Monthly Archives: May 2023

college wood bat league, futures collegiate baseball league, vermont

Centennial Field, Burlington, VERMONT

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vermontinprogress

Number of states: 41
To go: 9
Number of games: 1
First game: August 6, 2022 (Vermont Lake Monsters 6, Brockton Rox 4)

By the time I got to Centennial Field in 2022, Vermont had lost its affiliated baseball in the tragic MLB purge of affiliates over

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the pandemic. I feel really bad for all of the spots that I have been that have lost their affiliates, especially wonderfully historic, quirky, or beautiful spots like Clinton, Billings, Ogden, Princeton, Bristol, or so many others. I just love the tie between deep, long ago history, both old (Negro Leagues! Tris Speaker! Some guy I’ve never heard of but is a legend of early Vermont baseball!) recent history (Ken Griffey, Jr.!), as well as the future (who knows who might be a Hall-of-Famer here today?) In an almost unbelievably penny-wise-pound-foolish move, MLB pulled the connection to the majors that affiliation provides ballparks like Centennial Field. Now, the Lake Monsters no longer have affiliated players, which is a shame. But the college-wood-bat ballplayers we saw in August of 2022 provided just as fantastic and historic a time as anywhere. Wood-bat or not, it’s was worth the trip.

The ballpark, for starters, was absolutely aware of its history. The historical marker (historical marker at a ballpark is just about as geeky-wonderful as it gets for me) tells me that the “Centennial” refers to the hundred-year anniversary of the first class of graduates from UVM, which is when they started playing ball on the site. The grandstand

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was constructed in 1922, so my friends and I were there for the centennial of the stands at Centennial Field. 

The park sets into a residential neighborhood in Burlington, where parking was nearly impossible to find. I walked through the dusty parking lot to find a historical marker and a fair amount of music. We sat in the front row of the back section, so people were walking in front of us all day–although we were high enough that it wasn’t that big a distraction. Plus–legroom! We sat for a while until a young woman–the mom of 3 in a family outing behind us–asked us about our scorebooks.

I swear, if you want someone to talk to you at the ballpark, bring a scorebook!

We let her know who we were, what we were up to, and she assented. “I was grooving on your serious vibe,” she said.

If we ever make a coat of arms for the College Buddy Baseball Trip, it will contain the phrase “grooving on our serious vibe.” Google Translate tells me that, in latin, this is “grooving nobis gravis vibe,” which, in my mind, must be recited like “Gunter gleebin glauten globen” at the start of the Def Leppard song. She has no idea how solidly she nailed our entire ouevre.

Then, her husband left for treats or kid bathroom aid or some such. She managed to persuade him to take all three kids. And

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she, like any mom of pre- and early-school aged kids, started cutting loose. In her case, it was a chance to finally use the profanity she had to bottle up habitually. She apologized at first (perhaps she thought she was harshing the serious vibe). But as it turned out, she and the family were hilarious. They told us about Vermont, about the ballpark, and asked us some questions about the baseball and the league. It was a symbiotic relationship.

Rob, who has a fabulous way with kids that age, started talking with the four-year-old about Lake Monsters. The kid knew that the lake monsters were real, and knew a ton about him. Rob threw him a curveball.

ROB: So, do you think that I might be a lake monster?
KID: [like Rob is a complete idiot] No! You’re not a lake monster!
ROB: Why not?
KID: Lake monsters don’t have hair!

Well, as a guy past the midpoint of middle age, I have some concerns with this. I took off my cap and showed the kid my ever-encroaching baldness.

ME: Well, I’m losing my hair. Does that mean I’m turning into a lake monster?
KID: [like I am a complete idiot]. No, silly! It means you’re DYING.

And that, thanks to this fabulous family, was the biggest laugh we had on the trip. See? We can laugh with the serious vibe.

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The ballpark was ancient and full. The promotions blitzed along in an enjoyable way. And the game–the Lake Monsters were finishing off the regular season safely in first place, against a team safely in last, before starting the playoffs–was fantastic.

The sun set behind us: the New England air was golden. The packed house rocked. And, as we approached the 9th, the game was tied at three.

I considered my first home run derby to finish a game.

The Futures Collegiate Baseball League had that new rule: if a game is tied after 10, the game will be decided by a home run derby. Now, I am old school. I mourned a little when the affiliated minors essentially eliminated marathon games when they enacted the zombie-runner-on-2nd rule to start extra innings back in 2019. I understand the purpose: when your job is to develop players, trashing arms for a 12-plus inning game is not optimal. (In the majors? Forget about it. I

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know it’s never going away, but I will die a crotchety old man talking about how the runner-on-2nd rule is Mickey Mouse crap.)

So it seems to me that a home run derby is as good a way as any to settle things.

