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Life in the Minors Brendan Sagara |
A trip through
Tornado Alley will
make you miss HawaiiNow in my fifth year or so in professional baseball, I have come to enjoy my seasonal relocations to whichever area of the U.S. I have been hired to report to each summer.
Sacramento, Calif.; Evansville, Ind.; Huntingburg, Ind.; Jackson, Miss.; Kenosha, Wisc.; and now Springfield, Mo., home of the Springfield-Ozark Ducks. And to think of all of the towns I have traveled to and passed through during that span -- which will total approximately 200 road games in so many towns across the country -- I never truly, exactly, precisely know where I am half the time.
On many occasions, it takes me a good minute or two to figure out exactly where I am waking up in the morning. Last week, it was the Giorgio's Comfort Inn in Crestwood, Ill.
With a pair of convincing wins over the Windy City Thunderbolts in the first two games of the series, we were looking for the sweep. So when I awoke that morning to see the torrential downpour sloshing against my hotel window, and the parking lot covered in several inches of water, I had a pretty good idea our game would be canceled.
I must admit that I was not completely disappointed. With a nine-hour bus trip to look forward to after the game and a big series at home against the defending Frontier League champion Gateway Grizzlies beginning the next day, I thought that perhaps it was the baseball gods telling us to enjoy the day off, go home and get ready for the Grizzlies. It seemed as though we were getting into a hot streak as the season got under way. We were 5-3 entering the second week of the season and just a game out of first place. I was thinking that maybe a rainout would be a good break right about now.
To the delight of the Ducks, who were dreading the estimated 9 a.m. time of return to our Price Cutter Park and the 7 p.m. start in our series opener against the Grizzlies, the game was postponed.
Funny how Mother Nature's heavy hand can quickly put everything into perspective.
Now while I do struggle with knowing where I am each day during the 96-game Frontier League season, I never forget where home is. Wahiawa, Oahu. Where the grass is always green, and the air is clean ... and the weather is always predictable. Always. Sure it rains a little every night and the winters get cool by Hawaii standards, but I always know what to expect.
Anyone who has spent any fair amount of time in the Midwest can tell you how absolutely crazy the weather can be. Thunderstorms, rain, hail, snow, and the most dreaded of all natural disasters in the land-locked U.S. -- tornados -- can come about pretty quick.
Trailing the team bus in manager Greg Tagert's brand new Honda Element, Greg, our assistant coach David Angeron and myself were cruising back south at a good 65-mph clip when the rain began to come down pretty hard.
So there we were, driving through America's Heartland, when all of a sudden, the rain began to get worse. The skies turned black, the temperature outside dropped and the winds started whipping Greg's Element all over the highway.
We knew that all was not well. Quickly we searched for a radio station with a weather report. Every channel had cut away from its scheduled programming to announce that there was a tornado warning or tornado watch or something in the area we were driving through. As we continued up the highway at a snail's pace, we saw a cluster of cars pulled up under a freeway overpass.
With our vehicle now barely able to continue on a straight course due to the winds, which were reported at more than 60 miles per hour, we did as the Romans were doing, and pulled up under the overpass.
Not even 30 seconds after the three of us pulled a dead sprint out of the truck and up the embankment through the wind and rain, a local policeman drove up and told us all to get out of there.
"What are you all doing here?" he said. "Don't y'all know this is the very worst place to be in a tornado? This structure creates a vacuum. There is another town about 2 miles up the road. You all better get there."
Of course, my first thought was that I didn't know any better. After all, the biggest concern caused by the weather on Oahu is whether to wear slippers or shoes. My second thought was, shouldn't we be driving away from the tornado instead of into it?
Nonetheless, we all did a return sprint to the truck and got back onto the road. The longest 2-mile drive of my life took about five minutes, but seemed to last about an hour. Upon arriving in whatever town we stopped in -- I really didn't have the time to check for a name -- the only structure we could find was one of the many convenience store/gas station/pizza shop combos that littered the highway from Chicago to St. Louis.
Following another sprint out of the Element, the three of us screeched into the Fastop or Quick Trip, or whatever the establishment was called. Again, I didn't really care to check.
Not knowing a thing about tornados or the whole "tornado experience," I had no idea what was going on. Probably the only thing that kept me calm was the helplessness of the moment. If Mother Nature wants to put her foot down, what the heck can I do about it?
But to see all of the 20 or so locals in the shop panicking and huddled up or pacing or trying to say all their goodbyes to loved ones over the phone, made me a little uneasy.
David was on the phone with his girlfriend, Greg with his wife. A couple of ladies were crying, some people resorted to nervous eating of food they probably didn't even pay for, and one couple chose this exact time to start arguing about something that had happened a few months ago. Everyone else stood there at the front window of the store, watching the weather intently, as if they'd be able to dodge the oncoming tornado.
The cashiers at the store were panicking as well. They tried to cover up their worry, but every time a new radio update came on, and the reporter mentioned the town in the path of the tornado, they cringed and whispered a little more. The tornado was coming our way. It had just ripped up a trailer park southwest of us, and was moving northeast.
At this point, it felt like I was back at recess playing capture the flag in fifth grade at Trinity Lutheran School in Wahiawa.
The adults in the convenience store had broken up into five groups. As if whispering to hide any secret details of their plans of attack, each group cluster seemed to move away from the others, as they plotted their escape. Greg whispered that he wanted to bolt. He had seen too many convenience stores leveled by tornados on those reality shows.
Heck, he wanted to go door to door across the street and see if anyone would let us join them in their basement. All I could think was this could be the neatest story I'd never get to tell.
The drama intensified as the local radio station lost its signal during the middle of a tornado update. Comic relief came in the form of a phone call: Some guy tried to order a pizza for delivery. The cashier told him he was out of luck.
With all the havoc around me, the room began to move in slow motion as I daydreamed of home. Riding my bike down Glen Avenue with the sun warming my face on a Saturday morning as I rode to my HYSA soccer game at Wahiawa Elementary School, with the cool tradewinds blowing back my hair, all the while thinking 'why the hell am I in Tornado Alley, Ill., instead of the paradise that is Hawaii?'
I had no answer for a couple of moments. And then I remembered the whole baseball thing.
Soon after my little moment, the weather cleared just a bit, prompting a couple of the capture-the-flag teams to hurry back to their vehicles and back on the road. With Greg's urging, so did we. So there we were, on the road again, racing the tornado in the Element.
While Greg and Dave were crossing their fingers and saying their prayers, I was clicking my heels.
After all, there's no place like home.
Brendan Sagara, a former University of Hawaii-Hilo pitcher, is in his first season as pitching coach with the Kenosha (Wis.) Mammoths.