Category Archives: nevada

Ballparks in Nevada.

Las Vegas Ballpark, Summerlin, Nevada

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Las Vegas Ballpark, Summerlin, NEVADA

Number of states: still 38

States to go: 12

First game:  July 12, 2019 (Salt Lake Bees 10, Las Vegas Aviators 7)

(Click on any photo to see a full-sized version.)

We encountered Las Vegas Ballpark on our huge National Park Tour in 2019, as it was between Sequoia and the Grand Canyon. (Quoth 10-year-old Steven: “Las Vegas is really a National Park, isn’t it?” Yes, Steven–it is.) Plus, Vegas is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me.

I don’t drink or do drugs or womanize, but the gambling is a vice I enjoy: the most likely way I will wind up face-down in a gutter someday (so far, I’ve managed it fine).

Las Vegas with kids is a bit of a different experience from Las Vegas without kids. For starters, we drove in along I-15, and the billboards as we approached were a bit intriguing to our 8- and 10-year-olds.

“Dad, what’s a strip club?” 

“Well, Steven, it’s a place where people pay money to watch people dance and take their clothes off.”

[Pause.] [Umbrage.] [Horror.] “Dad, what is WRONG with people? Who would ever want to do that?”

Noted. Still latent. 

After an afternoon engaging in “baby gambling”” at Circus Circus, we headed across town to the planned suburb of Summerlin to go to the brand-new ballpark. And while I was worried this might be part of the recent disease of suburban flight among ballparks (I’m looking at you, Atlanta and Gwinnett Braves). But this didn’t feel like a suburb. This felt like Vegas due to a number of deliberate choices the ballpark people made, and the result was a delight.

For starters, let’s discuss the name: Las Vegas Ballpark. I thought it was a misnomer, since the team moved from run-down Cashman Field (which was actually in Las Vegas) to Summerlin. But it’s not. It’s corporate naming. The naming rights for the ballpark

were bought by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, and so they paid to slap the city’s name on the ballpark. They want people to visit the city, obviously.

And this place therefore had many touches that allowed it to pass the is-there-any-question-where-you-are test. While the Strip isn’t visible from the park, the Red Rock Casino and hotel looms over the park, with its immaculately shining

orange-ish windows.  Look out past right field and we have a set of palm trees in a row, not unlike along Las Vegas Boulevard on the way into the city from the southwest. And then there’s the bar in right field. Yeah, I know that ballparks have bars. But I suspect none of these were quite as nice as this bar. Teetotaling me wouldn’t partake, but this was fully stocked with absolutely everything, as I think any bar in Vegas should be, ballpark or no ballpark. 

Which brings me to my favorite part of the ballpark: the lounge chairs.

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This is the only ballpark I’ve ever been to that had lounge chairs as a part of the park that anyone could sit in. Both in the bar in center field, or by the right field foul pole, there are tons of chairs that one can sit in with their drink or whatever, overlooking the pool, or the ping-pong tables, or the baseball game. As in the rest of Las Vegas, watching people is just as fun as watching the show, and that’s an option.

This leads to a conundrum I face with scoring the park. On the one hand, for high-quality

AAA baseball, I’d like there to be less distraction. But here, there are TONS of distractions, with wacky promotions on the field at pretty much ever inning break. Typically, I’m not a fan of this. But in gaudy Vegas, visual stimulation and tons of shows is exactly what the town is about.  So I have mixed views in this place.

Appropriately, a man behind us tried to start a massive betting pool on whether the throw the home plate umpire tossed to the mound between innings settled on the mound or off of it. I’ve seen this played before: it’s called Moundball. But I have never seen it so enthusiastically advocated for at a ballpark as this man behind me did. Rather than the usual two choices (on the mound or off of it), our guy wanted to set up lines for quadrants around the mound. Did the ball settle in the front left off the mound? Front right? Back center? No thanks: not gonna play. Neither would anyone else around us. And this annoyed our friend, who insisted that at any other ballpark he could get people to lay their money down on the umpire’s throw.

This got our section talking to each other, and we met some cool people who had moved to Vegas from various other parts of the country (this is true of most Vegas residents), and who were interested in my past travels as well as our current trip.  And we nearly got everyone going on one more bet.

See, my kids were picked for the tricycle race.

Right before the game, a pair of lovely young women asked my kids if they wanted to do the tricycle race after the 8th inning. My boys enthusiastically assented. And this set up an interesting question. My older kid is bigger and stronger than the younger one, but the younger one spends at least some of his time riding his bike-with-training wheels (the older one doesn’t care to ride). Oddsmakers would likely set this up at even money. The people around us agreed (although no money changed hands).