Instead, I got a tremendous 9th inning. In the top of the 9th, Liam Foley gave the bad guys the lead with a solo home run. They were up 4-3.

And then, in the bottom of the inning, the Lake Monsters started the inning with a strikeout, a hit batsman, a wild pitch, and an intentional walk. 

I’ve been to a ton of baseball games. I’ve made a ton of friends and had a lot of fun. My life will continue exactly the same whether the Brockton Rox or the Vermont Lake Monsters win on a Saturday night at the end of the Futures Collegiate League baseball season. I know that the fun times I spent with my friends next to me and the strangers-turned-friends behind me is way more important than what winds up in my scorebook. 

Still, when Brian Schaub absolutely bludgeoned a pitch and sent it deep into the New England night just past the good side of the left field foul pole, I stood up, and I shouted deep into the night. The arc of that ball will stay with me as a wonderful end to a fantastic night in a beautiful, charming ballpark.

BALLPARK SCORE:

Regional Feel: 8.5/10.  I’d like a tad more of an “only in Vermont” view–the surroundings are sort of suburban anywhere–but I can’t argue with all that history.

Charm: 4.5/5.  It’s a well-loved and well-cared-for antique.

Spectacle: 2.5/5.  I could have used a little more, even though the PA was hard to hear where I was.

Team Mascot/Name: 4/5

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Here’s Champ the Lake Monster. Note that he, like me, has no hair. He’s a totally appropriate resident of Vermont to have this job.

Aesthetics: 3/5.  It’s wonderful, but not terribly attractive, especially from the outside.

Pavilion area: 3.5/5

Scoreability: 4.5/5. I especially appreciate what a good job they did for the college wood-bat league level.

Fans: 5/5. Thanks for joining our serious vibe, fam!

Intangibles: 5/5. We had a walk-off, we had some laughs, and we had a gorgeous day in a beautiful state.

TOTAL: 40.5/50

BASEBALL STUFF I SAW HERE:

Brian Schaub! He had all six RBI for the Lake Monster, with a double in addition to his walk-off dinger.

Brockton’s Thomas Shertleff was the best pitcher for the day, going 2 1/3 without giving up a hit.

vermontgoldenhour

Written May 2023.

double a, eastern league, minor league, new hampshire, toronto blue jays affiliates

Delta Dental Park, Manchester, NEW HAMPSHIRE

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Number of states: 40
To go: 10
Number of games: 1
First game: August 5, 2022 (New Hampshire Fisher Cats 6, Richmond Flying Squirrels 1)

Click on any picture to see a full-sized version.

One benefit to New England is how small all of the states are. Rob, Matt, and I spent our first couple of nights on the 2022

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College Buddy Baseball Tour in the same hotel, just zipping out to Brockton, Worcester, and New Hampshire. So much easier than it would be in the West (which is to say impossible). There’s a ton of baseball, affiliated and otherwise, that is accessible and which still allows one to sleep in one’s own bed. I’ve got to give a thumbs up for that.

I crossed the 40-state mark for minor leagues in New Hampshire on a hot August night in 2022, sitting in the front row right by third base. Double-A baseball–my favorite level–played out in front of us. The three of us got out our scorebooks.

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This often leads to us getting some attention, and it did tonight, as the guy next to us asked us the magic question…

“Are you guys scouts?”

Man, as often as I am asked that, I still find it surprising every time. I was probably wearing my Julio Rogriguez sherzy and a Reading Phillies cap (my go-to cap for the college buddy tour). Matt and Rob were unquestionably equally nerdy in Twins and Phillies garb, respectively. How is it possible that someone would assume that is our work outfit? I am not too expert in scouting, but when I think of a scout, I think of someone sitting behind home plate with a radar gun wearing a short-sleeved polo adorned with a team logo. How in the name of God could someone think we were scouting out by third base? Do scouts buy mini-bats?

Still, this kind of thing does often lead to a conversation. The guys started talking to us about the ballpark and the history, which I appreciated.

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It fairly quickly developed into a remember-this-guy? he’s from New Hampshire list of ballplayers from 20 years earlier. I enjoy the Remember Some Guys factor of the day, but have to admit that I grew tired of this conversation. It wasn’t just “yeah! he’s a good dude, that [insert name of serviceable major leaguer from New Hampshire]!” It developed into how this guy had gotten hits off of or struck out every major leaguer his age that he had ever faced. That’s a cool story to tell…once. But it did NOT take long before I found myself sucked into this guy’s personal history.

That’s not the kind of history I want to experience at the ballpark. Delta Dental ballpark did a good job of

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giving me the rest of that information: their history of baseball in the state–especially affiliated ball–was commendable. I could read those Blue Jays of the past for a long time and enjoy it.

