Chase Field, Phoenix (Year Four of our Quest is About to Begin)

 

Kerry and I are beginning season 4 of our five-year quest to see all 30 of the MLB stadiums plus all 30 of the AAA stadiums. So far, we’re on track, having been to a total of 37 of the 60 stadiums (61.7%) after three of the five years (60%).

At this point, we’re pretty sure we’re going to complete it, in large part because we are thoroughly enjoying it, the occasional rain delay, long drive, or (less frequently) completely uninteresting game aside.

Also, we know we’ll find something fascinating, often in unexpected places. It may be the food (the Green Chile Philly at Albuquerque, Béisbowl in Miami), a beautiful stadium (too many to list, particularly in the majors), or catching up with old friends or making new ones (we’ve attended games with more than 20 different people so far, some of whom we hadn’t seen in 50 years). It may be a creative promo (Bruce the Bat Dog in Rochester), a truly bizarre story (the saga of the illicit pieces of a shredded stadium roof and the dead bodies just under the pavement of the parking lot in St. Petersburg), an interesting museum (the Louisville Slugger Museum, the Negro Leagues and Bobblehead Halls of Fame), or a different take on baseball (Field of Dreams field, the Savannah Bananas). It may be the human interest aspect of seeing players moving up or down through AAA, or even umpires on their way up (we saw Jen Pawel behind the plate in a AAA game a few weeks before she made history by being the first woman to umpire an MLB game).

This year, we’ve got four trips planned, all involving flying in and renting a car.

April 2-3 (or 4, depending on weather): Nashville and Memphis (and stay tuned about the weather);

April 11: Indianapolis (Kerry has a meeting there at a time when the team is in town, the third time we will have done that);

April 27- May 13: Chicago (both Cubs and White Sox), Columbus, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland and Cincinnati;

May 28-30: Tacoma and Seattle.

We may take a one-day trip to St. Paul to see the Saints, or to St. Petersburg to see the Rays play in the infamous Tropicana Field (we saw them play at the Yankees’ Spring Training stadium while the Trop was undergoing repairs from hurricane damage, hence the story about pieces of the roof).

That will leave just two East Coast swings, one to Syracuse, New York City, Boston and Worcester, and one to Baltimore, Washington, Norfolk, Charlotte and Durham.

Come along for the ride!

The game (Arizona 9, Detroit 6)

Tonight was Arizona’s first home game of the season, so it was a sell-out (48,350 tickets) in MLB’s second-largest stadium. But the thing I took away from the game was how often the “theme” (the most important fact or event) of a game can change during the course of the game. Normally, I try to keep the discussions of the games short, but it was the complexity (in a dramatist’s sense) of this game that was interesting.

Going into the game, the biggest story was the return of Justin Verlander, who spent the first dozen years of what is clearly a Hall-of-Fame career in Detroit. Now in his 21^st season in the majors, Verlander has won more than 20% more games than any other active pitcher, and has won the Cy Young Award as the league’s best pitcher three times, albeit only one was with Detroit. At age 43, he signed as a free agent with the Tigers, and his return was eagerly anticipated by a team that made the second round of the playoffs last year. He’s no longer the Tigers’ ace (that distinction goes to Tarik Skubal, who was won the last two American League Cy Young Awards), but could he help them win their first World Series in more than 30 years?

After two innings, his team was behind 5-0, and the Diamondbacks were hitting the ball hard off Verlander.

Next story: Diamondback star Corbin Carroll had a triple in the first inning against Verlander, and a home run in the second. That meant that he was half way to hitting “for the cycle” (single, double, triple  and home run in a single game). I’ve never seen an MLB player hit for the cycle, although the Dbacks have had five players do it in their 27-year history. The closest I’ve ever seen anyone come was when a young Chris Taylor, who had just been traded to the Dodgers, hit his first career home run, and also had a double and triple, leaving him just a single shy of the cycle in what was clearly going to be his last at-bat of a game against the Dbacks. He tried to beat out a bunt, but was thrown out. So hitting for the cycle, or even coming as close as Taylor did, is memorable. Tonight, Carroll didn’t get any more hits, so while his first two innings still qualified it as a great game, it wasn’t truly memorable.

Next story: The Diamondbacks starting pitcher was Michael Soroka. He had one great season, coming in second in Rookie of the Year voting in 2019 as a 21-year-old, but has had little success since – missing two full seasons with injuries didn’t help. To be honest, I didn’t even know the Diamondbacks had him until I saw his name on the scoreboard. He got hit hard the first couple of innings, but unlike Verlander, he never gave up a big hit, and then he got better. By the time the fifth inning rolled around, he was still pitching, and still hadn’t given up a run, although he had thrown enough pitches that it was questionable whether the manager would leave him in for the full fifth inning. But it was a quick inning, three straight swinging strikeouts.

It wasn’t until they posted it on the scorebard during the next half-inning that I realized that it wasn’t just a quick inning, it was a memorable inning. Soroka threw nine pitches and struck out three batters, the absolute minimum number of pitches. There’s a term for that. It’s called an “ImmaculateInning.” It’s the fourth in the team’s history, which means it’s comparably rare to hitting for the cycle. For that matter, there have been four no-hitters in the team’s history as well. But unlike a no-hitter or hitting for the cycle, the drama doesn’t build from inning to inning, so it doesn’t have the same feel. As I noted, I didn’t realize it was an immaculate inning until later, but with a cycle or a no-hitter, the whole ballpark would be aware. Still, it’s impressive.

Next story: In the bottom of the fifth, the Dbacks got three more runs, so it was 8-0, and it was clear that Soroka, with his scoreless start and immaculate inning, would be the story. Then two Diamondback relievers fell apart in the 7^th inning, fell apart to such an extent that the score was 8-6 with two out and a runner on first. The sell-out crowd was beginning to boo, a little at first, then louder and louder as the next two batters walked to load the bases. But the third pitcher of the inning got the out, the Dbacks added a run in the bottom of the 7^th, and the Tigers didn’t have another baserunner for the rest of the game. So Soroka was the story of the game.

I love the way a game ebbs and flows.