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Surprise, Arizona (What a Surprise!)

  This evening was quite surprising. Today was a day I planned to go to two Arizona Fall League games. The afternoon game was a walk-filled game that lasted over three hours, so it cut down my transit options, but I still had nearly two hours to get out of one stadium, get some food, and get to the other stadium, with the total driving only 20 or 25 minutes. After waiting 20 minutes without success to get waited on at an Applebee’s, I got a quick bite to eat at a fast-food restaurant, then headed to the Glendale stadium. I was surprised when Google told me I was within a mile of the stadium, and I could see stadium lights on the horizon, but they didn’t look like they were on. I was more surprised when I pulled into the stadium parking lot and there wasn’t a soul in sight. I thought I must have misread the schedule, so I got on the web to see what was what, and it said that Glendale had a home game tonight. As I was doing that, a security guard came up and tapped on the windo
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Peoria, Arizona (Arizona Fall League #6 - Baseball with a different vibe)

  One of the joys of living in Arizona, for a baseball fan, is the Arizona Fall League. Starting right after the MLB regular season ends, the six-team AFL has three games a day, six days a week, until nearly Thanksgiving. And the players are good – for example, in the 2022 MLB All-Star game, roughly half the players selected to participate (including more than half the starters) had played in the AFL at some point. For decades, players working their way up the ladder in the minor leagues frequently played “winter ball” in Latin America to keep their skills sharp, and to get to compete against a higher level of competition than they were necessarily seeing in the minors. In the early 1990s, MLB decided that they wanted a more controlled environment for some of the top prospects, so they created the AFL. Each of the six teams is stocked with seven players each from five MLB teams (yes, that adds up to 35 per team, and I never have figured out how they decide playing time). The coac
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Pittsburgh (Remnants of Forbes Field, and the most lopsided World Series ever*

  The last two days have were the first baseball games I’ve gone to in Pittsburgh, but it isn’t the first baseball stadium in Pittsburgh I’ve been at. Sort of. From 1909 until 1970, the Pirates played at Forbes Field , one of the first metal and concrete baseball stadiums. The earliest years of major league baseball were played in stadiums made of wood, which weren’t that sturdy, and had a habit of burning down. Forbes Field wasn’t the first metal and concrete stadium, but it was the first in the National League. In the next two decades, every major league city built one. Two of those, Wrigley Field in Chicago and Fenway Park in Boston, are still in use. By 1958, the nearby University of Pittsburgh was growing enough that the university purchased Forbes Field for the land, with the understanding that the Pirates would play there until a new stadium was built. That new stadium was Three Rivers Stadium , which, like most stadiums being built then, was a multi-purpose (the Pittsbu
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PNC Park, Pittsburgh (A meeting and a ballgame, this time in the owner's box)

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  Slipping away from a meeting for a ballgame is a good way to get to a lot of parks if you have a job where you end up with meetings around the country, even if you’re not trying to systematically see all the stadiums. This trip to Pittsburgh counts as one of those, and also got us some great seats. Kerry is part of the lay leadership for our church denomination (Disciples of Christ) in the state, and was asked to go to a meeting of state leaders from across the nation in Pittsburgh this week. The person doing the asking, Jay Hartley, knows Kerry well enough that he mentioned that the Pirates were going to be in town when he did the ask, so she was hooked, and I came along. Incidentally, we went to last night’s game with Jay, a die-hard Reds’ fan, and his wife, whose engagement ring was paid for by selling an extensive baseball card collection. Today, the folks in charge of the meeting put together an outing at the ballpark for anyone who wanted to come, so we (and Jay) naturall
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