In the eighth inning, we headed up to the concourse to meet

with some other people. Once there, we encountered a pair of sisters roughly my kids’ age. 

“Are you here for the bicycle race?” Aaron asked them.

Yes they were. And they were excited. And they really wanted to win because they had a victory dance already choreographed.

That there, my friends, is bulletin board material.

So I started talking to my guys about how they would have to figure out how to work together, since this was clearly a team event rather than the individual event we were anticipating. Steven insisted he did NOT want to work with his brother. I said he might have to.

But then the game operations people came.  Turns out there were three pairs: an additional pair of brothers arrived.

“Okay,” said the game ops person. “So you two are together, and you two…” 

“NO!” Steven shouted. “I do NOT want to be on a team with my brother!”

Fair enough, the game ops guy said. He split the brother pairs and put my son with the older brother. This was a kid about his age. He had the look of the MVP of his Little League team, and I think he figured he had this in the bag.

Leadership. Excellence. He turned to Steven and gave him a high-five.

While I do not take joy in the disappointments and emotionally-rough moments of children, I do have to say that what happened next was simply fantastic and amazing and hilarious.

Little League MVP was ready. He asked Steven, “So, are you fast?”

“Actually, I don’t know how to ride a bike,” my son answered.

I watched this kid’s face as he processed this. He was about to get in a tricycle race, and his partner, rather than his athletic younger brother, was a kid who did not know how to ride a bike.  His expression went from confusion, to anger, to trying-to-be-supportive, back to something like annoyance.

Well, the race was a hot mess anyway. Half of the kids were told that the second leg would be heading back towards the left-field foul pole, and half of the kids were told they would keep heading down towards home plate. Aaron’s legs were too short to reach the pedals, so a worker wound up pushing him to the exchange point. Steven decided to run next to his tricycle instead of riding it.

“Nobody said we had to ride it,” he said, working a loophole in the rules. In the end, only Aaron’s team went the right direction, and out of the pandemonium, he got the win (unless that aid given by the MC was illegal). None of this mattered, of course, since everyone got a pack of baseball cards as a participation trophy, but still, neither participants nor referees nor audience knew what was up.

I guess it’s fair to say that’s my feeling about Las Vegas in general. And in the end, this was a tremendous night: really good baseball in front of a happy, packed house that was enjoying the kind of warmth that only happens in a desert after dark.

Vegas, baby. Tons of fun.  The kind of thing that I’d enjoy doing as a part of my next Vegas journey. They managed to get this one totally right.

BALLPARK SCORE:

REGIONAL FEEL: 9/10.

All of the wacky weirdness of Vegas was on display here. Loved this: loved the casinos and the lawn chairs and the de facto ring girls running the promotions.

CHARM: 4/5

Vegas is “charming” in its own way. I can’t give it a perfect score, because kitsch isn’t the same as charm, but this still worked.

TEAM MASCOT/NAME: 4.5/5

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Loved this new mascot (great upgrade on the 51s). This guy’s name is Aviator. Not pictured is Spruce. I don’t know the whole history of aviation in Las Vegas, but I trust it’s there.

SPECTACLE: 3.5/5

In a way, these were fantastic. A little anarchic, but excellent. In other ways, I think they did too much. I’d rather a few really good promotions than the constant confusing action they gave.

AESTHETICS: 5/5

I was taken aback by how beautiful and gleaming this place was.

PAVILION 4/5

Not much going on in the history department, and there were spots beyond the left-field wall that were dull, but good beyond that.

SCOREABILITY 4.5/5

Loved all the detail they offered. Needed some scoring decisions, however.

FANS 3.5/5

Some were quite nice. Some were a bit obnoxious.  Most left early and missed a crazy ending.

INTANGIBLES 4/5

A little hot, and a little busy. But man, this place was fun, and we got an awesome game to boot.

TOTAL 42/50

BASEBALL STUFF I SAW HERE:

The Bees come back from several deficits, relying on a few home runs. When down to their final strike in the 9th, trailing 8-6, Jared Walsh blasted his second homer of the night way past anything in right field to give the Bees a 9-7 lead. They added one more and had a one-two-three bottom of the ninth for the win.

Jose Rojas raked for the Bees, with a double and a homer.

Eric Campbell hits a three-run dinger for the Aviators. Sheldon Neuse drives in three using a double and a single.

Written August 2019.

