Batavia

On Why Alamo Rental (Metaphorically) Eats Dead Babies After Killing Said Babies

Friday, June 13, 2014
Hoboken, NJ


Outside the Game:
I clearly should have checked the date more closely when making my travel plans.

The plan, such as it was, called for me flying out from Newark Liberty Bald Eagle God Bless America Airport on Friday after work. The flight wasn't until just before 10 PM, so even if work went (inevitably) long, I could still make my flight.

As it was, work was unexpectedly wrapping up a little early, and I was even looking into perhaps moving up my flight. Everything was looking pretty okay.

I'm not the most superstitious person on the planet by any stretch of the imagination, but it was Friday the 13th. Oh, and pouring rain like there was a fire sale in Heaven. I realize that analogy is awful, but we're going with it anyway. The skies opened up a little before six PM. The weather report had it raining well into the night.

I called United Airlines rather quickly to see what my options were if my flight didn't get out. It turned out all the flights to Buffalo so far that day had been cancelled. My first game was at night the next day, so I had a little flexibility in getting out in the morning. But all the morning flights were booked (no doubt from the cancellations that day), and the first flight I could get wouldn't land until an hour or so before game time.

I then made my co-workers' lives rather difficult for the next half hour or so in my own indubitable manner. My best options looked restricted to taking an 8-hour Amtrak train to Buffalo that would have me rushing to make the game in Batavia. I went online to see if I could book a ticket on the earlier flights, and suddenly seeing availability, I called United back and got put on the one remaining seat on the 10 AM flight the next morning.

Feeling better about the world, I moved on to what I thought would be the easier tasks of moving my rental car and trying to cancel my hotel. As far as the latter went, I didn't think it would be possible, as I had gotten an unrefundable Internet rate and blown past the cancel time. I tried to call the hotel to tell them I wasn't showing up, but they referred me to Hotels.com. I tried to call them and got put through an automated phone tree hell and gave up.

It was then that I called Alamo to move my reservation 11 hours. I got a call center in India, which is always a great start, but I pushed on. I explained that my flight was cancelled, and that I would now be picking up my car almost exactly twelve hours later. And then the attendant gave me a price nearly double my original quote.

And we had a problem. I asked how she could possibly justify doubling my reservation cost on what was now a shorter reservation. She said that they base their reservations on the price at the time of the change instead of the original rate. I then said that I was keeping my original reservation and would just be late. She countered that she would be marking my reservation as unclaimed at midnight. I told her where to place my reservation.

After a few minutes on Kayak, I had a rental arrangement with Budget at slightly less than my original agreement with Alamo, and I called back them to officially cancel my reservation and tell them where to shove their price gouging, which was surprisingly also where I told them to put my original reservation earlier.

I finished up at work and went home to do some laundry. I called a car service for a ride to the airport the next morning and then went to bed, grumbling things about Texas-based rental car agencies.


The Accommodations:
Sadly, Hoboken

On Finally Getting Started

Dwyer Stadium, 2014

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Auburn Doubledays (Washington Nationals) vs.
Batavia Muckdogs (Miami Marlins)
Dwyer Stadium
NY-PENN League (A-)
Batavia, NY
7:05 PM


Outside the Game:
And I awoke in a new day, after a fitful night's sleep. Dragging my luggage back home the night before, I had wrenched my back, so tossing and turning was painful enough to wake me up. Fabulous.

I blearily went through a wash cycle and gathered up all belongings when my cab showed up. An uneventful Saturday morning drive to the airport commenced and ended swiftly.

I went to the kiosk to see if I could get a boarding upgrade, which I purchased dutifully faced with an overfull flight. After breezing through security, I had breakfast at the diner in Terminal C.

