Summer tradition

When a group of advertising writers set out to find three things that captured the American ideal in a nutshell, they came up with this trio: baseball, hot dogs and apple pie.

As the Fourth of July nears, the day we celebrate all things American by partially incinerating meats of all kinds on an outdoor grill, it’s good to note that chief among these three All-American things is baseball.

Which explains, in part, why many of us choose to celebrate the Fourth in a ballpark, watching the game and sticking around afterward for a display of fireworks.

The Spokane Indians start a five-game home stand Monday with the Vancouver Canadians. First pitch is at 6:30 p.m. each day, including the Fourth of July, which includes a fireworks display after the game..

But baseball goes far beyond a midsummer holiday, and baseball in Spokane dates back 115 years. The first minor league baseball team from Spokane was fielded in 1892 in the Pacific Northwest League. In 1903 the team took the nickname Indians. Put it this way: the Spokane Indians baseball team has been around longer than the seventh-inning stretch tradition of singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Jack Norworth didn’t pen the song until 1908.

In other words, warm summer days and the game of baseball one of the area’s longest standing traditions.

Avista Stadium on a summer night is a bona fide gem.

You can sense the excitement as you come through the turnstiles and feel it build as you climb the stairs to enter the stadium.

And then you see it.

Is there a greener grass than a manicured ballpark on game day? Is there a more perfect geometric pattern than the infield cutout, dotted in the middle by the raised pitcher’s mound?

It’s not one of the new-fangled creations that have popped up around the country, providing major league baseball fans with cushioned seats while they eat sushi and barbecue and watch video games on gigantic screens.

This is what baseball is all about. This is where baseball started and where it has flourished long before television intruded, where young men have chased dreams and hometown fans have helped keep them aloft.

This is the kind of place that Humphrey Bogart was talking about when he said “A hot dog at the ballpark is better than steak at the Ritz.”

This is where you can still eat peanuts salted in the shell and sip a cold drink and lose track of time for a few hours. And feel much better for the time spent.

This is where the outfield fences still have advertising on them, where the scoreboard tracks the game, even though one or two lights are on the blink.

And this is where the friendly ghosts of baseball reside.

Parents and grandparents can talk about the old days with the youngsters. They can talk about those glory days when Spokane Indians grew up to be Los Angeles Dodgers and Preston Gomez and Tommy Lasorda managed the young colts.

They remember Lasorda managing third base to help his team break a slump, or bragging to Bob Briley on KHQ-TV that his outfielder, Cleo James, could play every position on the field – the days when the television station would broadcast home games live.

They remember the days when Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg sent his son, Steve, to play first base for the Spokane Indians alongside future Seattle Mariner Lenny Randle, best remembered for trying to blow a slow rolling ground ball foul, and future National League Most Valuable Player and three-time batting champion Bill Madlock.

And they can remember the Northwest League title the Indians won in 2005. And they can watch this new group of youngsters find their professional legs and quest after another league championship one warm summer night after another.

It’s what summer is all about.