AutoZone Park, Memphis (AAA #20 - The Joy of Logistics, The Trouble with Weather)

 

 

 

    A part of the fun of this quest is the planning, at least for me. Kerry just stays away from it, except for answering questions about preferences. This is a fairly short trip, two games, three nights, but there were plenty of decisions that went into the logistics we ended up with. And one of the factors that goes into all the planning is the weather, which you don't really know until it happens.

    There are three choices that we’ve made throughout the quest, and which, in fact, we make for virtually all of our travel. 1) We fly on American Airlines, 2) we stay at Marriott hotels, and 3) we rent cars from Enterprise. I won’t claim that any of those are the best at what they do, but they are all options for every MLB or AAA city, and building up “miles” or “points” leads to perks that are worthwhile. We get the occasional free night’s stay or airline trip with miles, and even an occasional free upgrade to First Class (which happened flying to Nashville this week), but the big deal is that we get treated better. I suspect it would also be true if we had chosen United, Hilton and Hertz, but companies tend to treat their frequent flier/guest/renters well, better than any of them treat you if you spread your spending around.

    Now having made those choices, how do we plan a short trip to Tennessee?

Part of another trip?

    The first consideration is whether to just go to the two Tennessee cities with AAA teams, Nashville and Memphis, or to make it part of a larger trip.

    At first, we planned on just making it a part of our longest trip of this year, a swing starting in Chicago, and including Detroit and four cities in Ohio (we will have picked up Indianapolis and Louisville on trips for non-baseball reasons) before heading back to Chicago. It’s a little more than a four-hour drive from Cincinnati to Nashville, and a seven-hour drive from Nashville to Chicago. Those are both easily done in a single day, so that’s OK. But it’s only a three and a half hour flight from Phoenix to Nashville, so even including the time spent going through security and waiting at the gate, it’s certainly not much more time if we fly, and is possibly less. Plus, U.S. commercial airline travel is far safer per mile than driving on the highway, even if we are both excellent drivers (yes, that’s a nod to the movie Rainman). So we’re making it a separate trip.

What part of the season?

    Tennessee is too hot in mid-summer. Our first year, we traveled in June and July, and sweltered in Minneapolis, Kansas City, and Oklahoma City. So we’ll limit it to April or May, which is when we did our Florida/Georgia trip last year, for weather reasons. Our biggest trip of this year is that trip to Chicago. But it includes both Cleveland (too cold at the start of the season) and Cincinnati (sweltering in mid-summer), so we know we don’t want to do that trip in the middle of the summer or in early April. So that moves Chicago into late April and/or May. Plus, our trip to Seattle and Tacoma really only works over Memorial Day – they’re having the FIFA World Cup there during July, when we’d originally planned to go. So Tennessee has gotten limited to the first half of April.

Which first, Nashville or Memphis?

    There are two non-stops per day from Phoenix to Nashville, including one in the morning, but only one per day from Phoenix to Memphis, and it’s evening. Tucson has no nonstop to either. While it’s possible to leave in the morning, make a connection, and still get to Tennessee in time for a game that evening, between the  layover time and the two-hour time change, you have to get up really, really early in the morning to make it work. So we’re flying from Phoenix to Nashville. Of course, it’s a two-hour drive from our home in Tucson to the Phoenix airport, so is that a winner? Only if we’re already in Phoenix, which means it has to be timed to start during a Diamondbacks’ homestand.

What specific dates?

    Now we have to look at the schedules for Memphis, Nashville, and the Diamondbacks. Both Nashville and Memphis have to be at home (obvious, but there are only seven weeks of the season when that’s true), and the Diamondbacks have to be at home the day before we fly out

    The week that works is this one, the first full week of the minor league season. The Diamondbacks had their home opener on the Monday, and then are at home through Sunday. 

    We could have gone to the Monday game in Phoenix, then flown to Nashville for the Tuesday game there, and drive to Memphis for the Wednesday game there. But Tuesday was the home opener for Nashville, which we’d rather avoid (although we did go to a sellout in Oklahoma City on a 4^th of July). Plus Memphis had a noon game on Wednesday after their Tuesday night opener, so that three- hour drive between Nashville and Memphis would be a problem. So we decided to go to the Monday and Tuesday games in Phoenix, then fly to Nashville for Wednesday’s game, then drive to Memphis for Thursday’s.

How many days?

    We do have to drive from Nashville to Memphis and back. Google lists it as just over three hours from one downtown to the other, so we can easily check out of a hotel in one city in the morning, drive to the other, check in to another hotel, and get to an evening game on time. However, if we go to a game in Memphis on Thursday, it would be afternoon before we got back to Nashville on Friday, and while we could probably catch the 5:30 p.m. nonstop to Phoenix, why rush? The other option is to fly out of Memphis on Friday morning, but that would have cost an extra $350 per person in airfare, and it’s $100 more to drop off the car in Memphis (even though it’s a day earlier). The hotel is much less than that $800 per night.