Everything was going smoothly until it was right about time to board. They changed the flight from an on-time Buffalo to a flight to Houston, and the board now showed us delayed to 11:40. I was immediately on the phone with United, but by the time I had walked two or three gates, we were back to on-time at our original gate. A brief phone call informed me that the original flight crew was delayed on their incoming flight, but a new flight crew had been found. They started boarding almost literally that second, so I thanked them, hung up, and got on line.

Besides some mild drama with an overly entitled woman bringing her pet on the flight, we boarded easily, and sat down to be told that we were 20th to take off thanks to a closed runway. We eventually took off around 10:40, so it wasn't all that bad. The rest of the flight seemed to go without issues, and we landed slightly later than originally intended.

Things are not going right in your life when you're looking forward to Buffalo

Offloading the plane was a cranky process, but eventually over. As  I got to the jetway, my bag was just being delivered, so I was able to grab my bag and go. I made my way to the car rental building and flipped off the Alamo counter on my way to Budget. I then discovered that apparently Alamo had screwed over everyone on my flight as well, because it seemed that half of said flight was waiting in line at the Budget counter.

The--of course singular--gentleman manning the booth made his painstaking slow way through the assembled line. The good news is that I got two or three phone calls in during the near hour I was on line. Finally arriving at the booth and getting my paperwork completed, I was told there would be a ten minute or so wait for my car. Beyond caring at this point, I just flopped down in a chair and stared out the window grumpily until my car was ready.

Eventually, a sporty Camry was waiting for me, and, at least, I got exactly one key fob, instead of more than one unavoidably fused together in one metal key ball of death to be jabbing my leg at random intervals for the remain of my journey.

My western NY chariot

I threw everything but the GPS into the trunk, put the address for my hotel in Batavia into the direction box, and set out. I took the precaution of asking the garage attendant for directions out to the Throughway, as sometimes it takes my TomTom a couple of minutes to wake up and realize where it is after a sleepy plane ride.

This turned out to be extremely prescient, as despite being out in the open for over ten minutes, my GPS could not re-establish satellite contact, despite my helpful yelling that perhaps it might want to try and look up. Throwing the thing on the front my dashboard usually resolves such issues, but it didn't do the trick this time. I had to physically hold the damn thing out the window, pointing it to the sky, before it finally resumed hearing the signals. As I had nothing to do but sit on 90 until the Batavia exit, this wasn't as catastrophic as it could have been, but it yet put me in a rather more annoyed mood.

Under an hour later, I was at Batavia, and my hotel was right off of I-90. I pulled in a little after 1 PM, and they were kind enough to let me check in early. As my assigned room wasn't ready yet, they  me in a suite that was open, marking the first thing that had gone right on this trip and marking the first decline in annoyance in about 24 hours.

I dragged my bags up to my room, and then set out to the Target down the street to get some heating pads from my shoulder that was barking again now that I had to drag my bags around. My purchase in hand, I walked around a bit to Batavia Downs, the racing track that is pretty much Batavia's only other claim to fame.

I slapped a couple of pads on my shoulder back in the room and then headed out to see the sights in Batavia. I went to the park very early, picked up my ticket, and took some photos outside to get that out of the way. I then drove into town to see what I could see, which wasn't much. There was a War of 1812 Peace Park that I wanted to see, because how often do you find War of 1812 memorials? The Peace Park was downtown next to some other historic building. Apparently, the American army retreated to Batavia after the Canadians torched Buffalo to the ground, and they made their stand there until re-enforcements could arrive, or something similar.

The Peace Park

I did some more walking around, visiting a hand-made candy store a little down the road to get some gifts for people at work, as well as a thing or two for yours truly. I did some more desultory driving around before heading back to the hotel for a nap before the game that I apparently needed a lot more than I realized. Fifteen minutes before the gates were to open for the game, I pulled into the parking lot at the stadium again. I got on the smallish line at the gate, and I was quickly inside.

There was some running the bases after the game, and even parked in the back of the lot as I was, it was relatively quick going back to the hotel. I finished up my scorecard and then went to bed at a reasonable hour.


