Since I’m not going to make it out to Los Angeles this year, it was fitting that my first baseball game after the death of Vin Scully was in Brooklyn. Adam and I went to the Brooklyn Cyclones’ Seinfeld Night back in 2016 and we did it again this year. We had been making a yearly minor league game a tradition, but the pandemic got in the way of that. It canceled the 2020 minor league season and it canceled our plans to go to Dodgers-Phillies in Philadelphia and then some Office stuff and a minor league game in Scranton last year (the Dodger game we had planned to go to was an afternoon game with temperatures in the 90s and the Dodgers lost so I guess I didn’t miss much with that half of the trip). I’m pretty sure the last time I had seen Adam was for a Long Island Ducks game back in 2019. The last time I was in Brooklyn was for Celtics-Nets in 2019 when Kyrie Irving was murdering the Celtics’ season.
I got to Coney Island before Adam so I stopped at Nathan’s for a hot dog (it’s right there when you get off of the subway). It was delicious. After that, I was just walking by the stadium and ran into Adam. We walked around for a little bit and then went into the stadium. We wanted to make sure we got there early because we wanted to make sure we were among the first 2000 so that we could get our marble rye figurine. There were supposed to be appearances by the actors who played the Wiz and Dolores. Neither one was there. Instead they had Donna Chang. Back in 2016, it was J. Peterman. I think they’ve had Jackie Chiles and Kenny Bania before. So it seems like they’re digging deeper for Seinfeld people to show up. I was thinking about other characters who I’d want to see at Seinfeld Night. David Puddy would probably be at the top of the list. Mickey Abbott, Bob Cobb, Jake Jardel, Jiffy Park/Jiffy Dump Guy, Lloyd Braun (either one or both), Yev Kassem would all be good options (some of those people might have done it already). Tim Whatley would be another good one, but he’s way too famous now for the Cyclones to be able to get him.
So was Seinfeld Night slipping? Much like the show in the later seasons, saying that it was slipping would be an overstatement. There were a lot of Seinfeld themed games before the game, between innings, and after the game (more than I remember from six years ago). There was a George ice cream eating contest, a candy bar lineup (but for some reason, it was four different candy bars when it should have been all Twix), a Seinfeld movie reference game, and an Elaine dancing contest. There were definitely a few other ones that I’m not remembering. So it was a good job with the Seinfeld themed stuff, but it would have been nice to have somebody more exciting than Donna Chang. As for the show, a lot of people would say that it slipped after Larry David left after the seventh season. I would disagree. I think the show was at its best when George was working for the Yankees, which was the very end of season 5 through season 8 (Larry David was still the voice of Steinbrenner in season 8, but he wasn’t in charge of the show anymore). Season 8 has the Bizarro Jerry, the Van Buren Boys, the Nap, the Muffin Tops, and the Summer of George. I would agree that season 9 isn’t as good, but it has the Merv Griffin Show, the Strike (Festivus), and the Frogger. A couple of years ago I looked at the IMDB user ratings of each episode and figured out the average rating for each season. Here is the rank of each season based on that: 8, 7, 4, 5, 9, 6, 3, 2, 1. I would have to go through each season and look at the episodes to rank them, but I would agree that the first two seasons are the worst.
There are plenty of examples of shows slipping in later seasons, but Seinfeld is not one of them. The Simpsons might have been the greatest show in the history of TV and then they decided in season 9 that Principal Skinner wasn’t Principal Skinner (just the first of many problems starting in season 9 and continuing until I finally gave up on the show a few years later). The Office is probably the best show of this century, but it definitely slipped after Steve Carrell left. Season 8 is mostly unwatchable. It has way too much of the three worst characters: Robert California, Gabe, and season 8 Nellie. The only good parts are Nate and the Jim/Dwight stuff. Season 9 is mostly bad, but it finishes strong. South Park held on for a long time, but it had been declining and I gave up on it with the season that was all about trolls from Denmark or something (I don’t remember exactly, but it was bad and I had no interest in watching it again).
