When geek worlds collide

[truepenny]

Fountain Pen Hopsital, who regularly send me pen pr0n, include in their latest catalogue, Historic Pen Editions' Stadium Seats Collection. You can get a pen made out of seats from Shea Stadium (N.Y. Mets, 1964), Dodger Stadium (L.A. Dodgers, 1962), Ebbets Field (Brooklyn Dodgers, 1913), Fenway Park (Boston Red Sox, 1912 and still going strong), Griffith Stadium (Washington Senators, 1911), Polo Grounds (N.Y. Giants, 1891), and Yankee Stadium (N.Y. Yankees, 1923). My fountain pen geekery, my baseball geekery, and my history geekery* have collided violently, and I WANT ONE.

Of course, I am not actually a fan of any of the teams whose stadium seats have been made into pens, but that hardly matters. (And we will not enter into the question of whether I need another fountain pen. Shut up.) I'm torn between Fenway Park, because it's STILL THERE, and Griffith Stadium, because it ISN'T still there, and neither is its baseball team--or teams, since the Wikipedia entry tells me it was also a part-time venue for a Negro League team called the Homestead Grays. Torn, I tell you!

Baseball! History! Fountain pens!

(This has been a public (dis)service announcement for anyone else who may find their geekeries colliding here, too.)

ETA: I went with Griffith Stadium.

---
*Can I just say that I hope someday Major League Baseball is REALLY FUCKING SORRY that they've destroyed all their historic ballparks? Dodger Stadium is the third-oldest baseball stadium in America and it's ONLY FORTY-SEVEN YEARS OLD.

Comments

[thechildoftime.livejournal.com]

I totally agree that it's horrible that MLB is destroying their stadiums like they're historically insignificant.

Also, I vote for Griffith Stadium, because while Fenway Park is still there and still an icon of baseball history, there will be more pens. Especially if it's ever destroyed. Griffith is already gone, thus placing a severe limit on pens made from materials scavenged from its remains. Also, Negro League baseball!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Negro League connection has pretty much made up my mind. And that's a good point re: continuing availability of Fenway pens.

fansquee

[soloadventure.livejournal.com]

Finally, the perfect present for my significant other. THANKS!

Re: fansquee

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I knew somebody else out there needed to know about this.

You're welcome!

Re: fansquee

[soloadventure.livejournal.com]

He coaches little league baseball, lives and breathes Fenway, even got to hit some balls out there for charity... a New Englander through and through. Loves to write but doesn't do enough of it IMHO, and is a games designer who appreciates lo-tech. AND he doesn't own a fountain pen.

Re: fansquee

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

You're right. That couldn't be more perfect if you tried.

[iskandariya.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, the perfect geekerage for a life-long Boston fan. Thank you for posting this!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

V. welcome!

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

I am resisting. For one thing, I have a Rule about how much I will pay for a pen. For another, I have a rule about how much I will pay for a pen. Besides, they don't have Busch Stadium (Cardinals, 1967), about which Casey Stengel famously commented, "It holds the heat real well," when a local reporter asked him what he thought of the new field.

I grieve for Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds as well; the first we can blame on Robert Moses*, who thought his balls were bugger than Old Man O'Malley's. In some cases, it's pure greed that has destroyed these ball parks**. In others, like Busch Stadium and some others from the 1960s, there were design and construction problems that just got worse over the years. Busch was very much prettier to look at from the outside than it was as a venue for the game, in large part because they were trying to make it a football stadium as well as a baseball stadium. I hope Kansas City doesn't give into the urge to replace its ballfield (although they'll have to play a lot better to convince the taxpayers they deserve more); it's a pretty field, and, like a lot of public spaces in Kansas City, it has fountains.

Of course, when some of the old fields were torn down, no one thought to save bits of them on a large scale--I never hear of stuff from St Louis's old Sportsman's Park.


*Along with a lot of other things. In the European Middle Ages, we might have referred to his overlapping positions as simony.

**Yes, I am laughing at the Steinbrenners' suffering over their inability to sell those $2000+ seats. Suck it up, boys, and consider that on about the camel and the eye of the needle. Also, you sound like idiots when complain the way you do about everything that isn't the way you want it to be. ALso, your land deal is highly suspicious.

[stephenhsegal.livejournal.com]

Speaking of geek worlds colliding, I don't recognize your avatar, but he looks like the love child of Isaac Asimov and Andy Warhol.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

That's David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (as is this icon)>

[bibliotrope.livejournal.com]

[channeling my mom]Homestead Grays! They were the best![/]

Seriously. Mom grew up in Homestead, and she would always say that any time the subject of the Negro Leagues came up. (And for the record, Mom was white. As am I.)

The other M.L. ball park the Grays called home was Forbes Field -- which was in walking distance from Homestead if you were young and healthy but poor in the Depression like Mom was (but it was a long walk, and I think she took the trolley when she could) -- and if I were to have a pen from a ball park that would be the one. I went to some games there and have fond memories of it.

Forbes Field would be celebrating its 100th birthday next month; it opened June 30, 1909. PNC Park is nice and all, but Forbes was special.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

That's awesome! Thank you for sharing!

[elmocho.livejournal.com]

I think Noodler's made a "Boston Brawn" or something like that exclusively for FPH, which would complete the baseball theme and cause the pens to transmogrify into bats. One can only load that much baseballness into a pen without dire consequences.

There is no "question." There are only more pens in the universe, and nothing but time.

[saltypepper.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of my late grandmother's snarking about how Americans always wanting/needing to go to Europe to see history/culture "because as soon as anything gets old here they tear it down!"

I think the Steinbrenners are going to burn for eternity for the whole new stadium fiasco. The whole thing stinks. I say that as a lifelong NYer and a Yankee Fan who can't afford to take her family of four to a game for my daughter's traditional birthday present anymore because even the cheap seats aren't cheap enough and my son is too young to sit in the bleachers with the rowdies.

I will cry real tears when they tear down the old Yankee Stadium.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I say that as a lifelong NYer and a Yankee Fan who can't afford to take her family of four to a game for my daughter's traditional birthday present anymore...

Okay, that just SUCKS. And whatever game the Steinbrenners think they're playing, it's not baseball anymore.

Not my baseball, anyway.

[laurel]

Those pens are excellent, as are the pens made from game used bats! I'm glad you went with Griffith, but then I'm a Twins fan and the Senators became the Twins and Calvin Griffith owned the Twins for a time, etc.

The Metrodome is currently something like the 7th oldest of current MLB parks. Seriously. That's scary and wrong.

Some folks do still sell seats from Met Stadium; I can't imagine anyone ever wanting to buy seats from the Metrodome.

While I think some of the new ballparks are pretty nifty and an improvement on some of the older parks; I also think it's a shame when parks are torn down, rather than upgraded or remodeled somehow if that's possible.

& the metrodome....

[themadblonde]

has been considered obsolete for some time now. I can't imagine anyone in the TC spending money on a pen from Metrodome seats. They've been trying to get rid of it (it seems) since they built it.

[meril.livejournal.com]

I agree with the above poster. Nobody wants Metrodome seats. (And it will still be in use after 2010, anyway, but thankfully not for baseball.) Besides, plastic. That's also probably why no Milwaukee County Stadium seats, as I dimly recall that they probably weren't wooden.