No.

I’m taking some heat from a few long-time friends that I’m not in the middle of the fight to keep PGE Park as a combination baseball/football/soccer venue. But really, it’s not worth fighting for.

It’s never been a ballpark. It’s been a stadium. And I’m just not going to settle for a stadium any longer. If we have to lose baseball yet another time, in order to get a real ballpark built, I’m all for it.

The University of Oregon, for $21 million, has built PK Park, a gem of a ballpark — a facility that may be the best ballpark anywhere between Seattle and San Francisco. And Portland, in like 100 years, can’t build a new ballpark? Ridiculous.

And I sit back and watch politicians criticize Randy Leonard and Sam Adams for what they’re doing with PGE Park, well — at least it’s SOMETHING. I mean, if you’re against the current plan for PGE Park, what exactly is your plan for professional sports in Portland? That’s what I thought — you really don’t care. You have no plan.

Am I big soccer fan? Obviously not. But for me, it is serving a purpose. It’s forcing this city to face up to its sports future. Will we ever build that ballpark, that gem, here? Maybe not. Probably not. At least not in my lifetime.

But at least we’re no longer fooling ourselves into thinking PGE Park is a real ballpark. It’s a stadium. And if you don’t know the difference, well, that’s maybe why we’re in the fix we’re in.

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Tags: PGE Park, PK Park, Portland Beavers, University of Oregon

I’m hearing a lot of grumbling from my baseball fan friends who are really disturbed that it appears the city will once again lose the Portland Beavers because PGE Park is going to be modified for soccer and football, with no further configuration for baseball. And of course, no obvious sites for local baseball relocation.

And I’m having to tell them that this time, I’m not on their side.

While I’m not a soccer fan, I understand this city’s romance with the sport. In many ways it is the perfect sport for Portland — all-inclusive, European, Yuppie, rowdy. It’s perfectly Portland, actually. And it’s an easy sport to garner fan support because there just aren’t many games. Perfect for a “mid-major” city like this one.

But the bottom line for me is real simple: Is PGE Park as a baseball venue worth fighting for? The easy answer is: No way. I was there as a little kid for the very first baseball game there, in 1956. It was poor then and it’s still not a good spot for baseball.

Yes, a lot of great players have played there. But if anybody ought to be nostalgic about the joint it’s me. I practically grew up in that place, as a batboy for the Beavers and later a clubhouse boy, pressbox boy, PA announcer, scoreboard operator, official scorer and even a director of group sales. Later, I covered the team for many seasons, starting when it returned to Portland in 1978. I do not think there are many people on the planet who have watched more games there than I have.

But I’m not feeling much of a connection there. It was always a very cold-feeling stadium and never a “ballpark.” Ever. It’s pretty much an inadequate place for baseball, from having too many seats to having way too many poor seats. The concourse is too small, the restrooms too scarce and the seats are difficult to get to. And when you get more than about 7,000 people in there, it’s a very uncomfortable place to be.

I long for a day when the citizens of Portland can have a real ballpark. Not a football stadium pretending to be ballpark, like PGE Park, which is still a venue better served as a greyhound race track than a ballpark.

But oh yeah, we don’t want to spend money in this town to build even a minor-league park. Mostly that’s because a great many people here don’t know how nice those cool new minor-league ballparks are — and what they would do to spark interest in the team.

And hey, we just remodeled old PGE Park a while back, didn’t we? Well, yes — but it was an overall catastrophe, for sure. And we have to admit that and move on. It was poorly designed and not well-thought-out — a project I will always believe should never have been chosen in the city’s request-for-proposal process — but that’s another topic for another day.

Yes, we did fund a poor stadium remodel. But it’s not as if this city has been investing a whole lot of coin in sports venues over the years. Sports fans, you’re living in a city that has NEVER, and I’m including old Vaughn Street Ballpark, funded the construction of a new baseball stadium. It has NEVER funded the building of a new football stadium.

EVER. I mean, is there another city in the world of at least moderate size that can say that? Yes, we funded Memorial Coliseum for peanuts, about half a century ago. That’s pretty much it for all of sports. And of course, the collective ego in this city dictates that a lot of people here think we’ve taken the right path in that regard — and the entire rest of the world is wrong. Yeah, sure.

In the last few years, Seattle has spent more than a billion bucks on football and baseball venues and while you heard a ton of grumbling about it at the time, you’re not hearing it now. People up there are ecstatic with what the Mariners and Seahawks and their venues have done for Seattle.

