Saturday, August 5, 2017
Princeton, WV
Outside the Game:
I got up somewhat groggily and partook of my breakfast buffet as rain poured outside the windows. It seems that I picked as good a day as any for a long drive. Given my prudent choice to stop off in North Carolina again instead of staying in Myrtle Beach, it was going to be a much shorter drive, as well. I was planning to meet up with my friend in West Virginia for a couple of days to grab the teams on the very edge of his state, and because we hadn't seen each other in over a year at that point.
After having my rain-enhanced breakfast, I went back to the room to shower up, pack, and check out of the hotel. I started driving on my way for a 3.5-4 hour run, and I was settled into a nice ride with next to no one on the road with me, going as I was from North Carolina to West Virginia on a rainy Saturday. I eventually had to stop for gas, and I was gassed up and grabbed some snacks and headed back out on the road in no time.
Except that my GPS would not pick up the satellite signal again. Granted, I had this GPS for nearly a decade at this point, but it had never failed me. More and more recently, it would have problems picking up the satellite signal, especially in new locations such as airports after a flight, but it had never completely gone to ground before. The good news, such as it was, was that my directions were fairly simple: Follow I-74 until it turned into I-77, and then get off at the Princeton, WV exit.
So I drove, using the roads as my guide for the extent of the trip. The ride itself was pretty calm and uneventful, and eventually I did a pull off for some lunch a short distance from my goal. I wrote down the exact directions at the exit in Princeton from the GPS during my lunch, and I confirmed them with my tablet before setting off again.
I needn’t have worried. The hotel I was meeting my friend at was literally a straight line off the exit of I-77, so although my GPS crashed, it at least crashed on the least complicated part of my trip.
I parked at the hotel to check in and found my friend had beat me there by a half hour or so, and I missed seeing his mother by the same timeframe. I went to the room and unpacked and took a nap after the longish drive.
After waking up, we took a drive to the nearby Walmart to buy a new GPS for the rest of the trip. I got a new GPS; my friend got a couple new LEGO sets. After getting back to the hotel room, my original TomTom unit finally woke up again, of course. Not quite trusting it anymore, I set up my new Garmin unit. We walked a couple doors down to have dinner at Shoney's (yes, because it was on the Rick and Morty episode, and I had never been in one before), and we had a thoroughly unremarkable buffet dinner.
We walked back to the hotel room, worked out some networking issues, and played video games for the rest of the evening. After looking up what the local entertainment options were, we decided on more video games for tomorrow as well.
Both worn out from our respective drives, we hit the hay relatively early and called it a day.
The Accommodations:
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| Holiday Inn Express |
In case you're wondering, there's not a huge selection of hotels in Princeton, WV. We picked one on the higher end of the scale in a Holiday Inn Express. It was a nice, big, room with two twin beds on one side of the room, across from a dresser, TV, large desk, and small Ottoman.
Outside the bathroom was a small refrigerator and coffee machine, and the bathroom off the main entrance was a fairly standard affair with a tub and a long vanity and sink.
We spent a lot of time in here over the next couple of days, between the rain and the video games. I don't even think that housekeeping got a shot at the place until after we checked out.
On Meeting Friends and Yankee Invasions
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| H.P. Hunnicutt Field, 2017 |
Pulaski Yankees (NY Yankees) vs.
Princeton Rays (Tampa Bay Rays)
H.P. Hunnicutt Field
Appalachian League (Rookie +)
Princeton, WV
5:00 PM
Outside the Game:
We both woke up somewhat early the next day and went down to grab some breakfast buffet. We grabbed our stuff and went outside to a small patio adjacent to the breakfast room and ate our breakfast in the fresh air, which was thankfully not filled with rain again.
After breakfast, we managed to get showered and dressed and spent the rest of the morning continuing the video game from the night before until it was time to go to the park. We parked in the huge parking lot that encircled the stadium and managed to find at least a half dozen batting practice balls each on the tarmac outside of the outfield. I'm imagining not a lot of people come to collect them.
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| It is free real estate. |
We did the walk around, and I took my photos until the ticket gate opened, we bought our tickets, and went in.
After the game, we went to a nearby Italian place for dinner and headed back to the hotel. I did my laundry, and we played more video games until we got tired enough to go to sleep.
The Stadium & Fans:
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| Home plate to center field, H.P. Hunnicutt Field |
H. P. Hunnicutt Field has a grandiose name for a rookie-league park. It is a nice enough facility, also used for high school ball, next door to a football field. As mentioned, the park is almost completely surrounded by a parking lot split with the football field, with the one side not surrounded by the parking lot almost directly onto the road that passes the park.
