VyStar Ballpark, Jacksonville (AAA #13 - How shall we get to the game?)

 

 

It’s always a challenge to figure out how to get to and from the stadium for a game. The “to” part isn’t too bad, but the “from”, with all those people leaving at the same time, can be a real adventure.  

In an automobile-oriented nation like ours, driving is the obvious way to go. In suburban minor league parks (Round Rock, Sugar Land), that works quite well, but at major league parks, particularly those with good attendance and lots of people driving, it can be a real mess. Dodger Stadium is the worst example I’ve ever seen, with the acres of parking lots leading into very few exits, but driving is really the only option there (except rideshare – more on that later). At many parks there are parking garages, but you can get a year’s worth of your carbon monoxide dose just getting out of the garage.

What about public transit? I don’t remember it being an option at any of the AAA parks we’ve been to, but we’ve successfully taken public transit to games in San Francisco on this trip, and have used it in (I may be forgetting some) St. Louis, Washington, San Diego and New York on other trips. In Phoenix, thousands of fans use it every game. It clearly eases the traffic congestion at the stadium, and also makes life easier for those who take it to and from park-and-ride lots.

Our favorite is walking, but that requires being close enough to the stadium (a mile is generally our limit), in neighborhoods you don’t mind walking through.

* In Phoenix, we always walk to games, because we have a condo within walking distance. It’s not a coincidence we have a summer home in downtown Phoenix.

* In San Diego, we were just a block or two from the ballpark, in Pittsburgh, we were just across a scenic bridge.

* In Houston, we stayed about a mile away, but there was a route that didn’t seem too sketchy.

* In Kansas City, we stayed at a hotel just across the interstate from the stadium, which is in the suburbs. The walk wasn’t that long, but walking across the overpass wasn’t exactly scenic.

* In El Paso, Oklahoma City, and Reno, our hotel was literally across the street from the ballpark, and we only had to walk a few blocks in Des Moines and Louisville.

If we’re not close enough to walk, there’s no public transit, and parking is going to be outlandishly expensive, and/or time-consuming, we take rideshare, and we’ve had some adventures with that.

Many major league teams have dedicated places where you can catch your rideshare.

* At Dodger Stadium, the rideshare pickup is between the stadium and the parking lots, which looks really tempting, except for the fact that I’m sure the rideshares have to compete with all the cars from the parking lot for the handful of exits.

* Oakland had a nice dedicated rideshare area that we used, and Kansas City has a nice area, although we didn’t use it.

At other stadiums, it’s a challenge.

* I went to a game at Wrigley Field in Chicago three years ago, and it took me 30 minutes to get to a location where a rideshare would pick me up, and then I had to wait another 15 to get a ride. If they have a dedicated location, they didn’t seem to have any staff who knew about it. I should have rented one of those bicycles I saw for rent along the lakefront, and ridden the 10 miles to and from my hotel – it would have been quicker.  

* In St. Louis, there was a description of a dedicated rideshare location, but we never did find it, finally walking about six blocks until we were out of the busiest traffic.

* In Denver, the game when we took a rideshare coincided with the Denver Nuggets playing in the NBA Finals. Although the Nuggets were out of town, their fans converged on the bars near Coors Field to watch the game and, later, to celebrate a victory, so many streets were completely impassable because they were filled with people. We eventually found a corner several blocks from the stadium where a driver was able to pause in stalled traffic to let us get in.

Which brings us to Miami and Jacksonville. There weren’t many people at either game in Miami (a total of under 15,000 for the two combined), but the stadium is in the middle of a neighborhood with not much more parking than Wrigley Field’s, and a lot more non-game traffic. We took a rideshare home from the first game. They have a dedicated space for the rideshares (so far so good), although the rideshare did have to take some time to get there. But then the traffic was pretty much gridlock, so the trip back to the hotel reminded me of the classic description of many activities (I’ve heard Kerry use it to describe an obstetrics ward in a hospital, and I’ve heard it applied to other things as well) of long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. Generally, we only seemed to advance when our driver successfully took some ridiculous chance at an impossibly narrow opening. Including the wait for the ride to get there, it took 45 minutes to go about a mile. The next game was an afternoon game, and we’d seen the area, so we walked back. It took under a half-hour, and was much less stressful, if less thrilling.

