More Manfred Madness

The two sports that I care about the most are baseball and college football.  And the people in charge of those sports just keep trying to make them worse.  Now we have the Big 10 talking about a 28 team playoff.  What are we doing?  College football had the best regular season in sports and they’re trying to make it into college basketball (which has the worst regular season in major sports).  If you’re outside of the top six teams in the regular season, you don’t deserve a shot at winning the National Championship.  Obviously it worked out pretty well for me last year with Notre Dame making it to the championship game, but I would have been totally okay with the penalty for losing to a bad Northern Illinois team being that you don’t get to play for a National Championship.  Ohio State won the National Championship.  Obviously they earned it in the playoff by beating good teams, but I like the idea of losing two games in the regular season costing you a shot at a National Championship.  They lost to Oregon and a bad Michigan team (post-cheating Michigan) last year and those games just didn’t matter.  They’re already at a 12 team playoff so I’d be okay with going to 16.  I think 12 is too many already, but what’s the difference between 12 and 16 for a college football playoff?  But anything more than 16 would be absurd.  The only good thing would be that maybe if they expanded by that many teams, Lincoln Riley wouldn’t be afraid to play Notre Dame because he’s pretty much taken the position that he wants to keep playing Notre Dame as long as losing to us doesn’t mean anything for USC.  If they could go 7-5 and get the 28 seed, then maybe he wouldn’t be so eager to get rid of the best rivalry in college football.

Now that I’ve gotten my college football rant out of the way, let’s get to Rob Manfred.  I’m convinced the guy just doesn’t like baseball.  He’s ruined exciting extra innings games.  He’s taken away the possibility of great moments like Clayton Kershaw’s Opening Day home run and shutout (unless Ohtani does it).  And now he wants to get rid of the American and National League and go East/West.  I saw this coming when he ruined National League baseball with the DH.  He talked about reducing travel and the wear and tear on players.  You know how you could do that?  Undo another recent stupid Manfred change, having every team playing every other team each season.  I don’t need the Dodgers playing the Blue Jays, Rays, Guardians, White Sox, Rangers, etc. each season.  For a while they were playing 20 interleague games per year.  Now I think they’re up to 48.  That’s way too many interleague games.  Manfred mentioned realignment in connection with expansion.  If you expand, you have to realign.  And I was in favor of that and had my own realignment plan 12 years ago.  I said, “I think the game is in much better shape now than it was [in 1998 when baseball last expanded].”  That was before Manfred was the commissioner.  So it’s not in such great shape now.  With Manfred as the commissioner, I don’t want to expand because he will mess everything up if they do.  For a long time, I’ve wanted the A’s and Rays to get their situations settled so that they could expand.  We know what’s going to happen to the A’s, but the Rays’ future is still very unclear.  I hope it doesn’t get figured out until after Manfred retires (2029 can’t get here soon enough) so that expansion will happen under the next commissioner.

The main reason I supported expansion and realignment was to reduce the number of interleague games.  With 15 teams in each league, there has to be at least one interleague game each day that there’s a full schedule.  With 16 teams in each league, interleague play could be much more limited.  The NFL does all divisional games the last week of the season.  This year the Dodgers are going to end the regular season against the Mariners.  They should be ending it against the Padres, Giants, or Diamondbacks.  My original expansion proposal called four eight divisions with four teams each.  I’m changing that to four divisions with eight teams each.  I’ve seen other geographical realignment proposals with eight divisions where the Dodgers and Giants are split up and the Cubs and Cardinals are split up.  If you’re doing that, you’re doing it wrong.  And I have no confidence in Rob Manfred to not do it wrong.  Anyway, here’s my new proposal:

NL West

Dodgers

Diamondbacks

Padres

Giants

Rockies

Cardinals

Cubs

Brewers

NL East

Mets

Phillies

Pirates

Reds

Nationals

Braves

Marlins

Southern Expansion Team (Virginia Beach, Charlotte, Raleigh, Nashville, Memphis, Louisville, or New Orleans)

