Buffaronto Blue Jays

For the first time in 18 months, I left Long Island.  I had only been outside of Suffolk and Nassau thrice.  I went to Aqueduct Racetrack for my two vaccine doses (one of those trips was in a snowstorm) and there was the doubleheader I went to at Citi Field.  Finally, I was taking a trip again.  I went to Buffalo.  The Blue Jays played most of their home games last year in Buffalo.  I had the idea that they should play a series in Buffalo this year as a thank you with fans at the game since they didn’t have any fans last year.  But of course, with the pandemic still going on, they kept playing their home games in Buffalo (after starting the season at their spring training facility in Florida).  So this was an opportunity to see a Major League Baseball game at a stadium that I had never been to so I wanted to go.  Speaking of the Blue Jays playing outside of Toronto, they should also embrace being Canada’s team and play one series each year in a different Canadian city. Eight other Canadian cities have stadiums that have a capacity greater than the Blue Jays’ average attendance in 2019. They’re almost all CFL stadiums so it would take some work setting them up for baseball, but I would think it could be done since CFL fields are considerably bigger than NFL fields.

My last baseball trip (also the last time I had stayed in a hotel) was July 2019 to some minor league stadiums in upstate New York, but I didn’t make it all the way to Buffalo.  The farthest west I got was Rochester, but I broke up that trip to make my train rides shorter.  Instead of going all the way to Rochester, my first stop was Syracuse, then I went to Rochester, and then my last stop was the Albany area instead of going all the way back to New York.  But this time I just went all the way to Buffalo and all the way back to New York in one train ride each.  I think the only time I’ve been in one mode of transportation for longer was my Hawaii/Australia trip in 2016.  There was also the drive from Notre Dame to Atlanta for the Georgia Tech game in 2006, but the drives there and back (11-12 hours each way) were broken up with stops (but not a stop for an alpine slide).

Anyway, I took the train up to Buffalo on Friday.  The plan was to go to two games.  I figured there was a good chance that I would get to the first game late because my train was scheduled to get in about a half hour before the Friday night game started.  The train station is really close to the stadium.  If you watch on TV, you can see a parking garage beyond the fence in right field.  The train station is right on the other side of the parking garage.  But I had to walk almost a mile to my hotel and then back to the stadium.  So I figured I would get to the game late.  And it turned out that my train was almost a half hour late.  So it was the third inning by the time I got to the game.

According to the Ballpark app, this was just the second Blue Jays game I’ve ever been to.  I saw them lose 6-1 to the Royals at Rogers Center (I refuse to use the silly British spelling) in 2014.  I have an exact record of every Major League game I’ve been to outside of New York on the Ballpark app.  It’s possible that I saw the Blue Jays play at old Yankee Stadium or Shea Stadium (much less likely since they never played at Shea Stadium until 1997 and they played a lot more games at Yankee Stadium each year than Shea Stadium).  But this might have been just my second Blue Jays game ever.  According to the app now, I’ve seen every team more than once now except for the Brewers.  The Brewers switched to the NL in 1998 so I might have seen them at old Yankee Stadium or Shea Stadium.  But it’s not like we would have ever made a point to go see the Blue Jays or the Brewers play.

