Chickasaw Bricktown Ballyard, Oklahoma City (AAA #5 - 4th of July in the minors)

 

 

4^th of July at the ballpark in Oklahoma City, the last game of this tour.

It’s a downtown ballpark, with lots of hotels and restaurants around (although several of the restaurants weren’t open on the 4^th). I’ve become a fan of downtown ballparks over the years. There’s what looks to be a nice pedestrian walkway along a canal a little below street level, reminiscent of San Antonio’s Riverwalk, although we aren’t in town long enough to really see what it’s like.

Some ballparks have a better skyline than others. Chickasaw Bricktown is one of the others. The skyline is a parking garage and three chain hotels. The flip side of that is that I’m sure there are a lot of hotel rooms with views into the park, and the parking garage had a lot of people standing at the railing watching the game. I don’t know if that’s always true, or just when they are having fireworks and are close to sold out (9800, in a seat that the web says seats 9000, although there were a few empty seats here and there).

 

The fireworks show was good. Not quite as good as they do in Phoenix, but better than the show in Kansas City last Friday night. So if a minor league team is in between two major league teams, they’re doing OK. I saw the woman next to Kerry wipe away tears during the fireworks, and while I’m all for patriotic fireworks, I thought it was a little much. Until Kerry explained to me that the woman’s fiancé had proposed to her during the fireworks show!

Singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” (TMOttBG for short) is a well-known 7^th inning stretch standard (though most people know only the chorus, not the verses, but that’s another story). But many places have other traditions as well. The two best-known are probably Wrigley Field and Fenway Park. In Wrigley, they have celebrity guests lead the singing of TMOttBG. In Fenway, they sing “Sweet Caroline.” But there are other traditions as well, and I’m sure I’ll learn some I don’t know about as we visit more ballparks. In St. Louis, when Anheuser-Busch owned the team, TMOttBG was always followed by the AB Clydesdales song - that’s now been demoted to the 8^th inning, though it’s still something of a city anthem. In Houston, they add “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” In Arlington, they have a set of a few Texas-appropriate songs they rotate through, although they never use “Deep in the Heart of Texas” if the Astros are in town. In Oklahoma City, they follow TMOttBG with the state song, “Oklahoma!” from the musical of the same name, with the refrain “Oklahoma, OK.” So again, they’re doing OK.

There was one thing that was distinctly minor league. Instead of selling programs or scorecards, a lot of teams are using online programs, and displaying a QR code for you to download it. I must admit that I haven't tried it before, so maybe they're all this bad, but of tonight's 20 starters for the two teams combined, only 12 were listed in the online program, and one of those was listed with a number different from the one he was wearing. I thought the idea was that you could update an online program more rapidly.

The game:

The Oklahoma City Dodgers beat the Albuquerque Isotopes, 7-4. It was the second time we’d seen each of those teams play.

Each team has a player that struck me as looking better than AAA. Michael Busch of the Dodgers had a double and a home run, and played a nifty third base (he did get charged with a throwing error, but Kerry and I both thought it was a bad call). The last time we saw OKC, Busch had two doubles. That’s three doubles and a homer in two games, and his batting average is over .300. Between the two times we saw him, he spent a lot of the time between playing the majors. But in 15 games with LA, he hit .200 and had only three extra-base hits (all doubles), so he had more extra-base hits in the two games we saw than in the 15 games he played in the bigs. This year is the first year that he’s spent any time in the majors, so I think he’ll get more chances.

Cole Tucker of the Rockies had some chances, playing from 18 to 56 games per year with the Pirates from 2019 through 2022. The only time he was really a regular was in the COVID-shortened year of 2020, when he played more games in center than anyone else on the Pirates. But he never hit above .220, and the Pirates gave up on him. The Rockies signed him to a minor league contract, and he is hitting about .350. That’s inflated some by playing in Albuquerque, but it’s still the best on the team, and the parent team is in last place, yet they haven’t called him up. He’s not that old (he turned 27 yesterday), but you have to wonder if he’s out of chances. Tonight he had three hits (one an inside-the-park homer) and a walk in five trips to the plate. Like Busch, he looks like he’s better than this league, but maybe he’s a “4A” player, too good for AAA, but not good enough for the majors. Time will tell.

I’m going to pick on the Oklahoma City defense again. Full disclosure: as a fan of a non-Dodger team in the NL West, I’m obligated to dislike the Dodgers, but hear me out.

We went to five minor league games on this trip, and saw 9 stolen bases. Five were stolen against the Dodgers in the two games we saw them. All other teams in all other games stole a total of four. The parent club lead the majors by a fairly wide margin in stolen bases allowed.

In the 15 games we’ve seen, we’ve seen two inside-the-park home runs, both against the Dodgers. Against El Paso, there was a ball to the wall between the left and center fielders, and both jumped for it unsuccessfully, rather than one of them backing up the other. Tonight, Tucker hit a fly ball to the wall in dead center. The (same) center fielder made a leaping try (again) but it went off the top of the wall (again). This time it wasn’t in the gap, so no one else went for it. But they didn’t back him up, either, so the ball rolled back toward the infield as Tucker circled the bases.

Albuquerque had only one error, but it cost them three runs, and they lost by three. With the bases loaded and no one out in the 6th, the batter hit a sharp one-hopper back to pitcher PJ Poulin. Poulin didn’t catch it cleanly, but knocked it down, and recovered in time to fire to the plate for the force out. Except that he threw it away, and two runs scored, and another runner ended up on 3^rd where a sacrifice fly later in the inning (which should have been the third out) scored him. 

Final thoughts about tour #1:

We're leaving early in the morning for the drive home, but I'll be posting these in the coming days.