AL West

Mariners

A’s

Angels

Western Expansion Team (Portland, Oakland, San Jose, Fresno, Sacramento, or Salt Lake City)

Rangers

Astros

Twins

Royals

AL East

Yankees

Red Sox

Orioles

Rays

Blue Jays

Guardians

Tigers

White Sox

I’ll get to what the colors mean, but first I’ll talk about the playoff format.  I’m trying to address some of Manfred’s concerns without further ruining the sport.  Manfred talked about travel and the TV schedule with the playoffs.  I really don’t care about the TV schedule.  It’s fine.  But he actually does have a legitimate point about travel in the playoffs.  If the Braves had beaten the Padres in the first round last year, the Dodgers would have had to play the Braves, then the Mets, then the Yankees.  That’s a lot of back and forth between the coasts.  So I have two very similar possible formats for the playoffs.  Both would have the division winners getting a bye in the first round.  The second place team in each division would host a three game series.  You could either have them hosting the third place team in each division or you could make it like the NHL.  In the NHL, the top three teams in each division make the playoffs and then there are two wild cards in each conference.  So baseball could have the top two teams in each division make the playoffs and then two wild cards in each league.  So like if the two best records in the NL after the first and second place teams were both from the NL West, then the NL East wouldn’t get any wild cards (four teams from the NL West and two from the NL East would make the playoffs).  So I’m good with either having the top three teams in each division making the playoffs or having the top two teams in each division plus two wild cards in each league.  It wouldn’t make too much difference in terms of travel because the third place teams or the wild cards wouldn’t get any home games in the first round so there would be no back and forth.

So far, the playoffs are not too much different from what we have now.  The second round is where I’m making a pretty big change.  The first place team in each division would host all five games.  The playoff format right now doesn’t do enough to reward the best teams.  The sport is based on playing every day and then they have to wait five days for the playoffs to start for them while their opponent is still playing.  So it’s still a five game series, but the first place team gets all five games at home.  That would definitely reduce travel in the playoffs and it would reward the first place teams.  We would keep the 2-3-2 format for the League Championship Series and the World Series.

Besides the playoffs, we need to figure out how to make the regular season schedule work.  My ideal number of interleague games is zero, but I know they’re not getting rid of interleague play.  I’m going to bend pretty far on this one.  I think my thinking with eight divisions in my original plan was that you would only play one division from the opposite league each year.  So it would take four years for the Dodgers to play every American League team.  With four divisions, I would make it so that you play every team in one division in the opposite league for three games each year.  That’s 24 games.  But again, I’m trying to be realistic.  They’re not going to make it so that the Mets and Yankees only play every other year.  So each team would have an interleague rival that they’re guaranteed to play six times each year.  Each team would play a total of 30 interleague games (way more than I want, but it’s a lot better than 48).  So it’s 24 games against the division in the other league you’re playing plus six extra interleague games.  Like if the AL East was playing the NL West, the six extra games for the Yankees would be the Mets.  If the AL East was playing the NL East, they would play everybody in the NL East except for the Mets three times.  They would play the Mets six times, and you figure out three more interleague games (like maybe if the Yankees and Dodgers finished in first place, they play their last three interleague games against each other.  So you would play every team in the opposite league at least once every two years.  It used to be once every three years, but now you play everybody every year.  So I think I’m making a pretty generous compromise on my hatred of interleague play.  I’ll get to the interleague rivals later (some are very obvious and some are not so obvious).  When they started interleague play, it all happened during one part of the season (it was all done in June and July).  There weren’t as many interleague games back then, but I would go back to doing it all during one part of the season.  Like I would have it start with a series against your interleague rivals in May and end with the other series against your interleague rivals in July.  And the last two months of the season you’re only playing the teams in your own league.

