Round Two: Roadtrips, stadiums and rookie dating mistakes

The ballpark was packed. I could hear the roar of the crowd. The excitement and electricity coursing through the stadium was palpable.

Except I wasn’t inside the stadium. I was standing outside with my girlfriend Kim, and we were standing outside for a reason: We didn’t have tickets to the game, and it was sold out.

So there we stood, admiring this monument to baseball known as Oriole Park at Camden Yards in downtown Baltimore, Maryland. It was late afternoon on a beautiful summer day in 1994, not far removed from our spur-of-the-moment trip to Buffalo, New York, a few months earlier that had resulted in an impromptu visit to the Buffalo Bills’ Rich Stadium. From that moment on, we had decided to take what limited vacation time and budget we had available and drive as far as we could get on long weekends to visit cities and stadiums.

Pittsburgh. Detroit. Chicago. Cincinnati. They were all within striking distance — and, as we discovered, so was Baltimore.

Neither of us had been to Baltimore, so it was new territory. Plus, being a military history buff almost since birth, I had always wanted to visit Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland, only about 70 miles from Baltimore. So we figured the region had a lot to offer for a long-weekend getaway.

But as soon as we got to Baltimore, things started to go awry. Starting with the fact that we arrived late in the day and ended up trying to get to our hotel for the night in the dark. This was before smartphones and GPS, so you either knew the directions or had a map, or you were in trouble.

We were in trouble.

Yes, we had a map, but trying to read one under the dome light in a car back then was like trying to read the fine print on a car warranty by moonlight. Plus, we weren’t booked for the Hilton at the Inner Harbor; we had made reservations at a place out a ways from the main part of the city. We were ruled by the budget.

And I thought we might die by the budget. It was dark, the area seemed a little sketchy, and we had to go up and down unfamiliar roads until, somehow, we finally found it.

We pulled in front of the building. It was an old, narrow, run-down, three-story brick structure, looking like anything but a hotel. This can’t be right, we thought. So we double- and triple-checked the address, and sure enough we were at the right place.

But not the right kind of place. If this was a hotel — and if I was a betting man, I’d say it wasn’t — then it was the kind of hotel you stayed in for a couple hours, not the whole night. We watched as a few people entered and exited the building, looked at each other and said: “Let’s try somewhere else.”

So, with Snafu No. 1 eventually rectified, we ran into Snafu No. 2: standing outside Camden Yards without tickets. To be fair, we hadn’t actually planned to attend the game; in fact, we didn’t even realize the Orioles were in town that weekend. We just wanted to see the ballpark, which, at that time, was only two years old. Designed in the style of baseball stadiums from the days of yore, Camden Yards was Major League Baseball’s crown jewel of the new breed of old-school ballparks. We just wanted to take a look at it and see if they offered tours to the public.

When we arrived, however, it was obvious a game was in progress. The parking lot was packed, vendor booths were everywhere and people milled about outside the stadium. This was even better, we thought; let’s go to the game!

It was a nice idea, but we quickly discovered the game was sold out. My new hobby being that of photographing stadiums and arenas thanks to the Buffalo trip, I whipped out our trusty 35mm point-and-shoot camera (yes, with an actual roll of film inside) and began taking pictures of just about every angle of the outside of Camden Yards.

But what I really wanted to photograph was the inside of Camden Yards — except we didn’t have tickets. So there we stood, outside the ballpark, listening to the roar of the crowd and wondering how to get inside a sold-out stadium.

This was seven years before 9/11, so stadiums back then — even on game days — didn’t have the kind of airtight security we’re accustomed to now. It was a lot more lax then: you actually handed your ticket to a smiling gate attendant, and you weren’t subjected to a full-cavity search by stone-faced security detail just to watch someone throw a ball.

We reached the outer concourse, walked up to an admissions gate, and asked the older gentleman working there if we could get into the stadium just long enough to take a few pictures then leave.

“We drove all the way from Cleveland to see the stadium,” I said to him, giving the man my best sob-story pitch.

Apparently, Cleveland wasn’t far enough.

“Sorry, but I can’t let you into the game without a ticket,” he responded. He was being polite but firm. “How do I know you’re not going to just disappear into the crowd after I let you in?”

Good point. I had to think fast. Then I threw him my filthiest slider.

“Tell you what. This is my girlfriend,” I said, pointing toward Kim. “How about I leave her here with you, that way you know I have to come back. I’ll just go straight down this row” — I pointed to the row of steps between seating sections that led from the concourse down to almost field level directly behind home plate — “and that way you can see me the whole time.”

No way he’s going to go for that, I thought.

“OK,” he said. “You have five minutes, and I’m going to watch you the whole time.”

I was in!

Off I went, excitedly making my way down the long bank of concrete steps to the railing just behind the plate, while Kim — serving as collateral — stayed behind on the concourse with the nice gate attendant. When I reached the bottom just above field level, the spectacle that is Camden Yards opened up in front of me: the magnificent Baltimore cityscape soaring into the sky behind centerfield, the imposing structure of the iconic B&O Warehouse looming just past right field, home plate so close to me that I could hear the ump call balls and strikes through the din of the crowd. The sights and sounds of the stunning panorama were overwhelming.

And all the while, I was snapping pictures like a runway photographer at a fashion show, just clicking away until I had pretty much spent an entire 25-exposure roll of film in the brief time I stood behind the plate.

I looked at my watch: My five minutes were about up. Time to go.

I quickly made my way back up to the top and walked over to Kim and the gate attendant.

“Thank you!” I said to him, “I told you I had to come back.” The plan had worked to perfection — or so I thought.

But it wasn’t until we started to walk away that I realized my scheme may have netted the photos that I craved, but it didn’t exactly win me many points at home.

“I can’t believe you just left me there with a stranger like that!” Kim said. She was one part mystified, one part annoyed. I hadn’t considered that angle of it, but viewed in this new light, my slick plan didn’t look so slick.

It wasn’t that she didn’t get to see the inside of Camden Yards, it was that I had left her behind as down payment for my picture-taking spree. I figured how the pictures got taken were secondary to actually taking them.

It was flawed logic, the immature brain of a 26 year old rearing its ugly head.

In retrospect, the question wasn’t so much: Would I come back once the gate attendant turned me loose inside Camden Yards? It was more: Would my girlfriend still be there when I did?

She was — not happily — but she was. And almost a year to the day later, she became my wife. So all was forgiven.

But my guilt from that day wasn’t forgotten. During my tenure with the Record-Courier, I was presented with a press pass to cover the World Series at Jacobs Field. The pass was for one media seat at the stadium for each of the three games in Cleveland, to be rotated among three members of our sports staff. So I would get to cover one World Series game — the experience of a lifetime.

It was the 1995 World Series, the first in Cleveland since 1954 and about a year and a half after my short-sighted faux pas at Camden Yards. The press pass was good for only one admission, which meant that I would get to witness the rare spectacle of a World Series in Cleveland — and Kim wouldn’t.

I declined the press pass.

Two years later, the same situation presented itself for the 1997 World Series. I turned that pass down, too.

Both years, I stayed home and watched the World Series games on TV, which was fine with me. It cleared my conscience.

And cleaned up all that collateral damage I left in Baltimore.

[Next week: Part II of Tales from the Open Road: A Sports Odyssey Across America]