Two Minor League Stadiums, One Major League Game

I started my summer vacation with a couple of games in minor league stadiums, but one of them was a Major League game.  My first stop was Durham to see the Durham Bulls against the Memphis Redbirds.  I didn’t do anything else in Durham.  I was there for my last pre-pandemic sports trip in November 2019 to see Notre Dame beat Duke in football.  I had gotten to a couple of spots that were on Man v. Food so there was nothing else I wanted to do in Durham before the game.  So I just relaxed until the 5:00 Sunday afternoon game.

One of the cool things about triple-A baseball is that you might see some players you know from the Majors or prospects on their way to the Majors.  It was a Cardinals affiliate against a Rays affiliate so I didn’t really care about the prospects.  Looking at the box score, I think the only player I knew from the Majors was Ha-Seong Kim from his time with the Padres.  Memphis scored first after Bryan Torres stole third and scored on a throwing error in the fourth.  Then Bryan Torres drove in a run with an RBI double in the sixth to make it 2-0.  But the Bulls took the lead in the bottom of the sixth with home runs by Carson Williams and Tanner Murray to make it 3-2.  They added another run in the eighth on a sacrifice fly and the final score was 4-2.

Like the Dodger game I saw two nights later, the game lasted two hours and 22 minutes.  It was 91°, but it wasn’t too bad.  There were fans above the seats.  The box score says the wind was only 1 mile per hour so those fans must have been doing a good job because it felt like a good breeze.  Attendance was 6,385.  I wondered if the next game I went to would have a bigger crowd.  I had the Carolina Que Dog, which was a hot dog topped with pulled pork.  It was very good.  I had the Lucky’s Lager (an amber lager) from the Fullsteam Brewery in Durham.  It was good.  I liked the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.  The capacity is 10,000 so 6.385 seemed like a good crowd and they were into the game.  They have a blue monster (32 feet high) in left field with a scoreboard that looks just like Fenway Park’s scoreboard.  I thought the scoreboard was a little weird considering that the Bulls are not a Red Sox affiliate.  Make it more Durham Bulls-like and less Red Sox-like.  The only other negative was that the concourse was not open so you can’t see what’s going on when you’re on the concourse.  But I would rate it as a very good minor league stadium.

I had a seat facing the Blue Monster.  It’s not the best picture, but you can kind of see the Fenway Park scoreboard that it has.

The next day I was off to Tampa to see the Rays.  I resisted going to Tropicana Field until 2019.  And now the Rays are the sixth team I’ve seen play in two different home stadiums (besides the Mets and Yankees, I’ve seen the Braves at Turner Field and Truist Park, the Blue Jays at SkyDome and Sahlen Field, and the Rangers at Globe Life Park and Globe Life Field).  Again, there was nothing I had planned other than the game so I just relaxed until it was time for the game.

I saw the Sacramento A’s (they don’t call themselves the Sacramento A’s, but I do) against the Rays.  The A’s might be the next team I see at two different stadiums and the first one I see at three different stadiums.  The starting pitchers combined to pitch six and a third innings.  Sigh.  In fairness, neither one was good (they both gave up four runs).  But baseball desperately needs starting pitchers going deeper into games.  The A’s took a 3-0 lead in the first on a home run by Shea Langeliers.  Brent Rooker had an RBI single in the third to make it 4-0.  The Rays tied it in the fourth on a home run by Junior Caminero and RBI singles by Jonathan Aranda and Jose Caballero.  And then it was tied going into the ninth.  I was definitely rooting for somebody to win in the ninth because I definitely would have left instead of watching stupid Rob Manfred extra innings in a game that I was not emotionally invested in.  Fortunately the A’s scored two on a triple by Lawrence Butler and ended up winning 6-4 in nine innings.  The other notable thing about the game was that the A’s have the other Max Muncy.  He went 1 for 4.

This game lasted two hours and 24 minutes.  It was 82° and the wind was 10 miles per hour, but it felt warmer than the day before in Durham.  I purposely sat in one of the last rows so that I would have an overhang in case of thunderstorms.  Fortunately there was no rain.  I figured where I was sitting had a low chance of getting a foul ball because I thought the angle would be pretty tough between the screen in front of me and the overhang above.  But actually, I came very close to two foul balls.  Somebody who was a row behind me and two seats to my right got hit in the back of the head or neck by a foul ball after it hit the wall behind us.  And then later there was a gentle pop up that was caught by a guy who was one row in front of me and two seats to my left.  Attendance was 10,046.  So it easily beat the attendance in Durham.  It also beat the attendance when I saw the Rays at Tropicana Field in 2019 (9,914).  I don’t remember what I had to eat.  The website lists the concession stands, but it doesn’t have menus.  If I saw a menu, I’d probably remember.  But I think I got something from the Legendary BBQ stand, maybe a pulled pork sandwich or something.  I was hoping for a bigger selection with a more Florida feel like some seafood or alligator or something.  But it felt more like a minor league stadium with the food options.  I had a Florida Special Lager from Coppertail Brewing Company in Tampa.  Despite its name, it was not special.  It wasn’t bad, but there was definitely nothing special about it.

It felt like a minor league/spring training stadium, but it was definitely better than Tropicana Field.  It was outdoors, it had grass, and it was full.  It can’t be the permanent home for the Rays, but Steinbrenner Field beat Tropicana Field easily.  It was also the fourth (or fifth) stadium that I’ve been to with the same dimensions.  It has the same dimensions as Yankee Stadium since it’s the Yankees’ spring training facility.  The current Yankee Stadium has the same dimensions as the Old Yankee Stadium at the end of its time.  Richmond County Bank Ballpark on Staten Island had the same dimensions because it was home to the single-A Staten Island Yankees (that team no longer exists so it’s home to the independent Staten Island FerryHawks now).  And Newman Outdoor Field in Fargo supposedly has the same dimensions because Roger Maris played for the Fargo-Moorhead Twins in the 1950s (although according to Wikipedia, it’s one foot shorter than Yankee Stadium in left center and 32 feet shorter in right center).  I’ll include Steinbrenner Field with the minor league stadiums when I rerank them after this season because it felt more like a minor league stadium than a Major League Stadium, but the Rays are better off playing there than they were in their actual Major League Stadium.

It’s not often that I sit this close to the field at a Major League game.

After that, I was off to Los Angeles to finish my first trip of summer vacation.  I’ve already done another trip since then and I head out for another one tomorrow.  But it was a good trip to start summer vacation.