Baseball Is Life on the Road Again: Baltimore

Through the good offices of The Most Generous Friends Ever, your humble blogger has spent enough time in Charm City to look forward to going back for a full-blown vacation trip at some point.
Baltimore holds more significance, professionally, than I realized before arriving. I knew that I would find there the home of The United Methodist Church. John Wesley concluded late in his life that his Methodist Movement would need to become a church in the new United States of America. To that end, he did something (just what Father Wesley did with Francis Asbury has been debated to this very day) to enable the establishment of a church through the 1984 Christmas Conference that met at Baltimore's Lovely Lane Methodist Church. The good people of Lovely Lane, still a worshipping congregation, had organized in 1771. I knew that the site of the current church housed a museum of Methodism, and that it is not at the original 1771 site. What I did not know was that the Old Otterbein Church, the mother church of the United Brethren in Christ, one of the lines that led to the 1968 merger that produced The United Methodist Church, was also in Baltimore. Philip William Otterbein became pastor in 1774 and stayed 39 years, the rest of his life. Otterbein was close to Francis Asbury, as was his church. Testimony to relations between the two: Lovely Lane Methodist Church organized and met at Old Otterbein in its infancy; it was the original site of the congregation that would birth the Methodist Church! Little wonder that Otterbein so frequently had Asbury fill his pulpit. Remarkable that the seeds in this relationship led, almost 200 years later, to a joined church.
It was a joy to experience this part of my history first hand.
It was also not at all unpleasant to have the opportunity to study another piece of Baltimorean architecture, just a couple of blocks from Old Otterbein. A beautiful patch of green over the hallowed grounds of the George Ruth Saloon. Oriole Park at Camden Yards is as absolutely and completely beautiful as it has appeard on television for the last 17 years. It is not at all difficult to sit in the stands and envision the 2,131 banner that hung on the old B&O Warehouse along Eutaw Street when Cal Ripken, Jr., saved Baseball in 1995. It is a blast to shake hands, take a picture and get an autograph from John "Boog" Powell, former Orioles' first baseman and 1970 American League Most Valuable Player, as he presides over Boog's Barbeque, also on Eutaw. Think John Goodman, only with a believable swing. The Booger is having fun, and likes for everyone else to do the same.
While there does not appear to be a bad seat in the place, I can attest that the section behind home plate, about 18 rows up, is specatcular beyond belief. How Mr. Most Generous Friend Ever managed to get those tickets is beyond me! Combine that with a Red Sox offensive onslaught and a now-typical performance by my hero, Jon Lester, and Monday night was, to use the Bay State vernacular, wicked awesome!
Tuesday was more of the same, hits and runs galore, with only the indigestion of an also now-typical performance by Daisuke Matsuzaka, and seemingly 75-80% of the park occupied by Red Sox Nation. It was a two evening riot.
Along with the daytime educational exercises, this was one terrific road trip!
My thanks, again, to Mrs. Most Generous Friend Ever for allowing the loan of her husband for a couple of days, along with the chance to sit in a seat she might have had without me along. And to the Mr. for giving up a Monday night that he might have spent at home with their totally awesome two year old son. And everybody should see the family portrait that my friend carries with him--oddly, in the very front of the photo album--where the boy is gazing adoringly at his dad. Great, great stuff!
And now, (yawn) back to real life, work and home. And even gone only for two days, and really nice days, life, work and home are pretty darned good.