So with 30 interleague games per year, that leaves 132 games against the teams in your own league.  You would play the teams in the opposite division six times each (48 games).  That leaves 84 games to play against your own division.  With seven other teams in your division, you could just play each one 12 times each.  I could live with that, but I think I would prefer my second option.  That’s where the colors above come into play.  You could think of each color in the division as a pod.  You’re all in the same division, but you play the teams in your pod 16 times and the teams in the other pod nine times.  That would help preserve those more traditional rivalries and reduce travel.  So every series of the season would be a three game series except you would play 12 series of four games each against the other three teams in your pod.  But I could live with just playing all seven teams in your division 12 times each.

Interleague Rivals

Dodgers/Angels

Mets/Yankees

Cubs/White Sox

Nationals/Orioles

Marlins/Rays

Brewers/Twins

Cardinals/Royals

Reds/Guardians

Giants/A’s

Padres/Mariners

Diamondbacks/Western Expansion Team

Rockies/Rangers

Phillies/Red Sox

Pirates/Blue Jays

Braves/Tigers

Southern Expansion Team/Astros

The rivalries in the blue and red could be shuffled based on where the expansion teams would be.  Like Giants/A’s made a lot of sense when the A’s were in Oakland, but Padres/A’s, Giants/Mariners, and Diamondbacks/Salt Lake City expansion team would make more sense.  But if the expansion team was in Oakland, Sacramento, San Jose, or Fresno, then they should go with the Giants.  The Tigers don’t have a natural interleague rival.  They could have the Pirates, but then the Blue Jays don’t have a natural interleague rival.  If you put an expansion team in Louisville, then they could go with the Tigers and the Braves and Astros could be rivals.  I guess you could also do Braves/Red Sox (since the Braves used to play in Boston), Phillies/Blue Jays, and Pirates/Tigers.  Or you could just keep the ones that make a lot of sense the same each year (Dodgers/Angles, Mets/Yankees, Cubs/White Sox, Nationals/Orioles, etc.) and rotate some of the rivalries that aren’t as natural each year.

So please don’t get rid of the National League (even though Manfred has already done great damage with the DH) and the American League.  My plan would preserve the NL and AL, preserve and strengthen rivalries, add extra importance to winning divisions, and address Manfred’s concern about wear and tear with travel.  Please Rob Manfred, don’t ruin the great sport of baseball any more than you already have.

Two Very Different Minor League Baseball Experiences

I started this year with nine states where I had never seen a sporting event.  I’m down to five now.  I crossed off Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire (leaving just Rhode Island to go in New England).  And I was recently in South Dakota on my way to Minnesota for some minor league baseball.  There aren’t many sports options in South Dakota, but Sioux Falls has an independent league baseball team.  Sioux Falls is the biggest city in South Dakota with a population of 192,517 in the 2020 census.  It was my first time spending a night in South Dakota since my only previous time in South Dakota was driving through the state on my way to North Dakota.

It was an adventure getting to Sioux Falls.  I had to go from New York to Detroit to the Twin Cities to Sioux Falls.  Originally I was scheduled to leave JFK at 8:00 in the morning and get to Sioux Falls at 3:24 in the afternoon.  After I booked my flights, Delta rescheduled them so that I would leave at 7:22 and get to Sioux Falls at 5:36.  I was going to see the Sioux Falls Canaries at 6:35.  I was staying at an airport hotel and I could walk to the stadium in like five minutes so as long as my flight was on time, that wasn’t an issue.  It turned out to be a rough day of travel.  I was on the train to JFK at 5:01 in the morning.  The line to get through security was really long.  I got through before 7:00, but I had a very long walk through the terminal to get to the gate.  I made it there as they were doing the final boarding.  From there things were going smoothly until I got to Minnesota.  I ended up spending more time in Minnesota that day than I did in South Dakota.  My long layover in Minnesota ended up being five hours instead of two hours and 45 minutes and I got to South Dakota around 8:00.  I watched the entire Dodger game that day on my iPad in the airport (Ohtani pitched well and hit a home run, but the Dodgers found a way to lose).

