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 Culture Club | Wine and Dine | The Twilight Zone | Out & About | Take Me out to the Ballgame EASY RIDERS Snappy suggestions for places you can drive in a day Take Me out to the Ballgame St. Louis Cardinals Busch Stadium, 250 Stadium Plaza, St. Louis, Missouri Distance from Chicago: 295 miles, 5 hours. How to get there: Take the Stevenson (I-55) toward St. Louis. Near St. Louis merge onto 1-64 west, exit at Stadium Boulevard and it’s right there. Money matters: Tickets $9-$37; call (314)421-2400 or visit www.stlcardinals.com. Where to stop: The International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame. Right across the street from the back end of Busch Stadium, it’s 50,000 square feet of information about the history and mysteries of bowling! There’s also a section housing the Cardinals Hall of Fame, thus successfully mating bowling and baseball. Fees run $4-$7.50. 111 Stadium Plaza, www.bowlingmuseum.com. Don’t miss: The hand-operated scoreboard. It’s not a rarity for Chicagoans, but for St. Louis types, this thing was only added in 1997. Make sure to check it out during the game as updates tend to get hilariously slow. A fun trip for any baseball fan, the new and improved Busch Stadium (they added real grass back in 1996, thank God), is a fun, cheap way to see some other team play the Cardinals. Completely enclosed by its concrete façade, Busch has its own charm, from the amount of bragging material about the fact that the Cardinals are second only to the New York Yankees in the number of World Series won (that’s a gap of sixteen championships, by the way), to the nifty twilight view above the curvature of the stadium top and through the arch-shaped openings along the side walls. In addition, there are usually seats available and even the upper deck (as long as you’re not at the absolute top) isn’t a bad seat—and, bonus, bleacher seats are only sold day of game, so you can frequently walk up, pay $10 and end up with a nice outfield perch. Cleveland Indians Jacobs Field, 2402 Ontario St., Cleveland, Ohio Distance from Chicago: 342 miles, approximately 6 hours. How to get there: Take the Dan Ryan to the Chicago Skyway (I-90) and follow it to the Indiana Tollway (I-80/90). In Ohio, take the I-90/I-71/OH-176 S Exit, 176B. Keep left, merge onto I-90E, take Exit 171B (Broadway, towards Ontario Street, but you should be able to follow the signs from here)/Broadway becomes Ontario. Money matters: Tickets $6-25 (more expensive seats are SOLD OUT for the year); call (888)70-TRIBE or visit www.indians.com. Where to stop: As you cross Indiana, die-hard fans of the gridiron can check out the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend. Get off at Exit 77, head south to Washington, turn left—can’t miss it. (Alternately, just follow the signs.) Open daily between June and November, 10am-7pm. $10, with discounts for kids. Don’t miss: The Flats, downtown Cleveland’s former warehouse district, located on either side of the Cuyahoga River and adjacent to Lake Erie, east of Jacob’s Field. Restaurants offering everything from burgers to fine dining line the streets, in addition to bars, dance clubs and art galleries. Be forewarned: On weekends, the Flats are crowded like Rush Street. Taking over for the canyon-like Municipal Stadium in 1994 as home of the Indians, Jacobs Field is the site of baseball’s renaissance in Cleveland, a ballpark designed solely for baseball and one of Major League Baseball’s “new breed.” As home to one the American League’s charter members, Jacobs Field was designed to architecturally fit within Cleveland’s aesthetics, its vertical light towers intended to match the city’s smokestacks from Cleveland’s historic industrial zone. Every seat is positioned towards the infield (from an eight- to twelve-degree angle), making it easier to watch the game no matter where you are in the park. Beware: Clevelanders are vociferous baseball fans, and the only tickets likely available are day-of-game, $6 standing-room-only seats—unless you feel confident dealing with scalpers, who will jack up the prices. Detroit Tigers Comerica Park, 2100 Woodward