A Book of Walks (3 page)

They'd handed out meal money at the start of the road trip, like they always do, and I had that with me, around six hundred bucks in cash, but I wasn't thinking about money just then, I was thinking about the freedom to be alone with my thoughts for a while.

One thing all my favorite walks have in common is water. I don't know what it is. I just love walking along water. Maybe you do too. Coming out of the ballpark in Milwaukee, you head due east and right away you come to the Menomonee River flowing past. I crossed over the river, picked up the Hank Aaron State Trail and followed that along the far bank of the river all the way across town to the confluence with the Milwaukee River, just a few blocks from the Pfister, passing the Marquette University soccer fields and the Potawatomi Hotel & Casino along the way. But it was dark as I walked that evening and I really didn't see that much. I prefer to walk during the day, to take in the scenery.

Every city has its tougher neighborhoods, industrial areas with warehouses and sketchy characters here and there, and I felt like I walked through all of them that night. There I was, in my shorts and tennies, looking like a fish out of water in some of these places I walked through. I was getting some strange looks. Like:
Is he nuts? Or is he with the police?

That was a long walk, more than four miles, but it felt a lot longer than four miles. That's one I don't need to do again. I probably looked like I didn't have anything on me, wearing shorts and all, and of course nobody's going to recognize
you — for one, it's dark, and two, I don't know how many baseball fans were in that area.

But you know what? I got back to the Pfister, went up to my room, and the last thing on my mind was that day's loss. I'd put it behind me and was focused 100 percent on going out the next day and getting a W back, which was what we did, too, breezing to a 7–0 victory. The night after that long walk, I slept like a baby — no bad dreams bothering me, no late-night worries about a game that got away, and no ghosts, either.

CHAPTER 3

MY WIFE AND I, WALKING UP THE STEPS TO COIT TOWER

I
'll tell you something: I might have given up on taking regular long walks at one point or another if it wasn't for my wife, Kim, who keeps me honest. That woman is one hell of a walker! She and a couple of her friends walk together regularly and those gals move! I used to think that term “power walking” was a little bit of a joke, kind of good-natured exaggeration, but then I saw Kim with her friends out there motoring along and no question they put the “power” in “walking.” Kim and I often go for walks in San Francisco starting out at our condo
across the street from AT&T Park, and one of our favorite routes is walking to Coit Tower and back.

Any walk starting at AT&T Park is a good walk. I know I'm a lucky man, I'm the first to tell you that. I'm happily married and the proud father of two grown boys I get along with great. But above all, I make a living doing what I love — and I get to do it in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I've been to Rome. I've been to Paris, France. I've been a lot of places, and I'd put downtown San Francisco right up there with all of them for sheer breathtaking beauty, a place that makes you feel good just being alive.

The city has always been special, but it has also come a long way in the last couple decades. I remember when I was playing for the Astros and then the Padres, from 1978 to 1987. We'd come to town for a series against the Giants and we'd play our games at Candlestick Park, which was fine, a big concrete bowl like a lot of other big concrete bowls around baseball in those years, nothing special either way, down on windy Candlestick Point looking out on the whitecaps whipped up on the San Francisco Bay. The team hotel was up in the city and we'd go out after the game to get something to eat and downtown looked totally different back then. I remember going down to Fisherman's Wharf in those years and, let me tell you, it was nothing like it is now.

They'd built a structure called the Embarcadero Freeway in the 1950s that pretty well blocked out the view from that part of the city. Then after the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, the one that hit with the A's and Giants gathered at Candlestick for Game 3 of the World Series, the Embarcadero Freeway had to come down and suddenly that area was restored with stunning views in every direction. By the time the Giants opened their new downtown ballpark, what we now call AT&T Park, that whole area along the waterfront had been redeveloped with countless different places to stop in to grab a bite with a view out on the bay toward Treasure Island and the East Bay in the distance.

Now when Kim and I lace up our sneakers and head out
our front door, we walk a ways up King Street and we hit South Beach Park with its view of hundreds of boats bobbing in place at South Beach Harbor, and walk past the Java House. It's a great old place that looks almost like a shack when you see it in the distance, and it has been in business flipping burgers for sailors and longshoremen and everyone else going all the way back to 1912. Baseball players have been stopping in almost that long and the great Joe DiMaggio, a San Francisco boy, used to frequent the place. Kim and I walk from there, across Herb Caen Way, named for the great
San Francisco Chronicle
columnist, past Pier 40 and Pier 38 and up out on the wide expanse of the Embarcadero. I tell you, no matter what month of the year, no matter the weather, the people you see out there are always in a good mood and you always get a lung full of clean salt air that leaves you refreshed and invigorated. Then we walk by another Java House, this one Red's Java House on Pier 30, which longtime
Chronicle
reporter Carl Nolte has called “the Chartres Cathedral of cheap eats,” a fitting tag for a place that opened in the 1930s and made a name for itself as Franco's Lunch, offering sailors a breakfast special of a cheeseburger with a beer. I love getting to know the history of all these different places. It makes you feel more connected to the city.

