This is what happens when I read. ...

More than two years ago, a friend's dad, a life-long Orioles fan, gave me a book before I left his house. He said, "Take this book and read it. Trust me. If you're a baseball fan, you'll like it." The book, Peter Richmond's "Ballpark: Camden Yards and the Building of an American Dream," is pretty good so far. It's not one I'll read again -- and not just because it's more than two years' overdue -- but it's loaded with in-depth reporting and more behind-the-scenes information than I ever imagined would go into putting a stadium in a city.

Richmond does a great job of introducing the people involved with the project. Really, the reporting is outstanding, and the anecdotes for each person does wonders, at least for me.

But - and I don't think this was meant to be funny, and certainly not as hilarious as I found it -- I couldn't stop laughing at this passage written about a strong-armed, strong-willed person named Janet Marie Smith.

I had to read the last line three times before I could flip the page.
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She'd go to Yankees games and Mets games with friends; there was something more enticing to her about Yankee Stadium, planted in the middle of the throbbing streets near the Grand Concourse. Although her hometown of Jackson had acquired a Double-A Mets farm team, she preferred the Yankees for a simple reason: A night at a Yankee game meant a night at an urban environment -- she'd meet friends at a local tavern in the Bronx, have a meal, walk over to the park. At Shea, she remembers with some disapproval, you had to meet at your seats.

"One of the wonderful things about baseball is the city culminated in a sport. The field, the fans, the food tend to reflect the city they're in. An embrionyc version of wherever you are. I came to love it as much for the game itself."

There were downsides to the city, too, of course, and they revealed themselves to her regularly -- drunks and homeless men sleeping in the lobby of her building on Murray Hill. She was attacked one time in the elevator. Any notion of fear, she remembers, was overcome by outrage. She ended up chasing her accoster out of the elevator and onto the street.

"I ended up chasing him out of the building with a Fresca can."

 

I knew it.

 

That's quality.

 

YOU ONLY WRITE ABOUT US WHEN WE DRINK FRESCA

 

Actually, we worship cans of Fresca in Godless County.

 

no wonder I got my ass kicked so much as a kid.

My mom armed me with cans of Fanta. FANTA!!!!!!

 

You wouldn't have gotten served so many times had she not dressed you up in those orange get-ups the Fanta dancers wear.

 

Outing alert: BYH is Kiki.

 

Just holding a bottle of Faygo would have given you enough street cred to skate on by untouched.

 

faygo.

That'd be like naming a kid Richard. Nothing could possibly go wrong there.

 

That's what you get for reading, Moops.

 

I know. I hate words.