After visiting the Field of Dreams, I drove west across the state and stayed in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Fort Dodge is about 120 miles from the Nebraska border. I searched for things to do in Nebraska near the border of Iowa and South Dakota. I didn't come up with much. I stopped at a McDonald's and had a smoothie. And then I took a walk to a park that was dedicated to the people who fought in the Gulf War. It was a cool little park. I filled up with gas and that was it for Nebraska.
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| South Sioux City, Nebraska- 50 American flags for people who served in the Gulf War |
I drove into South Dakota. Sioux Falls has an independent league baseball team. Originally, I was going to see them play. But that would have meant another night at a hotel and another day of paying for a rental car. So I decided against that. I stopped at the Strawbale Winery in Renner, South Dakota. They offered tastings of 5-6 wines for $5 and you get to keep the glass. I didn't really care about the glass and I also didn't want to drink all that much since I had about three more hours of driving ahead of me. So they let me taste two wines for free and I didn't get to keep the glass. They had different kinds of fruit wines. I tried the blueberry and the cranberry-jalapeno. I'm definitely not a wine guy, but they were good. I was told that the cranberry-jalapeno is their most popular wine now, so I picked up a bottle of that for Dennis and Courtney. I got back on the road and stopped at a rest stop pretty close to the North Dakota border. They guy working there asked where I was from. He was surprised to hear that I was from New York so he gave me a South Dakota pin.
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| The tasting room at the Strawbale Winery in Renner, South Dakota |
After a long day of driving, I made it to Fargo. I stayed right across the street from the Fargodome, home of a Division I FCS powerhouse. College Gameday has been to Fargo twice for the North Dakota State Bison. North Dakota State has won four FCS national championships in a row and they're 8-3 against FBS opponents (five wins against Big Ten and Big 12 schools). That's pretty crazy.
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| The Fargodome |
Anyway, I was there for an independent league baseball game. It was the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks against the Grand Prairie AirHogs. This league has teams from Winnipeg to Texas. How do these teams make money? There's a lot of travel involved and they're selling maybe 5,000 tickets per game for much lower prices than a Major League team (yes, I know they're paying their players much, much less). Fargo turned out to be a good spot for a game. The RedHawks play in Newman Outdoor Field. They have a Maury Wills Museum because Maury Wills was a coach and then broadcaster with the team in the 1990s. They museum is just a room full of Maury Wills stuff, but it's pretty cool. He was the first player ever to steal 100 bases in a season. Maury Wills is not in the Hall of Fame, but should he be? My answer is no. He had a very good career, but it's not the Hall of Very Good. He made five All Star teams, had over 2,000 hits, and won an MVP (with three other top 10 finishes), but I have 1962 and 1965 as his only no doubt Hall of Fame seasons. Not good enough. He did help the Dodgers win three World Series, though (his numbers from the World Series aren't particularly great, except for 1965). The other interesting thing about Newman Outdoor Field is that the dimensions are supposed to be the same as Yankee Stadium because Roger Maris lived in Fargo for part of his childhood. There are two problems with that, though. They only labeled the distances down the lines and in center field (318, 408, and 314). Those were all correct. But according to North Dakota State baseball, it's 399 to left center and 365 to right center. Left center is correct, but right center is 385 at Yankee Stadium. But the bigger problem is that those weren't the dimensions when Roger Maris played for the Yankees. According to one of my favorite websites, Yankee Stadium was 301, 457, 461, 407, 296 from left to right from 1952-1976.
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| Some of the stuff in the Maury Wills Museum |
I've been to a few minor league stadiums now and this one was a little different. The concourse didn't go all the way around the stadium. With a good crowd (5,031 with a seating capacity of 4,513), the concourse got very crowded. They did have a good selection of food and beer. I had a Stone's Throw Scottish Ale from the Fargo Brewing Company. It's not a beer that I would pick again, but it did have a distinctive flavor, which is a lot more than you can say for bland, mass-produced beers made by Budweiser, Coors, and Miller. A local Mexican place had a concession stand so I got a burrito from there. It was probably the first time I've had a burrito at a baseball game. I got a ticket that was row 11 right behind home plate. I like sitting behind home plate, but I'm usually sitting much higher up of course. Being that low, I'd rather not be directly behind home plate. You kind of get blocked out by the umpire and the catcher. I think between the dugout and the plate is the ideal spot if you're down that low.
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| First pitch in Fargo |
It was a pretty good game. It was 4-4 going into the ninth. Then Grand Prairie strung together a triple, double, another triple, and a reached on an error to score three runs. They ended up winning 7-4.
So that was Nebraska and the Dakotas. There's been an independent league baseball team on Long Island since 2000, but it took a trip to Fargo to get me to an independent league baseball game.
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