    Plus, that gives us a little margin for error in case of a rainout (more later). Rainouts are always an issue, and on a short trip like this, we don’t have much room for margin, but if Nashville gets rained out Wednesday, we could catch them on Friday. Or if Nashville plays Wednesday, but Memphis gets rained out Thursday, Memphis has an afternoon game Friday, so we could catch that, and still drive back to Nashville in time to catch our Saturday morning flight.

    The final advantage to the extra day is that it gives us half a day Friday to do something touristy. The most obvious ones are Graceland in Memphis or something C&W in Nashville, but neither of us are Elvis fans, and while Nashville could be fine, our music listening habits are stuck in our youth, when we listened to ‘70s rock, and a five- or ten-year experiment with C&W didn’t really take. So instead, we penciled in a Civil War battleground site at Franklin, Tennessee, which we’ve heard good things about.

 What hotels?

    Finally, we have to decide what hotels to stay in. We stick with the Marriott chain, because a) we generally know what to expect (the amazingly cramped “Fairfield Inn” in Philadelphia being the exception), and b) staying in the same chain all the time means that we build up “points,” so we have “status,” so we get little perks, like slightly bigger rooms. However, Nashville and Memphis are both big enough that there are lots of Marriott properties.

    In Nashville, there are two basic options. One is to stay near the stadium, the other is to stay near the airport. Staying near the airport is cheaper in terms of the room rate and the parking, but means that we have to get downtown to the stadium. Sometimes we opt for downtown. This time, we’re opting for the airport, mostly because taking Lyft to and from the stadium is much cheaper than renting a car for an extra day and paying for parking at the hotel and paying for parking at the stadium.

    For Memphis, one of my quirks guided our hotel choice. I’ve never been in the state of Mississippi, one of only five U.S. I haven’t been in. We’re staying in a Fairfield Inn in a suburb on the Mississippi side of the state line, so I can check that off one of my life-lists.

    And after all that, we have a three-day trip all planned out. Mostly.

About the weather

    Getting this trip to work requires some cooperation from the weather, as I described, although we don’t have single-point failures. But we do have to get to two games in three days. While Nashville and  Memphis are 200 miles apart, their weather isn’t that different. So we agreed that we wouldn’t make our final decision on whether to go until we had some idea of the weather forecast (our hotel and car reservations could be cancelled as late as a couple of days in advance, and we bought the airline ticket with miles, which can easily be applied to another trip).

    My favorite weather app is Weather Underground, which will give an hourly forecast as long as 10 days out, so as soon as we got into that window, I started checking Nashville and Memphis weather.

    The weather was not looking great. When the 10-day window first opened, it became clear that there was a storm moving in sometime mid-week.

    When will it actually get there?       

    How bad will it be?

    How long will it stay?

    Will it go straight over eastern Tennessee and reduce the chances of seeing two games to near zero, or will it move north or south and leave us clear days?

    The forecast updates every few hours, and becomes more accurate the closer you get to the time you’re interested in. I ended up doing a spreadsheet to calculate the chances that we would get to two, one, or zero games, based on the chances of rain from game time through the next four or five hours (we’ve had rain delays before) for Nashville on Wednesday night, Memphis on Thursday night, Memphis on Friday noon, and Nashville on Friday night. We agreed that if I didn’t get a 60% chance that we’d see two games, we’d pull the plug, and make the trip in July instead, despite the likely heat. At first, it looked like we were right around the 60% mark, then the chances of rain went up, and timing of the rain spread out. We decided we’d make the call Sunday morning. Saturday night, the numbers worked out to a 49% chance we’d get in two games (and an 11% chance we’d get in none). But the forecast was better Sunday morning, and kept getting better as the forecast was updated every few hours. By Sunday evening, I calculated a 77% chance that we’d get in two games, and only a 2% chance that we’d get none. However, the most likely scenario was seeing a game in Nashville Wednesday, having a rainy day in Memphis Thursday, and seeing a rain-delayed 7-inning game on Friday in Memphis followed by a late drive back to Nashville. So we kept all the reservations. 

    And the forecast kept getting better. By Monday morning it was an 88% chance we’d get two games in, and a 79% chance that we’d finish either Thursday night or with an on-time 7-inning game on Friday. By Tuesday morning it was a 97% chance that we’d get both games in, and a 75% chance we’d be done Thursday evening. The chances of rain had gone to near zero in Nashville on Wednesday and Memphis on Friday, and had dropped to 24% for Memphis Thursday. 

    When it all came to pass, although we saw some beautifully stormy looking clouds before the game in Nashville Wednesday, we didn't get a drop of rain. 

    While the clouds looked ominous as we drove to Memphis Thursday, it never rained during the intercity drive. 

    Then it poured on us as we drove from the hotel to the game. But it stopped as we were looking for the parking garage where we'd reserved a spot.

