Baseball in Big 10 Country

Last year I saw baseball in SEC Country (Oklahoma and Texas).  This year I saw baseball in Big 10 Country (Nevada and Oregon).  It’s so stupid that Oregon is in the Big 10 now, but that’s where college sports are in 2024.  There’s no Big 10 team in Nevada (at least not yet), but I could imagine the Big 10 having events in Las Vegas like the Big 10 Championship Game or their basketball tournament.  The Pac 12 didn’t have any Nevada teams and they had events in Las Vegas.  The Pac 12 should still exist, but sadly, it does not.  Anyway, I didn’t go to Los Angeles during Easter vacation, so I had to get there during summer vacation.  I wanted to combine that with other baseball stops so I had to figure out what worked with baseball schedules and flight options.  I wanted to go to Portland because I’ve never seen a sporting event in Oregon (before this trip, I had spent a couple of hours in Oregon).  And then I wanted to do something out West before Portland or after Los Angeles.  I thought about Salt Lake City, but the flights were not very convenient.  So I ended up doing Las Vegas.

I had been to Las Vegas once before.  I went for an education conference as part of a graduate class twelve years ago right before I started the blog.  If that was the only time in my life that I ever went to Las Vegas, that would have been totally fine with me.  I’ve been to a minor league game in Reno so I have done a sporting event in Nevada.  But it worked with my other plans for this trip so that’s where I started.  That reminds me, I thought about going to see Notre Dame play BYU two years ago in a Shamrock Series game in Las Vegas.  I didn’t get to any Notre Dame football games that year, but I considered it.  I would pick a game on campus a million times out of a million over a game in Las Vegas, but Las Vegas is easier to get to than South Bend is.  There are a lot of direct flights from New York and a lot of good/cheap/convenient hotel options.  So anyway, it was easy enough to get there this summer and that’s what brought me there for my first baseball game of summer vacation.

Gambling is stupid (the whole purpose is that the casino makes money and you don’t) so I did not do any gambling at all.  In fact, I really didn’t do anything other than the game.  I checked into my hotel and took a nap and then went to the game.  Las Vegas Ballpark opened in 2019 so I’m pretty sure it’s the newest minor league stadium I’ve been to.  It was pretty nice.  There were good food and beer options and the wait at concession stands wasn’t very long even though it was a pretty good crowd.  I had an Aviators Ale from the Tenaya Creek Brewery in Las Vegas and a burrito.  They were both good.  There was a pool out in right center field.  Of course, the Diamondbacks have that, but I don’t know of any other minor league stadiums that have a pool.  And the pool is cooler in an outdoor stadium than in an indoor stadium (the roof is usually closed in Arizona).

The game was the Oklahoma City Baseball Club against the Las Vegas Aviators.  Oklahoma City is the Dodgers’ triple-A affiliate and Las Vegas is Oakland’s affiliate.  It was fun to see a Dodgers’ affiliate since I know some of the players.  James Outman, Diego Cartaya, Nick Ramirez, and Kyle Hurt are players who I’m familiar with who played in the game.  It was not a well-pitched game.  It was tied at six after five innings.  James Outman had a double and a home run.  He had a good rookie season last year for the Dodgers and then he was bad this year until he got sent down. He got called back up recently so hopefully he’ll be able to contribute to the Dodgers again.  It was still tied at six going into the top of the eighth.  I stayed to watch Oklahoma City hit and then I left.  Normally I wouldn’t leave early, but I had gotten up really early for my flight to Las Vegas and I had a 6:00 flight the next morning on my way to Portland.  The game was taking a long time with the bad pitching (it ended up being three hours and one minute, which is long in the pitch clock era).  And we were looking at the prospect of Rob Manfred extra innings.  The good news and the bad news was that it didn’t get to Rob Manfred extra innings (the only reason that’s bad is because I actually had a rooting interest in this game with the Dodgers’ triple-A team).  Las Vegas scored six in the bottom of the eighth and the game ended 12-6.

This was my view for most of the game in Las Vegas.

Attendance was 4,438 and the temperature at the start of the game was 101°.  The high during the day was 104°.  It actually is a pleasant heat at least for a short amount of time with the humidity being so low.  The forecast had been calling for temperatures around 110° so it wasn’t as hot as I was expecting.  And I think it got up to 120° the following weekend.  So it was hot when I was there, but it wasn’t terrible.  Of course the A’s are supposedly moving to Las Vegas (I don’t know if that is 100% official yet).  There was talk of them playing in this stadium until their stadium is built.  That would have been an issue with Sunday afternoon games in the summer.  But now the plan is for them to play in Sacramento until their stadium is built.  Major League Baseball shouldn’t be in Las Vegas, but supposedly it’s going to happen.  The A’s have the worst outdoor stadium in baseball so it won’t be sad to not have games there anymore.  But it will be sad to have another Major League Stadium with a roof and probably artificial turf.  I’m skeptical of having a Major League team and a triple-A team in the same city.  I guess it’s cool for the fans because you can easily go see your team’s triple-A prospects.  But it’s not as convenient as it would sound for the Major League team.  You would figure that the triple-A team wouldn’t be home at the same time as the Major League team.  So if you need to call somebody up, it’s not like that would just mean going to the Major League stadium instead of the triple-A stadium.

