The Salt Line, Vol. 23: A Near-Perfect Game, a Sunken Casino, and the Week Foley Decided to Finish Everything
Welcome back to The Salt Line — the Gulf Coast news roundup written by a man whose flip-flops have officially entered their July form, which is to say they are now more duct tape than flop. Volume 23. The fireworks are over, the leftover potato salad has been dealt with, and the news kept newsing. Let’s get into it.
⚾ Sir, This Is a Double-A Game, Why Are There Four Ejections
The Pensacola Blue Wahoos closed out their Rocket City series in style: Eliazar Dishmey took a perfect game into the sixth inning while the game around him produced four ejections, and the Wahoos beat the Trash Pandas 5-2. I want you to appreciate the range on display here. One man achieving something close to athletic perfection — 5.2 hitless, walkless innings — while everyone else in the building is getting thrown out of a baseball game like it’s a saloon. The headline calls it “chippy,” which is the most polite word ever applied to four ejections. After the season this team has had (Vol. 12 readers remember the Ibarra hauntings), I am simply thrilled to report the fish are the ones doing the tormenting now.
🎰 The Casino Boat Sleeps With the Fishes, on Purpose
Days after a retired casino boat was intentionally sunk off Orange Beach, local scuba divers are already down there exploring the Argosy VI in its new career as an artificial reef. This is objectively wonderful. A vessel that spent years relieving tourists of their vacation budgets is now providing free housing to snapper. The house always wins, and now the house is a house — for fish. Somewhere down there, a grouper is drifting past a bulkhead that once heard ten thousand people say “one more hand and then we’ll go.” Enjoy your retirement, Argosy. You’ve earned the quiet.
🏖️ Beach Access #3 Is Taking a Personal Week
Heads up, Key people: Perdido Key Beach Access #3 closed Monday and will stay closed for about a week. That’s it. That’s the story. One beach access, one week, in July — which on this island is roughly the equivalent of closing one lane of the interstate in Atlanta. The good news is that Perdido Key has other access points and, I’m told, the same Gulf attached to all of them. Check conditions before you go, aim one access over, and please do not take it out on the traffic cones. They’re doing their best.
🐉 Baldwin County Is Getting Dragons and Honestly It’s About Time
Stockton is gearing up to host Baldwin County’s first-ever Dragons on the Delta boat race this October at Live Oak Landing. Dragon boats. On the Delta. In Baldwin County. I have read this sentence several times and it improves with each pass. We are a region that will put absolutely anything on the water — pontoons, airboats, casino boats (see above, briefly), and now vessels with dragon heads paddled by teams in friendly competition. Mark your calendars for October and start recruiting your paddle crew now, because I guarantee somebody’s church group has already been training since March.
🚧 Foley Completes the Legendary Sidewalk, Scholars Rejoice
After years of work, the final segment of Foley’s four-mile sidewalk project along Highway 59 is underway, closing the last 1.25-mile gap. Four miles of continuous sidewalk along 59. Future generations will walk from one end of Foley to the other and never know the sacrifice. I’m genuinely not being sarcastic here — anyone who has ever tried to walk anywhere along Highway 59 in beach traffic season knows this is infrastructure heroism. Foley: quietly the most getting-things-done municipality on the Alabama Gulf Coast. First the sports complex, now this. What can’t they pave?
🌀 Foley Also Planned a Party for Hurricane Season, Which Is Very On Brand
Not content with completing sidewalks, Foley is hosting its first-ever Hurricane Preparedness Expo on July 14 at the Civic Center, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., free to attend. Only on the Gulf Coast do we throw an expo for the thing we’re all quietly dreading. But honestly? Go. Every local knows the drill: you don’t buy the generator in June, you buy it in February, and you don’t learn your evacuation zone in the cone, you learn it at a free expo in an air-conditioned civic center with (one hopes) complimentary pens. Preparedness is the most Gulf Coast form of optimism there is.
That’s your week, Gulf Coast. The Wahoos found their ace, the casino found the bottom, the dragons are coming in October, and Foley finished a sidewalk and immediately started planning for the apocalypse. Balance in all things. See you next week — I’ll be the guy walking all four miles of Highway 59 just because I finally can.
— Chris
