THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Traffic jams, ocean beaches, baseball games and other stuff

For those who complain about traffic around here, here’s a suggestion: 

Spend an afternoon on the rolling parking lot which is Interstate 5, just south of Seattle.

Touring the Evergreen State to watch summer wood bat and minor league baseball games a couple of weeks ago, motoring from Wenatchee to Tacoma to Longview to Richfield to Walla Walla, was a joy. 

Trying to burrow our way down I-5 on a Thursday afternoon, from the metropolis of Fife, Wash., to just past Olympia — a distance of maybe 30 miles — in our pursuit of ocean beaches seemed like it took two @#$%^$# hours, was an absolute pain.

(Is that STILL the Tacoma Dome?) 

• Though all of the photos you see on Facebook are from people visiting the Oregon Coast, I can confirm that Washington has beaches as well — though it took an extra hour or two to find them. 

One such coastline where sand meets ocean is in Ocean Shores, a pretty drive off the beaten track after escaping the @#$%$#@ I-5 Parking Lot. 

The road from hustle and bustle to the calming sea even looks a little bit like the one from Salem to Lincoln City — minus the must-stop for a pronto pup in Otis. 

The other interesting thing is that people literally drive to the coast in Ocean Shores.  

None of this parking nearby, then walking down 75 steps to the sand. 

In Ocean Shores, folks drive down a long road which starts out as pavement and then morphs into something more beachy, past a group offering horseback rides, onto the sand, then hang a left and park in a row, just steps from the water. 

I’m guessing these people parked on the beach are regulars there, armed with knowledge of high tides and low tides. 

Otherwise, we would have read about some folks who literally drove to the beach and went for a long walk — only to return to find their car floating somewhere toward Alaska. 

That possibility notwithstanding, we may have to visit that beach again — albeit via a faster route. 

MEANWHILE, ABOUT the baseball games ... 

• In Wenatchee, the Mustard mascot won the outfield race between innings — after dropping the Ketchup mascot with a right hand on the right field warning track of Paul Rogers Sr. Stadium. 

• Also in Wenatchee, the fans and the home team share a men’s restroom. Walk in there after a game, and you can see into the Apple Sox players in the adjoining clubhouse through an inside door in the wall between the two rooms. 

• And please don’t grab the hamburgers or chicken strip baskets that are piled on the counter near the concession stand after the game. That food is for the players. 

• David Story Field is a cozy ballpark tucked inside the grounds at Lower Columbia College in Longview, home to the community college baseball team as well as the Cowlitz Black Bears, the college wood bat squad in the 17-team West Coast League which plays there in the summer. 

The park is scheduled for $1.3 million in renovations — the old wooden bleachers at the 60-year-old stadium are, well, old wooden bleachers, as your rear end reminds you after only a couple of innings. And the old yard could use a facelift elsewhere as well. 

But the setting is why you drive all those miles — grandstands nestled in front of trees that give you a feeling of privacy, just you and the baseball game. And kids rattling past on the rickety boards in front of you, in pursuit of foul balls.

However, when Lower Columbia and the Black Bears couldn’t agree on how to use that $1.3 million, this became the 15th and final season for the Cowlitz team in Longview, a season which ended last weekend. 

Too bad. Remember years ago, when Coeur d’Alene was mentioned as a possible site for a college summer wood bat team? 

MEANWHILE, 30 miles down I-5 (a stretch which is not as painfully slow as the one mentioned above) ... 

• The Ridgefield Outdoor Recreation Complex, basically a Quad Park-type setup but bigger, with artificial turf, more fencing and more protective netting, just down the hill from the campus of the Ridgefield High Spudders, does a nice job as home to the Ridgefield Raptors college wood bat team since 2019.  

By contrast, Ridgefield’s newer wide plastic seats are quite comfy, compared to the uneven wood bleachers up the road in Longview. 

The next day, some 260 miles away ...

• At 99-year-old Borleske Stadium in Walla Walla, after certain games, kids are allowed to run the bases, like they do an many other ballparks. 

But after Sweets games, when the kids round third base and head for home, they dash through a tunnel of Walla Walla players, giving them high-fives and offering encouragement. 

A memorable trip around the bases for the youngsters. 

LET'S BACK up to our stop at a Tacoma Rainiers game — pre-traffic jam. 

• Even the Mariners’ minor league pitchers are nasty.  

After doling out a whopping $20 for parking at a Triple-A game, we saw Casey Lawrence, who has totaled 17.2 innings with the big club this year, twirl a complete-game two-hitter in Tacoma. He went seven hitless innings between allowing hits. 

The Rainiers clobbered four home runs, one by Tyler Locklear, who the following week would be sacrificed to Arizona so the Mariners could bring home Eugenio Suarez. 

Imagine that? 

Two years ago, the Diamondbacks were playing in the World Series. 

Now, the M’s can pilfer a couple of their middle-of-the-order guys to provide some more punch to the lineup, without damaging the big club. 

There wasn’t room for Locklear in the majors as a Mariner anymore, but suddenly there was as a Diamondback. 

Seattle’s hitting philosophy of close your eyes and swing for the fences, just in case, seems to work well enough with that filthy pitching. 

That, combined with two other Mariner staples — the ability to get the other team to throw a wild pitch late in the game with a runner on third, as well as being able to drop down a late-inning bunt that the other team panics and throws down the right-field line — could lead to a parade soon. 

Especially if opponents continue to be stupid enough to pitch to Cal Raleigh. 

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 1205, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports.