Las Vegas (In Praise of "Minor League" Cities)

We frequently get asked why we are going to the AAA parks as well as the major league parks. A part of the answer is that it’s more challenging – lots of people try to hit all 30 of the MLB parks, but the AAA parks aren’t usually thought of. But another part is that we’re getting to cities we’ve never been to before, some of which are quite nice. We were impressed by our brief stays in downtown El Paso and Des Moines, we really enjoyed the Nuclear Museum in Albuquerque and the Omaha Zoo (there was a popular family TV show we both watched as kids, called “Wild Kingdom” hosted by Marlin Perkins of the Omaha Zoo). I’m sure that we’re going to discover things in many of the other AAA cities we go to.

We’re now  in one that we might not have seen otherwise. Las Vegas is just across the Colorado River from the state of Arizona, and while we’ve lived in Arizona for nearly 38 years, it took this quest for us to see any of Las Vegas other than the airport.

Las Vegas is not a destination for scientific conferences. Not much planetary science happens at UNLV (although they have just hired a young woman who studies meteorites and Mars). I can imagine doctor’s conferences being in Las Vegas, but Kerry doesn’t go to that many. It’s certainly not on the way to anywhere driving, since we had to take a variety of non-interstate roads throughout the day to get there.

Finally, although it’s a tourist destination, Las Vegas has just never appealed to us. After we’d lived in Arizona for a little more than a decade, Kerry and I planned a long weekend trip to Las Vegas just for the two of us. But as the time approached, we were each getting grumpier and grumpier, until we talked about it, and found out that each one of us was agreeing to go because we thought the other wanted to. So we cancelled that trip, and never planned another one to Vegas for a quarter of a century.

Our big problem is that Las Vegas was built on gambling. I’ve never understood the appeal of playing a game where I know I’m going to lose in the long run, such as slot machines or blackjack. I know there are people who set a limit for themselves on how much they’re willing to lose, and play until they’ve lost that much, and find it entertaining, and that’s fine. We’d rather spend our money going to baseball games, or going to a show, than playing a game of chance. Las Vegas once had a reputation for having cheap food and shows, but that reputation was gone by the time we first thought about going.

On the other hand, our older son is an airline pilot, and he doesn’t mind spending the night in Las Vegas in the middle of multi-day trips. In particular, one of his favorite overnights was when he ended up in Vegas on Halloween, and just walked the Strip people-watching. 

It’s not that I’m opposed to betting. Poker, for example, has always intrigued me. My favorite game was one that was centered in the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and ran every few weeks for a number of years. I don’t remember all the details now, but the stakes were such that the biggest winners and losers at the end of the night were typically about $20 or $30. It was a very social game, but also very competitive – few, if any, of the players drank alcohol while playing. It was also a very capitalistic game, in the sense that it took a while to learn the strategies of the five or six different games regularly played, so beginning players (like new graduate students) tended to be the big losers, and those who had been around a while (faculty, and graduate students who were about to graduate and get jobs) were the big winners. In other words, money moved to those who had from those who didn’t. One of the best in that game was my friend Mike Drake, who said, “I like to bet, but I don’t like to gamble.” I’ve always thought that was a good way to look at it, and since I’m not interested enough in poker to try to play it professionally, Las Vegas lacked that appeal.

Now, though, Las Vegas is acquiring major league sports franchises. The current Oakland A’s are the latest, joining the Raiders (NFL), Knights (NHL), and Aces (WNBA). Only the NBA and MSL aren’t there.

It’s an interesting dynamic. The Las Vegas metropolitan area is the 29^th largest in the country, sandwiched between Sacramento and Cincinnati. The next-smallest to have 4 major league sports franchises is Denver, at #19. A couple of metro areas that are larger than Las Vegas (San Antonio and Austin) have only one. Will Las Vegas teams be able to draw crowds? Probably, because Las Vegas is a tourist destination, but I suspect the crowds for baseball, in particular, will be dominated by fans of the other team much of the time.

In the meantime, we’ve made it to Vegas. The photo is of the 50 or so people in line to have their pictures taken with the small, but famous (National Register of Historical Places) Welcome to Las Vegas sign. Tomorrow we’ll check out a pinball museum that we’ve heard great things about, then go to a minor league game. Even if we don’t always visit cities for the same reasons others do, we do have fun.