Journey into the Suns

This is the first, and could be the only, photo-centric blog post that I'll make on here because I'm terrible at remembering to take pictures when I want them.

From June 11-13, my good friend Phil was gracious enough to invite me down with him to visit a friend (Andy) who is interning for the summer with the Washington Nationals' Class A affiliate Hagerstown Suns (click here if you want to read a couple of great stories from the ballpark as told by Phil). Andy was awesome enough to get us free entrance into both Friday's and Saturday's game, both against the Charleston River Dogs (Yankees). Here are the pictures I took at the two games, along with a little commentary about the pictures and our experiences related to them: (sorry if the quality isn't the greatest; I took them with my BlackBerry phone)

Walking into the stadium. As you can probably tell, it's an older-style stadium that is maintained in such a way to keep its local, old-fashioned flavor. There are no video boards or electronic graphics in sight, just a public address system from the press box that sits atop the stands shown in this picture. The seating arrangement is as expected for any class A team's stadium: seating and bleachers ran most of the way down the base lines. Cars in the nearest parking lot, along the right field line, were very vulnerable to getting battered with foul balls.

The field from our seats on Friday. A roof covered the seats behind the plate, and there was virtually no way for us to catch a foul ball with the netting draped over the roof. The grass seemed decently well-kept; it looks like your average minor league field. The dimensions of the field are nothing out of the ordinary for a ballpark, and with the higher wall in left-center to center field, the field is less favorable for right-handed hitters to smack the ball out of the park.

The old school scoreboard, as seen from the beer garden down the left field line. As you can probably tell, outside of the electronically-kept ball-strike-out counter, it is entirely updated by hand; a nice staple of old-style ballparks. "Who keeps the score?" you ask. Well, the Suns have a Scoring Cowboy, fully clad in cowboy garb. He did a little bit of dancing when his presence was announced, and danced when the stadium had some danceable songs durring inning breaks, but he mostly did his job keeping the score with help from a walkie-talkie connection to the press box.

Finally, we get to some game action from Friday's game. Here, RiverDogs first baseman Luke Murton puts a pitch from Suns' pitcher Paul Demny into play, but flies out to right field to end the top of the 3rd. Unfortunately for the hometown Suns, the bullpen could not keep the RiverDogs in check for any possible comeback, the defense made some very untimely errors, and the offense never got going for the Suns. The RiverDogs won 8-2; all 140 lbs. of Kelvin Perez received the win. After the game, there was a nice little fireworks show that was very similar to the ones I've seen when visiting Erie for SeaWolves games.

The first fans through the gate for the Saturday game received a statue of former Sun and current Texas Ranger (as well as a member of my fantasy baseball team) Michael Young. I've always been a fan of Young, and I'm more than impressed that he's now collected the most hits as a Ranger than anyone else.

We got to sit in the VIP seating area for Saturday's game, as you can see from the close proximity of the action in the picture. At least some major leaguers like to swing pink bats during breast cancer awareness days; the Suns went with pink jerseys. The jerseys went to the highest bidders after the game through a silent auction.

Walking back to the dugout after just striking out against Suns pitcher Dan Rosenbaum is RiverDogs outfielder Zoilo Almonte. Almonte went 2 for 4 with an RBI on Saturday, following a Friday where he spearheaded the offense with two HRs. With such great hitting those two days, Almonte became a quick favorite of Phil's and myself. Rosenbaum went 5 innings, surrendering 2 runs and striking out 4.The Suns batter who I believe is swinging and missing at a pitch here is the Nationals' second round pick in 2009, second baseman Jeff Kobernus. As Phil describes in his blog, we had the distinct pleasure of meeting his dad, also named Jeff, who came all the way from Oakland to watch his son play in Hagerstown. Keeping with his season average, Kobernus went 1 for 4, though I did like the speed he displayed.Hagerstown did not disappoint in providing classic minor league between-inning entertainment. It's tough to tell from this picture, but I believe this contest was between two youngsters who had to dress themselves in the full baseball uniform while running all of the bases. That's one bit of entertainment that never gets old for me.Victory! After dropping one the night before, the Suns provided some very timely, late-inning hitting, including a HR by Justin Bloxom in the 8th, and secured a 5-3 win.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the Hagerstown experience. It was both a traditional minor league ballpark experience with plenty of between-inning entertainment and elements of the town's culture itself, as well as a unique experience with the numerous retro touches around the stadium. Oh, and eating at IHOP for the second time ever was a nice finishing touch to the weekend as well. The 4 hours of driving there were well worth it.

Off-Topic Law School Update: I waited until all of my grades were in before I checked on them (in order to save me the repeated stressful buildup of going to check on my grades the minute they were released). Looks like they're keeping me around.