Single-A Opening Day in Virginia

I was trying to figure out what to do for my annual Easter vacation trip.  I usually travel the week after Easter, but my brothers were coming to town that week so that left me with the window of Holy Thursday-Holy Saturday to travel.  Before I knew that my brothers would be in town, I was thinking of going down to Biloxi, Mississippi, for minor league baseball and to cross Mississippi off the list of states to see a sporting event in.  I was thinking of combining that with a trip to Richmond because they were opening a new minor league stadium there.  But those teams weren’t home before Easter so I had to adjust my plans.  I thought about going to Mississippi State for college baseball.  They have the biggest college baseball stadium in the country outside of Omaha and it would be interesting to see some SEC baseball.  Not surprisingly, it’s really hard to get to Starkville, Mississippi.  I think my options involved a tight connection in Atlanta on the way home (I didn’t feel good about that) or getting home really late on Saturday night before Easter.  So Mississippi was out.  I was looking at the minor league schedule for a game in a place that I’d want to go to and I decided on Single-A Opening Day in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  This was my second Opening Day at any level of professional baseball.  No matter what happened, it was not going to come anywhere close to Opening Day for the Dodgers in 2013.

Fredericksburg was appealing for a couple of reasons.  I had wanted to go to Richmond for their new stadium.  Fredericksburg does have a pretty new minor league stadium.  The Richmond stadium is opening this year, the Fredericksburg stadium opened in 2021.  It was supposed to open in 2020, but the minor league season was canceled.  Although it didn’t host any minor league games in 2020, it did serve as the Nationals’ alternate training site that season.  So it’s a pretty new stadium.  The other reason I wanted to go to Richmond was because I think I’ve only seen one sporting event in Virginia.  Sean and I went to a Potomac Cannons game in the spring of 2003 (they were a Reds’ affiliate back then).  I think that was my first minor league baseball game ever.  I’ve spent a lot of time in Virginia since Sean used to live there, but I think that’s the only sporting event I’ve been to in Virginia.  I’ve seen plenty of sporting events in Washington DC and Maryland, but Virginia doesn’t have a major professional team.  I thought about going to the Notre Dame-Virginia football game in 2015 (when Malik Zaire got hurt and DeShone Kizer threw the winning touchdown pass to Will Fuller late in the game), but that didn’t happen.  So it was almost like Virginia was a state I hadn’t attended a sporting event in even though I’ve spent a lot of time there.  I was thinking about the states I’ve spent the most nights in.  Of course, New York is number 1 and Indiana is number 2.  My guess is that Florida is number 3 and California is number 4.  Virginia is probably number 5, Pennsylvania is probably number 6, and Massachusetts is probably number 7.  I’ve seen hundreds of sporting events in New York, dozens in Indiana, 22 in California (16 Dodger games, two Giants games, two Padres games, an Angel game, and an A’s game), I think 13 in Pennsylvania (four Phillies games, three Pirates games, four NCAA tournament games, a Lancaster Barnstormers game, and a Notre Dame-Pittsburgh football game),  I think 9 in Massachusetts (six Red Sox games, a Celtics game, a Notre Dame football game, and a Notre Dame hockey game), and I think 4 in Florida (Rays games in St. Petersburg and Tampa, a Marlins game, and the Notre Dame-Alabama National Championship Game).  

The game was on Good Friday.  If they had played on Holy Thursday, I would have gone to that game instead, but Good Friday was their Opening Day.  Going on Holy Thursday would have allowed me to eat whatever I wanted at the game and it did seem like there were some good food options.  But I was fasting for Good Friday and I couldn’t eat meat.  It seemed like the non-meat options were soft pretzels, mac and cheese, and a black bean burger.  I would have gone with mac and cheese, but soft pretzels are a traditional Good Friday food.  So that’s what I went with.  Fortunately they had real mustard (they had yellow also, but they had packets of Gulden’s).  If the pretzel had been warmer, it would have been very good.  To drink I had a Rappahannock Red from the 6 Bears and a Goat Brewery in Fredericksburg.  It was pretty good.  The bad thing about the concessions was that the lines moved very slowly.  There was one little beer stand that had cans that was pretty quick, but I was hoping to get it on tap.  There was a stand that had the Rappahannock Red on tap so I was waiting in line.  There was one bartender when they definitely should have had two.  The line moved slowly but I got to the point where there was a group of two people in front of me and then I was up.  But it never got to the two people in front of me.  The computer the bartender was using died and since the stadium is cashless, he couldn’t sell any more drinks.  So after waiting for a while for a beer on tap, I had to settle for getting a can.

As for the game, it was the Nationals against the Augusta GreenJackets (a Braves’ affiliate that plays in North Augusta, South Carolina).  The Augusta starting pitcher was Ethan Bagwell.  He left with a 3-0 lead (Augusta scored on a home run, an RBI single, and a throwing error) after throwing 78 pitches in six innings with six strikeouts and only a walk allowed.  I’ve seen a combined no-hitter in the minor leagues and I was nine outs away from seeing another one.  The bullpen was not able to get it done.  Fredericksburg had plenty of baserunners in the bottom of the seventh thanks to a hit by pitch, two walks, two doubles, and a triple.  They also had two stolen bases and a sacrifice fly in that inning and they took a 5-3 lead.  And that was all the scoring for the game so Fredericksburg ended up winning on Opening Day.

It was good to be at a baseball game for the first time since August in Minnesota.

Concessions were an issue, but there were good aspects of the stadium.  I rank stadiums based on my experience attending games and the weather helped.  It was 82°, which was nice because my last couple of Easter vacation trips have involved cold weather baseball (Des Moines and Portland, Maine).  It was a very nice looking stadium and the crowd was good (being there on Opening Day definitely helped with that).  Attendance was 4,230, which was mostly full (with a capacity of 5,000).  The game lasted two hours and 20 minutes.  So it was a decent enough experience for my first baseball game of the season.  I’ll probably get to more minor league games this season so I’ll hold off on rerunning my full non-Major League Baseball stadium rankings, but I think this one was in the middle of the pack as far as the ones I’ve been to.  I’ll probably slot it in around 20 on the list.