As it became clear that I would be late for the game in Sioux Falls, I was just hoping I could get a hot dog and a beer at the game.  I got to the game in the seventh inning.  I had already bought my ticket, but I could have just walked in without a ticket because nobody was checking them by the time I got there.  I was able to get a hot dog and a beer.  The hot dog was good.  The beer was disappointing.  I figured I didn’t have time to explore the stadium so I just went with the first option I saw.  But I had done my research before the game and it didn’t seem like there were many other options anyway.  The beer was a Bird’s Brew (specially made for the Canaries) from the Take 16 Brewing Company.  The Take 16 Brewing Company is in Luverne, Minnesota (about 40 minutes away from Sioux Falls).  It looked like other than that, it was just cheap beer.  How do you not have some South Dakota beer?

As for the game, it was the Sioux Falls Canaries taking on the Winnipeg Goldeyes.  They play in the American Association of Professional Baseball.  It was my second ever American Association game.  I saw the Fargo-Moorhead Redhawks take on the Grand Prairie AirHogs (a team that no longer exists) in 2015.  That was my only trip to North Dakota and it was also part of the trip that was my only previous time in South Dakota.  I was there for the whole game that time, but of course I only saw three innings this time in Sioux Falls.  Winnipeg hit a two run home run in the first and then added runs on RBI singles in the second and fifth to make the score 4-0.  That was the score when I got there.  And that was the score when the game ended.  So I barely saw a sporting event in South Dakota, but I got a hot dog and a beer and saw three innings so I’m counting it.  The game lasted two hours and 26 minutes.  It was 80° and partly cloudy so it was really good baseball weather.  Attendance was 1,442.  Sioux Falls Stadium is going to rank low on my minor league stadium rankings.  The food selection was underwhelming (but the hot dog was good), the beer selection was bad, and the biggest problem was the artificial turf.  The stadium has been around since 1941.  It didn’t seem that old (it was renovated in 2000).  So it could be a good stadium.  The problems are very fixable.  The most costly would be putting grass back in.  Apparently they switched to artificial turf in 2022.  So that was a gigantic waste of money and they probably won’t fix it any time soon.  The scourge of artificial turf in baseball stadiums must be eliminated.

It was getting dark by the time I got there.

The next day I was on my way to the Twin Cities.  After the disaster of getting to Sioux Falls, I had my easiest airport security experience ever in the Sioux Falls airport (I could have taken a bus, but they were not at convenient times and flying was pretty cheap).  There was nobody on the security line when I got there.  And you don’t have to take your shoes off anymore.  And I didn’t have to take my iPad out (that varies whenever I travel and I have no idea what they’re going to tell me any time I go to an airport).  So I got through security very quickly.

I’ll cover most of my time in Minnesota in my next blog post, but I figured it would make sense to finish up my minor league baseball experiences in this blog post.  I was seeing Dennis for the first time since I saw him at Notre Dame in the summer of 2018 (I’ve lost track of how many Notre Dame degrees he has, but I think it’s three or four).  We went to see the St. Paul Saints.  St. Paul was the sixth or seventh state capital I’ve been to this summer (also Atlanta, Montpelier, Concord, Boston, Hartford, and I don’t know if I was ever actually in Raleigh or not when I was in North Carolina).  But for all the other ones, I was just traveling through.  I spent a lot of time in St. Paul.  With a population of 311,527 in 2020, it’s Minnesota’s second biggest city.  The Saints play at CHS Field, which was built in 2015.  I remember seeing the stadium when I visited Dennis in Minnesota in 2015, but we didn’t go to a game.  The stadium is very good.  It’s surprising how good it is because it was built when the Saints were still an independent league team.  They were in the American Association when the stadium was built.  In 2021, they became the triple-A affiliate of the Twins.

We saw the Saints take on the Iowa Cubs.  Iowa went up 5-0 in the third inning, scoring on a fielder’s choice, an RBI double, and a three run home run.  Former Dodger James Outman was the leadoff batter for the Saints.  He hit a home run in the bottom of the third to make it 5-1.  I would have applauded him as a former Dodger, but he was the DH and I couldn’t do it because of my moral opposition to the designated hitter.  The Saints tied it in the fourth inning, scoring on a sacrifice fly, a fielder’s choice/throwing error, and a two run home run.  And then they took the lead in the fifth on an RBI triple.  And that was all the scoring as the Saints won 6-5.