But that’s the difference between a big-league city and a bush-league town. And so don’t come at me asking to save PGE Park for baseball. I’m not down with that. We’ve lost the Beavers before — twice. And maybe being without them again will finally spark an interest in building a new ballpark. If it doesn’t, well, that’s fine by me.

I mean, really — this is Portland. And it’s about time we started holding out for something better than just the constant attempts to turn a cow’s ear into a silk purse.

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Tags: Baseball, Dwight Jaynes, MLS, PGE Park, Portland, Vaughn Street Ballpark

I gave up worrying about it a long time ago. Seriously. In fact, I must say I enjoyed baseball on the juice more than I do this smallball game they’re back to playing these days. People who go to games just waiting to see a fine bunt really amuse me.

Damn, not just chicks dig the long ball, folks. Guys do, too. I think a whole lot of fans are like me. They really don’t care how the players got that talented, they just want to watch them play at the highest level possible (no pun intended). I think the media worries about it a lot more than the average fan does.

I sort of naturally assume just about everyone from that era used steroids and/or HGH, actually. And hey, what kills me the most is all the holier-than-thou whimpering from some of the old timers out there. As if they wouldn’t have used them if they’d had the chance.

And seriously, as if they didn’t play hopped up on “greenies” in the “old days” all the time, too. I was a clubhouse guy for the Portland Beavers way back in the 1960s and I saw heavy amphetamine use even then — by minor league guys. And what I heard at the time was that it was even more common in the big leagues in those days. And many days to follow — including when I covered pro baseball in the late 1970s through the 1990s.

Cheating is part of the culture of baseball, I’m afraid — from stealing signs to throwing spitballs to using corked bats. You think many guys hesitated about using an illegal substance?

And really, it’s ridiculous to think this is confined to baseball. You think there isn’t rampant use in the NFL? Come on, those guys just have better masking agents. I believe I’ve seen the signs in the NBA, too. And the Olympics.

I’m sort of libertarian when it comes to this stuff. Explain all the ramifications of usage to these guys and if they want to take the risk in order to provide me with better entertainment, I’m pretty much fine with it.

And hey — don’t talk to me about kids using it. I don’t condone that any more than I condone underage drinking.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, major-league baseball, Mark McGwire, Portland Beavers, steroids

Steve Kelley will tell you what the voice of the Seattle Sonics meant to Seattle. But a generation of Portlanders remember him, too, as the voice of the Beavers — both the Oregon State and Portland variety.

A great man and a great broadcaster who made everyone around him smile. He died Friday at 85.

I grew up listening to Bob and spent many an evening listening to him call live or even recreate the Portland Beavers, back when they meant plenty to the whole state. At Oregon State he was an institution who made every play in every game seem important.

He was first class in every way.

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Thomas Boswell wrote about it yesterday and I love it. His best points, by the way, speak to speeding up the game. I loved this, because I believe him to be exactly correct:

– Cut 15 to 20 minutes off the average time of a regular season game. Everybody knows this is baseball’s elephant-in-the-room. The game is too slow in total time and too sluggish while in process. This doesn’t just alienate “the young” or “the old.” It drives anybody crazy who has a life. When revenue drops in an industry, folks are suddenly open to new ideas and common sense

All the time, I hear that “true” baseball fans don’t worry about the length of games. Baloney. Anybody with a family, a job or some sort of life worries about it — because four or five-hour games are absurd, in any sport. And in today’s world, time is a very big issue.

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Tags: Baseball, Dwight Jaynes, speed up baseball!, Thomas Boswell

At the age of 13 I got a great job — ballboy for the Portland Beavers in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League.

As part of that job, I used to have to bring a few dozen new baseballs, still in the box, to the umpires’ room a couple of hours before the games. In the old days, the team clubhouses and umpires’ room were located in the Multnomah Athletic Club, beyond the right-field fence in what was then Multnomah Stadium. The umps’ room, in fact, was high up in the club — an elevator ride.

Anyway, I’d take the balls up there where the umpires could rub them down, then make sure during the game that the home-plate umpire had his pocketful of baseballs. Then, after the game, I’d usually run some soft drinks or beer up to their room.

I loved the job and got to know the umpires a little. They were a very nice bunch of guys. But one of them stood high above the rest. Doug Harvey was just starting his umpiring career then, but already had that gray hair. But even then, as a minor-league umpire, he had that combination of dignity and confidence that would earn him the nickname “God” in the major leagues.