There were some old friends and old enemies in this game.  Charlie Culberson (who ended Vin Scully’s last game at Dodger Stadium with a home run to clinch the division) went 1 for 3 with a walk for the Rangers.  Dennis Santana (who was a member of the 2020 World Series Champions, but didn’t pitch in the postseason) gave up four runs in two innings of relief for the Rangers.  Former Notre Dame baseball player Cavan Biggio went 1 for 3 with a walk for the Blue Jays.  Cheater George Springer (BOOOOOOO!!!!!!) went 0 for 4 (Yay!) for the Blue Jays.  Former Arizona Diamondback Robbie Ray started for the Blue Jays.  Unfortunately, he has pretty good career numbers against the Dodgers.  He’s 8-6 (he doesn’t have more than five wins against any other team) with a 3.39 ERA in 21 starts against the Dodgers (he has faced the Dodgers more than any other team).  In this game, he got the win after allowing zero runs on four hits and two walks with eight strikeouts in six and two-thirds innings.  When I got to the game, it was 1-0 Blue Jays after Vladimir Guerrero’s 29th home run of the season.  I was there for the rest of the scoring and there was a lot.  In the third inning, Marcus Semien hit his 23rd home run, Teoscar Hernandez hit his 12th home run, and Randal Grichuk hit his 17th home run to give the Blue Jays a 5-0 lead.  The Blue Jays got another run in the fourth and Vladimir Guerrero hit his second home run of the game to cap a four-run sixth inning.  Eli White hit a two-run homer in the ninth to make it 10-2 and avoid the shutout for the Rangers.

Here’s a panoramic shot from my seat.  If I looked straight ahead from my seat, I was looking out to left center and not the infield.

It cleared out late with the rain and the Blue Jays having a big lead.  I moved right behind the plate because there was a good chance that the game the next day would be rained out and I’d miss my chance to sit in a good seat.

Of non-Major League stadiums, there are only three in the United States that hold more fans than Sahlen Field according to Wikipedia.  Howard J. Lamade Stadium (Little League World Series) holds 40,000, TD Ameritrade Park (College World Series) holds 24,000, and Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan (former part-time home of the Expos) holds 18,264.  Sahlen Field’s capacity is 16,600.  For comparison, Rogers Center holds 49,282 for baseball and their average home attendance in 2019 was 21,606.  For Friday night, I got a seat pretty far down the right field line for a few reasons.  Since I figured I would get there late, I went with a cheap seat.  And when I bought a ticket for the game back in early July, not many seats had been sold in that part of the stadium.  I was hoping it might be kind of empty and I could just get a foul ball because there wouldn’t be many people around.  As it turns out, my section was pretty full and there weren’t any foul balls that came all that close anyway.  I paid more for a good seat on Saturday since I would be able to be there for the whole game.

When I checked the forecast a week before my trip, it looked great (around 80 degrees and no rain).  When I checked again a day or two before I left, it was pretty bad.  Both games looked questionable.  I was more concerned about Friday night’s game.  It looked like it was definitely going to rain on Saturday morning, but it might clear up in time for the game.  But they got the Friday game in.  There was pretty much a light rain for most of the game (it looked much heavier on TV than it actually was) and it was around 70 degrees.

I had googled Sahlen Field’s food and beer selection, but the information I found seemed to be all from before the pandemic.  Like Citi Field, the food options were more limited than normal.  I try not to eat meat on Fridays and I was planning on being back the next day so I wanted to get a non-meat option.  The internet said they had poutine.  That’s what I was planning on getting since it doesn’t have meat and it seemed appropriate for a game where the home team was a team that usually plays in Canada, but if they had it, I didn’t see it.  The non-meat options were uninspiring.  I ended up getting a slice of pizza.  My college friends remember my feelings about pizza from outside the Pizza Belt.  It’s not impossible to get good pizza outside of the Pizza Belt, but it’s not easy.  Even inside the Pizza Belt, I would pretty much never get pizza at a sporting event (I just assume that you’re not getting Little Vincent’s quality pizza at Madison Square Garden or wherever).  I will say this about pizza outside the Pizza Belt, when you put dough, sauce, and cheese together, it’s not going to be terrible.  It will taste okay, but that doesn’t make it good pizza.  And that’s what I got.  The good thing about it was that it was a pretty substantial slice (definitely more substantial than a good slice that you would get on Long Island).  I hadn’t eaten anything since around 10:00 in the morning so at least I got something pretty filling for only $5.  The beer selection was okay.  You had to put a little effort in to find good options, but there were a few stands that had a decent selection of local beer.  I got a Rusty Chain from the Flying Bison brewery, which is an amber beer.  I usually like amber beers, but this one was a little underwhelming. But it was definitely better than the pilsner I had when I went to Citi Field.

