After going to Wichita and Kansas City, I wanted to do one more trip for a minor league game this summer. The problem was I had a tight window to do it because I had some stuff coming up. I was thinking of the Pennsylvania to New England part of the country so that I could go somewhere without flying. So I was trying to find somewhere that had a home game in my narrow window of availability that was easy to get to and had good hotel options. Nothing seemed to be working and then I thought of the Atlantic League. The Lancaster Barnstormers were hosting the Long Island Ducks. It was an easy train ride from New York and the Lancaster train station, the stadium, and a good hotel at a reasonable price were all within walking distance of each other. So I booked my trip on July 4 and two days later I was on my way to Lancaster.
I got to Lancaster around 5:00 and the game was at 6:30. So after checking in at my hotel, I went to the stadium. The Lancaster Barnstormers play at Clipper Magazine Stadium, which has been named the best stadium in the independent leagues. So I was excited to check it out. I walked around the stadium before the game and there was a pretty solid food selection and a very good beer selection. You could walk all the way around the stadium, which is something that you can’t do at some minor league stadiums. So there was a lot to like. But there was one big problem. They built the stadium facing the wrong way. Home plate faces northwest. So when you have a game starting at 6:30, every seat is in the sun until the sun sets out beyond left field. And it was 93° so it was hot. I watched the top of the first from my seat and then I had to move out to left field. There was a fence with advertising beyond left field so that was the only part of the stadium in the shade for a while. Once the sun went down, it wasn’t bad and I went back to my seat, but it was bad while the sun was still out. One thing that I noticed while I was out in the outfield was that the outfield fence was a chain link fence. You wouldn’t notice that right away because almost the whole thing is covered with advertising. So that was something that you don’t see at most places these days.
This was my view at the start of the game. It was way too hot in the sun.
I spent a couple of innings in the only shady part of the stadium and it was much better.
After sitting in the shade for a little bit, I went to get food and beer. I got pulled pork mac and cheese with fries. It was tasty, but it was a lot of food and I didn’t finish it. I would have been just fine if it was just the pulled pork and mac and cheese with no fries. To drink, I got a Lemon Blueberry Shandy from the Lancaster Brewing company. It was a top notch summer beer. I would absolutely drink it again. I did some research on the internet and unfortunately it didn’t seem like I’d be able to find it on Long Island.
This was likely the best beer that I’ll have at a baseball game this year.
The game was not competitive. The Ducks scored three in the first, two in the third, and five in the fourth. They ended up winning 15-1. With the Atlantic League, you usually get some former Major Leaguers so here were some names I knew from the Ducks that played in the game: Al Albuquerque, Kevin Quackenbush, Wilson Ramos, Ruben Tejada, and Alejandro De Aza. The Ducks also used a pitcher named Jose Jose. The Barnstormers didn’t have as many recognizable names, but their lead off hitter was Shawon Dunston Jr. Of course, I remember his father playing in the Majors. Attendance for the game was 2,302 and it lasted two hours and 47 minutes.
There was a lot to like about Clipper Magazine Stadium, but sitting in the sun when it was hot was not fun. If they rotated the stadium 90° clockwise, there would be a lot more shade for the fans and that would have been better. Since this was probably my last minor league game of the season, I’ll update my minor league stadium rankings (you can click on each stadium for my post about it):
In April 2020, I was supposed to do a trip out to California to see the Dodgers with stops along the way in Louisville and Wichita. Those cities were in states that I had driven through and that was it. I got to Louisville in August 2021, but I still hadn’t been to Wichita. Wichita is not that far from Kansas City and the Dodgers were playing in Kansas City this year so I wanted to combine those two cities in one trip. The problem is that there isn’t an easy way to get from Wichita to Kansas City without renting a car (which I didn’t want to do). There’s no train options and the bus options were not at convenient times. I looked into flights on Kayak and that wasn’t working either. Then I thought of Southwest. I did my first two legs of this trip on Southwest. To get from Wichita to Kansas City, I had to fly to St. Louis and then back across Missouri to Kansas City, but the flights were short and it wasn’t too expensive. The last leg of the trip was a direct flight back to New York on JetBlue so I made it work.
I was originally supposed to be in the second game scheduled in Wichita in 2020. The Marlins triple-A affiliate moved from New Orleans to Wichita and I was going to go to the game the day after their home opener. Of course, that didn’t happen. With the reorganization of the minor leagues a couple of years ago, Wichita’s team became the Twins’ double-A affiliate. I got to Wichita fairly early and just relaxed until the game. I was tired after getting up early for my flight and it was 102° anyway (the highest temperature I’ve ever been in was 109° in Phoenix). I walked to the stadium and it was hot. I walked around the stadium and got myself a hot dog with chopped onions and pico de gallo and a Warbeard Irish Red from the Walnut River Brewing Company in El Dorado, Kansas. I usually wouldn’t get toppings like that on a hot dog, but the condiment choices were ketchup (which has no business being put on a hot dog) and yellow mustard (which really should just be called yellow because it’s not mustard). The beer was not very cold, but I’ll give them a pass because it might have been tough to keep the kegs cold with the heat.
