Day 7-June 1, 2016-Houston, More Baseball & Deacon Jones
Hot again, 86. Cloudy all day, rained about 4PM for ½ hour.
Houston is enormous! We drove into downtown Houston onto Memorial Dr., pretty drive with oleander and crape myrtle trees along the side of the road. Some interesting homes along the way, some very contemporary, a lot of condos. Beautiful architechture. Went through the theater district, the historic district and my favorite, the skline with its beautiful, shiny skyscrapers on every side of you making you feel very small. Very imposing.
From there we went to Sugar Land to Flying Saucer Brewhouse right in the town center. They have saucers on all the walls and ceilings and their theme is UFOs. They have 84 beers on tap which they change every day and a 3 page menu of bottled beers. Good burgers, too. It’s only a 10 minute drive from there to the baseball game.
We got free insulated bags at the game, we use them a lot for lunch. Cooler tonight, a nice breeze, great seats (we opted for the same section a few rows back so we could see better) and no rain. Hardly anybody at the game, the rain probably scared the fans away. About halfway through the game an older man came in who seemed to know everybody. He stopped and talked to groups of people and finally sat down in front of us. He had two huge rings on and I asked him about them. He took them off and handed them to me. One said “Championship” and the other said “Deacon Jones”. They were gorgeous, one had a ruby background and a silver baseball with diamonds for the stitches. They were both really heavy. I didn’t have my glasses on and it was dark so I couldn’t read anything else on them. He said he had a lot of rings like them at home. When I asked him what they were for he just said he had been in baseball for over 50 years, he was instrumental in getting this ball park up and running and he was 82. Said his name was Deacon and he was from White Plains and went to Ithaca College, which got him talking to Harry. We must have talked for almost an hour, people coming up and saying hello to him now and then. He offered us free tickets for tomorrow night but we’ll be gone. The whole time I’m thinking Deacon Jones was a football player, not baseball. But after he left a staff member came over and told us he was a first baseman and pinch hitter with the Chicago White Sox in the 60’s, coach for the Houston Astros in the 70’s and the San Diego Padres in the 80’s. He’s now “special assistant” to the president of the Skeeters. It was really nice talking to him even though he said I was nosier than his wife because I asked him about his rings.
The Skeeters went on the lose the game 3-2. Not much fun for the fans. They had another mascot, the Trash Monster, a big brown hairy thing that eats your trash. The kids line up to put garbage in its mouth. Guess it’s one way to keep the fans from putting trash under the seats. On the way out everybody got free tickets to any other game this season because it was “Winning Wednesday”. We gave ours to a family who really appreciated them. Back at the campground it was really wet so it must have rained a lot. Also a lot of lightning in the sky but not close.