Watching Baseball in Memphis

I was taking another trip out to the West Coast and I wanted to stop somewhere along the way.  I've now been to every state between Canada and Mexico, but there are several where I've never spent a night.  I think I deserve credit for all of them, but a few of them are probably a little questionable.  I think the only time I've spent time in Rhode Island was when my brothers were looking at Providence way back in 1995, but I've driven through it several times.  If you added up the combined amount of time I've spent in Maine, New Hampshire, Nebraska, and Oregon, it's probably about four hours.  But I did make a point of going to all of them (I had meals at non-randomly chosen places in all of them except for Nebraska, I went to a Gulf War memorial in Nebraska).  The only two states that I didn't make a point of going to were Kentucky and Tennessee.  We drove through them on the way to and from the Notre Dame-Georgia Tech game in 2006.  So I stopped in Memphis.  The Memphis Redbirds are the Cardinals' Triple-A team and they had a game the day before I was heading out to Los Angeles and there was a direct flight from New York to Memphis so Memphis it was.

After checking into my hotel, my first stop was Gus's Fried Chicken.  It was on Man vs. Food and I remember Bill Simmons talking about it when he was there to cover the Grizzles in the Western Conference Finals in 2013.  I had the 2 piece white plate which included a breast, a wing, baked beans, cole slaw, and white bread.  It was definitely tasty, but not as exciting as I was expecting based on what I had heard from Adam Richman and Bill Simmons.  I guess I'm just not that big of a fried chicken fan.

Good, not great

I didn't do anything else until the game because it was 97 degrees and humid.  The game was the Redbirds vs. the Salt Lake City Bees (an Angels affiliate).  It's a pretty big stadium compared to the other minor league stadiums I've been to, but that's not too surprising because it was only the second Triple-A stadium I've been to.  The box score says that there were 3,071 people there.  I think that's exaggerated.  I would guess that it was no more than 2,000, but maybe I'm just thrown off because of how big the stadium was.  When I googled food at the stadium, the one thing that came up consistently was the barbecue nachos from Rendevous.  Rendevous is a barbecue place that was also featured on Man vs. Food so that's what I went with.  I was disappointed.  Way too much cheese.  It didn't let the meat shine.  I didn't finish them.  I should have just gone with the $1 hot dogs that they had that night, but I knew I had some Dodger Dogs in my future so I wanted to go with something else.  I had a Memphis beer.  I'm not sure which one it was, but it might have been a Lucid Kolsch from the Memphis Made Brewing Company.  They had one concession stand with several local beers so I know I definitely had a beer from Memphis (crossing Tennessee off of my beer list), but I don't remember for sure which one it was.  Whatever it was, it was solid.  I was hoping they'd have some Arkansas beer as well (Arkansas is right on the other side of the Mississippi River), but I couldn't find any.

My view for the game

I came across the grounds crew playing basketball as I took a lap around the concourse.

Possibly a Memphis Made Lucid Kolsch

Anyway, it was scoreless until the Bees scored two in the top of the 7th.  But the Redbirds answered in the bottom of the inning.  They hit a two-run home run to tie the game and then the go ahead run scored on a double play.  That ended up being the winning run.  I noticed that a lot of the fans seemed more excited about Salt Lake City than Memphis.  I figured it out when Salt Lake City's starter left the game.  I looked him up and he was from Tennessee and he went to Arkansas State.

So Autozone Park was decent.  The beer selection was pretty good.  The food selection could be better.  The crowd was tiny.  I think two days later was $2 beer night, but it doesn't look like the crowd was all that much bigger that night.  The 360 degree concourse was cool.  That was probably my last minor league game of the year, so here are my updated minor league stadium rankings:


13. Arm & Hammer Park in Trenton
12. Dehler Park in Billings
11. Arvest Ballpark in Springdale
10. Autozone Park
9. TD Bank Ballpark in Bridgewater, New Jersey
8. Memorial Stadium in Boise
7. KeySpan Park in Brooklyn
6. Newman Outdoor Field in Fargo
5. Isotopes Park in Albuquerque
4. Daniel S. Frawley Stadium in Wilmington
3. Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park in Charleston
2. Dunkin Donuts Park in Hartford
1. Regions Field in Birmingham