The Pad: Dripping With Memories

Ah, Memory Lane. Probably my favorite shady street to linger on. Of course, we Grizzly boosters have a lot of nice friends living there. Practically every house on Memory Lane has a light burning and a key under the mat, ready to be turned. That key: the key to our Hot Pink Hearts.

Forgive me for waxing so poetic, but it’s been a good life as a Grizzly fan. So many memories, almost all of them positive. After Ryan’s stellar post about his favorite memory, I thought I’d talk about one of mine. I can’t say it’s the best, because as I’ve said my whole life as a Grizzhead has been “all good.”

I suppose I could talk my first trip to The Pad at age ten, walking up those steps to the field. Everything was so pink. Pinker than the pinkest bottle of store brand Pink Bismuth (compare to Pepto-Bismol^TM) in my mother’s medicine cabinet. Pinker than a strawberry Jello^TM Brand Gelatin pop. Pinker than a pinafore dress in the pinkest closet of Barbie^TM’s Dream House, viewed through a pink filter by an albino with pink eye. Brother, that place was pink. I can barely remember the game (other than that we won on a squeeze bunt by “Ring “The Ringo” Sandler), but I remember the almost womblike tranquility of Stay Free^R Maxipad^TM Field^{TM, R}.

Or I could talk about watching “Swattin’” Stevie Sota hit his 63rd and 64th home runs of the month of June in 1998. That was the year Bud “The Rooster” Selig caved to pressure from the players union and made PED’s mandatory. Second baseman Mickie “Mickey” Morandinelli hit for the cycle twice in one game for the second time of the season, which was cool, but totally eclipsed when Sota’s second home run of the night landed in the middle of Irving Park road, leaving a dent in a CTA bus stop sign that to this day is still called “The Sota Transfer.”

Or maybe the game I watched from the Upper Upper Tier Reserved Box of The Pad, just outside the freshly built “Shenanny North” (as The Fabled Box Bums insist on calling the second Shenanigans that was built on top of The Pad’s semi-retractable dome). The Grizz has just won a bidding war with the Cardinals to sign Jim “Kid Chicago” Edmonds (They still called him “Hollywood” at the time of signing, but 5 homers on his first day in the Grizzly Pink half-shirt soon changed that) from the Angels on the on the same day they extended Grizzly lifer Greg “Maddux” Maddog’s contract for 5 more years, and aside from the aforementioned 5 doggie dongs (I’ve never known why we Grizz fans called them that, by the way. Just part of the Grizzly traditions, like returning foul balls for the $5 deposit or booing the setup man for exactly 27 seconds at the top of the 8th), seeing “Maddux” pitch his 6th no-hitter in a row to break his own record from the previous season was the high point of the day.

Really all of these moments are near and dear to me, but really there is no one moment that stands out. Just a feeling. A feeling of Grizzly Swagger. You taste it with every Appletini in the Grizzly Mall Shenanigans (Or “Triplenanny,” to the Box Bums), located on what used to be called “Waveland Avenue” back before “Padtown” was leveled and rebuilt in the mid-80s. You hear it every time a child sings “Funkytown during the stretch, trying to do his best impression of longtime Grizzly Announcer Howie Mandel’s delivery of the classic rallying song of the fabled “Big Pink Train” team that annihilated the Boise White Sox in the 2005 World Series. You feel it in the artificial turf every Mother’Day when The Pad opens the field for the Bjork ‘n Friends Eclectic Folk Revue Concert Series.

My favorite Grizzly memory? It's a Pad-Tie (if you'll excuse the pun stolen from the noodle shop at the Grizzly Food Court) - ALL OF THEM.