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.

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*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

[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.