I also found the ballpark to be physically and architecturally interesting. It is just about impossible to notice there is a ballpark there, for starters: it is tucked behind and into a hotel. The Hilton Garden Inn shields the entrance to the ballpark, making it hard to find: within the ballpark, we can see patio seating for the hotel lounge: a strong home run to left could land in one of their drinks. 

Before the game, I walked along the path that squeezes between the third-base side of the ballpark and the Merrimack River.

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The trees were dense enough that, while it provided a welcome shade on a hot evening, they prevented any really good views of the river. Traffic on I-283 across the river was audible: had I walked a while longer, it appears my path would have taken me across both the river and the interestate, but I wanted to double back to the ballpark to see if it had a view. It looks like there was this view from the second deck:
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Yeah–I’ve seen better, but I appreciate the effort.

The game itself was a bit of a snooze. Matt and Rob, in about the sixth inning, went off to find an IPA. I know Matt prefers a seat a little ways back, where I prefer to be close enough to make a play if called upon. but when Matt said he was going off, I

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said “Hey, if you find a better seat, text me and I will join you.”

Matt, gracious guy that he is, said “Oh, it’s no big deal. We’ll be back.”

Matt missed my message. I made eye contact.
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“No, Matt. If you find a new seat, you should text me so I can join you.”

Matt looked at me, and looked at guy-who-had-dominated-every-1990s-major-leaguer-in-New-Hampshire next to me.

“Oh. We’ll be sure to text you.”

That’s how I got to spend at least the last couple of innings with my buddies…in some quiet.

In the end, I think that Delta Dental Park was a tweener. Too old to be gleaming and modern, but not old enough to be charming. It had some quirks, and it had a sense of history, but I can barely remember it as I write this nine months later, and that’s not a good sign.

BALLPARK SCORE:

Regional Feel: 7/10

The historical stuff on the pavilion was appreciated. Look! It’s Gustavo Chacin!

newhampshirehistory

Charm 2.5/5. It’s a tweener.

Spectacle 3/5

Mascot/Name 4/5
I didn’t get a shot of Fungo the Fisher Cat, but a fisher cat (a weasel-like mammal native to the area) is a fantastic name for this team.

Aesthetics 2.5/5
We have a view of a hotel and a sort-of-view of the river-ish if you get way up high. Not quite right. But I do like the hidden nature of it: like a surprise ballpark. I wonder how much nicer this photo would have been without that giant Hilton Garden Inn:
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Pavilion Area 3.5/5

Scoreability 2.5/5. I missed a couple of decisions.

Fans 2.5/5. Nice enough people, but I’ve never had to manufacture a reason to flee someone before.

Intangibles 2.5/5.  Not a great game, and it was kinda hot.

OVERALL 30/50
newhampshire3b
BASEBALL STUFF I SAW HERE:

Fisher Cats’ pitching, led by Ricky Tiedemann and Gabriel Ponce, shut down the Flying Squirrels’ bats for the day.

Cameron Eden, whom I had seen four times prior as a Vancouver Canadian, knocks in three and homers. 

Ryan Gold and Sebastian Espino, also guys I had seen as Canadians, also homer. I have now seen Espino homer in two leagues, thousands of miles apart. Maybe he needs to pay me to start showing up.

Written May 2023.

 

boston red sox affiliates, international league, massachusetts, minor league, triple a, Uncategorized

Polar Park, Worcester, MASSACHUSETTS

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worcesterexterior

Number of states: 39
To go: 11
Number of games: 1
First game: August 4, 2022 (Worcester Red Sox 12, Durham Bulls 0)

After a night at the kinda-icky Brockton Sox park (not commemorated here–see the rules for why), the pandemic-postponed New England swing for the College Buddy Baseball Annual Tour happened just two years late. And it started with a pretty cool

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and unprecedented night in Worcester.

Had the tour happened in 2020 like it was supposed to, we would have made it to Pawtucket instead, and I would have crossed off Rhode Island. But by the time we could make the trip happen, there was no more Pawtucket: instead, there was this place, which was exactly what you’d expect out of a 21st-century ballpark. Corporate. Antiseptic. Nice, but not special. Yes, it has all of the amenities, but it felt the same as pretty much any other spot. Also–it was pretty spendy for a minor league park. 

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In any event, I did appreciate the Red Sox history on display in Woostah. The sign that points to Fenway and all of its affiliates feels more regional here somehow, and not just because so many of the Sox’s affiliates are rightly in New England. This is a place to see the future Sawx and talk about the current Sawx, and we got a chance to do that.

And I did so with my buddy Chuck! Chuck is one of the few purely on-line friends I have ever known, and this was our chance to meet in person. I met him through refereeing: he’s a former Division I basketball official who paid some visits to my old officiating blog. That led to Facebook friendship, which led to me wanting to meet him in person when I was near his central Mass home! There were no badly missed calls that night. Had there been, Chuck and I would have had the umpires’ backs.