I have one other thought before I get to Portland.  The Oklahoma City team changed their name from the Oklahoma City Dodgers to the Oklahoma City Baseball Club.  I have no problem with them not being the Oklahoma City Dodgers.  They only became the Dodgers’ triple-A team in 2015 so it’s not like they had a long history of being the Oklahoma City Dodgers.  But Oklahoma City Baseball Club is stupid.  They used to be the Oklahoma City 89ers and the Oklahoma City RedHawks.  Oklahoma City Baseball Club is temporary.  They’re going to pick a new name.  But this is a stupid trend that comes from soccer.  Why do soccer teams have stupid names?  I just looked up the MLS teams.  Most of them have stupid names (which I guess comes from European soccer teams having stupid names).  Here are some of them:  Atlanta United FC, Charlotte FC, Inter Miami CF, CF Montreal, Real Salt Lake.  What is Inter Miami CF?  Those are just some of the stupid ones.  They’re not all stupid.  There’s the Colorado Rapids and San Jose Earthquakes, but they’re mostly stupid.  So this stupid trend has come from soccer into other sports.  We had the Washington Football Team before they became the Commanders (another bad name since it can be shortened to the Commies, but it’s still better than the Washington Football Team) and now we’re going to have the Utah Hockey Club.  They should have stayed the Oklahoma City Dodgers until they came up with a good name.  And either be the Utah Coyotes for a year or come up with a name (why does it take so much time to come up with a new name?) instead of the Utah Hockey Club.

Anyway, I was off to Portland early the next morning after my day in Las Vegas.  My schedule was like my day in Las Vegas.  I got to my hotel and took a nap.  I thought about going to a place that was on Man v. Food, but it was kind of out of the way so I didn’t.  I was going to a Portland Pickles game.  The Pickles play in a collegiate summer league.  The website was kind of confusing.  There’s the Pickles, but then there’s also the Pickles All Stars.  It is not at all clear what the difference is between them.  I saw the Pickles All Stars play the Bend Bucks.  They play at Walker Stadium, which is like a nice high school field in a public park.  It was only 335 feet to center field so it definitely wasn’t professional dimensions.  But they did have merchandise for sale and some different options with the concessions.  The food was kind of expensive so I just had a hot dog and a Pub Beer from the 10 Barrel Brewing Company in Bend, Oregon.  The beer was nothing special, but it was cheaper than the other options and most of the other options were IPAs.  That’s something I’m noticing with local beers at a lot of sporting events.  There’s not enough variety in the beers.  There are too many IPAs.  I feel like IPAs are a roll of the dice.  Some of them are just fine, but some are too IPA-y.  Anyway, I left early again because I had another early flight and I didn’t care about the outcome.  The Pickles were winning when I left and I can find no record on their website or their social media what the final score was.  Since there’s no box score that I can find, I don’t know what the attendance was, but it was a pretty full crowd.  The high temperature that day was 76° so it got pretty cold during the game.  A week later the high temperature in Portland was 103°.  It would have been nice to find the happy medium between those two temperatures for going to a baseball game.

The left field line goes from home plate to the west so the sun was setting in a weird place for a baseball game.

I would have liked to have a little more time in Portland to get to a Man v. Food spot or something, but that’s the way my schedule worked out.  I was staying at an airport hotel so I didn’t really get to experience the city.  But Portland is one city where I would definitely put an expansion team when Major League Baseball expands (somewhere in the South is where I’d put the other team, and the A’s would be in Oakland, Sacramento, or San Jose and definitely not Las Vegas).  I’m in favor of Major League Baseball expanding, but I fully expect Rob Manfred to do it in a stupid way.  We’re probably going to get some realignment that kills the NL and the AL.  I’m expecting to be East and West instead of AL and NL.  I would much rather have the possibility of a Mets-Yankees World Series than having the Mets and Yankees playing more frequently in the regular season.  But Rob Manfred is involved so it will probably be something stupid.  So given the choice between leaving baseball the way it is or expanding and realigning geographically, I’d just leave it the way it is.  Speaking of something stupid, my next blog post will cover the way the Dodgers played when I was in Los Angeles.