Back in business

As Douglas MacArthur once said, “I have returned.”

Visiting the San Francisco area for vacation was relaxing, apart from driving on California 1…

Fortunately, we were going north, so oncoming traffic was on the left and inland was on the right. If we had been going south it would have been oncoming on the left and death on the right.

One of the highlights, aside from adding to my ML baseball cap collection, which requires actually being in the city where the team plays (as opposed to just buying it any store or on-line), was sharing the hotel with a group of former San Francisco 49ers who were in town for some function. These are still huge people, for the most part, but I almost felt sorry for them. Staying in a hotel situation means most of your fellow lodgers are out of towners who might not appreciate your former fame. That’s a long way down from your glory days.

The family reunion took us to Angel Island. While getting ready to embark on the ferry, my baseball radar picked up this in the little port town (click to enlarge all images):

And here’s the accompanying plaque which explains why Sam Chapman is such a local hero. Actually he wasn’t too bad a player; over an 11-year career, he averaged 21 homers and 92 RBI.

One of our stops was the Hearst Castle, the inspiration for Xanadu in Citizen Kane. Talk about opulent. But you know what? It’s the Hearst Castle; let the Hearst family pay for all the renovations and upkeep, rather than charge $7.50 for a slice of frozen pizza in the cafeteria, not to mention the $25 for the various tours available and the $30 photograph they’ll offer you of your family standing in front of a green screen, after which they insert the Castle as a background. I can take my own damn picture of that for nothing and it’ll look, I don’t know, like we’re really standing in front of the Castle?

But I have to admit, I did appreciate one part of the three tours we took: the library. Sorry my iPhone picture doesn’t do it justice.

On the way back to Jersey, while waiting for our flight, I strolled through the San Francisco International Airport and found a series of plaques for members of the Bay Area Spores Hall of Fame. They were scattered through the terminal so I can’t be sure if I got all the baseball-related figures, but among them were Jerry Coleman, Joe DiMaggio, and Gaylord Perry: