Baseball, the Love Boat, and Scatman Crothers


This blog is dedicated to Aaron Spelling, the genius behind Charlie’s Angels, The Love Boat, and Beverly Hills 90210, oh and we’ll forgive him for Tori...


Tori back when she looked even more like an alien.

A few weeks ago our family decided to go to a baseball game. The choices in town for pro ball are the Minnesota Twins, who play in a Teflon bubble, and the St. Paul Saints, who play in a campy outdoor facility. Well since it was a beautiful Minnesota night (like usual), we chose the latter. I would like to insert the pictures I took but my (camera) phone was later stolen. We sat above the third base line, about row 20. At these games there are always several things going on at once. One of the mainstays is the massaging nun. You read that right. There is a 110 pound 60 year old nun who gives massages all during the game. There were also two people getting haircuts. They also have an MC who constantly is working the crowd, cracking on the other team etc. Just a real fun atmosphere. They had another guy who, picture this, was a skinny dude, of some Spanish decent, in a white tux and top hat singing songs. His best song was Unchained Melody, just a weird experience. There was a kids playground near the right field corner. Quite nice to take the kids over there from the 5th to the 7th inning stretch. Then you only have another 45 minutes until the game is over. Breaks up the game really well for the kids. Well apparently the Saints games all have a theme now. That is another new thing since I went to a game last. The theme our night was “Love Boat” the first 5,000 people got a Love Boat stress squeeze thing. The theme was of course making fun of the Vikings issue last year. Which by the way if anyone was surprised by that you are a fool. If you were a twenty something, single, millionaire and your buddies asked if you wanted to rent a boat with a bunch of strippers, would you say no? I wouldn’t say yes now, but if you were in their shoes? Come on if the idea alone didn’t hook you, the peer pressure certainly would force your hand, be honest. I’m not saying it’s right, but let’s not be surprised about it. It was probably a typical night for most of them, it just happened to be on a boat where the crew didn’t welcome it instead of at a strip club.

The baseball was pretty good. In particular the pitching. There were several pitches in the 90’s, pretty good for minor league ball. The game was secondary for me though. There were also people watching the game for free. One guy just rode his bike right outside the left field fence which is a rail yard (I’ll get to that in a minute). He just leaned his bike up against the 6’ pile of rail road ties and climbed up and watched the game for a while. The announcer even commented on him saying “everyone wave to the guy out by the fence” and “How’s the game?” At no point did anyone try to kick him out though. Even better, a train crept up to the same opening in the fence and stopped to watch the game for about 15 minutes! Amazing.


Many people think the show went downhill when Vicky, the captain's illegitimate daughter was added. But as a shocker, she grew up to be a hottie single Mom!

The love boat theme was carried out throughout the game. They of course played the theme song several times between innings or pitchers. They also showed pictures of the actors on the jumbo screen. And they made paper copies of the main guest stars of the show and taped them all over the stadium. The ones I remember the most are Charo and Scatman Crothers. For some reason I felt compelled to take the one of Scatman, not sure why or what I was going to do with it. My kids of course were asking why I took it, I started to explain, but soon realized they were not going to ‘get it’.



The most memorable episode for me was when Scatman was on playing an “Uncle Tom” character (of course), and also there was a proud black woman who presumably has a Black History degree. Of course when you saw Julie check in a black woman, you knew Isaac was going to get some action! Well the story tried to play Isaac between these two characters, who both had something to ‘teach’ Isaac about Black History. It was culminated by Scatman doing “Hambone”, one of the greatest moments in TV history, I will never forget it. The most recent one for me that comes close is when Snoop Dogg was at a video game conference on TV and the interviewer was asking him how he liked the new first person shooter, House of the Dead. He answered “Well I dunno, I think I’m better at shooting real people”. True Story.



Betta Believe Snoop is Both Rhythm and Gangsta


Scatman was a big contributor to my childhood, including doing the voice for Hong Kong Phooey and Jazz on Transformers. You might say "You watched Love Boat and Transformers when you were a kid, they were like 15 years apart", I say "I'm still a kid".

Unfortunately my second biggest memory of the Love Boat is Ethel Merman in a muumuu singing “Over There” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business”.

The highlight of the night was when my 4 year old got a chant of "Go White Go" started. Eventually about 100 people surrounding us all joined in, inspired by the inspired mini-me. Well the Saints ended up losing anyway, can’t even remember the score. But that wasn’t the point. We had a great night of outdoor baseball and got a free trip down memory lane.