WOOSTAH! Chuck was as good a guy in person as he was on-line, and we did some ref-nerding out that day.

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My seat was right by the passageway to the Durham dugout, so I was treated to a set of autograph seekers. They were the kind I don’t like that much: guys with massive sheets of cards of who they think the next stars would be, leaning over the railing to get some signatures. What bothered me about this was there was a kid there. Now, let’s be clear. I do get signatures sometimes: always of my scorebook, and always of a game that I have seen that person in from the past. What I find is that this frequently leads to a moment of joy for the player that I get to sign. Most recently, this has meant I figure out who a

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player is that I have seen play in the past who is now a coach. I get him to sign a thirty-year-old scorebook. For the now-coach, that’s a huge trip down memory lane. Last year, former relief pitcher Doug Henry, now pitching coach for the Tri-City Dust Devils, spent time reading the entire box score of a game he saved as a Brewer in 1993. Truthfully, I like the feeling that I’m sharing a thing with a guy rather than taking a thing from him.

But even with that, I won’t compete with a kid for an autograph. If kids are there, I won’t be. So this means that I either go to a fiftysomething coach while all the kids are clamoring for the twentysomething players, which feels right, or I am in a place that

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has set aside time for autographs, where I can queue up with everyone else.

What I do NOT want to be is like the guys in this photo. I mean, different strokes, and I hope they are happy and all of that, but there’s a kid in this photo who wants to interact with a ballplayer, and I find that the transactional nature of trying to create a card that will sell for a ton of money to be kind of joyless in comparison.

We’d get plenty of joy this night, though. Michael Wacha was on a rehab start for Worcester, and he looked awfully good. Kept the pitch count low and got all the way to 4 2/3 innings. The Sox were crushing 4 home runs off of Bulls pitching, so the game was out of control very quickly. Then A.J. Politi came on to get through the seventh.

No hits.

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My rule is that I will not discuss a no-hitter in progress. It’s not that I’m superstitious. I know that I do not have any impact on whether a pitcher gives up a hit. It’s more that it’s not worth talking about until we get through 6 innings. I have stuck with that through my lifetime of baseball, and it has served me well. So I was willing to discuss it even when I finally got to my first no-hitter in 2021 (Baltimore’s John Means in Seattle). 

I don’t find combined no-hitters terribly impressive as one-guy no-hitters like I saw Means do, but having one as a part of our college buddy trip: that was pretty awesome. It was also provided a little tension late in a blowout game.

Chase Shugart pulled it off in front of my friends–old and new–with two more innings of hitless ball. Josh Lowe smacked a

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ball pretty hard, but the Sox’s Devlin Granberg made a really great catch: a diving catch to his right. It was a real charge to end the game and begin the on-field celebration.

You can’t go wrong with a spark like that, and something about it happening on one of my trips–like, the coincidence of this

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happening on my one time at this park–was kind of special. There’s nothing quite like jumping up and down and celebrating a great play to finish off a great experience.

I didn’t get a real sense of Worcester or Massachusetts as a place, truthfully, beyond the Red Soxiness of it all. I wonder if I’d have felt something different in Pawtucket. Still, there was a lot of fun, great friends, and an accomplishment I won’t soon forget.

BALLPARK SCORE:

Regional Feel 6.5/10

Other than the Red Sox stuff, I didn’t get much of a sense of New England here.

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Charm 2.5/5

Too corporate. Corporations are not charming.

Spectacle 4/5

The higher the level, the less I want stuff to interfere with the baseball. This rule is especially important in the midst of a no-hitter, and the WooSox obliged well.

Mascot/Name 3/5

I didn’t get a shot of Woofster, and he didn’t impress much on my memory, but I wrote 3/5, so I guess he was fine, as is the name “Red Sox,” which matches with the history of the team (going from PawSox to WooSox).

Aesthetics 3/5

Again, fine. Not special

Pavilion area 3/5

Scoreability 4.5/5

They did a fine job keeping up with a LOT of hits and runs (for one team, anyway) and I trust they would have been solid if there had been a tough, important scoring decision late in the no-hitter.

Fans 4/5

My buddy Chuck was great, but the guys bugging the Durham team weren’t.

Intangibles 5/5

I mean, it was a no-hitter capped off by a fabulous diving catch. Can’t give that anything other than a 5.

TOTAL: 35.5/50

Baseball stuff I saw here:

Andrew Wacha, A.J. Politi, and Chase Shugart walk 5 batters but give up no hits.

The WooSox tee off on poor starting pitcher Easton McGee, with 4 home runs in 3 innings, leading a 17-hit attack. 4 of those hits and 2 of the homers come from former Mariner (and “wow, he’s still playing, cool!” guy) Abraham Almonte. Pedro Castellanos adds three hits and a home run.

Devlin Granberg ends the night with a catch everyone will remember.

Written May 2023.