When I got up on Saturday, it was raining pretty hard and the forecast for the rest of the day had gotten worse.  The game was supposed to be at 3:00, but I figured it wasn’t happening.  They ended up calling the game a little after 1:00.  I’ve spent the last ten years (minus 2020) traveling the country (plus Toronto) going to Major League games outside of New York City in 30 different stadiums (plus minor league games in many other cities).  Often I had no wiggle room for rain.  I’d be in a city for a night for a game and then I was on my way to my next stop.  This was the third time I didn’t get to a game I was supposed to get to. In 2014, my father and I didn’t make it to Cincinnati because our flight was delayed many hours (we did get to the other places we were supposed to go to, the Pro Football Hall of Fame and an Indians game).  I got to a Reds game the next year.  In 2018, I went to visit Tom in San Francisco to see Dodgers-Giants, but the Giants had their first rain out in 11 years.  But that wasn’t too big of a deal because I had a late flight home the next day and they had an afternoon game that day.  So we just went to that game instead.  I’ve had some rain delays at some games I’ve gone to, but I’ve been pretty fortunate with the weather.  This was the first time that I wasn’t able to attend a game on a trip because of weather.  It was disappointing (the most disappointing thing about it was that old friend Hyun Jin Ryu was the scheduled starter for the Blue Jays), but at least I had gotten to a game the night before so I didn’t miss out completely and I’ll get a refund so whatever.

So I had Saturday to just hang out.  I really didn’t do much.  I wanted to get wings.  I thought about ordering from Anchor Bar, which is where buffalo wings were invented.  Their menu listed a combination of beef on weck (which is like the Buffalo sandwich) and five wings, but that wasn’t listed on their much more limited Doordash menu.  There was another bar with better reviews that had the same combination for a cheaper price.  So that’s what I was going to go with.  But right after I put in my order on Doordash, it was cancelled and they said the bar was closed.  I couldn’t find another place with good reviews that had the same combination.  I didn’t want to order a beef on weck and a full order of wings (too much food and too expensive).  I was interested in the beef on weck, but if I only had one day in Buffalo, I had to get wings.  So I ordered half mild/half medium wings and a side salad from a bar right by my hotel (which also had better reviews than Anchor bar) and then just picked it up myself.  The wings were fine.  The medium was definitely better than the mild.  Medium had the right level of spice so that you could feel it and it added something positive to the whole experience, but not too much spice to the point where it was difficult to eat.  But they were spicy enough to get my nose running, which is kind of annoying as you eat.  Buffalo might have invented the buffalo wing, but I could definitely get buffalo wings that are just as good on Long Island.

I spent Saturday night watching Pat Connaughton play well in the NBA Finals.  Notre Dame was going to win either way with Monty Williams coaching the Suns, but I definitely enjoyed watching Pat Connaughton in the NBA Finals.  He’s been the best Notre Dame NBA player since I was a student at Notre Dame (I thought he had a chance to be a good NBA player, but I thought Jerian Grant would be better).  Pat Connaughton is my favorite Notre Dame basketball player ever (read this story about how awesome Pat Connaughton is).  Monty Williams is from before my time at Notre Dame, but he is extremely likeable as well.  Since the Celtics stunk and had no chance of getting to the NBA Finals, this was my dream Finals matchup.  I feared that we were going to get Lakers-Nets, which would have been my nightmare Finals matchup (like when the Patriots played the Seahawks in the Super Bowl).  And besides having Notre Dame people prominently involved, these were the two teams that beat the Lakers and the Nets so it was pretty awesome.  I think this was the first time since 2007 when the Finals didn’t feature a team and/or player that I despised (Lakers-Nets would have featured one team and four players that I despise, with James Harden bordering on being the fifth).  I didn’t despise LeBron James in 2007, but since then, we’ve had at least one of the Lakers/Kobe Bryant, the Heat/Dwyane Wade (I liked Wade in 2006, but he became a villain with LeBron James on his team), LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Anthony Davis in the NBA Finals each year (I didn’t include Kyrie Irving on that list because I didn’t despise him when he was with Cleveland, but now he’s behind only LeBron James on my list of least favorite NBA players).  So it was nice to just be able to enjoy this NBA Finals. By the way, my draft evaluations of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Pat Connaughton hold up.

