Constellation Field, Sugar Land, Texas (AAA #7 - WristbandGate)

 

Tonight was our first AAA game of the year, and it was a beautiful night at a nice, if somewhat empty, minor league park. It was an enjoyable evening – it was baseball, outdoors in pleasant weather, after all – but we ended up spending a chunk of the evening discussing, and researching on the Web, the most interesting non-game-related story of the baseball season, the impending move of the Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas.

That’s because the Sugar Land Space Cowboys, the Astros’ AAA team, was hosting the Las Vegas Aviators, the A’s top farm team, and the leadoff hitter for the game was Esteury Ruiz, a player at the center of “wristbandgate.”

We’ll get to Las Vegas and Oakland this year. In fact, one of the factors determining which stadiums we would visit was a desire to see an MLB game in Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, where the A’s have played since 1968, before they leave. They’re moving to Las Vegas, so there will no longer be minor league baseball there, so another city will have a AAA team. There will also be a few years where the A’s will be somewhat nomadic (the latest I’ve heard is that there will be major league baseball in Sacramento next year), before the new stadium is complete in Las Vegas, and the A’s can move in. We haven’t decided whether we’ll try to see every stadium the A’s play home games in for the next few years.

But back to wristbandgate. 

The A’s only representative in the All-Star game last year was Brent Rooker, and he’s been benched. Arguably their best player was Ruiz, who led the American League in stolen bases, and is an exciting young player. Ruiz got three hits in his first seven at-bats this year, and was sent to the minors. Rooker did not start the year well, going 0-for-11, and was benched. But do the A’s, who lost 113 of 162 games last year, really have players better than Ruiz and Rooker waiting in the wings?

Conspiracy theorists have opined that those personnel decisions came because both Rooker and Ruiz have worn wristbands from a group that celebrates the history of Oakland Coliseum (and, sometimes not so subtlely, criticizes A's ownership for moving the team). It may or may not be true -- the manager, Mark Kotsay, has been seen with one, too, and he’s still got his job -- but it’s fun.

There’s much more to the Oakland story, but I’m really looking forward to those Oakland games. And we'll be wearing wristbands.

The game:

The Space Cowboys won on a walk-off, 5-4. There were things about the game that were, well, minor league. The game was tied going into the bottom of the 9^th inning, but after a walk to the leadoff hitter (the 13^th walk of the game), Aviator pitcher Tyler Ferguson got the next batter to hit a ground ball that should have been a double-play. But the Aviators’ shortstop (who also struck out three times) booted it for an error, and next hitter,  Space Cowboy shortstop Shay Whitcomb, lined a clean single to score the winning run.

Incidentally, the Aviators’ loss wasn’t the fault of Esteury Ruiz. He had two hits and a stolen base. Maybe the A’s, who are 1-6 on the season, could use a player like him.

Notes:

We’ve been to six games in three stadiums in the first eight days of the season. We won’t keep going to games at this pace, though. In fact, it will be nearly a week before our next one, with an attempt at viewing a solar eclipse in between.

Constellation Field is nice, but rather small (7667 capacity, second smallest in the 12-team Pacific Coast League), and the game drew only 2367 fans, easily the smallest crowd at a game we’ve been to. It was a weeknight in April, though.

I like the little personal touches about minor league baseball. There was a boy, perhaps 10 or 12, who yelled to the Space Cowboys’ first baseman Will Wagner (by name, between innings, which is the polite way to do it) that he wanted a ball, and Wagner nodded. The next time an inning ended with a throw to Wagner, Wagner threw the ball that he’d caught for the last out over the fan-protection screen, and hit the kid right in the glove. We thought it was well-done, all the way around.

The Space Cowboys are the top farm team for the Astros, and the stadiums are about 30 minutes driving time apart (an hour in rush hour). That’s very convenient when you want to call a player up from AAA because of an injury or something like that. It’s also convenient if you’re trying to see all the AAA and MLB parks – we’re staying within walking distance of Minute Maid Park, but actually got home in about the same length of time tonight, since we could drive (without a traffic jam). This is one of three cases where the AAA team is in the same metro area as the MLB team (the Twins’ Saint Paul affiliate, and the Braves’ Gwinnett County team are the others).  

Although “Constellation Field” fits into the Houston space-themed baseball (“Astros”, “Space Cowboys”, with mascots named “Orbit” and “Orion,” respectively), Constellation is actually a power company. And the field is very Texas. They don’t sing “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” as they do during the 7^th inning stretch at Minute Maid Park, but the scoreboard is in the shape of a map of Texas.

Finally, our second game last year, we saw a young man named Quincy Hamilton hit home runs in his first two at-bats at the AAA level after being promoted to the Space Cowboys from AA. The bad news for Quincy is that he's still in AAA, and hasn't yet gotten a shot at the bigs. Also, he didn't play after July 25 last year, so I suspect he was hurt. The good news is that he's still in AAA, and wasn't demoted.