The Stadium & Fans:

Home plate to center field, Dwyer Stadium

Dwyer Stadium is a fairly standard low A-ball park that is located right in the middle of a larger Little League complex, with two or three youth parks surrounding the facility. Judging by the scoreboard and fieldhouse in left field, it also doubles as a youth football stadium in the off-season. Although the park has undergone some recent renovations, the field has been there for nearly 100 years.

The layout is basic. In the seating bowl, there is a row of box seats that extends roughly from just beyond third base to just beyond first base. A walkway separates the box seats from several sections of separated bleachers along the first- and third-base lines. The covered grandstand is behind home plate, where a section of box seats resides, ending at the top in a shed-like Wayne H. Fuller Pressbox. A picnic area sits at the end of left field and a small kids area sits at the end of right. The home and visiting clubhouses sit in right and left field, respectively, and the home dugout is down the third-base line.

A shed houses the team store just inside the main entrance. This Opening Day evening, they had a husband-and-wife folk group doing a pre-game concert next to the shed. Concessions were mostly limited to the main big building right by the entrance, though there were one or two smaller stands down the lines. An aged black-and-white scoreboard sat in left, with some of its lights no longer working. Speaking of not working, the PA system was completely shot and illegible in the stands, and the "I" was missing from "Visitor" clubhouse, rendering it "Vistor."

Homer is watching you

Muckdog mascot Homer made appearances throughout the game, with help from a fan services crew. It was mostly the same old minor league races and contests, though one stand-out was a contest for kids to hit the president of the team in the face with a cream pie, which, if nothing else, shows the management are good sports. The Opening Day crowd was pretty heavy, though not a sellout, and though there was not much going on for most of the game, they did get into it for the big comeback.


At The Game with Oogie:

Opening Day scoring

This being Opening Day, there developed quite a line at the concession stands as soon as the gates opened. By the time I got back for food after taking pictures, there was a bit of a wait to order. Eventually and inevitably, I ordered a "Muck Bowl," which was a plastic bowl with home fries and pasta salad under a hamburger and "dog sauce" on the top. Because, how can you not order that?

Bowl of muck

As per usual, I was sitting behind the home dugout. This would be my 96th stadium, and I was set to hit 100 by the end of the trip, but things got weird. Sitting behind me was a couple from Toronto whose son had been a prospect before having arm problems. That wasn't the weird part. Sitting next to them was a guy head-to-toe in Pirates gear. He was talking to the couple from Toronto, which is why I know all this information. He informed them that this was his 176th park he had visited.

Whoa, there.

At that point, I didn't really know what to do. Do I speak up? Do I mention my own trips? Do I not? Do I try and ignore this whole thing? Hearing the words come out of his mouth, I felt a little embarrassed. Do I really sound like that when I talk about this stuff? The people from Canada were being contractually polite, but did I sound as crazy as him when I talked about it?

In overhearing, it turned out that all of his parks weren't professional ones, and he wasn't keeping score, so already his rigor was much less than my own. And then this somehow became a thing. There was an odd tension of embarrassment and competition that ran through me for most of the night. The guy even had the exact same camera model as myself, but one upgrade higher. I really couldn't process all of the competing information I had going through my head.

Did I actually have a nemesis? This Pittsburgh native currently living in DC travelled a lot for work, and was willing to drive an insane amount of time on his trips. He was going to see another game in Jamestown the next day, and was then driving back to DC that night. That's nuts, right? Right?

Regardless, he left during the last inning to go take more photos and disappeared into the night. And I will never know. I feel we may meet again, however.


The Game:

First pitch, Doubledays vs. Muckdogs

This was the second game of the season for both teams. Auburn, an hour down the road, had their home opener on Friday versus Batavia, and then the next day, they drove back down the road to give Batavia their home opener against Auburn. This, incidentally, was only the second Opening Day game I'd ever been to.

