On Long Stays at Odd Affiliates
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| Spirit Communications Park, 2016 |
Saturday, September 3, 2016
Charleston RiverDogs (New York Yankees) vs.Columbia Fireflies (New York Metropolitans)
Spirit Communications Park
South Atlantic League (A)
Columbia, SC
7:05 PM
Outside the Game:
After starting in Georgia, I was going to dip my toe into South Carolina for a day. But I had a night game and only a three-hour drive, so it was a slow and very lazy morning. I eventually pressed the good graces and liberal check-out times at the Marriott to their limits before packing up and heading out on the road.
Thanks to the vagaries of geography, I was pretty much heading due east. And I was on a road, it so happens, that was double tolls in the direction I was going, but not the way back, which I would not be taking, so there was that. A bit expensive, perhaps, but the drive was otherwise uneventful.
The Metropolitans and their affiliates have a reputation, and not in a good way. For the most part, from top to bottom, all the Mets teams are in really crappy locations. From the parent club setting the standard (located in the Iron Triangle of chop shop auto parts in Queens) down to their Spring Training home in "Port St. Lonely" (in the only boring and deserted place on the Spring Break coast), Mets affiliates tend to be in less than ideal locations. Their single A affiliate strives to live up to this lowly goal.
Now the park itself is brand-new and quite nice for a low minors facility. It is just located in a... Okay. So, at first glance, it appeared to be an abandoned college campus. But whatever it was, it was abandoned. Campus-like buildings named for people were quietly rotting all around it. Creepy, rusted-out bicycles lay chained to collapsed and rusting bike racks. Subsequent investigation would determine that it was not, in fact, an abandoned college, but an abandoned state mental health asylum.
I'll let that one sink in for a minute.
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| Looks kind of like this. |
The New York Metropolitans were looking for the location of their new flagship affiliate, and after extensive searching they went, "Yes, let's build it on the crumbling remains of the state insane asylum." Our ownership, ladies and gentlemen.
Fun Fact: The building that now houses the team store was once the asylum morgue. Tell your friends!
After collecting my tickets and doing my pre-game picture sweep, I headed off to find my hotel. Now, perhaps I should have been tipped off by the fact that a luxury Sheraton hotel smack dab in the middle of downtown was available so cheaply, but I wrote it off in my mind to being in South Carolina, because, come on.
I was disabused of this notion as I drove to the hotel and found all of the roads to the hotel blocked off. This, as you'd imagine, is quite a problem in reaching said hotel. After ten minutes or so of driving around, I made an illegal run down a one-way street a block from the hotel, turned on my flashers, and tried to run to the hotel before I got a ticket.
It was then that I ran into the Pride Parade. To be fair, it was pretty damn hard to miss, and the only reason I had managed to do so until this point was because I was so fixated on trying to get to the hotel itself. The building was right on the parade route, and the entire area was swarmed with parade goers. Now, lord knows, I don't have any problem with The Gays, but I was falling into despair about ever getting any sleep that night.
I had a rather enlivened discussion with the hotel staff on the subject, and they managed to talk me down and told me they'd put me in a room facing away from everything in a quiet corner. Temporarily placated, I then remembered I was illegally parked facing the wrong way a block or so away and sought to sort out my parking situation rather quickly. I was provided with some convoluted directions to their parking deck, and grabbing my key, I rushed off to move my car.
Gloriously ticket-free, I tried to follow the directions to the parking lot. Driving around in the parade traffic, I made three passes by the supposed entrance before I noticed the hidden enclave literally in between two stores. I managed to get parked, grabbed all my stuff, walked the half-block back to the hotel, and shared an elevator with three drag queens to my floor.
The parade outside was just a dull roar at that point, and I passed out for a nice nap before heading back out to the game, having no idea of how long it would actually be before I'd be back in the hotel.
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| Departing |
After the game, I drove back to a thankfully deserted downtown, and I was able to park and get back up to the room with minimal fuss, blacking out in the air conditioning and comforter while no doubt several thousand violations of the state’s still-extant sodomy laws were being perpetrated all around me.
The Stadium & Fans:
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| Home plate to center field, Spirit Communications Park |
So, we've talked about the crumbling mental health campus around the park already. Presumably, that is all going to be gutted and renovated into the "destination" they are clearly trying to build up around the park. The closest facility buildings have been incorporated into the park, and in right field is a brand-new, shiny business building. At least I assume it is for corporate use. I can't imagine they're trying to sell people condos in the middle of a deserted insane asylum, but what do I know about the real estate market? For the most part, once you are inside the stadium, you don't have to worry about the decaying campus, except in right field, where a cluster of buildings loom eerily over the proceedings.
The park itself is of a fairly standard, modern low-minors design. The ticket booth and team store flank the main entrance at the top of a wide flight of stairs up from the parking lot. (Although, I suppose "lot" is a grandiose term for weed-strewn grass area where you currently park.) The main promenade extends from the entrance all around the exterior of the field, and leads down into the seating bowl. A second tier of luxury boxes, party areas, and the press box extended above the promenade from first base to third base around behind home plate. The gigantor video screen looms in right, and auxiliary scoreboards hang down from the party deck.
Seating is regular stadium chairs in the infield, picnic tables in the outfield corners, and large picnic berms in the outfield. Table seating is available at the top of the seating bowl. A games area is in center, near the history plaques, and the SCU Kids Zone is off in left (featuring an off-putting bouncy castle of mascot Mason, where you enter through his feet on his splayed-out legs and bounce around in a window at just about junk level). Concessions and other stores line the promenade.