The tiny park has one entrance, guarded by a quaint little ticket booth. The entrance opens up to a tarmac walkway that circles the outside of the field, hosting the one concession stand, team store, the bathrooms, and player and training facilities. There is a small picnic area underneath the home plate grandstand. A small, covered grandstand with flip-down seats sits behind home plate, topped with a tiny press box. Uncovered bleacher seats run down the base lines from either side of the main grandstand. A small digital scoreboard sits in left-center field, along with the site line of trees and distant buildings that provide the outfield view.
A number of memorials are in the park, including five retired numbers along the outfield wall, the dedication plaque for the stadium, a banner honoring "Princeton's Mr. Baseball Lefty Guard," the Dick McCormick Hitting Facility, and a small garden at the entrance honoring local booster Gail Cheatwood.
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| Roscoe P. Coltrain |
Mascot Roscoe the Chicken (number 1/8) runs most of the interactions between innings. There was a small array of your standard minor-league quizzes and games, but a lot less than you see at the higher minors. Given a Sunday afternoon game after a couple of rainy days, there was a decent-sized crowd in the small park that cheered the Rays on to victory.
At the Game with Oogie:
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| Rookie scoring |
As mentioned, I was at the game with my friend, and with the open seating, we grabbed two reserved seats behind home plate. We split up for a bit as I did my photography thing, and he grabbed some food and looked around. When we regrouped, it turned out that he had helped the mascot on with his chicken costume when he stopped in to use the bathroom. So, this was clearly a top-tier organization.
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| Sausages |
There was only one concession stand at the stadium. I ate a brat before the game and grabbed a drink. As we had sprung for the "reserved" seats, there was seat service for concessions, and I snagged a sausage sandwich during the game, as well. A couple of visiting Pulaski Yankees fans who had come down for the game were sitting behind us and bemoaning their team's fate and the drive they had taken to see such a beating.
Roscoe the Chicken mascot tried to get my friend and I to participate in a game between innings, but we demurred.
The Game:
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| First pitch, Yankees vs. Rays |
The visiting Pulaski Yankees were the class of the Appalachian League, facing off against the Princeton Rays at home, but the year up to this point had no bearing on this game, as the hometown boys cleaned the clocks of their brethren from up north.
Things started well for Pulaski in the first, with an early run off a leadoff single, stolen base, single, and sacrifice fly to put them to a 1-0 lead. That would be their first and last lead of the day. In the bottom of the first, the Rays had a two-out rally with a single and a booted grounder to second that was followed by a homer to left to give them to a 3-1 lead. The Yankees went in order in the second, but Princeton kept going with a booted grounder to third making it home on a balk, passed ball, and a triple. The runner left on third got brought in on another single, and the lead was extended to 5-1. Pulaski struck out their side in the third but had two walks in the middle, while the Rays calmed down and snuck in a single and nothing more.
The Yankees got nothing more than a single and walk in the top of the fourth, and even Princeton went in order. Pulaski had a single in the top of the fifth, while the Rays tacked on another odd run with a hit batsman moving to third on a single and then coming home on a wild pitch, making the score 6-1. The Yankees only managed another single and walk in the top of the sixth, while Princeton got three strike outs. But in the middle, there was a one-out rampage, with two walks, three singles, and an error by the center fielder, leading to four more runs to make this increasing blowout 10-1.
Pulaski had a single in the top of the seventh, and the Rays just a walk in the bottom of the frame. The Yankees tried feebly to get back in the game in the top of the eighth with another run on a double, stolen base, and single, to close it to 10-2. Princeton had a single to show for the bottom of the eighth. Not making the most of their last licks, Pulaski went out on three straight ground out, leaving the hometown Rays with a decisive 10-2 final victory.
The Scorecard:
Yankees vs. Rays, 08/06/17. Rays win, 10-2.
The $1 scorecard came with a raffle ticket stapled to it for one of the giveaways. I didn't win, but it was nice, nevertheless. The program was a magazine tabloid, with the scorecard in the centerfold on semi-glossy paper that made it a little hard to write on with pencil. At least 50% of the scorecard spread was filled with ads, but at least it was on a white background that left space for notes.
The scorecard was roomy enough, with just white boxes for each player, so it wasn't so cramped. There were a couple of oddities, though. There were no pitching lines, but there were so many player lines that I was able to fashion some ad hoc at the bottom of the scorecard. Also, there was a printing error on the home side, with one block that should have been two players lines was missing the divider line. It was pretty obvious, so it was odd no one thought to fix that.
There were only a couple of plays of scoring note. There was a balk in the bottom of the second, a CS 1-3-4t in the same half inning, and a CS 9-6 in the bottom of the eighth when the runner tried to turn a single into a double. The Yankees also committed four errors, which can't be good for the skipper's blood pressure, and there were twenty strikeouts combined with both teams.
The Accommodations:
We had another night in the Holiday Inn Express, mostly playing video games and accumulating a ton of wrappers and garbage, as room servicing was in prime video game time.
2017 The Carolinas & Tennessee
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