As for the game it was the Wichita Wind Surge hosting the Northwest Arkansas Naturals (the Royals’ double-A team). The first batter of the game homered for the Naturals homered and then they didn’t score again. The Wind Surge tied it in the bottom of the first with an RBI single and then scored two more with a homer in the third for a final score of 3-1. The box score said that the temperature was 99°, but my phone said 97° when the game started. Attendance was 3,787 and the game took two hours and 29 minutes. The stadium was pretty good. There could have been some more food options. They had some local beer, but not a huge selection. It was a good stadium, but it probably won’t rank in my top five minor league stadiums when I update my minor league stadium rankings.
This was my view for the first pitch.
This ended up being my view for most of the game.
Here’s the view from right behind home plate.
I spent three days in Kansas City so I think I’ll break this part of the post down by talking about museums first, then food and beverage, and then the baseball. I got to Kansas City early on Friday morning. It was too early to check in at my hotel so I dropped my stuff off and then went to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. It was a cool museum that you can probably check out in an hour or two. There’s a lot of information on the history of the Negro Leagues and even going back before that. The first all-black professional baseball team was the Cuban Giants. They started in Philadelphia in 1885, but then they were hired to play for summer entertainment for guests of the Argyle Hotel in Babylon on Long Island. The Kansas City Monarchs were the best team in the Negro Leagues. Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson were probably the two best players from the Negro Leagues. There’s a mini field in the middle of the museum with statues of some of the most famous players at their positions. There’s also a statue of Buck O’Neil where one of the dugouts would be. Buck O’Neil was definitely a star in the Ken Burns baseball documentary. I could listen to that guy talk about baseball all day. There was a lot of stuff on Jackie Robinson. He played for the Monarchs before the Dodgers signed him. Of course, it was good for Jackie Robinson and other black players to get a chance to play Major League Baseball, but the negative side effect of that was that it destroyed a huge black business as the Negro Leagues came to an end.
After the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, this is the best baseball museum I’ve been to.
Satchel Paige’s age was always a question, but he ended up playing in the Majors in six different seasons after integration, including three scoreless innings for the Kansas City Athletics at age 58 (maybe) in 1965.
Sadly, Josh Gibson was just 35 years old when he died three months before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.
On Saturday I went to the National World War I Museum. It was opened in 1926 as the Liberty Memorial. Congress made it the official National World War I Museum in 2004. I would say it wasn’t as good as the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, but it was a very good museum. I know a lot of stuff about history so I’m always looking for things I didn’t know. I also like any connections to Catholicism. I found one that surprised me. Britain used Joan of Arc in their World War I propaganda. And then I found out later in the museum that the United States also used Joan of Arc in their propaganda directed towards women. There were a couple of other things that I didn’t know before that stood out to me. I knew that American soldiers in World War I were called doughboys, but I had no idea where that came from. US soldiers training along the Rio Grande would get covered in the dust of the adobe soil so they were called adobes. That became dobies and then that became doughboys. And lastly, any student of World War II learns about the Navajo Code Talkers. But the US had Choctaw Code Talkers in World War I and the Germans never broke their code.
The tower has been around since 1926. You can go up to the top, but I chose not to.
There was a big display on trench warfare.
There was a British poster that was very similar. This one is not nearly as famous at the Uncle Sam I Want You poster, which is also from World War I.
John J. Pershing was the only army officer given the rank of General of the Armies of the United States during his lifetime. The same rank was given to George Washington in 1976 and Ulysses S. Grant in 2022.
There were other museums that I could have gone to. I went to the Harry Truman Presidential Library in Independence (right by Kansas City) in 2014. There’s also the College Basketball Hall of Fame. I thought about going there, but the reviews I read made it sound more like a place for kids to play games than college basketball’s version of Cooperstown. So I passed on that.