In Jacksonville, it’s a downtown stadium, but surrounded by acres of parking, because it’s part of the same complex as the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team, so we decided to drive. The baseball team’s website says that they don’t control parking, but it’s usually $3 to $10. When we bought our tickets online, we had the option of buying a parking space, too, for $22, so we passed, since it didn’t seem like a deal. When we got to the stadium, it turned out that we had indeed saved money – they were only charging $21.50. But the parking lot they directed us to was full, so we had to drive around a bit before ending up in another of the football stadium lots. After the game, we thought we’d be able to get away reasonably well, particularly since it was a fireworks night at a minor league ballpark, and we weren’t staying for the fireworks.

It turns out that Google Maps can get quite confused by post-game traffic, when police close some streets, and make others one-way. There were a couple of intersections that we went through twice, in opposite directions, after Google sent us down a street that was blocked off, and we got sent back to where we’d already been. But we made it back to the hotel safely.

Comparing the Marlins and their AAA team

The Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp (I’m not sure about the name, but I do like their promotion of their fans as the “Crustacean Nation”) are the AAA team for the Miami Marlins. We were in Miami for two games this week, and then in Jacksonville for a game this evening. I was fascinated by the difference.

Let’s start with the stadium. Miami’s LoanDepot Park has a beautiful view of the Miami skyline. Jacksonville’s VyStar Ballpark has a view of the top of the Jacksonville Jaguars’ football stadium. But Jacksonville has the modern metal-detectors for screening patrons, while Miami still has the older kind, so that everyone has to take out cell phones, hand their clear bags to someone to search through, etc. In a customer service survey, Kerry told the Marlins that if they had a fan base, they would have a very hard time getting the crowd into the stadium for the first pitch.

The Jacksonville crowd was slightly larger than the average of the two Miami games.  Since it was in a stadium that seats half as many as the Marlins’ stadium (a third as many if you include the upper deck seats in Miami that they don’t offer for sale), there was much more of a buzz to the crowd in the minor league park. In fairness, it was two weekday games in Miami (one in the afternoon) against a Saturday night with fireworks in Jacksonville, but still.

While I saw a fair percentage of Marlins’ caps and jerseys among the fans who were there, I saw a comparable amount of Jumbo Shrimp gear at Jacksonville, a surprisingly high amount for a minor league team. And I saw not a single item in Jacksonville that said “Marlins,” even though I saw caps and jerseys from about a dozen other major league teams.

In keeping with their season record (12 wins, 13 losses), the Marlins won one of two games we saw. But they seemed a little listless, including getting a lot of bases stolen against them. The Jumbo Shrimp, on the other hand, have the best record of the 30 AAA teams (21-6), and played like it, winning 2-0, making no mistakes, running hard on plays that looked like a lost cause (one batter hit a weak ground ball to the pitcher, but beat the throw to first), stealing two bases, and throwing out the only runner who tried to steal against them. Plus, the pitching, starting with Janson Junk and finishing with Seth Martinez, was spotless. They haven't given up a single run in the first two games of their current series.

Comparing the Braves and their AAA team

The Jumbo Shrimp were playing the Gwinnett Stripers, the AAA team of the Atlanta Braves. Next week, we’ll see both the Braves and the Stripers, so we get to compare them to. But here are some impressions going into that week. Unlike the Marlins, the Braves have an avid fan base. By far the most common MLB gear in the stadium tonight was Braves (although I didn’t see anything that said “Gwinnett”). Also unlike the Marlins, the Braves have been very good for a very long time, winning the World Series as recently as 2021, and having been in the postseason every year since 2018.

However, like the Marlins, the Braves are losing slightly more games than they are winning this year. They have some great players, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see them start winning at some point. If they don’t, however, they could be in real trouble, because they don’t look like they’ve got much help in AAA. The Stripers are also losing slightly more often than they win, and while they didn’t look bad tonight (in particular, their pitching was very good), five of their nine starting hitters have five or more years of major league experience. Two of them, Garrett Cooper and James McCann, are both 34 years old, both one-time Major League All-Stars with 11 years of experience each in the bigs. In other words, they have players on the tail end of good to very good careers, and while they might be an adequate fill-in for someone who is injured for a couple of weeks, it looks like if and when the Braves have to rebuild, it won’t be from the players currently in AAA.