As for the game, it was the Winston-Salem Dash (a horrendous name for a team) against the Cyclones. Both teams scored in the first inning. Gregory Guerrero hit a two-run homer for the Cyclones in the bottom of the second and that was all the scoring in the game. With the low scoring game and the pitch clock being enforced this year (14 seconds with nobody on and 18 seconds with runners on), it was a quick game (two hours and nine minutes). And that caused a couple of problems. Adam and I tried to get food after the top of the third. I figured we would watch a little bit and hopefully let the lines die down. That didn’t work. The lines were really long so we decided we would try again later in the game. We tried again after the sixth and the lines were still really long. I got a Brooklyn Summer Ale, but I was not able to get food. And then after the game, they had the Elaine dancing contest and they had to wait for it to get dark enough for the fireworks (besides being a quick game, it was a 6:00 start). I missed out on food at the game, but it didn’t seem like there was anything all that exciting anyway. I found an article from last year saying that a Thanksgiving dinner turkey burger was a new item. If they had that anywhere, I didn’t see it. I like Maimonides Park (it used to be MCU Park), but the slow moving lines and lack of interesting food options are things that they could improve on. Also they should have grass because baseball should be played on grass. Anyway, after the fireworks we stopped at Nathan’s and I had my second hot dog of the day since I didn’t eat anything at the game. So it was a fun night. Hopefully it won’t be three years until I get to see Adam again.
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| This was our view for the game. You can see a guy in front of us wearing a Koko the Monkey shirt. Lots of fans had good Seinfeld shirts. Adam wore his #1 Dad shirt. I don’t have any Seinfeld shirts so I wore my Brooklyn Dodgers 1955 World Series Champions shirt. |
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| I like Sam Adams Summer Ale better of course, but Brooklyn Summer Ale is appropriate for a game in Brooklyn. |
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| Fireworks after a baseball game are always good. |
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| Joey Chestnut has won many Mustard Belts. They don’t give out Ketchup Belts for winning the hot dog eating contest because ketchup has no business being put on hot dogs. You can check my post on Seinfeld Night in 2016 for my ideas about how to fix the hot dog eating contest. |
Since the pitch clock is most likely coming to the Majors next year, I’ll give some quick thoughts on it. I’m fine with it as long as it’s enforced. It’s been in the minors for several years and it always seemed like it wasn’t enforced whenever I went to a game before this year. Apparently this year it is being enforced and it has shortened games. I wouldn’t be surprised if they give the pitchers more time when they bring it to the Majors next year. Like maybe it will start at 18 seconds with nobody on base and 22 seconds with runners on or something. And then maybe they’ll take a second off each year until it gets down to what it is in the minors now. But the bigger issues that are not being addressed at all are starters not going deep into games and the number of pitching changes. Every team has 13 pitchers and they use them. That’s an absurd amount of pitchers. This also goes along with another problem in baseball these days: not having enough balls in play. Every pitcher goes all out to strike guys out because they know they aren’t going to be in the game very long. If starters were expected to go deep into games and relief pitchers might have to go more than three batters, they wouldn’t be trying to strike everybody out all the time. I’m definitely in favor of abolishing the DH forever, but if you’re going to have it, you could at least use it to help the game in one way. If you implement the double hook rule correctly, there would be an incentive to have starters go deeper into games. If you did that, you wouldn’t need eight relief pitchers and the game would be much better.
I always enjoy minor league baseball. I wish I could go to more AA or AAA games where I would know a lot more of the players. You’d have guys with experience in the Majors and bigger name prospects. I was curious to see if we saw anybody noteworthy at Seinfeld Night back in 2016. I found the box score, but it was not easy. It was much easier to find the Dodgers’ box score from the day my father was born (they beat the Pirates 4-3) than it was to find a minor league box score from six years ago. Pete Alonso’s first professional team was the 2016 Brooklyn Cyclones, but he didn’t play in that game. He had just been drafted so he might not have even signed with the Mets yet. Nobody really stands out from this game. But maybe Seinfeld Night in 2022 had a future Mets star.
Anyway, I’m probably only going to get to one more baseball game this year. I tried to get to as many as I could this year without traveling (including college and summer collegiate league games). Hopefully I’ll get to go to more games next year in various places.
