A Book of Walks (5 page)

The crazy part was, we almost felt that winning was inevitable once we got past Game 3 of the series, an extra-inning thriller we won in the 10th inning when Buster and Hunter got us going. The Reds gave us an opening. Buster and Hunter moved over on a passed ball and then Buster scored when sure-handed Scott Rolen bobbled the ball. Sometimes when you win a big game like that based on the other team's miscues, it turns the dynamic of the series even more. It sure did feel that way. Angel Pagan's leadoff homer in Game 4 gave us a lift right from the get-go, even though the Reds tied it in the bottom of the first. Barry Zito settled down and did a nice job for us and we had a 5–2 lead by the fifth and won going away. I guess for Giants fans it's like a tune you know so well, you can all sing along: In Game 5, we were locked in a pitcher's duel, Matt Cain and Mat Latos both putting up goose eggs, and then in the sixth Buster hit that grand slam we'll all remember to the end of our days, jump-starting us to a six-run inning, and we held on to win 6–4.

I tell ya, that one felt good. I was so proud of my guys for letting the game come to them and being ready to pounce on every opportunity. We had ourselves a heck of a good celebration that night, and the next day, we were kind of stuck in limbo, with nothing to do but enjoy what we'd done a little longer. The other NLDS also went to five games, and we had to wait a day to see whether the Nationals could beat the Cardinals at home to take the series. It didn't make much sense to fly to another city until we knew where to fly! We had a free day, so I did what I loved to do: I went walking. And kept walking. And walked some more. Kim was there, of course, and she and I had a day we'll never forget. The weather was perfect and we walked along those winding paths by the river, and stopped by and saw those statues I was mentioning earlier. Taking three in a row from the Reds was some feat, but afterward I needed nothing more than to decompress and that was what I did, walking here and there and everywhere, going back and forth from Ohio to Kentucky, taking in the day, being in the moment, and giving Kim my best “Life sure can be sweet!” smile. We didn't know what was coming next, but we knew we were excited about it. I felt refreshed and recharged, walking with my wife. Amazing what a good walk can do for you.

CHAPTER 6

IN NEW YORK MY WIFE AND I SPEND HOURS IN CENTRAL PARK

If San Francisco is my idea of the best walking city around, just for sheer beauty and variety, not to mention that great feeling of taking in a lung full of fresh sea air blowing in off the bay, I'd have to put New York right behind it. I'm not sure I'd want to walk through Manhattan every day. I might get a little tired of all the commotion. But for a few days at a time, especially when the weather is right, Kim and I just love our trips to New York. What a great city to walk in and take in the sites and the people. It's a little challenging, because you're running into so many people, it's so busy everywhere
you turn, but at the same time you just can't beat walking as a way to get an experience of a city. It's funny. I tend to fall into a little bit of a routine at home in San Francisco with my walks. I have my favorite routes I take, like walking along the Embarcadero to the Pier 23 Café for crab and turning around and walking back, or climbing the steps up to Coit Tower, or doing the big one and walking all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. But in New York I have a different mind-set. I like to let the walks take me where they will. We never go the same way twice.

Kim and I start out from the team hotel, just a few blocks south of Central Park South, and usually walk up Sixth Avenue toward the park. It kind of feels like home, in a way, we've made the walk so many times and enjoyed it so much. Even just walking through the city blocks, you see all kinds of places you know well from other visits. As you come up toward the intersection on 57th Street, you see the red awnings of Rue 57 lining the sidewalk and you know you're close to the park. You pass your little delis, your luggage shops, all of that stuff stays pretty much the same over the years. Then you come up to 59th Street, with the big blue banner pointing you to the Ritz Carlton Central Park looming off to your right, and the green of the trees opening up in front of you and yellow taxis all sprinting past you to try to get through that intersection before the light changes.

As soon as you cross the street and set foot in the park, it's like the atmosphere changes. You're still in Manhattan. You still feel all that activity and all those people and all that raw energy around you. But at least for visitors like Kim and me, Central Park always feels a little like a special kind of adventure. It's like a carnival in there. Right there on the corner you'll see horses and carriages stopping to pick up passengers, and next to them the pedicabs. Directly across from the Ritz is a giant statue of Simón Bolívar on his horse, which is pretty hard to miss. You can hit one of those little stands there for a hot dog or an ice cream or an iced tea, but I'm there to try to get in a good workout, so I'm not thinking
about stopping. If I'm going to keep up with Kim, I've got to work at it, because she's a walker. In fact, when I'm off at the ballpark with the team, she'll keep right on walking most of the day.

“I love New York,” she says. “There's so much to see. One time last year I left the hotel at one o'clock and didn't come back until nine. I walked across the whole park. I was in stores some of that time, but I didn't sit down for more than fifteen minutes the whole day.”

Once Kim and I cross 59th Street, we generally walk right on up into the park through that area by the Pond. When Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were designing Central Park after winning a contest in 1858, they made a point of landscaping the area and surrounding the Pond with trees to help give you the feeling that you've plunged into the middle of the wilderness. What they called “the Promontory,” now the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, wraps around the Pond and makes you think you've been swallowed up in some unknown woodlands. We keep moving and head past the Trump Ice Rink there, trying to imagine for a minute that it's wintertime, with snow on the trees and people sliding around on the ice in skates.

