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Tacoma Rainiers fun
I spent today in Tacoma. Went down for the Rainiers-Bees doubleheader. It was fun. I basically spent the day with two of the guys from Mariners Morsels -- I sat the first game with Paul and his wife and son. His son is like 4 years old and spent the whole game yelling "SWING BATTER BATTER BATTER BATTER!" and such. It was cute, but I have to admit if I had paid more than $7 to get into the game, I'd probably want to kill him. Still, it amused most of the people around us. The Rainiers won that first game, despite Jered Weaver striking out 12 of them in 6 innings; they blew apart the bullpen for 4 runs in the 8th inning to win 4-2.
Inbetween games, Paul and his family decided to leave, but he found me Marc W, another guy from Mariners Morsels. Marc's dad had decided to take off after the first game, so I came down to the home plate box seats and sat in Marc's dad's seat. And OH MY GOD, I was literally three rows behind the foul ball screen by the plate. At one point I simply walked up and took some pictures from right inside the screen. Also, Clint Nageotte (one of the Mariners/Rainiers pitchers) was sitting three seats down from us, and Francisco Cruceta was in the row ahead of him -- Cruceta had a radar gun and Nageotte had a pitch chart sheet, and they were keeping track of all the Rainiers pitchers. Marc and I went up to Nageotte and got him to sign these 8x10 pictures Paul had printed out for us. So it's really rad -- I have a great signed picture of Nageotte pitching the Rainiers Opening Day game. How sweet is that? I guess it's a good thing he really sucked when the Mariners called him up for a day or two, or he wouldn't have been down in Tacoma. Dustin Moseley and one of the other Bees pitchers were sitting a few rows behind us doing pitch charts for their team. I had no idea that the team has to do that stuff.
Marc was also pointing out all the players' families to me. He was like, "See that cute little Korean kid jumping up and down and running through the stands over there? That's Shin-soo Choo's son," and stuff like that. Minor league games are fun like that.
The second game was supposed to only be seven innings, but the Rainiers managed to tie it up 3-3 in the bottom of the 7th when Hunter Brown reached base on an error. So it went into the 8th inning, aka "extra innings", but Dallas McPherson hit a home run in the top of the 8th, and that's where the score stayed, the Bees winning 4-3.
I had a blast getting to hang out with Marc though, talking about old baseball stuff and Japan and other crap. He had to take off after the game since his wife expected him home a lot earlier than 7:30pm from an afternoon game, but I'm sure we'll hang out at a game again in the future.
Since it was late and I was starving, having not eaten anything all day, I ended up going to Claim Jumper with Oren for dinner, where I got *too much* food. Oops. Afterwards we watched ESPN's Baseball Tonight for a bit until we saw the web gems and got sick of John Kruk, and I came home.
Whoosh.
Inbetween games, Paul and his family decided to leave, but he found me Marc W, another guy from Mariners Morsels. Marc's dad had decided to take off after the first game, so I came down to the home plate box seats and sat in Marc's dad's seat. And OH MY GOD, I was literally three rows behind the foul ball screen by the plate. At one point I simply walked up and took some pictures from right inside the screen. Also, Clint Nageotte (one of the Mariners/Rainiers pitchers) was sitting three seats down from us, and Francisco Cruceta was in the row ahead of him -- Cruceta had a radar gun and Nageotte had a pitch chart sheet, and they were keeping track of all the Rainiers pitchers. Marc and I went up to Nageotte and got him to sign these 8x10 pictures Paul had printed out for us. So it's really rad -- I have a great signed picture of Nageotte pitching the Rainiers Opening Day game. How sweet is that? I guess it's a good thing he really sucked when the Mariners called him up for a day or two, or he wouldn't have been down in Tacoma. Dustin Moseley and one of the other Bees pitchers were sitting a few rows behind us doing pitch charts for their team. I had no idea that the team has to do that stuff.
Marc was also pointing out all the players' families to me. He was like, "See that cute little Korean kid jumping up and down and running through the stands over there? That's Shin-soo Choo's son," and stuff like that. Minor league games are fun like that.
The second game was supposed to only be seven innings, but the Rainiers managed to tie it up 3-3 in the bottom of the 7th when Hunter Brown reached base on an error. So it went into the 8th inning, aka "extra innings", but Dallas McPherson hit a home run in the top of the 8th, and that's where the score stayed, the Bees winning 4-3.
I had a blast getting to hang out with Marc though, talking about old baseball stuff and Japan and other crap. He had to take off after the game since his wife expected him home a lot earlier than 7:30pm from an afternoon game, but I'm sure we'll hang out at a game again in the future.
Since it was late and I was starving, having not eaten anything all day, I ended up going to Claim Jumper with Oren for dinner, where I got *too much* food. Oops. Afterwards we watched ESPN's Baseball Tonight for a bit until we saw the web gems and got sick of John Kruk, and I came home.
Whoosh.
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Sacramento's team is AWESOME, you should go see them sometime.
There's another team in San Jose and probly more you don't know about -- have you checked here? http://baseball-reference.com/travel/
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The nearest minor league teams are in San Jose (38 miles away), Stockton (40), Sacramento (57), and Modesto (59). And as much as I like minor league ball, I have trouble justifying a one-and-a-half to two hour drive to see a single-A team when I can take the BART train to the Coliseum in half an hour to see the A's.
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I've still never been to the Coliseum though I've been to SBC a whole bunch... and this year probably won't change that -- I'm planning to go to SF in July to see the Phillies play, I think, and Oakland isn't in town anywhere near that weekend... a shame, really, since I actually like the A's quite a bit. I guess I could make two trips. Eh.
Sacramento is the A's AAA team though, and they really are pretty phenomenal, as you'd expect a team stocked by Billy Beane's farm system to be; I'm going to trek to Tacoma to see them next time they're in this neck of the woods. I think if I lived in the bay area, I'd make like, one trip a year to see the RiverCats, just because it'd be neat. Maybe they'll do a doubleheader sometime and make it worth your while?