    Then it started drizzling during the national anthem. But it stopped before the first pitch.

    For the first few innings of the game, we were treated to a beautiful sunset over right field (left picture, at top), one almost good enough to be an Arizona sunset.

    Then, in the bottom of the 7th inning, with the home team leading and probably only 10 outs left in the game, they pulled out the tarp, even though it hadn't started raining. 

    Then it started to rain a little, so we moved up under cover. 

    Then it started to absolute pour buckets (right picture, at top). It rained at least a couple of tenths of an inch in about 40 minutes. I was watching the weather radar on the Weather Underground app, and it was clear that there was one set of clouds rolling through Memphis. 

    The minute the rain stopped, they started preparing the field to play again (more on that below). The total rain delay was just over an hour, then they played for about 30 minutes to finish the game. The announced attendance was a paltry 1286, and by the time it ended, I doubt that the paying spectators exceeded the number of people being paid to be there (players, umpires, team staff). It sure didn't look like it (see photo below).  

    The late finish meant that today we invoked another lesson we've learned in our quest -- we need a day off now and then. In the last four days, we both traveled and went to a game on three of them, and went to a game on the fourth, so today, while we did travel (and will again tomorrow), we bailed on the battlefield. 

    Who knew that this quest would turn me into a connoisseur of travel logistics and weather reports?  

 

 

The game: Memphis Redbirds 6, Norfolk Tides 2 

 

    Memphis has won the first six games of their season, and it didn't look like a fluke. They just seemed like a better team. Norfolk's infielders kept almost making great plays, but not finishing the deal -- the shortstop made a great pickup and a quick throw on a tough play, but threw wild for an error; the second baseman dove to his backhanded and got a glove on a ball, but that only served to slow the ball down enough that the runner was able to hustle into second base. Memphis' infielders completed the plays. There were two plays that I thought epitomized the quality of the play of the two teams. In the bottom of the third, Memphis had a runner on 1st and one out, and the hitter grounded it right back to the pitcher. He methodically turned, and threw to the shortstop to force the runner at second base, but the throw to first, which would have completed the double play, was late. The next half inning, Norfolk had a runner on 1st and one out, and the hitter grounded it right back to the pitcher, He quickly turned, fired to the shortstop to force the runner at second base, and the throw to first to complete the double play beat the runner easily.

    The best overall performance was by Memphis' Blaze Jordan, who crushed two home runs, and hit another ball that might have been hit harder, but wasn't hit as high, and, worse, was hit right at an outfielder. 

    The best single play of the night was by Norfolk center fielder Enrique Bradfield Jr. In the bottom of the 7th inning, on a ball hit to the deepest part of the field, he sprinted back, leapt, and caught the ball as he crashed into wall at full speed. Amazingly, he hung on to it, and even managed to weakly toss it to another outfielder to prevent a runner on base from being able to move up. But he was on the ground for several minutes, and when he did get up, he was helped off the field (although 24 hours later, I can't find any news that he was anything more than shaken up, which is good).

 

Watching the "grounds crew"

 

To have a downpour during the game, but get the game in anyway, you have to treat the field right. That means that you cover the entire infield with a tarpaulin right before it rains (weather radar can tell you that). You then have remove it as soon as the rain ends. The radar shown on Weather Underground can tell you that, too, but it doesn't take a weatherman to know whether it's actively raining (I don't think I've ever made two Bob Dylan references in the same sentence before -- if you don't know, ask). Plus, the outfield, which is not covered, has to drain really quickly. 

 

The outfield is in some ways, the easy part, though it's only in recent decades that it's been perfected. Memphis is typical of many modern stadiums in that it has really grass. But the grass grows in a "soil" that is very sandy, so that water essentially drains away instantly. In fact, after removing the tarp from the infield, the tarp had large pools of water on it, so there were a few people who squeegeed the pools of water off the tarp onto the outfield, where the water would disappear within seconds. 

 

The tarp is tougher to handle, because it's square of heavy material, 175 feet on a side. It's stored by folding it in fourths, then rolling it up on a roller. How do you do that? With many, many people. In the major leagues, there are enough people hired to work on the grounds crew that they can handle it. At Memphis, and I suspect elsewhere in the minors, it looked like they took everyone who works in the team's front office and conscripted them. But they got the job done. See the picture below, when they were starting to cover the field before the rain delay. Incidentally, the timing was such that the guys in the green uniforms in the middle of the photo behind the "grounds crew" are the Norfolk outfielders assisting Bradfield off the field after his spectacular, but painful, catch.

 

 

 

I love the minor leagues because  

 

I mentioned the diversity of "bat boys" in my last post. The "bat boy" for Memphis was a teen-aged girl.

 

The national anthem was performed on a harmonica. Kerry and I always rate the anthem, and our ratings are usually close to one another. But we diverged a lot on this one, in part because it was so very, very different from the average performance. For what it's worth, Kerry thought it was so-so, I thought it very good.