Beer, books, baseball
Visiting the other Portland
It was a long trip up to Portland, Oregon. Nearly the 12 hours it took me to go to the last Portland I visited. I didn’t arrive at my AirBnB until 8 p.m. on Tuesday night, the latest I’ve checked in this trip.
That almost half day drive was pretty eventful. I finished the book I was listening to in audio form, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” After about 15 minutes of listening to music and recovering from the emotional end of that story (no spoilers here), I immediately inserted the final book in the series. The drive itself was surprisingly mountainous. I thought I had left the mountains behind when I left Colorado and descended all the way to sea level, but I was mistaken. The drive up Interstate 5 took me up 4,000 feet and not at all gradually. Entering Oregon, I was also surprised by the amount of fog in the mountains. I actually couldn’t tell if it was fog or smoke; I know there had been reports of wildfires in southern Oregon. It was nearly impossible to see the tops of some of the mountains because of it. Finally, I needed to stop for gas in Oregon. Remember when I was in New Jersey and someone pumped my gas? Well, this also happened in Oregon. This time, the guy didn’t wipe my windshield. Score one for New Jersey, I guess.
Hillsboro itself is a nice suburb of Portland. Though I didn’t spend much time in the city, I would describe it as your typical American suburb. I did spend one morning at a local coffee shop, sipping a mocha and blogging. Did I feel like a true millennial? For sure.
Later that day I went to Portland. I was a bit surprised by the small size of the downtown area, though I must admit I did not traverse too much of the city. That is because it was nearly impossible to find a place to park. I showed up around noon and all of the street parking was full. What wasn’t filled required tricky parallel parking maneuvers. I have no faith in myself to parallel park, so I kept looking for lots. Finally, after about 15 minutes looking for a spot, I finally found a garage that I thought wasn’t full. I told the attendant (who took my key) that I would be back in a few hours because otherwise, it seemed like he wouldn’t let me park in the garage. This gave me limited time to explore Portland.
Really, the only item on my list was the huge bookstore. Called “Powell’s City of Books” this store took up an entire city block. It’s three stories tall and filled with books. It’s also a dream for someone with OCD because all of the rooms are labeled and color-coded. There is an order to everything in the store. I thought I needed a map to navigate, but I ended up just walking around the whole store, making sure I never went to the same spot twice. It took me over an hour to get through the store, and, unlike my two previous bookstore adventures (in Denver and San Francisco), I actually bought a book. It’s a collection of essays by David Foster Wallace that I had been meaning to read but never have.
Knowing my time was limited, I walked around the block and happened to see a pizza place that advertised pizza by the slice. Naturally, I was hungry (it’s hard to eat a lot on the road), so I stopped in for a slice. As it turned out, this pizza parlor served very large slices and also has a large selection of craft beer options. Portland is known for its many breweries, and I was hoping to try a local draft. Not being an experienced beer connoisseur (I’m just four months past 21), I just picked a beer that had a good name. It was from a small brewery in Washington, which I learned later is not too far away from Portland. Not what I was hoping for, but still an excellent choice. Oh, and the pizza was good too.
And that was really it for my time in downtown Portland. Though, a few hours before adventuring through the bookstore, I took a hike through one of Portland’s many parks: Forest Park. It definitely lived up to its name, and it was a refreshing start to the day. Next time I plan on visiting the city, I must watch all eight seasons of the TV show “Portlandia.” It’s a fictional comedy starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein that takes viewers throughout the real city. Maybe they’ll give me some ideas of what to do. Or where to park.
That night, I saw another baseball game, the real reason for my stay in Hillsboro and not Portland itself. The Hillsboro Hops, the short-season Single-A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks, were taking on the Idaho Hawks, affiliated with the Colorado Rockies. The short season schedule is broken into two halves with playoff teams determined by the winner of each half. The Hops had already won the first half, clinching a playoff spot, but the game I went to was in the second half. It’s not like the crowd cheered or the players tried any less because of it. In fact, I think this game was the most fun I’ve had at a game this whole trip. There were quite a lot of fans, the crowd was really into it, and the game itself was close. Maybe it was just because I was at the “hoppiest place on earth.”