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| Mason, get it? |
Firefly mascot Mason (as in jar, to catch fireflies) is in charge of the off-field entertainment. Your regular races and contests are spiced up with water balloon Whiffle ball, bubble-suit fights, and a dancing grounds crew.
There was a decent crowd of nearly all families out to support the still-new Columbia franchise. However, it was also the start of college football season, so the family in front of me were also streaming the football game on their phone, and they and everyone around them seemed far more interested in that game than the one on the field. So, they can't quite be labelled big-time baseball fans, per se.
At the Game with Oogie:
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| Affiliate scoring |
I grabbed seats down the third-base line past the extended netting that had been put up at the park for "safety" reasons. As is the case in the low minors, there were families all around me. In a nod to the Metropolitans affiliate one-level down, they had Nathan's dogs on sale, so I grabbed one of those, along with some tacos. The extra food would be key in surviving the game itself.
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| Hot dog, fries, and souvenir soda |
As the innings wore on, more and more of the crowd dispersed. There was a large exodus at the end of nine with most of the families with young children. Then around the twelfth, another mass migration out of the park happened, leaving just the die-hards to watch the end of it. Only two of the families around me stayed for the duration, and one of them only because they were watching the football game anyway.
The Game:
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| First pitch, RiverDogs vs. Fireflies |
This was a cross-town rivals clashes of sorts, as the Metropolitans' single-A affiliate faced off against the Yankees' single-A affiliate. But this cross-town contest almost took longer than it would take to fly to the home clubs and back.
The RiverDogs dominated the first four innings. With two outs in the top of the first, a single, error by the third baseman, and another single got home their first run. In the second, a leadoff double was followed by a walk and a single, scoring the lead runner and placing the other on third. A sac fly brought him home to make it 3-0 for the second inning. A leadoff single and stolen base in the top of the third got caught trying to swipe third, but a leadoff homer in the fourth made the lead 4-0. In the same time period, the Fireflies scattered three hits and a walk. It looked to be over early.
In the top of the fifth, Columbia worked out of trouble with a one-out double-play to negate back-to-back singles to start the frame, and they got on the board in the bottom of the inning with a two-out, two-run homer to close the score to 4-2. After getting Charleston in order in the top half of the sixth, the Fireflies scored again in the bottom of the inning. A one-out double moved to third on a wild pitch, and then scored on a passed ball, but they got nothing else, leaving it 4-3 for the visitors.
Gaining steam, Columbia struck out the side in the top of the seventh, and then tied it up with three straight singles in the bottom of the inning, making it 4-4.
And then it all just stalled. Each side had three baserunners in the next two innings, and we went to extra baseball. In the top of the tenth, Charleston got a two-out double to third on a passed ball, but stranded him. A one-out walk in the bottom half of the inning got erased on a good old 4-6-3-6 double play (but more on that in a bit). The eleventh went quickly, but the RiverDogs squandered a leadoff double in the top of the twelfth, though the Fireflies went in order. The thirteenth also sped by, and Charleston got struck out in order in the top of the fourteenth.
And then the bottom of the fourteenth. The Fireflies got a leadoff single. Simple enough. The next batter got pegged, so it is first and second with no out. And then the walkoff fielder's choice. So, the third batter of the inning grounds to the second baseman for a tailor-made double-play. He flips to the shortstop for the putout at second, and then throws the ball to the wall at first, allowing the runner going to second to score on the error. Five hours of baseball leads to this.
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| Walk-off error |
The post-game fireworks were cancelled for some reason or other.
The Scorecard:
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| RiverDogs vs. Fireflies, 09/03/16. Fireflies win in 14 innings, 5-4. |
The scorecard was a pre-printed paper with the lineups, umpires, and coaching staff. It was utilitarian and served its purpose. It actually had eleven innings printed, so I had to draw in the remaining three.
As to the game, where in the hell to start.
Okay, it was 14 innings and five hours. That's a given. But for it all, there was a grand total of only nine pitchers and exactly one substitution (in the tenth).
I have so many explanatory notes for plays in this one. In the top of the fourth, a two-out single hit an umpire that prevented the runner at second from advancing to third, which may have killed a bigger inning for the RiverDogs. In the bottom of the sixth, with one out and runners on first and third (who got there on a wild pitch after a double), a first-pitch passed ball scored the runner from third. The catcher tried to throw the runner out at the plate to the pitcher. The pitcher missed it completely, letting the runner now on second to make it to third on the error. In the bottom of that inning, a batter was walked on a 2-1 count before being brought back to ground out to third. In the top of the ninth, a two-out grounder to the second baseman ended up in the dugout for a two-base E4.
And then there's the bottom of the 10th. There's a one-out walk, and the next batter grounds it to the second baseman. The second baseman flips to short for the putout, but the shortstop overthrows first, making the tail runner dash to second. The first baseman retrieves, and pegs to the shortstop for a tagout, leading to your routing 4-6-3-6 double play. And we already discussed the second toss past first on a double play by the shortstop four innings later that cost the RiverDogs the game.
The K-Man was the Riverdog first baseman, who struck out in the fourth and gave everyone half-off Miller drafts for 15 minutes.
The Accommodations:
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| Sheraton Columbia |
Pride Parade issues notwithstanding, the Sheraton Columbia was a classy, old-school hotel, and my room was very nice, if a little small. My bed was huge, with a ridiculous comforter, along with a desk, TV, and dresser. The bathroom was almost larger than the bedroom, and had a Jacuzzi tub, and, for no apparent good reason, a TV to watch while you were in the Jacuzzi tub.
I had exciting plans with that tub and that TV for when I got home from the game, but at that hour, I had to defer them to the next morning.
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