THE PORTLAND Urban Minor League Baseball Experience begins at the New Moon Tavern before the game. It begins in Fred Vranizan's long tunnel across the street from the stadium, Westside, the New Moon Tavern, where pennants hanging from the ceiling cite championship years for the Beavers, where the walls are papered with superstars from Ruth to Mays, where behind the bar autographed baseballs and Louisville sluggers are found instead of go-go girls. With luck the temperature is dropping below eighty outside, though still warm enough to draw brow-beads and to whet the thirst. And if you're thirsty the Baseball Experience begins an hour before batting lineups are exchanged at homeplate, begins with a beer and a not to Fred, the man with the gray handle-bar moustache. Slap down a quarter, get back a glass of beer, a dime and a pass good for half-price admission to the game. What happens next is up to you, baseball fans. If you want to have a quiet beer, Fred obliges. If you want to talk, and especially talk baseball, Fred's ready. Perhaps you have a question: "Say, when did DiMaggio go up anyway?" Fred refers the question to the guy two barstools down and before the head on your beer drops, the whole place is talking baseball. At the stadium the players warm up with fungoes, and at the New Moon Tavern the fans do the same.
Written decades ago, this piece on the Portland Beavers is the one and only thing I've ever written about baseball. It first appeared in Northwest Magazine, and I included it in the anthology
Oregon Fever. It always comes to mind when a new baseball season begins. (Note that a glass of beer was fifteen cents!)
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