No. 719 – Shining in the Light

Performer: Jimmy Page & Robert Plant

Songwriters: Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Charlie Jones, Michael Lee

Original Release: Walking into Clarksdale

Year: 1998

Definitive Version: None

Shortly after this album came out, Debbie and I took a long weekend trip to Baltimore and Washington. The purpose of the trip was an art exhibit in Baltimore art museum that she wanted to see. Called Giverny, it was of Monet’s later works and mostly Water Lilies, which were Debbie’s favorite paintings.

And when I asked about making it a weekend when the Orioles were in town so we could go to a game at Camden Yards, Debbie, who was a legitimate baseball fan, quickly agreed. And if we’re that close to Washington, I’d like to go there, too, for a day. I hadn’t been in 23 years. So we changed the trip a bit. We’d fly into Baltimore, get a rental car to drive to Washington and fly home from there.

We got to Baltimore early in the morning to hit the art exhibit that first day. The next day we’d do the Harbor downtown and then the game in the evening. I remember the exhibit was cool, and Debbie loved it, but what I really liked was finding a painting that was featured in Twelve Monkeys, one of my favorite movies.

It’s called The Ideal City, and the thing that stands out about it is the very cold and antiseptic nature of it.  I had forgotten that a lot of the movie was filmed in Baltimore, and it was a bit creepy to encounter the painting that perfectly fit the bleak movie.

And speaking of bleak, Debbie got a hotel that was close to the Walters Art Museum, which means it was in a pretty scary-looking part of town. Debbie insisted that the description of the hotel in the travel guide sounded nice. When was that travel guide written, 1968?

It turns out the hotel was pretty nice, more like a bed-and-breakfast or inn instead of a proper hotel, and it was something of an oasis in its neighborhood. It had a backyard sitting area where we had a drink the first night, and I half-expected to hear gunshots ring out during the night, but we never heard anything.

The next day we went to the Harbor for a crab lunch—complete with mallets to whack open the shells—and a hike around at some of the shops. We didn’t have time to take the tour of Fort McHenry, but I took lots of pictures and noted with some surprise that it was as close to land as it was.

Before the game, we went back to our hotel and changed into baseball duds before hiking to the park, which was maybe a mile from where the hotel was. (Yes, we hiked through the rough part of town, but it was no big deal. I always figure in situations like that, if you act like you know what you’re doing, no one bothers you.)

The first order of business was to stop at the Babe Ruth Museum at the Bambino’s birthplace—a must for any baseball fan in Baltimore—particularly because it’s only two or three blocks from Camden Yards.

We hiked around the outside and entered the park on Eutaw Street, which is the pavilion between the diamond and the famous B&O Warehouse. Of course, it was great to see the park fully functional after touring it while it was under construction in 1991 (story to come), but what made it so great was that the game felt like a festival.

Outside the park were tons of street vendors who had tables set up selling general merchandise and some baseball-related stuff. Inside, all sorts of activity was going on. The Oakland A’s were taking b.p. as the music blared over the p.a., and the smell of grilled meat from Boog’s Barbecue billowed everywhere.

We took up a spot to eat our barbecue down the first-base side, and I noticed that whenever a player came to the stands to sign autographs, the ushers would make the fans line up the stairs instead of just massing at the fence. It was an orderly procession, and I quickly got Elrod Hendricks on my Orioles program.

I noticed that Rickey Henderson and Ben Grieve were hitting balls off a screen, and when they were done, Rickey went over to the stands and began to sign. This was shocking. Henderson was notorious in the card industry for not signing and generally being a pain in the rump. But here he was singing for a fan … and another … and another. Before long, there was a decent line. I figured that he’d leave at any second. But he didn’t.

Finally, I decided to give it a shot, figuring that as soon as I got over to where he was on the third-base side he’d split. No harm done in trying though, and the next thing I knew I was handing over my program. He signed and I told him I loved watching him play. He said, “thanks, man.” From then on, all I could say whenever anyone talked about Rickey being an ass was, well, all I know is he was cool to me at the moment of truth.

And to this day, Henderson—the greatest leadoff hitter in baseball history—remains the best player whose autograph I got at a ballpark.