Daniel Dayton:  

Back when I was a travel agent, I would use my free airline tickets to follow the Baltimore Orioles around. One of those trips was to Wrigley Field in Chicago with Craig Abbott. It happened to be the first Saturday game at Wrigley after the lights were installed for night games. Craig Abbott, and I flew in on Friday night and went to a Saturday afternoon game against the Cardinals. After taking my seat in the Cathedral to baseball, the ambiance of Wrigley overwhelmed me. The smell of cooking sausage and the relaxed sound of infield practice put me at peaceful rest. I looked at the dark green grass and the pale blue sky and I started to cry. It was like a religious experience in the Sistine Chapel. It was pure, unadulterated baseball. No beer signs or advertisments in the park, no fancy jumbo-tron scoreboard and no loud music blaring on the public address system. It was just perfect, righteous, holy baeball. It was hard to answer Craig Abbott when he asked me if I was crying. I told him something about an onion from my sausage landing in my beer. Huey Lewis and the news were sitting in the left field bleachers that day and I remember that night going to the bars around Rush Street singing "I need a new drug" and I watched with awe the way women were picked up in Chicago. The most effective way at that time to get a beautiful woman to dance with you in a club, was to do a Harry Carrey impersonation. The better your impersonation, the more beautiful your dance partner would be. By the time I left Chicago, I was pretty good at impersonating Harry Carrey extolling the value of shopping at Ace Hardware Stores, and explaining the benefits beachwood aging had on Budweiser beer. On Sunday Craig and I drove 2 hours along Lake Michigan to Milwaukee and watched the O's thump the Brewers. The one thing that stood out in my mind was how nice the people in Milwaukee were. Even though I was wearing my Oriole cap, I was treated like a king at a Brewer tailgate party....Expand for more