There was some good food and beverage to be enjoyed. I usually don’t eat meat on Fridays even when it’s not Lent (except for solemnities, we just had Meat Friday on June 16 for the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus). So on Friday I went to Grinders. It was walkable from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. It was on Man v. Food. It’s supposed to do New York pizza and Philly cheesesteaks. The twist with the pizza is they add a chili bomb where they add tots, chili, Cheez Whiz, and onions on top of a slice of pizza. That’s what was featured on Man v. Food. I would have tried that, but I didn’t want the meat in the chili so I just had a regular slice. It was good. I wouldn’t say it was New York quality, but it was pretty close. It was very thin. It reminded me a little bit of Little Vincent’s (but even thinner). What I really could have used on the slice instead of chili was cold cheese. The non-meat food options at the game were pretty limited. I ended up just getting nachos and cheese. That’s not something I would usually get, but it got the job done if I wasn’t going to have meat. I think in all of my travels over the last decade, I think the only other place outside of the Pizza Belt where I’ve gotten pizza is Anchorage, Alaska. Of course, I’ve also had deep dish pizza in Chicago, but deep dish pizza is not pizza:
On Saturday, it was time for meat so I went to Q39, which was also featured on Man v. Food. On Trip Advisor, it was the second highest ranked barbecue place in Kansas City. The highest ranked spot was Joe’s (which was on Man v. Food back in the Adam Richman days), but that was on the Kansas side of Kansas City and it wasn’t at all convenient for me since I wanted to get to the World War I Museum after lunch. This time I didn’t have what was featured on Man v. Food (the burnt end burger). I had the Mr. Burns sandwich for two reasons. First of all it’s named after one of the best Simpsons characters. Second of all, it was a sandwich with burnt ends, pepper jack cheese, onion straws, and barbecue sauce. Kansas City barbecue is known for burnt ends and hearing people talk about them, it sounds like a life changing experience. I also had a Brew 39 Amber Ale, which was made by Kansas City’s Martin City Brewing Company. The sandwich was very good and this was probably the best beer of my trip. That night at the game I just had a hot dog with honey mustard (definitely not my first choice, but it’s a better option than yellow). It was solid.
Sunday was an afternoon game. I thought about just getting a hot dog again, but after having nachos and a hot dog at the two previous games, I wanted something that was more Kansas City. Grinders (where I went on Friday) has a stand at the stadium that sells sandwiches (you can’t get the pizza there) so I had a Philly cheesesteak. It was good, but I’ve definitely had better in Philadelphia. I also had a Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat to drink. It was the only beer I drank during a game in Kansas City. I always like to have a beer at a game, but since I was going to four games on four straight days, I didn’t feel like I needed a beer each day. On Saturday, I got a beer with lunch because it was cheaper than a beer at the game, but I wanted to have at least one at a game in Kauffman Stadium. It was a solid beer, but not as good as the one I had the previous day. Since it was an afternoon game, I still had to get dinner. I felt like just relaxing at my hotel so I got Slap’s BBQ delivered. Slap’s is another highly ranked barbecue place in Kansas City and it was featured on Burgers, Brew, & 'Que. I got three ribs and burnt ends. It was all very good. But I would say that burnt ends at both locations were not the life changing experience that people have made them out to be. And the ribs were very good, but it’s not like having Kansas City barbecue has ruined other barbecue for me. I had barbecue in North Carolina in 2019. It’s been a while since I had Texas barbecue (excluding brisket tacos at a Ranger game back in April). If I’m back in Texas anytime soon, I’ll have to get some barbecue. But I would put Old Fields Barbecue in Huntington right up there with any barbecue that I’ve had.
As for the baseball, Friday night was fun and Saturday and Sunday were stupid. On Friday, I had a standing room ticket. I wanted to go with one really cheap option and standing by the fountain in the right field is pretty cool. I ended up sitting for about half the game way down the right field line since there were a lot of open seats. Mookie Betts led off with a home run and then hit another in the third. He drove in two more runs with a single in the fourth and a double in the eighth. Mookie Betts has been outstanding this season. He ended up starting in right field, second base, and shortstop (a position he never played before this season) in this series. He did make an error at shortstop, but he has been generally good at all three positions. Jason Heyward had three hits and drove in two runs. Bobby Miller pitched five and two-thirds and allowed three runs. It was all Dodgers with a final score of 9-3. The box score says it was 97°. It was hot, but definitely not as hot as it was in Wichita. Attendance was 22,006 and the game was two hours and 57 minutes. I stuck around for the fireworks after which were pretty cool.
If you’re going to be watching the game standing really far away from home plate, this is the place to do it.
This was right before Mookie Betts led off the game with a home run.
On Saturday, I got to the stadium and it was sunny, but it said that it was a rain delay. That seemed pretty silly, but the rain did come and it rained hard for a while. I was sitting in the upper deck right behind home plate. I moved up several rows to where the seats were covered and kept dry. The rain delay lasted for an hour and 25 minutes. There was still a possibility of more rain, but they got the game in without any further delay. Julio Urias (2020 World Series hero) was making his return after more than a month. His first inning was a combination of bad pitching and bad luck. He gave up three bloop singles. There were two runs scored on sacrifice flies (one was caught by the second baseman, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that before). So there was bad luck, but also he couldn’t get anybody to swing and miss. There were a lot of foul balls when strikeouts would have limited the damage. Urias gave up five runs in the first inning. The Dodgers ended up losing 6-4. They definitely had chances, but they couldn’t complete the comeback. It was 75° when the game started and it got a little cold as the game went on. Attendance was 21,004 and the game took two hours and 44 minutes after the rain delay. They had fireworks again after the game. It would have been a great view of the fireworks from where I was sitting, but I was checking the weather and it looked like the rain was just about to start again and I wanted to beat the rain on my walk back to my hotel if possible (I did). I got to pretty much see the whole show as I walked back, but it definitely would have been better to watch from my seat.
