Play Ball!!

[susandennis]

I love minor league baseball.  The Tacoma Raniers are the AAA farm team of the Mariners.  Ann and I drove down there last night for a game and it was such fun.  I love the name of their program is The Dirt.  Our seats ($25 each) were 8 rows back between 3rd and home.  You could see the label on the batter's underwear.  They flung towels into the stands between innings and gave away prizes and the food was horrible and expensive and it was just so much fun.  It was the perfect night to go.  Not crowded and cool in our shady seats.

Major league farm teams step up from pony to single A to double A to triple A to the bigs.  Here's where it gets depressing.  Half of last night's team was made up of guys who had played for the Mariners and got demoted.  And the other half stunk.  If the Mariners are going to build their next few years from this crop, we are so totally doomed.  And they played like they could not wait to get home to their Nintendo games.  It was just horrible.  There was a home run or two and a line drive here or there but even those where pretty joyless.

Also it was very easy to see why the coaches and umpires were in the bigs yet either.  The strike zone was somewhere between toes and crotch.  The other team was the Marlins team from New Orleans.  Their third base coach put up the stop sign if any of their guys even thought about getting to 3rd base.  He would not let them run home even when they had so much time, *I* could have made it safely.  Until one inning when he finally waived the guy in and the guy was so stunned he literally stopped first and, of course, was then tagged out.

It was all just pretty funny and really sad.  Especially when you consider that now, after playing all Summer, they should really have this thing nailed.  

Week after next I'm meeting seattlejo up in Everett and we're going to an Everett Aquasox game which will be much more fun because they are a Single A team so no pressure plus their mascot is a frog.  Much better than the Raniers Raindeer...