Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
I purchased one of those Internet boxes that allows you to watch every Major League Baseball, NFL Football, and even a few minor league baseball games. It’s great, but it comes with a caveat. Like coming up on a wreck on the highway, you can’t help but look, and I’m talking about the Colorado Rockies.
We cut the cable years ago, going with digital streaming, an AirTV device hooked up to our daughter and son-in-law’s over-the-air TV antenna in Pittsburgh, and since then, watching the Rockies has been intermittent. Not anymore, the VSee box brings the Blake Street boys into my living room far too often. They’re horrible this year, yet I can’t refrain from watching them commit game-losing errors, watch rally after rally (by the opposing teams) snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and continue to wonder just how bad the ownership and management of this team can get.
I’ve been a baseball fan for a long time.
My first professional baseball game came in the summer of 1968 when my cousins and I traveled to Candlestick Park with my uncle Quentin Raymond, uncle Chris Pallas, and my Dad to watch the St. Louis Cardinals battle the San Francisco Giants. It was the only time I ever watched my favorite player of all time, “The Say Hey Kid,” the late Willie Mays, in person.
Since then, I’ve made it to a few big-league parks and a lot more in the minors.
One memorable trip to a big-league game came in 1981 in Baltimore. Tom Massey Sr. of Lander and I were Close Up sponsors and arranged for a chartered bus to take us and about four dozen other teachers to Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. A rain delay, and dollar-a-pint Bohemian Draft beer, had the entire group in great spirits until our driver, a guy from D.C., got lost on the way back to the hotel.
After driving in circles for over an hour, Tom and I got off the bus and asked some guys standing around a fire in a 55-gallon drum the way back to Washington.
These 20-somethings looked like extras out of a gang movie, but they were friendly and one of them quickly said, “Four lights and take a right, you can’t miss it.” He was right. We were back at the hotel with little delay.
I’ve been to Safeco Field in Seattle, Angels Stadium in Anaheim, and Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, but PNC Park in Pittsburgh is now a familiar venue, after attending many games with my son-in-law, Adam. I even know the best parking garage with the shortest route to the stadium, across a bridge over the adjoining Allegheny River.
Our most familiar venue began at Mile High Stadium in Denver, the year after the Rockies became a big-league franchise, and has continued a couple of times a year since, now at Coors Field.
The $20 you used to pay for parking just a block-and-a-half north of the field was money well spent. Those spots are gone now.
Where else in America can you go watch the worst professional baseball on the planet, eat $15 hot dogs, then wash them down with $19 beers? Overpriced, overhyped, sometimes annoying with the incessant baseball music, sometimes sweltering, and other times near freezing. It’s all great.
Minor League baseball has its own unique charm. Not quite the big league, but much more than your local high school or American Legion level of play.
In the early 90’s we discovered Texas League Baseball.
I’d heard of “Texas Leaguers” for years in old war movies. It was always one of those questions that betrayed Nazi spies. “Who won the pennant?” was the opening question, followed by “What’s a Texas Leaguer?” A moment later, either a hail of machine-gun fire or a collective sigh of relief with a pack of Lucky Strikes passed all around filled the screen.
The Midland Angels (now the Rockhounds) hosted the Corpus Christi Hooks one night and we had front row seats. The biggest difference between minor and major league play is the pitching. Everybody can hit in professional baseball, but quality pitching is a rarity. Just ask the Rockies front office about this one. (While you’re at it, ask them about fielding and batting as well)
As the game progressed, it was evident that there weren’t many 1-0 nail-biters in the Texas League. The batters were way above the level of the pitching. Fans of the long ball love AA baseball with scores that more closely resemble football than baseball.
The Angels built a 12-3 lead in the fifth inning. The sparsely populated stands began to fill quickly in the sixth inning. We soon learned why.
Anytime the Angels won by 10 or more runs you could get a free large pizza by showing your game ticket the next day. The cheap seats were only three dollars. American consumers always find a way to beat the system.
Eight years ago, Sue and I caught another Texas League game in Frisco, Texas, a suburb of Dallas-Fort Worth. The Roughriders beat up the Amarillo Sod Poodles that night.
Sod Poodles, Hooks, Mud Hens, Tin Caps, Isotopes, Biscuits, Flying Squirrels, Iron Pigs and my favorite, the Lugs of Lansing, Michigan, are all team names; that’s part of the charm of the minor leagues.
Is there any other professional or amateur sporting venue with better names? If you find one, let me know.
For a while, we were familiar faces at the Casper Rockies, but the program disbanded.
The Billings Mustangs offer an interesting venue with a stadium right in the middle of a residential area. A few of the houses across from the outfield fences had barriers in their front yards. A testament to long-ball hitters that once made brief appearances in Montana.
When Sue and I travel across the country in the summer, we look for destinations with minor league teams. We spent a memorable few hours in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, at a Tin Cups game, spending much of the evening watching an endless stream of air ambulance helicopters landing on top of a high-rise downtown hospital just beyond centerfield.
The most stylish stadium I’ve been in might be the Peoples Natural Gas Field, home of the mighty Altoona Curve. A team playing in a stadium owned by a utility company, named after a stretch of railroad track, only in America can you find this.
Some AAA stadiums don’t rival the big leagues in scale but exceed them in ambiance, food, and viewing pleasure.
FNB Stadium, home of the non-affiliated Harrisburg Senators, rests lazily above the Susquehanna River as it flows by to the south of the field. It has all the amenities of any American or National League ballpark, with the closeness of the minor leagues.
Smith’s, the same grocery store most of us shop at owns one of the finest stadiums in all of baseball at Smith’s Field in Salt Lake City.
Home of the AAA Salt Lake Bees, a California Angels affiliate, they routinely have players move up and down from “The Show,” as players call the big leagues.
One later afternoon, early evening, at a Bees game, we had box seats for $10 each, and they had a T-bone steak special for another $12; try that at Yankee or Dodger Stadium.
It’s the game of summer.