One day, after bringing a few cold ones to the umpires’ room, Harvey asked me, a 13-year-old, to “give me five.” Sorry, at that age, in those days before high fives, low fives and everything in between, I had no idea what he was talking about. He assured me it meant to shake his hand.

I stuck out my hand and shook his, during which he passed me a five-dollar bill. Man, these guys didn’t make much money and seldom tipped me in those days.

Doug Harvey had given me a $5 tip. And to this day I haven’t been able to forget how much class the man had and how generous he was with a kid.

As well as being the best umpire I ever watched, by far. And Monday came word that he’d been named, finally, to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Congratulations, Mr. Harvey! You were in a class by yourself.

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Tags: baseball Hall of Fame, Doug Harvey, Dwight Jaynes, umpires

The city of Portland had one last chance to keep the Portland Beavers within the city limits when Beaverton couldn’t get its act together to do something that would have forever changed the face of that boring mass of car lots and fast-food restaurants.

But nothing’s going to happen here, either. Heck, we’ve already paid for one sports arena/stadium in the last 100 years here, why build another? And really, why finance a sports facility and do what every other major city in the world does? Let’s just be Portland. Let’s keep it weird.

Besides, that Merritt Paulson guy is a Republican! And he’s from the east coast! And he only wants to contribute about $10 million of his own money to build us a ballpark. Damn, he should be paying for the whole thing! We want free stuff here — it’s the American way!

I believe at some point, Paulson is going to have no choice but to sell the team and watch it go elsewhere. They’re building a new minor-league ballpark in a suburb of Houston right now and my guess is, the Beavers will end up there. Or someplace else. Who really cares, right?

And I’m afraid not many people here do care about it. And the team really ought to be in a place that cares about it. Which is fine. We have our convention center, at least. Pack up the kids on a Sunday afternoon in the summer and spend the day with them over there — maybe catch a breakfast at Denny’s, too.

And don’t forget to take the MAX train!

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Tags: Beaverton, Dwight Jaynes, Merritt Paulson, Portland Beavers

He was the mostly absent guy who owned the Portland Beavers and Timbers for a while prior to selling them to Merritt Paulson. My understanding is that he made a lot of money when he flipped the franchise to Paulson.

But it didn’t seem to do him much good. His financial problems have put a LOT of people out of work at TGI Friday’s restaurants all over Oregon and Southwest Washington.  (Thanks to Clueless Vince for the tip!)

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Tags: Abe Alizadeh, Dwight Jaynes, Merritt Paulson, Portland Beavers, Portland Timbers, TGI Friday's

Cool story at West Albany High School. Saturday night Mike and his father, Duane Barrett, will be inducted into that school’s Hall of Fame together.

For those of you who don’t know, Duane Barrett was a very successful high school basketball coach for many years. Mike went 11-2 as a pitcher his senior season and was a first-team all-state pick. He also played two seasons of basketball for his father.

Congrats to them both — a couple of class acts.

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Tags: Duane Barrett, Hall of Fame, Mike Barrett, West Albany High School

The Columbian has this story about the Giant pitcher and former Cy Young Award winner being stopped for speeding one morning in late October in Hazel Dell — and having a little something extra in his car:

Tim Lincecum, star pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, is facing charges of misdemeanor possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia use after being stopped for speeding on I-5 last week.

At 8:23 a.m. Oct. 30, Washington State Patrol trooper and spokesman Steve Schatzel said, a motorcycle trooper working with a laser device timed a 2006 Mercedes Benz doing 74 mph northbound in Hazel Dell near Northeast 78th Street — where the speed limit is 60 mph.

The trooper pulled the Mercedes over. When the driver, Lincecum, rolled down his window, the trooper smelled marijuana. He asked Lincecum to hand it over, and Lincecum reached into his dashboard console and produced a small pouch and a pipe, Schatzel said.

The amount was 3.3 grams, Schatzel said, which is considered only enough for personal use. Lincecum did not appear to be impaired behind the wheel and is not being charged with a felony crime, Schatzel said.

“Not unless there’s something else going on,” Schatzel said. “With this amount of marijuana, that’s normally the way we deal with it.”

He said 3.3 grams is about the size of a human thumb.

Lincecum “was cited and released,” Schatzel said. The speeding citation was for $122. He is expected to be arraigned on Nov. 23 in Clark County District Court

Geesh, did he have to come all the way down here to buy it?

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Hazel Dell, San Francisco Giants, Tim Lincicum, Vancouver