 

Cashman Field, Las Vegas, Nevada

Cashman Field, Las Vegas, NEVADA

Number of states:  12
States to go:  38

Number of games: 1
First and last game:  April 6, 2006 (Las Vegas 51s 7, Fresno Grizzlies 2)

(Cashman Field is no longer used for baseball as of the 2019 season.)
(Click on any image to see a larger version.)

2006 marked my third trip to Las Vegas.  I had been twice earlier for my fantasy football league’s draft (recommended…nothing’s more fun than drafting on a Saturday, then watching all the games at the same time on a Sunday), and as a result, all I had ever experienced of Las Vegas–and, for that matter, of Nevada–was the airport and the

Strip.  A $15 cab ride from the Stratosphere at the north end of the Strip changed all that.  It brought me to Cashman Field and a chilly April opening night for the Las Vegas 51s.  I was quite pleased with what I found there.

First, let me state a point of confusion.  I’m not 100% sure what the name of this place is.  The signs on the outside call it Cashman Stadium, but the 51’s website refers to it as Cashman Field.  The place is obviously in the midst of some terrible identity crisis.  With contradictory information, I’m going to go with “Field.”  The place is fairly small, and therefore feels more like a field than a stadium to me.

The most important part of my ballpark rankings is regional feel.  I want there to be no question where in the U.S. I am when I’m sitting in the stands of a ballpark.  What would that look like in Vegas?  Slots?  Showgirls?  Garish neon?  That’s not exactly a good

thing at a ballpark.  Cashman Field goes another direction:  it provides a quiet oasis from what one normally associates with Las Vegas, and I appreciate that a good deal.  There were very few promotions–which I like when the baseball is AAA-quality.  All we have to tell us we’re in Vegas are a combination of palm trees and desert mountains past the outfield fence.  (Yes, I know that we have palm trees and desert vistas in southern California.  But I know that I’m not in Southern California because I can SEE the mountains here.)

So while “quiet oasis” isn’t exactly what one thinks of when one thinks of Las Vegas, I like the feel and will rank it high in the “regional feel” category.  When I’m in Las Vegas, my brain can only handle three days of the sensory overload, and even then, I can get a little overwhelmed by the constant lights and BINGBINGBINGBINGBING sounds of the place.  Surely I’m not the only tourist who feels that way.  Unfortunately, we’ve grown to have almost as much bingbingbing in our ballparks as at a Vegas casino.  When I’m enjoying high-quality AAA baseball, I don’t need it.  Cashman Field recognizes this, and even winks at Vegas’ reputation with a cool “only in Vegas” advertising that rings the inside of the ballpark (things like “We love the night games” and “All hits, all the time.”)  The net result was a positive night at the ballpark.

Architecturally, the place has positives and negatives.  Like all three of the warm-weather ballparks

I visited on this trip, it offers the ability to watch the game while on the concourse buying food (especially welcome for most of the fans on this Thirsty Thursday Dollar Beer night).  I do like being able to motor around the ballpark without sacrificing my ability to score the game.  There are grassy hill areas by both foul poles, but there is no trespassing on the grass.  When I was there, I thought that was a shame, because I was picturing that being a nice place to picnic on gorgeous desert summer nights…but then, the next night in Lake Elsinore, I realized they were actually just preventing eight-year-old boys from beating the crap out of each other, a common activity on such hills.  On the negative side, its setting is well north of the strip and downtown, and it adjoins a convention center and some sort of museum, which makes it a little nondescript.  There’s nothing interesting about its external architecture.  Although I like the combination of tans and reds, Cashman Field’s connection to other buildings takes away any interest in its footprint (and makes my traditional pregame hike-around-the-ballpark a lot more taxing and arduous, especially on the bum knee I lugged along).  In the no-excuses department, I was really disappointed to find a prodigious amount of trash in the front row upon my arrival at the park.  This was opening day!  I guess they hadn’t bothered fully cleaning up since the last event there, which I believe was a major league tune-up at least four days prior.

Cashman Field has the kind of history-of-baseball-in-the-area stuff I like on its concourse, but they do some things that make it not as nice as it is in places where it’s done well (like Wichita or Spokane).  They have a number of past greats for the Las Vegas Stars and other minor league ballclubs from the city, which I enjoyed, especially because I had not heard

of so many of the ballplayers, such as Paul Faries.  They had Dodgers history mapped out as well.  Even though the 51s are a Dodger affiliate, I didn’t care for these.  I love Jackie Robinson and all, but because his story does not involve Las Vegas, his tribute seemed out of place.  And it certainly seemed out of place when their walk of fame also featured famous movie aliens.  Yes, that’s right…Tommy Lasorda is in the Hall of Fame with Jabba the Hut.  I’m all for wackiness, but this has all the markings of a ballclub and stadium that is simply trying too hard.  Ease up, guys.  This sort of stuff is out of character for a ballpark where, for the most part, they let the baseball be the star.