From there you walk under the Bay Bridge, emerging on the other side to a great vista of San Francisco's North Beach and the wide expanse of the bay stretching out toward Berkeley in the distance. The Ferry Building has been restored in the years since the Embarcadero Freeway was demolished and cleared away, and it's now a beautiful place to stroll through and people-watch. Kim and I like to go there as often as we can on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays for the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market. There's a restaurant in the Ferry Building called the Slanted Door that started out as a little hole-in-the-wall kind of place in the Mission District, back when that was considered a sketchy part of town, until one night Mick Jagger stopped in for dinner — and liked it so much he stopped back again the next night. Soon it was
one of the best known restaurants in town.

I love that walk along the Embarcadero so much, I could tell you about every pier, every stretch of the way, shoot, almost every crack in the pavement, I've done that walk so many times, and enjoy it so much, but if I described every detail for you here in my little book, I'd take some of the fun out of it for you. You've got to get out and take your own walks and experience for yourself all the sights and sounds and smells of that great walk along one edge of the city by the bay.

But I can tell you my favorite stop along the way: the Pier 23 Café, known for its great seafood and for having live music every day. It's one of those places that was a dive for so long, it still feels like a dive, but in a good way. “We were a nightclub-bar-pickup-joint forever. We've kind of evolved into a San Francisco institution,” current manager Mac Leibert told the
Chronicle
in 2013 in an article that went on to note: “In 1980, Herb Caen concluded: ‘Place hasn't changed in 40 years.' It was a compliment.”

Kim and I both love the place. We never sit inside, but always outside looking out on the bay. Especially on a sunny day, it just doesn't get any better than sitting there with that view eating a whole roasted Dungeness crab. We even saw some of the America's Cup from there. It's the kind of place where Kim and I can keep a low profile. We're there so often, we've almost become regulars. “We love seeing them in here,” Mac says. “They just kind of relax out back and chill.” That's what we do, all right!

From there Kim and I are liable to stick to the Embarcadero until just before Il Fornaio, an Italian restaurant we like, and from there hang a left onto Filbert Street, a wonderful little universe unto itself. It's one of the steepest streets in the Western Hemisphere in places. You pick that up from the Embarcadero after a walk through the plaza there and soon you're heading up the famous Filbert Steps, where locals tend private gardens you can enjoy on your way up. It's so steep, they had to put in steps instead of letting the road go
through there.

The steps will take you right up to Telegraph Hill and the way up to Coit Tower, a San Francisco landmark as much as our beloved AT&T Park. I always love to dig around a little and learn the history, and I gotta say, the back story on Coit Tower is as good as it gets. The tower was built with money left behind by a grand lady of San Francisco by the name of Lillian Hitchcock Coit, who was a true eccentric in the best sense of the word, meaning she wasn't afraid to be herself, and also a huge fan and supporter of the city's brave firefighters. Lillie moved to the city with her family from the East Coast in 1851 and before long was dubbed “Firebelle Lil.” I bet she was, too. She earned a reputation for loving to gamble with men, even if it meant dressing up as a man to do so. I'm told she enjoyed a good cigar and liked to wear pants back at a time when it was considered shocking for a lady to do that. She was friends with the Telegraph Hill firefighters from the time she was fifteen years old, was adopted as their “mascot,” and even rode along with them from time to time.

When she died in 1929 she left behind a sizable fortune. Some of that money was used to build a statue of three firefighters in Washington Square Park and some to construct Coit Tower out of reinforced concrete in the early 1930s, providing a place with sweeping views of the city and the bay surrounding it, with Mount Tamalpais and Alcatraz Island as a backdrop. Kim and I love walking up the hill and passing by dozens of murals that were painted to go with the tower, murals that take you back through the decades and almost make you feel like you visited this place before, long ago.

Even though it was 90 degrees easy, clear with not a trace of fog, we weren't about to head home after visiting Coit Tower. So we kept on going, down the far side of the hill, and walked up Columbus Avenue until we found the perfect spot to grab some lunch there in the heart of North Beach. That's one of the great things about pushing yourself on a long walk: You always work up a great appetite, and food tastes even better. So does a bottle of beer. But once we had
a meal in us and had a break from the heat, we walked over to Taylor Street — and Kim insisted that we ride one of those motorized cable cars on a tour of the city, right across the Golden Gate Bridge. Neither of us wanted that day to end.

CHAPTER 4

CLIMBING CAMELBACK TO LOOK DOWN ON THE ARIZONA DESERT

If you're an old catcher like me, you've always got your aches and pains. Some days it's my left knee flaring up. Some days it's my left hip tweaking on me. In fact, some year before too long I'm going to have to have something done there, they've made so much progress with hip-replacement surgery. I have a lot of friends, many of them former baseball players, who've had hip replacement and they tell me they feel so much better and can move around way better. I'll be on blood thinners through the 2015 season, so I'm in no rush, but within a year
or two I'll probably get that done. I tell you about some of my creaky parts not because I think anyone oughta feel sorry for me. Poor Boch! Oh no! But we all have our aches and pains, especially as we get up there a little in years, and yet you can't let that slow you down. You've got to get out there and walk anyway. Sometimes the walking will loosen you up and make you feel better. That's how it often is when I'm in Arizona for six weeks every spring. The dry desert climate is kind to the body, there's no two ways about it. I guess it's no mystery why so many snowbirds, as they're called, drive on down to the Southwest from Canada and the north every winter. The weather's perfect in Scottsdale for spring training. Once you get to summer, it gets just a little hot.