The rain led to a rainbow over the field.
This was my view for the second game of the series. The location could be better, but this is still an excellent stadium.
Sunday was an afternoon game and it was bad. I’ve never been to a Fourth of July game, but this was on July 2 (our actual Independence Day). I was sitting up high a little bit off to the first base side. I was in a great spot because I was in the shade for the whole game. If I was down a few rows, I would have been in the sun for the whole game. The box score says it was 82°, but it felt a lot hotter in the sun. It wasn’t bad in the shade. The Royals took a 1-0 lead in the second inning and the Dodgers tied it in the fourth. Then the Dodgers gave up eight runs in three innings. The Royals won 9-1. David Peralta had three hits for the Dodgers and the rest of the team had three hits. Tony Gonsolin was the starting pitcher and he was bad. Victor Gonzalez was the first relief pitcher used and he was bad. The Dodgers ended up using infielder Yonny Hernandez to pitch the bottom of the eighth. I think it was the only time I’ve seen a position player pitch other than when Kiké Hernandez was the losing pitcher for the Dodgers in Philadelphia when he pitched the sixteenth inning (the Dodgers lost that game, but it was an awesome game, unfortunately Rob Manfred decided that he doesn’t want to have fun games like that anymore). Seeing position players pitch used to be interesting, but it happens so frequently now that it’s not interesting anymore. Anyway, this game had 19,058 fans and it took two hours and 40 minutes.
This was my view on Sunday afternoon. Day games are more fun than night games as long as they’re not too hot. Fortunately, I was in the shade for the whole game.
So it wasn’t a fun series, but it was fun to get to three games at Kauffman Stadium. It’s an old stadium. The location is bad (it’s right by Arrowhead and they’re both surrounded by parking lots and they’re not close to anything). But inside the stadium is fantastic (even though it’s old). Back in the day, it was one of many stadiums that had astroturf and was symmetrical, but it was the best of those stadiums because it wasn’t used for football, they had the waterfalls in the outfield, and it wasn’t completely enclosed by seats. Now there’s grass and it’s been renovated and it looks fantastic. And unlike when I was growing up, so few stadiums are symmetrical now that I like the symmetrical design. There’s been talk of the Royals getting a new stadium. My vote would be no on that. They could definitely have a cooler location. If they could just move this exact stadium downtown, that would be cool, but of course they can’t do that. If they do build a new stadium, I hope they go in the Yankee Stadium direction (at least in some ways). Build it in a better location (unlike Yankee Stadium), keep the dimensions the same, keep the waterfalls and fountains in the outfield, and just make the inside of the stadium more modern and nicer. I’d be okay with that.
I do have one criticism to mention about Kauffman Stadium. They had displays with the pitch type, speed, and vertical and horizontal break. I did not trust the information about how the pitches were breaking at all. Four seam fastballs were routinely shown with more break than curveballs and sliders. There would be four seam fastballs where it said 16 inches of vertical break and sliders with three inches of vertical break. The whole point of high spin rate is to minimize vertical break on four seam fastballs and to maximize the break on breaking balls. So that seemed weird. But other than that, Kauffman Stadium is awesome.
When I last did my stadium rankings (after getting to the one current stadium that I hadn’t been to), I had Kauffman Stadium ranked sixth out of the stadiums that still exist (behind Dodger Stadium, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, PNC Park, and Petco Park and just ahead of Oracle Park and Target Field). I have been to all of those stadiums for at least two games now and after three more games at Kauffman Stadium, I’m keeping it in that same spot. The next stadium in my rankings is T-Mobile Park in Seattle. I’ve only been to one game there, but it was also very good. I have now seen the Dodgers play at 15 different stadiums (that includes two for the Mets). If I could see them play at any more places where I haven’t seen them play already, I would pick Baltimore (because I could get there without flying), Minnesota (the same city where they won the 1965 World Series and a very good stadium), Seattle (the best stadium that I haven’t gotten to twice yet), and St. Louis (just because Dodgers-Cardinals is a rivalry). Anyway, I will be going to at least one game at Citi Field. I just got to an independent league game at a stadium that I hadn’t been to before (I’ll get to that probably in my next blog post). We’ll see if I get to any games other than that this summer.