Ave., Detroit, Michigan Distance from Chicago: 280 miles, approximately 5 hours. How to get there: Take the Dan Ryan to the Chicago Skyway (I-90) and follow it to the Indiana Tollway (I-80/90). At exit 21, take I-94/US-6/IN-51 toward Detroit, keep left for I-94. Take I-94 for the next 200 miles. Take exit 171 to MI-14 east, then take the I-96 E exit. (Note: MI-14 E becomes I-96 E.) Take I-96E, get off at I-75N. Take I-75N to exit 50, Grand River Avenue. Turn right on Woodward. Money matters: Tickets $8-75; call (248)258-4437 or visit www.detroittigers.com. Where to stop: Hell, Michigan. Yes, that’s really the name of the town. Surely, one of Michigan’s highlights has to be the Hell Country Store and Spirits, the town’s liquor store and, incidentally, post office. It’s worth the hour or so out of your way to pick up some booze in Hell, and send off a postcard—postmarked from Hell, of course. Located approximately twenty minutes to the northwest of Ann Arbor (which you’re passing anyway); take M-36 to Pinckney, go south at Dexter-Pinckney, then west of Patterson Lake Road. Don’t miss: You don’t get many chances at taking an international road trip—take this one. Windsor, Ontario, is just a short jaunt over the bridge (although the Canadian border patrol slows things down at night), and provides equal the entertainment—though much less sinister–than Detroit, like the Casino Windsor (377 Riverside Drive) or the epic-sized dance club, The RESidence (671 Ouellette), and bars too numerous to single out. And kids, take note: Windsor’s drinking age is only 19. This $300 million ballpark and home of the Detroit Tigers is a gentle blend of old and new. It’s brick and steel construction recalls the great old ballparks of yore, but don’t be deceived—Comerica is anything but antiquated. Modern features include a decade-by-decade museum detailing the century of history behind the Tigers, a ferris wheel, a carousel and a monstrous water fountain in center field that is choreographed to music. The stadium seats 40,000, and tickets are usually available, despite the fact that the park is only in its second year of existence. Milwaukee Brewers Miller Park, One Brewer Way, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Distance from Chicago: 89 miles, approximately 1.5 hours. How to get there: Take the Kennedy, stay on I-90 west when the roads split until you hit I-294. Take I-294 north, and get on I-94 north. From I-94, take I-43 south to US-45 north, and get off at Beloit Road. Turn left on Beloit until you see the giant baseball park in your way. Money matters: Tickets $5-50; call (800)933-7890 or visit www.milwuakeebrewers.com Where to stop: Your going to pass it anyway, so submerge yourself in the corny, “Cable Guy” kitsch of it all and eat dinner at Medieval Times. Where else can you eat, watch horses in armor and call people scoundrels and wenches? For reservations, call (800)544-2001 or check out medievaltimes.com. Be forewarned: all this fun is pricey, ranging from $40-$42 for adults. Don’t miss: Kelly’s Bleachers (5218 W. Bluemound, (414)258-9837), which at first glance seems like just any old cheesehead sports bar, sets itself apart. How, you ask? It’s the self-titled “Home of the Four-Pound Burger.” Yep, count ‘em—one, two, three, four. It’ll set you back nineteen bucks, and you’ll wait for it. But if you’re hungry, or even just curious, it’s totally worth it. Once upon a time, County Stadium was a virtual mecca for baseball fans in Chicago, what with its beer slide and Harley-Davidson sidecars that brought pitchers in from the bullpen. But 2001 ushered in a new era with Miller Park, a state-of-the-art baseball-only facility that holds 43,000 fans and is loaded with memorabilia honoring everyone and everything from Hank Aaron to Robin Yount to the old County Stadium. To help alleviate the pain of watching baseball in spring or fall, Miller Park is graced with a retractable, fan-shaped roof, which, when implemented, takes approximately ten minutes to cover the stadium. Miller Park was built with the fans in mind: more than two-thirds of its seats are located on the lower levels.
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