On Sunday morning I went to Mass at St. Louis, which is apparently the oldest Catholic Church in western New York.  I think oldest in Western New York referred to the original church at that site, which opened in 1832, the current church is the third church at the same site.  After Mass, I headed back home.

I thought about whether I should rank Sahlen Field with the Major League Stadiums or the minor league stadiums.  I think the answer is I have to rank it with the minor league stadiums.  It definitely felt like a minor league stadium.  You don’t have a 360° concourse.  The field is not visible from the concourse.  The scoreboard lacked information.  You got the lineups with OPS (stat nerds would probably take that stat, but if you’re only going to give me one stat, I’d rather have batting average, on base percentage, or slugging percentage than one stat that just adds two of those together).  I’ll note that George Springer had the lowest OPS of any hitter in the lineup for the Blue Jays.  It is harder to play baseball when you’re not cheating.  You got pitch speed and pitch count, but not the pitch type.  And that was about it.  They had a big picture of each batter, but they didn’t give information about the previous plate appearances for each hitter.  I’m not going to rank it too high on my minor league stadium list (I should get to a couple of minor league games this year so I’ll wait to update those rankings), but if I did compare it to Major League stadiums, it did have some good things compared to some of them.  The first two are obvious:  it’s outdoors and it has grass (I hate that we’ve had stadiums switch from grass to artificial turf in the last few years and a new one built with artificial turf).  The beer selection was pretty good (not great, but pretty good).  And the atmosphere was good.  The game had more fans than the Rays game I went to two years ago.  It was. 10,100 for this game (60% of capacity) and 9,914 for the Rays game (40% of capacity, but really it was much lower than that because they cover up thousands of seats because they can’t get fans to come to their games).  It felt more full than 60% and the fans were into the game.  But if it was a minor league game on a Friday night in July, I doubt they would be getting that many fans and that the fans would be as into the game as they were.

I was kind of expecting the Blue Jays to finish their season in Buffalo, but they’re heading back to Toronto on July 30.  So I’m glad I got to a game in Buffalo in time.  I had thought about going at the beginning of the month but it didn’t quite work with my schedule.  I would have been there for Canada Day and July 2 if I had gone at the beginning of the month.  Speaking of that homestand, they were home on July 4.  Now it worked out because they were playing in Buffalo, but they didn’t know when the schedule was made that they wouldn’t be playing in Toronto.  When you have one team in Major League Baseball in Canada, why do they ever get a home game on the Fourth of July?  I know it’s close to Canada Day, but there’s enough separation so that they should never be home on July 4.  Even if the Canada Day is a Friday (which would likely be the first game of a series), they should always be home that day and then they play July 2 and 3 at home and then they should always start a road trip right after that so that no American team has to be in Canada on the Fourth of July.  This is so obvious.

So that was my trip to Buffalo, the second biggest city in my home state.  For comparison, Buffalo’s population is about 3% of New York City.  I’m pretty sure that’s the biggest disparity between the two biggest cities in any state.  It reminded me a little bit of Detroit.  I was walking around downtown Buffalo and there was pretty much nobody there.  But it was a weekend and people were at home instead of going to work I guess (I was in Detroit on a weekday and there was nobody around).  I’ll probably never be in Buffalo ever again, but I saw one of the very few major league games played in Buffalo since the BufFeds played in the Federal League in 1914 and 1915 (the Buffalo Bisons were in the NL from 1879-1885).