It started off interesting, to say the least. An Auburn triple split the fielders in center. The next batter did exactly the same thing, driving in the first run. A deep fly to center almost did it again, but a great catch turned it into just a sacrifice fly, making it 2-0, Auburn, with one out. Two strikeouts followed to end the half. The Muckdogs went in order in the bottom of the first, and then the game went into neutral for a while.

The Doubledays had a two-out single in the top of the second, and the Muckdogs only had a one-out walk in the bottom. Auburn did the same with a two-out walk in the top of the third, and the Muckdogs had a hit batsman to lead off the bottom of the third and nothing else. Auburn had a lead-off single in the fourth erased on a double-play, and Batavia went in order in the bottom of the inning.

Things picked up a little in the fifth. Auburn had a one-out single erased on a fielder's choice. The surviving runner moved over on a (questionable) balk, and the next batter walked. But a strikeout looking ended the threat. The Muckdogs started the bottom of the fifth with a double, moved over to third on a fielder's choice, but two more outs stranded him at third. Auburn went in order in the sixth, but Batavia had a leadoff walk erased on a fielder's choice, with the second runner picked off. A two-out walk was stranded by a strikeout, still leaving it 2-0, Doubledays.

Auburn went in order in the seventh, and the Muckdogs just had a two-out walk in their half and nothing else. The Doubledays had a leadoff walk in the top of the eighth, but he was picked off, and a one-out single was subsequently stranded, bringing nothing across.

Not so for the Muckdogs. A double started the bottom of the eighth, and the next batter walked. A grounder to the pitcher got muffed to load the bases. A single to deep short left the shortstop with no throw, brought in a run, and left the bases bombed. A grounder to second only got a runner at second, scoring another run and leaving it first and third with one out. Another single brought in the runner from third and left it first and second. A strikeout put hope for an end to the bleeding for Auburn, but the next batter got plunked to load up the bases yet again. A long double cleared the bases and marked a batting around for Batavia. The next batter walked, and the one after him got plunked, loading up the bases again and chasing the Auburn pitcher, finally. A grounder to short looked to end the inning, but the shortstop threw it away, bringing in another run. A strikeout finally ended the beating at an amazing 7-2, Muckdogs.

The closer came in for Batavia in the top of the ninth and quickly got a strikeout. The next batter walked and made it to third on a following ground-out to second. But a pop to the shortstop would strand him there, ending the game with a unexpected Muckdog win, 7-2.


The Scorecard:

Doubledays vs. Muckdogs, 06/14/14. Muckdogs win, 7-2.

The scorecard was part of a $3 magazine program, which was kind of surprising for a short-season minors team where the programs are usually give-aways. However, the scorecard was on non-glossy paper, all on one page, and had a decent amount of space for scoring. The facing page of the program even included instructions on how to score a game.

The park was very scoring-friendly. There were a lot of people writing on lineups cards, and in a particularly nice touch, they put a slanted shelf in the wall underneath the lineups so that scorers had a convenient place to write on when filling out said scorecards. So that was nifty.

Scoring-wise, this game had some oddities. I don't think I'll ever see back-to-back triples to start a game ever again. The catch right after to make it a sacrifice fly and not a double was worthy of a gem. Besides that, it was mostly standard, with a bit more hit batmen than expected and more yips in the field, which is probably the case for an early-season game in the short-season league.


The Accommodations:

Best Western Crown Inn

I was staying at the Best Western Crown Inn & Suites in Batavia, which was literally down the street from the NY Thruway entrance, which was convenient leaving the next day.

As mentioned, I got upgraded to a suite. It was frankly a huge room, with a large bathroom off the entrance, an island with a sink, refrigerator, and microwave breaking up the room, a desk and couch towards the front, and a king-sized bed in the back by the window.

I popped in an out all day, but the longest I spent in the room was when I crashed for the night. Still, not bad all around.

Click here to see all the photos in this trip.

2014 Western New York