Speaking of trying too hard, let’s talk for a second about the nickname

of 51s and the mascot:  Hate them.  I never, ever, want marketing to be so stinking obvious.  Sure, I guess we could argue that the nickname is locally appropriate, but I don’t think that was the primary reason for its selection.  It’s clear to me that the primary reason that the name was changed to 51s was to increase the number of fuzzy items that would be sold, as well as hats, etc.  The alien they have on their hat isn’t even intimidating looking (like the guys from Independence Day).  He looks wise and friendly (like E.T.).  Don’t get me wrong:  I loved E.T., and cried when I first saw it at age 12.  But puh-leez.  What’s on a hat should be something that shows pride, tradition, or elicits intimidation.  The 51s go oh-for-three in that regard.

Opening Day 2006 in the minors meant there were replacement umpires on the field.  The minor league umpires, after not enjoying a pay raise in nearly a decade, were given an offer whose

miniscule pay raise was almost entirely counteracted by raises in their health insurance deductible.  When they struck to get a fair deal, Minor League Baseball decided to recruit replacement/scab umpires.  News accounts said that the replacement umpires were recruited from college, high school, and even Little League.

This was the background for a fascinating conversation I overheard.  A young guy in the stands came down to the front row during warmups and called some 51s player over.  He was a striking ump.  The players were very friendly and supportive; I think they were worried about what they’d see in the replacements. Also, many of them had likely risen through the minors alongside these umps.  The players asked what they could do to help the umps.  The ump said “Don’t go crazy, but if you could make it clear you don’t like a call, that’d help a lot.”  Sure enough, there was an ejection that day…a Fresno player got run for arguing a called third strike.  I feel like I know why.

This night also marked the first time my travels overlapped with the travels of someone else trying to make it to all the ballparks.  I met Doug and Carrie.  They’re a married couple

who were actually ahead of me in the quest to get to a minor league game in all fifty states!  They had a little bit of an advantage in that both of them are in the military, so their jobs have brought them within driving distance of a lot more ballparks than most people.  We enjoyed a long stretch of very nice conversation about ballparks.  I liked Cashman Field a lot more than they did, as it turns out.  We talked about major league parks we both have liked through the years–San Francisco, Kansas City, Boston.  Carrie helped me with some missed scoring decisions.  We were headed in opposite directions:  I had just come from San Diego the night before, and they were on their way there the next night.  Still, our paths crossed on this night, and I do hope they cross again.  Guys, drop me an email if you’re ever headed up to the Pacific Northwest.  Tacoma, Safeco, Everett, Portland, Salem…I’d love to join you.  The pretzels are on me.

So, on the whole, a nice quiet night at a place where the baseball was in the foreground.  It wasn’t a perfect ballpark, but on the whole, I felt like the 51s understood what a night at the ballpark should be about.

BALLPARK SCORE:

Regional feel:  8/10
I’m going against the grain on this one.  The ballpark was not much at all what I picture Las Vegas to be, except for the lovely desert mountain views.  But that’s what I liked about it, actually, so that’s why I give it a high score here.  If Vegas is a desert of noise, this place was an oasis of quiet baseball.

Charm:  2.5/5
Occasionally overblown in this department.

Spectacle: 4/5
Very few promotions, which I like for AAA ball, but still enough appropriate distraction if that’s what one likes.

Team mascot/name:  1/5


Cosmo and me.  Don’t like the name at all–never let your marketing be so transparent.  And this guy is goofy-looking.

Aesthetics:  3/5
The park itself is a bit dumpy, but the mountain views are lovely.

Pavilion area:  3.5/5

Scoreability:  3.5/5
Missed a key scoring decision, and the scoreboard guy was a hair slow at times.

Fans:  2/5
This part was bizarre.  Perhaps most surprisingly, most of the fans around me weren’t from Las Vegas.  Not at all surprisingly, most of the fans on Dollar Beer Night were smashed and idiotic.  Doug and Carrie actually brought this score up a point.

Intangibles:  5/5
I just kept enjoying how quiet it was, and what a nice break it was from the bingbingbing.

TOTAL:  32.5/50

BASEBALL STUFF I’VE SEEN HERE:

The Grizzlies’ Brad Hennessey gives up 7 runs, but only 1 of them is earned due to 2 errors by his teammate Tomas de la Rosa’s 2 errors.