The forecast in St. Paul looked a little questionable at one point, but it turned out fine.

CHS Stadium was fantastic.  To eat, I had a chili cheese dog.  It wasn’t great, but I wanted to have a hot dog as it might have been my last hot dog at a baseball game in 2025.  To drink, I had a Mango Blonde from the Lift Bridge Brewing Company in Stillwater, Minnesota.  It sounded like a good summery beer.  I didn’t love it.  It could have been colder.  But I give CHS Stadium credit for having an excellent local beer selection.  Dennis had a very non-summery beer (like an oatmeal stout or something).  We got our beers at a bar down the left field line that probably had about 20 local beers on tap.  There are Major League stadiums that don’t have a beer selection that comes anywhere close to CHS Field.  The game took two hours and 32 minutes.  It was 85° and attendance was 8,059.  That’s close to the biggest crowd I’ve ever been a part of at a minor league game (I think the biggest was 8,500 in Birmingham).

The other really cool thing about the stadium was the little museum about baseball in St. Paul.  I remember first hearing of the St. Paul Saints when Darryl Strawberry was playing for them before the Yankees signed him.  The museum had the letter that Brian Cashman sent to the Saints with a check for $3000 to purchase the contract of Darryl Strawberry.  This version of the Saints started as an independent league team in 1993.  But there was a previous version of the Saints that existed from 1901-1960.  It looks like they ceased to exist when the Twins moved to Minnesota in 1961.  That previous version of the Saints was an affiliate of the Dodgers from 1944-1960 (it looks like they were triple-A from 1946-1960 and double-A before that).  Walter Alston was their manager for two years and Duke Snider and Roy Campanella played for them.  Four-time NBA Champion with the Boston Celtics and Basketball Hall of Famer Bill Sharman also played for the Saints (apparently he got called up to the Dodgers at one point, but never played in a game).  I had no idea about the previous version of the Saints and their connection to the Dodgers.  The current team has uniforms that kind of have a Dodgers look to them so that might be a nod to their history.  So despite not a great food and beverage experience for me personally, I was very impressed by CHS Field.  One thing that would have made it even better would be a better backdrop.  Like if you just rotated the stadium 180°, it would have an excellent backdrop of St. Paul.  But if they did that, you would also have hitters facing west and the setting sun when they’re hitting.  So there’s a good reason why the stadium is oriented the way it is.

Duke Snider ended up being one of the greatest Dodgers ever, but he played for the St. Paul Saints first.  This says that he played for the Saints in 1948, but apparently it was 1947.  He hit .316/.352/.584 with 12 home runs in 66 games for the Saints.

Bill Sharman made eight All Star Teams and seven All NBA teams, won four NBA Championships with the Celtics, and made it to the Basketball Hall of Fame, but during two off seasons he hit .293/.344/.437 with 27 home runs in 270 games with the Saints.

I remembered Darryl Strawberry playing for the Saints and then coming to the Yankees.  What I did not remember was that he played for the Yankees in 1995 and then for the Saints in 1996 before coming back to the Yankees.  He hit .435/.538/1.000 with 18 home runs in 29 games with the Saints.

I’m definitely done for the year going to minor league stadiums that I hadn’t been to yet.  So it’s time to update my minor league stadium rankings.  Really these are non-Major League stadiums.  Some of them aren’t minor league stadiums anymore.  Two are college stadiums.  Three are homes of collegiate summer league teams.  Two are minor league and/or spring training stadiums where I’ve seen Major League games.  I’m adding stadiums that I had been to before this year but I hadn’t included in my previous rankings (a college stadium and two collegiate summer league stadiums).  These rankings are based on my experiences when I’ve been to them.  I haven’t been to a Long Island Ducks game since they replaced wonderful grass with the abomination of artificial turf.  So their stadium is ranked a lot higher than it would be if they had artificial turf when I went there.  Anyway, here we go:

