JoPo: Historic Stadium Ramble (AL Edition)

Dead: Memorial Stadium, Baltimore

– My most vivid recollection of Memorial Stadium is parking in someone’s front yard. I recall this because we were driving around a neighborhood looking for a parking spot — you remember how Memorial was just plopped right in the middle of this neighborhood — and there were none to be found. Then a guy waved us over and he said, “Park here for 10 bucks.” It might have been five bucks, now that I think of it. In any case, he said, “park here,” and we said, “Where? The driveway is full.” And he said, “No, it’s OK, park in the yard.” So we did. It was a tiny front yard too, you could not have parked another car in there. But hey it was really close to the stadium.

Well, then we started walking to the stadium and it all of a sudden occurred to us … we had NO idea if that guy owned the house and lawn where we parked the car. We had just sort of assumed that. And as we kept walking, we started to realize that, yeah, there was no possible way that guy owned the house and lawn where we parked the car. He did not exactly look like the home-owner type. Plus, it did not really seem economically viable to basically give up your front lawn for five bucks a day. So, yep, you know what we did. We walked back to our car and, sure enough, the guy was gone, and there was nobody home, and so we carefully moved our car to a faraway spot (for another five bucks, but this time not on somebody’s lawn).

The best part: After the game ended and we went back to our car … yep, there was a car parked on that front lawn. After that we were trying to decide if that guy was legit or if he was running the greatest scam in the history of the world — the get five bucks, then guilt relatively honest people into leaving, then get five more bucks, all night long scam.