchandise)…. all with the purpose of buying missiles from Iran.

Huh?

Yup, this inmate claims that Vick has switched to the Dark Side of the Force and is now an Al Qaeda allegiant.

So what’s he suing for, aside from the astronomical amount of money (delivered in gold and silver to the prison, by the way)? Well Vick has to not steal his dogs, or his name. He also has to quit physically hurting his feelings and dashing his hopes.

I guess that depends on whether Vick’s at the head of the Falcons, and how they perform, eh?

(BTW, the handwritten complaint is also posted on Fox. Funny stuff, and well worth reading!)