The Hops score two runs in the first inning; I thought I was going to be witnessing another blowout. That was not the case. The Hops held the Hawks scoreless for five innings and allowed just one run through the first seven. But the Hawks struck for two in the eighth inning, putting my five-game winning streak in doubt. Then, the seemingly impossible happened, and I was reminded which level of baseball I was watching.
First, a quick explanation of short-season Single-A baseball. You might be familiar with the minor league affiliation system. Each major league team has a few “farm teams” below it where hundreds of players develop and hope for their chance at the big leagues. You may even know that the closest league to the majors is Triple-A (I said as much in an earlier blog post) and as you lose letters, the quality and age of the player decreases. You would then logically think that Single-A is the lowest level. It is not. There are actually three levels of Single-A baseball: advanced, regular, and short-season. Not counting rookie leagues, short-season Single-A is the lowest level of affiliated ball. Some of the players I was watching had just been drafted in June, either straight out of high school or out of college. The average age of a player in the league (adjusted for playing time) is a shade over 21 years old. For context, that is my age. These are young players still learning how to play professional baseball. A vast majority of them won’t make the major leagues. Keep this context in mind as I describe what happened in the ninth inning.
The Hops had a runner on second and were down to their final out of the game. Hunter Williams, the Hawks pitcher, had an ERA under 1.50 and had dominated the first two hitters. Then, Jake McCarthy skied a pop up to the right side of the infield. The second baseman converged under it, near the foul line. It certainly looked like the game was over right then and there. But he missed it. An easy, game-ending popup. Missed. The ball landed on the grass, in fair territory, and the tying run came across to score. To be fair, the wind was giving infielders trouble all game. But, that’s the kind of play you only see at the lowest level of professional baseball.
Fast forward to the top of the 10th inning. The minor leagues now follow the international tiebreaker rule in extra innings and each team gets a runner on second base to start the inning. The first Hawks batter failed to drop down a bunt but singled anyway a few pitches later. The visitors had runners on the corners with no one out, and the energy was tense. Then, the Hops made a major-league caliber play to get the next two outs. The batter hit a short fly out to the right fielder. The runner on third stayed on the base until the ball was caught and ran about a third of the way to home plate. Then, upon seeing the throw from the outfield was too strong and the off-line, started running toward home. Hops pitcher Kai-Wei Lin perfectly backed up the errant throw and flipped the ball to the catcher. Realizing his mistake, the runner tried to retreat, but it was too late. After a solid throw to the third baseball and a very short chase, the runner was out. The next batter, however, drove in the other runner with a base hit but was foolishly thrown out at second.
The first two Hops hitters in the bottom half of the 10th were retired, and it, again, looked like the team would lose. For some reason, the next batter was intentionally walked. A wild pitch moved both the tying and winning runs into scoring position. Then, L.T. Tolbert, a 2018 draftee playing in his first Hops game, scorched a single up the middle for his first Midwest League hit. Hops 5, Hawks 4. The home crowd was raucous. It really was the “hoppiest place on earth.”
Mascot watch: Barley, a hop. There’s not much I can say beyond the fact that he is a representation of an ingredient in beer. And his twitter account is pretty fire. Just don’t mistake him for an artichoke.
Cap watch: I bought a new cap at the Hops game. This time, I spent a little extra money and bought the fitted cap. Well worth it because I’ve been wearing it the most of any of my hats this trip.
Home team record: 6–1
Where to next: I drove from Hillsboro to Wenatchee, Washington then to Three Forks, Montana and finally to Spearfish, South Dakota. I spent four days there (July 28–31), exploring national parks and spending time in small-town America. My next post will be about driving, something I have a lot of experience in, and the following post will discuss my park adventures.