We walk past the rink there, picking up the long, gradual arc of East Drive, which takes you past a complex of buildings on the right, including the Central Park Zoo, and cut over on the 65th Street Transverse, heading back across the park now toward the Upper West Side. That takes us to the Central Park Carousel, which is always good for a smile. You hear that funny music sounding out, calliope they call it, even before you see the brightly painted horses. I always do enjoy a little history and I get a kick out of knowing that there has been a carousel there in the park dating back all the way to 1871. This is the fourth they've had, the last two having been destroyed by fire, and here's a good detail: The current carousel, originally built in 1908, was restored and brought over from Coney Island, where it had been left abandoned at an old trolley terminal. Our boys Greg and Brett
are thirty-five and twenty-seven now and Kim took them on that carousel when they were small.

I said we like to be able to take a different path every time, and that's true, but there's a feeling of being pulled forward by the way in front of you, and sometimes we just keep going right along the edge of Sheep Meadow, maybe cutting across it a little, and walk up West Drive past Tavern on the Green with its big picture-glass windows. It starts to veer a little bit east as you get up toward Strawberry Fields, near the Dakota apartment building where John Lennon was shot, and we walk along Terrace Drive, past the Lake, to that area where they've got red brick all over the place and a whole bunch of steps leading down to the Bethesda Fountain, surrounded by a big round pool and topped off with an eight-foot bronze Angel of the Waters statue. Past there we're back on East Drive heading north through the park again, and that's an especially nice stretch. Over on the right is another pond where they have model sailboats and on the left is the Loeb Boathouse at the edge of the Lake. Then it's not far to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the right, looking out on the Great Lawn to your left with its complex of softball fields, always a game going on there.

That's our basic walk, with variations, and it never gets old. I'll do that with Kim or sometimes I'll go out there on my own. In New York I'm usually focused on getting in a good workout, since everything in New York is a little intense and you want to make sure you have that release, but some days I'll say to myself:
You know what? This isn't going to be a power-walk thing, we're just going on a casual walk here. We're going to stop anyplace we want to stop
. On those days you're liable to find me anywhere. I'll keep on walking out the side of the park, down whatever street looks good to me that day, and if I see a little Irish pub along the way, which you always do walking around in New York, I might just duck in there and pull up a stool at the bar and order myself a beer. Those little Irish places are fun. Out on the street, in New York like in a lot of cities, there will be Giants
fans and they'll call out, “Hey Boch.” It's kind of amazing, how wide our fan base spreads. But most of the time in New York when I pop into a little neighborhood bar, they have no idea. We might talk about the weather or hunting or fishing or most anything. I'm just some guy stopping in to take a load off and rest my feet a little, cold beer in hand, a regular guy like anyone else. I like that.

CHAPTER 7

ON MY WAY TO THE IVY-COVERED WALLS: WALKING CHICAGO'S LAKEFRONT TRAIL

Sometimes I like to go for a long walk back to the team hotel after a game, the way I did in Milwaukee that time I mentioned, but if it's a great walking city, I might get ready for a game by walking
to
the ballpark. I find myself doing that a lot in Chicago, one of my favorite walking cities, where you can always count on dramatic backdrops and people-watching at its best. They call Chicago the City of Broad Shoulders, or they do when they're not calling it the Windy City, that is. There's something down to earth about Chicago people you've got to like. Our team hotel is on the Near North Side
near Water Tower Place, close to Michigan Avenue and the John Hancock building. If I have a little extra time, I can head south from the hotel for a great walk along Michigan Avenue through what they call the Magnificent Mile, full of shops and sidewalks stuffed with people, or I might follow the Chicago River toward the lake and walk out to the Navy Pier. But if I'm on the way to the game, then I walk north from the hotel.

You often feel a breeze coming in off Lake Michigan, which in summer helps cool you down. I walk up Michigan Avenue a couple blocks, passing the Drake Hotel, a snazzy place that opened in 1920 and soon became a local landmark. Most of the time when I'm walking, even walking alone, I don't want to have headphones on my ears, because I just love taking in my surroundings. I want to hear the sound of the water on Lake Michigan chopping in the wind. I want to hear birds squawking overhead. I want to hear the murmur of conversations in front of me that I couldn't understand even if I wanted to. That's part of the joy of walking for me, being focused on whatever I see along the way, alert to everything from a couple of songbirds making a bird bath out of a fountain to some friendly faces smiling at me from the far side of a picnic lunch. But I do love my music, especially country and country rock, and sometimes when I want a little kick to get me going, I'll crank up some tunes as I'm walking. It makes me move along a little faster, and it makes the time go quicker.

I'm a big fan of classic country, anything from Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson to George Strait and George Jones. A good country song makes me smile because, well, it feels like home to me, losing myself in the rhythms of the music I grew up with. Funny thing, I was actually born in France when my Dad was stationed over there in Europe in the Army, and then the family moved to Columbia, South Carolina, and then on to the Canal Zone in Panama for a while. We spent time in Virginia before my Dad retired and we moved to Melbourne, Florida, which was where I graduated from high school and also spent two years attending Brevard Community College.
That was where I met Kim. A good country song tells a story and if I'm out on a walk, that story will pull me right along just as surely as if I've got a wind at my back.