On the Beauty of the Unexpected
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| McCoy Stadium, 2012 |
Scranton-Wilkes Barre Yankees (New York Yankees) vs.
Pawtucket Red Sox (Boston Red Sox)
International League (AAA)
McCoy Stadium
Pawtucket, RI
7:05 PM
Outside the Game:
I decided to take my "Summer Friday" at work to try and knock off the last two teams left on my Connecticut/Rhode Island list: Pawtucket and Norwich. Since they were both over three hours from home (on a theoretical traffic-less trip on 95), I decided to do a sleep-over for them, bunking up after the first night, and then seeing how long the second game went before deciding on whether to drive home after the second night or get another hotel.
After getting another pep talk about how bad 95 was on the weekends from a colleague at work, I decided to take the "long" way around. Although the "northern route" up and over was another half-hour longer, there was at least a half-hour of traffic waiting for me on 95 (if TomTom and Google Maps were to be believed [and they were]), and I'd rather be driving for that time than sitting and stewing.
I was trying to get started at 10 AM , eventually was physically behind the wheel and driving a little before 11, and decided to chance a city crossing. I went through the tunnel, and then straight up the West Side, taking 9 up and out of the city before hooking up with 684. And from there, it was mostly straight east for the rest of the trip. Beside some minor congestion at some work sites or near cities, it was smooth sailing all the way there.
In fact, it was such smooth sailing that I forgot to stop for lunch. So when I eventually pulled into Pawtucket a little before 3 PM, I was seriously hungry. Some construction was going on in town that took me the long way to the hotel, but I eventually got there, checked in, and dumped my stuff in my room. I made a quick walk to a local fast food place to get some late lunch, and then went back to the room for a nap before leaving for the game.
It was only a mile to the stadium from the hotel, but I drove it anyway, since I didn't want to be walking around in the dark at night in an unfamiliar town, and I didn't know how tired I'd be. It only took a minute to get there, and I was one of the first in the free parking lots outside the stadium.
After the game, it was mostly the same in reverse, although the TomTom took me on 95 for no reason. I got back to the hotel before 11 PM, and spent the rest of the evening getting ready for tomorrow and working on the scorecard.
The Stadium & Fans:
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| Home plate to center field, McCoy Stadium |
The home of the AAA affiliate of the Red Sox, McCoy Stadium is an old place that has been renovated a bunch of times, and it is absolutely great. It is probably on the small side for AAA parks, but it is an old bandstand park, with one large seating area under a classic overhang that runs from base-to-base behind home plate. An old-style broadcast booth lies parked up behind home plate, with honest-to-goodness restricted view seats located behind them.
All around the outside walls of the park was a "Walk of Fame," with big posters of all the major-leaguers of note who came through the "PawSox," with special note of the world series winners. There were also no less than three barbecue areas arrayed about the outfield seating for people with special tickets. You could walk all around the stadium, and there was a high-school track located next door. A family across the parking lot from the stadium decorated the back of their house to be a scoreboard, and they have lawn chairs and the like for, I guess, listening to the game, since they are staring right at a wall of the stadium.
The main entrance to the stadium was out in right field, with access to the team store on the ground floor before spiraling up in a staircase. It was located next to the main ticket window, the team store, and a number of baseball-themed statues out in a little park. A martial arts school was doing demonstrations next to the park for most of the time before the game, and would latter do a pre-game demonstration on the field.
The main seating area of the stadium is divided into a lower area by the field, a middle area, and an upper area. As mentioned, the upper area has some restricted-view seats, especially by the old press box. Due to a particular layout quirk of the stadium, the dugouts are actually inset into the stadium, under the lowest row of seats (probably due to one of the previous expansions). So instead of hanging on the top of the dugout to ask for autographs, kids "fish" for autographs, by tying books and whatnot on strings with pens and lowering them down in front of the dugout. Players will then sign throughout the game, and the seekers can drag up their catch at the end of the game to see what they got. The "luxury" boxes in the stadium are also all field-level, as opposed to above the action at most places.
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| The longest memorial in minor-league history |
There is a main walkway that extends around the stadium between the middle and lower seats. All the concessions are arrayed throughout this area, as well as tributes to great moments in Pawsox history. A particularly large display is dedicated to the 33-inning game at McCoy field, the longest game in organized baseball history. There is also a small icy stand by the main entrance staircase dubbed "Paw's Pavilion." A small kids area sits in right. There is a walkway above the upper level that leads down to the upper-area seats. These are reachable by spiral ramps located sporadically around the circumference of the seating area. They are decorated with painted baseball cards of notable Pawsox alumni.