41. Sioux Falls Stadium

40. Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen

39. Arm & Hammer Park in Trenton

38. Walker Stadium in Portland, Oregon (which I did not include in my last rankings)

37. Dehler Park in Billings

36. Arvest Ballpark in Springdale

35. Mulcahy Stadium in Anchorage (I never included it in my rankings before)

34. Autozone Park in Memphis

33. TD Bank Ballpark in Bridgewater, New Jersey

32.  Heritage Financial Park in Wappingers Falls

31. Memorial Stadium in Boise

30. KeySpan Park in Brooklyn

29. Newman Outdoor Field in Fargo

28. Isotopes Park in Albuquerque

27. TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha

26. Daniel S. Frawley Stadium in Wilmington

25.  Clipper Magazine Stadium in Lancaster

24. Centennial Field in Burlington

23. Frank Eck Stadium at Notre Dame- I had never ranked this one before and I have to include a note on it.  Objectively this should rank 41st.  There’s artificial turf, no beer (they’re going to start selling beer at football, basketball, and hockey games this year, but not baseball), and small crowds.  But my rankings are based on my experiences.  And I like being on campus at Notre Dame.  So this is ranked way too high. It was grass when I was a student there, but I’ve been to games before and after the switch to artificial turf.  I wish they would invest a lot more in the baseball program.  I would go back to grass, make the stadium nicer, and start selling beer.  So yes, I have this one very overrated, but I still have 22 stadiums ahead of it.

22. Sahlen Field in Buffalo

21. Greater Nevada Field in Reno

20. NBT Bank Stadium in Syracuse

19. Richmond County Bank Ballpark on Staten Island

18. Hadlock Field in Portland, Maine

17. Dickey-Stephens Park in Little Rock

16. Joseph L. Bruno Stadium in Troy

15. Bethpage Ballpark in Central Islip

14. Four Winds Field in South Bend

13. Prince George’s Stadium in Bowie

12. Riverfront Stadium in Wichita

11. Louisville Slugger Field

10. George Steinbrenner Field in Tampa 

9. Delta Dental Stadium in Manchester

8. Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark in Oklahoma City

7. Las Vegas Ballpark

6. Durham Bulls Athletic Park

5. Frontier Field in Rochester

4. Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park in Charleston

3. Dunkin Donuts Park in Hartford

2. Regions Field in Birmingham

1. CHS Field in St. Paul

We’ll see what next year brings as far as minor league games, but these are teams that I might go see play at home:

Sacramento A’s (of course they’re a Major League team, but they’re playing in a minor league stadium)

Charlotte Knights

Indianapolis Indians

Lehigh Valley IronPigs

Norfolk Tides

Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders (I could do some Office-related stuff in Scranton)

Worcester Red Sox (I’ve heard good things about their stadium)

Salt Lake Bees (Salt Lake City is far away, but easy to fly to)

Altoona Curve

Binghamton Rumble Ponies

Harrisburg Senators

Reading Fightin Phils

Richmond Flying Squirrels (they’re getting a new stadium next year so they’re high on the list)

Biloxi Shuckers (since I haven’t seen a sporting event in Mississippi yet)

Vancouver Canadians (I just got my passport renewed last year so this might be part of a bigger trip out west)

Fredericksburg Nationals

Lynchburg Hillcats

Charleston Dirty Birds (the play in the same league as the Ducks and I’ve never been to a sporting event in West Virginia)

Chicago Dogs (like the Sioux Falls Canaries, they play in the American Association and they play in a fairly new stadium that’s right by O’Hare so it would be easy to get to)

Of course, a lot depends on next year’s schedules, but I’d like to a handful.  This year I got to nine non-Major League Baseball stadiums for the first time.  That was a lot, but it was only five separate trips because all four of my trips this summer included two non-Major League stadiums).  If I got to like 4-8 next year, that would be pretty good.   So I have no idea which ones I’ll get to next year, but hopefully it will be a decent number and hopefully I’ll be able to cross off at least one of West Virginia or Mississippi.