Anyway, it was a long drive from St. Louis to Springdale, over 300 miles. Most of the drive was heading southwest across Missouri. I was less than ten miles from the Arkansas border when I got pulled over for speeding, my first ticket ever. I definitely wasn't going to get another ticket on this trip, so I kept to the speed limit the rest of the time. Compared to other cars on the road, that didn't seem slow in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, but in Missouri, I was going slow and getting passed by lots of people. And that's where I got my speeding ticket. Lame.
I got to my hotel in Springdale around 5:30. It was about two miles from Arvest Ballpark, home of the Naturals. I figured there wasn't too much to see at the stadium and it was a short trip, so I had some time to rest. Besides cutting a day off of the trip by going to a game in Springdale instead of going to games in Little Rock and Tulsa, another reason for going to Springdale was that Arvest Ballpark was named baseballparks.com's 2008 Ballpark of the Year. I got to the stadium around 6:45 and checked it out. It is very nice. The seats don't extend all the way down the left and right field lines, but there is a 360 degree concourse. So if you want to walk out to the outfield and watch the game from there, you can. There is a bullpen cafe in left field, but that wasn't open for this game. There wasn't much of a food selection, but there's no reason for there to be when the capacity is only 6,500. It seemed like they put some food items on sale so I bought a bag of peanuts for $1 to go with my hot dog. They did have a craft beer corner down the right field line. I had a Sam Adams Boston Lager on tap. There were only a couple of beers on tap, but there did seem to be a pretty good selection of bottles available. So Arvest Ballpark had a better beer selection than some Major League stadiums.
The Naturals were playing the Corpus Christi Hooks, an Astros affiliate. Corpus Christi took a 2-0 lead in the third. By the end of six, it was 5-0. Delino DeShields, Jr. hit a home run in the seventh to make it 7-0. Hopefully the Dodgers don't trade a future Hall of Famer for him. Corpus Christi held on to win 7-2. The box score lists the attendance as 2,854. I was there and there weren't 2,853 other fans there. I'm going to say there were less than 2,000, perhaps a good deal less than that. My ticket was for a seat between home plate and the first base dugout about 11 rows up from the field, but I pretty much could have sat wherever I wanted. Nobody was checking tickets and there were so few fans there. If I sat in somebody's seat and they showed up, I just could have moved over a few seats to an empty one. But I did really like the stadium. If I lived in the area, I would definitely go to a decent number of games. I've never lived in a minor league area. I wonder what that would be like. Some people were wearing Royals stuff and there were some wearing Naturals stuff. Like I said, I would go to some games, but I can't imagine really caring much about the result. Is any fan going to be really angry about the Naturals blowing a 4-2 lead late in the game? I doubt it, but if the Dodgers blow a 4-2 lead late in a game, it probably ruins my night. The one thing that stood out to me was that everything at the game was sponsored. Everything. The PA guy would read an advertisement after foul balls because foul balls were sponsored. Strikeouts and other things were sponsored also. I hadn't had much to eat during the day so I was a little hungry so I went to a Sonic right by my hotel and got a shake after the game. Now that I've actually been to a Sonic, I think I can move it up to number 8 on my fast food power rankings.
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| My view for the game. Arvest Ballpark was very nice. |
The next day, I was going to the Royals game at night. I had plenty of time to get there. So my plan was to at least get to Oklahoma and Kansas. I drove about 90 minutes to Mickey Mantle's boyhood home in Commerce, Oklahoma. It was a very old looking house in a small town. There was a plaque on the door and it looked like you might be able to go in, but I just took a look from the outside.
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| Mickey Mantle's boyhood home in Commerce, Oklahoma |
After that, I was on my way to Kansas. My original plan was to go to the Knute Rockne crash site. To go there, you have to make arrangements with John or Sue Ann Brown. I spoke to both of them and they seemed like very nice people. I ended up not going for a variety of reasons. First of all, it was out of the way. I had already driven an hour and a half to Mickey Mantle's house. From there, it would have been about four hours to the crash site and then it would have been at least two hours to where I was staying for the night. Also, it's not easy to get to. Apparently there's some driving on dirt roads involved. I was told by John Brown that the site was inaccessible if it rained and the forecast was a little questionable. And I didn't really feel like driving a rental car on dirt roads in the middle of nowhere in Kansas. It would have been great to get there, but I can live with not making it. I've been where Knute Rockne received his first Communion after converting to Catholicism (I lived in that building). That's good enough for me. I did read a good post on NDNation about somebody who did make the trip. There's a good chance that I'll never be in Kansas again, but if I ever drove across the country or something, I'd try again to get to the crash site.
I thought about driving all the way to Nebraska, but I really didn't feel like driving that for so I just drove north from Mickey Mantle's house into Kansas on my way to hotel. I wanted to do something besides just drive through Kansas so I did some googling. I found out that there's a restaurant in Galena, Kansas that has the truck that inspired the movie Cars outside of it. I've never seen the movie, but it was pretty much on my way so I stopped there before finishing my trip to the Kansas City area. I'll cover that in my next post.
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| This picture will make more sense to me if I ever see Cars. |
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