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| Tee-hee |
The outfield seating is its own entity. In left, by the Pawsox bullpen, is the "berm" seating, with an open-seating picnic berm. In center to right are two BBQ areas around the bleachers proper. The "Red" BBQ tent sits out in right, with a large tented area for barbecue, and a small bleacher area out front for people who actually want to watch the game. (Someone managed to fall off of it at the game I was at, so there was a lot of paramedic activity in the area.)
There was less of the regular minor-league tomfoolery between innings. The main feature seemed to be "Pawsox Idol" where singers came on between innings to sing for the approval of the crowd. There were a few contests and a t-shirt toss, and the standard seventh-inning fair. The mascots (Paw and Sox) made their way through the crowd for most of the game, and were only on one or two on-field activities.
There was a large crowd for the game that night (especially, perhaps, because it had connotations for the league playoffs against the hated Yankees), and everyone was into the game. As with the case in New England, there were a lot of scorers in attendance that evening as well. What was surprising was the sizable contingent of Yankee fans in the house. Although they are everywhere, seeing them all in the park this deep in New England was a thing to behold. In the later innings, they even took up the "Let's Go Yankees" chant, and in some cases, drowned out the Pawsox fans. But the local crowd stayed in it, even to the bitterest of bitter end, though a lot of people made for the exits before the top of the ninth.
At the Game with Oogie:
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| Old-school scoring |
On a fluke, I decided to take a look at what seats were available online when I was making my hotel reservation the night before leaving. There were precious few seats still available for the game, so it is lucky I did. I was able to get a seat in the middle section behind the home dugout since I was only a single, but all the non-handicap seats in the lowest section were already booked.
I was in an area right behind third base and to the left of the protective netting, so all in all, it wasn't a bad seat by any stretch of the imagination. It was in was sandwiched around several rows of some kind of social club for older gentlemen who were making a yearly trip to see the team. They were all on a chartered bus, so they were gassing up pretty heavily, but they weren't out of control by any means, just there to have a good time. Everyone was talking with each other, and, as the game progressed, yelling at the team and the umpire crew.
There was a group of two guys to my left who appreciated the two-pencil scoring style I was using. We had a brief talk about that, and then I became the go-to guy when anyone had any questions about what had happened earlier in the game.
The group perked up considerably when an in-game announcement about the major league match-up between the Sox and Yankees was given, with the Red Sox jumping into the lead. But the lack of updates and the particular kick when they were down would happen when the announcers confirmed the major-league Yankees had come back to win that game as well.
The Game:
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| First pitch, Yankees vs. Red Sox |
When you out-hit someone 14 to 8, you'd probably expect to win. For this game, you'd be wrong, as Pawtucket got nearly double the hits of the Yankees, but had nearly triple the men left on base. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Pawtucket was the visiting team for this night's contest even while in their home park because of renovations at the Scranton Yankees facility that had them on the road for the entire season. The Pawsox were up first, and got it first and third with two outs with a couple of long singles, but killed their own rally when they tried to send the guy from third home on a wild pitch. He got gunned down by a mile to kill the half inning. This would set the stage for the entire game: questionable choices and men left on base. In the bottom of the first, the Yankees blasted a one-out homer to right that may have landed in Boston, ending the first up, 1-0.
The Pawsox got a single and walk before two straight fly outs, and what would have been the last batter in the inning struck out, but a dropped third strike led to a bases-loaded situation. But a weak ground out to the pitcher quickly snuffed the threat and left even more men on base. The Yankees had a single (erased on a double-play) to show for their half of the inning. In the top of the third, the Pawsox finally broke through. A lead-off single was followed by a double, leaving it second third with no outs. After a strikeout, a single brought in a run to tie it, but on the next play, they decided to test the left fielder's arm on a fly out, and the runner (not sliding for whatever reason) was gunned down by a mile in the second half of the inning-ending double play. The Yankees got a two-out walk and a double to quickly regain the lead, 2-1, at the end of three.
In the top of the fourth, the Pawsox again mounted a rally. Three singles in a row brought home the tying run and left the bases loaded, but a grounder to third for a put-out at home and a double play ball that followed left it tied. As if to show the Pawsox how not to leave men on base, the Yankees got their first two batters on with a walk and a hit batsman, followed with two quick outs, and then had the next batter hit a towering homer to left to clear the bases, with the inning ending with the Yankees up, 5-2.
