Take me out to the Ball Game...

[jducoeur]

Well, that was a pleasant change of pace.

A couple of months ago, hungrytiger and isisofcool invited us to come join them at a Lowell Spinners game. This is an A-league team, a nice long ways from Major League Baseball (tm).

Basically, this is baseball as community outing, rather than baseball as gladiatorial combat. Yeah, the Spinners are in the basement, but no one showed much sign of caring. (Except the ten-year-olds from the Tewksbury All-Stars in the next section.) The ballpark was full anyway, of people having a nice summer evening out. The food didn't suck as badly as I expected (they even had halfway drinkable, if ordinary, ale), and the schtick was omnipresent.

Every inning break had something happening. It might be the race between the eight-year-old kid and the team mascot around the bases. It might be some poor woman winning a dinner out through karaoke. It might be a couple of guys in sumo suits knocking each other over -- or the same two in bizarre plastic Knight suits, knocking each others' fake heads off. It wasn't exactly high culture, but it was fun, and far more of a sincere community experience than I'm used to from sports.

(It *was* pretty commercialized, admittedly -- everything was sponsored. But even that was different: this wasn't being sponsored by Coca-Cola and Sears, but by Joe's Diner. When they brought out the brushes at mid-game to smooth out the dirt, that was sponsored by the local dental practice. I'm much more willing to forgive hometown advertising.)

As hungrytiger pointed out, the game itself is almost an afterthought. Apparently to keep people interested, they passed out Baseball Bingo cards. There's a complex formula listed on the back, with rules like, "If the home team Shortstop gets walked, that's I-23". People who got Bingo early on got door prizes. I actually did get Bingo fairly late in the game, but wasn't all that deeply in need of door prizes even if I'd won one, so didn't bother to figure out if they had more of them.

Only mistake of the evening was having soft ice cream at the ballpark; the mistake being realized when I got home and saw the cherry pie sitting there. (ladysprite came over yesterday, and we had a sort of mini-cooks'-guild meeting -- I showed her around a couple of cookbooks, and we made a pie from one.) Shopping for tomorrow: good vanilla ice cream. Mmm...

Anyway, a much-needed distraction, neither difficult nor intellectual. msmemory and I agreed that, if it was more convenient, we might seek this out more often. As it is, I suspect we'll get down to a Spinners game once a year or so, to remind us of what baseball is supposed to be like.

(Oh, yeah -- the Spinners lost. But the Sox won, which was actually the only score we were paying much attention to...)

Comments

[kellan_the_tabby]

I've had similar experiences at minor league hockey games...I've been a Flyers fan since I was old enough to know what hockey was, but tickets are insanely expensive and really I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy the games anyway. But the Flyers have a farm team, the Phantoms, with nicely inexpensive tickets and fans who actually care about the _game_ and a reasonable number of gimmicky fun things going on...

During one of the intermissions every time I've gone down, they get a couple of kids' teams out there playing. _Small_ kids, maybe six or seven, in enough padding that they're as wide as they are tall, and about half the time they take a shot they just fall over. They get to play for about five minutes and usually somebody scores a goal, and the cheering is just as loud as if the Phantoms themselves had scored...

It's a lot of fun.

Sounds familar

[chriso.livejournal.com]

John and I went on an outing with friends a couple of years ago to see the San Jose Giants A League baseball team. We had the contests between innings, the baseball bingo, local sponsors and the usher girls led cheers (I think during the seventh inning stretch). It was a lot more fun than a professional game.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

That does sound like fun.

I've often wondered why anyone feels like a professional team is "their" team, considering it's usually made up of people hired in from far away, like mercenaries.

[kfitzwarin.livejournal.com]

Steve & I and the Oldcastles did that last fall - free tix care of our electric company or something, decent beer and bad-for-you-but-tasty snacks, various entertainments between the innings and oh yeah, a ball game (Reading Phillies at Bowie Baysox). Very family-oriented - they even come on in the beginning (over the loudspeaker) to ask people to try to keep it couth since there are so many kids present. Should try to do that again sometime!

[mermaidlady]

You've reminded me that I really should get over to Brockton. My cousin's team, the Aces, is playing there at the end of August.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Your comments about sponsorship remind me of the local rodeo we went to out in CO recently...everything was sponsored by local businesses, with the exception of a beer manufacturer and a major beverage company. Kind of felt odd to be watching something and wearing a hat bought in the store sponsoring it.

That, too, had a feeling of audience participation and connection to the community that Major Sporting Events do not, and that makes me sad. Now, Bruins games do do something interesting during every TV time-out, but that's usually on the order of "Watch the JumboTron to see today's winner!", which just doesn't feel as homey.

[hungrytiger]

Minor league baseball games are entirely different beasts from going to Fenway. Since you're not emotionally committed to the success of the home team (it took me until the 3rd inning to actually pay attention to whether the Spinners were wearing the blue or the grey uniforms) you can relax and enjoy a summer's evening at the ballpark in a way that's impossible at Fenway due to the cost and crowds. When I saw the opposing team make a good play, I was just as excited because it was fun to watch, I really didn't care that it helped them go ahead of "my" team.

Side note: going to the Lowell Spinners is a lot of fun, but tickets can be hard to get. After the game though, Marsy and I were saying that the concourse is wide enough and the view from the top of the stairs is so good (better than almost any view in Fenway) that we may just get standing room tickets in the future, which are generally available at walk up.

Additional side note: Going to Pawtucket to see the PawSox is a nice middle ground. Better players, more facilities, but still intimate and laid back.

[matildalucet.livejournal.com]

Yay, Pawtucket! Cheap seats, decent beer (which I couldn't have since I was driving), decent baseball. The drive from Melrose for an evening game sucks so I won't do THAT often, but it was worth the trip. Keep meaning to get to a Spinners game Some Day.