Things settled down then for a while, with the Pawsox just getting a walk and the Yankees going in order in the fifth, and the Pawsox going in order and the Yankees just getting a walk in the sixth. The Pawsox went in order in the seventh, but the Yankees got a lead-off homer to make it 6-2 at the end of seven. The Pawsox scattered two singles in the top of the eighth to no effect, while the Yankees had a lead-off single, and then a foul out to third, and then the entire frickin' world ended.
The Yankees center fielder hit a ball out to the corner in left. It was called a foul initially, but after some yelling from the Yankee dugout and a huddle by the umpires, it was called a two-run home run. And that was about all the Pawtucket manager could take, as he came out and quickly got himself ejected, and the pitching coach soon followed, needing to be restrained by other players and coaches while still no doubt earning some fines as he bumped up a storm on the umps. The pitcher got out of the inning with the score 8-2 Yankees. But on the way back to the dugout, he had words with the home plate umpire, got ejected, and had to be tackled several times by teammates to prevent further altercation that may have ended in bloodshed.
Perhaps energized by the actions of the umpires, the Pawsox got a lead-off walk and then a homer in the top of the ninth (that lead the right fielder to go spout over teakettle over the outfield fence trying to corral it), and with two outs, they launched another homer to left, before a weak ground out to first made the final score a more respectable 8-5.
This win helped put some distance between the Yankees and the second-place Pawsox in their division race, and, coupled with the big team Sox's loss to the Yankees, the crowd did not leave happy in any way from this game.
The Scorecard:
Yankees vs. Red Sox, 08/17/12. Yankees win, 8-5.
This was one of the most pleasant surprises of a day of pleasant surprises. Say what you want about New England, but they are a people that take their baseball scoring seriously, apparently even in the minors.
Scorecards were for sale at a kiosk outside the stadium, right next to a printed standee that had the lineups for the evening. The scorecard cost $1, and was its own booklet on heavy-weight paper, with the scorecard proper as the centerfold of the booklet. It was a very appealing size, with no ads on the scorecard pages to scrunch up the scoring space, either. The paper was a delight to write on, and was clearly made to be used with pencils. It handled erasing and re-writing quite well, and had copious space to record everything. It used a standard pre-printed diamond boxes, but unlike my last foray with such things, it was easy enough to write over the diamonds legibly, even with pencils.
The first weirdness to deal with was that the Sox were the visiting team in their own park this evening, as Scranton was playing all their games on the road. I made some notations to deal with that. There were some minorly odd or uncommon plays of note, like the 4-1 put out in the bottom of the first (when the first baseman got pulled so far off the bag to make an attempt on the ball that the pitcher covering first eventually got the throw from the second baseman who made the play), and the L-6-3 DP in the bottom of the second (which just doesn't happen all that often).
But the true oddness happened in the bottom of the eighth with the home run call. What looked (or at least hoped) to be just a foul ball was overturned after the ump huddle. I've never had one of those before, so I made a note of it on the play, along with the initial ejections of the manager and the pitching coach. I had to add a further notation at the end of the inning when the pitcher got the hook, as well. Certainly a record for ejections I've seen, and perhaps home runs as well, with a total of six for the game.
I also took issue with an official scorer's decision to call a grounder to third a hit instead of an error. I'm not sure if they hold people to lesser standards in AAA, but that was a routine grounder. I put an asterisk on the scorecard and left it at that, but sometimes I wonder about the people they have scoring games for real.
The Accommodations:
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| Comfort Inn |
I was only able to find one hotel actually in Pawtucket itself, as opposed to the many in surrounding Providence area. I made my reservation for the Comfort Inn on the night before I left, and after my rather relaxing drive up, I pulled in during the mid-afternoon.
It was about as nice a mid-scale hotel as I expected. The room had its own desk and lounge chair, and parking was free. It was directly attached to a restaurant and right down the street from some fast food establishments that I partook of throughout the day. For some reason, I found the knowledge of a free breakfast the next day very exciting.
One other thing of note: The previous occupant of my room used the notepad, and at a quick glance, I noticed the word "password" embossed on the top sheet. Using my Encyclopedia Brown skills, I went over the pad with the side of a pencil, and I had the full login credentials for the back end of a company site -- left in a hotel room. Lucky I'm a decent person, but when people talk about "physical and human resources security" being the weak point of any system, they are not kidding.
2012 New England Weekend
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