One thing a couple friends and I had in common over this summer is that none of us had been to an Erie SeaWolves game this summer. Although they attend a college much closer to Erie than I do, all of us at some point do our best to make it up to at least one game, whether together or separate. On 7/27, all of our schedules were open, and we found that Detroit's AA affiliate would be facing the Altoona Curve, the Pirates' AA affiliate. Moreover, one of the Bucs' top pitching prospects, Bryan Morris, was to be on the bump that day; we could take in the game and take a glimpse at what we hope could be the future of Pirate baseball. With all that in mind, we decided to make the trip north to catch some minor league baseball. I made sure to take some pictures, and as you will see below, they are of better quality than the ones I took at Hagerstown. Little did we know that we'd be treated to quite the lengthy affair...
Erie's Jerry Uht Park, with some of the Erie skyline in the background, as the players warm up and fans file into the stadium. This stadium has always been maintained very well, and it is certainly more in line with the times than old Hagerstown Municipal. Situated in the middle of Erie right beside the arena where OHL and NBDL games take place, it's a nice AA-sized stadium, and a pretty nice place to take in a ballgame. Lake Erie is maybe a mile from the ballpark.
Bryan Morris warming up in the bullpen before the game. We had the surprising opportunity of briefly taking with both Altoona's catcher that day, Kris Watts, and pitching coach Tom Filer. I can't say that I had seen such openly nice guys at any level of professional baseball initiating conversation with people they didn't really know.
Morris delivering early in the game to what looks like Kody Kaiser of the SeaWolves. For the most part, Erie hitters have been struggling to find much success; many in their lineup that day were batting around .230 for Erie. In addition, with the numerous injuries to the parent club, the Tigers, the trickle-down effect of the injuries was players being called up to Erie who perhaps were not quite ready for the promotion. Still, Bryan Morris was incredibly impressive in his 5 innings of work. His fastball was hard and mostly low in the strike zone, and his curveball was on target and devastating to SeaWolves hitters who swung over the top of his curve often. Morris gave up only 2 hits, walked no one, and struck out 8.
This is shortstop prospect Chase D'Arnaud. Chase has had a rough season in 2010, and that night was no exception. He really didn't hit anything solid in any of his 6 plate appearances, and the frustration probably got released when he struck out looking and promptly argued a little bit with the umpire. On defense, he was pretty solid and showed some good hands on some slow grounders.
This was my attempt to get a picture of third baseman Josh Harrison after making a nice play on a high chopper hit his way. Although his short stature doesn't make him very ideal for 3B, he's always hustling both in the field and on offense. He went 2 for 6 that night with a nice bunt single.
What I've neglected to mention until now is that no one had scored at all in this game until the above picture was taken. With some exceptional pitching from Erie's Bryan Villarreal and Altoona's Michael Dubee and Dustin Molleken, no one could muster even a run in this game until the bottom of the 13th inning, when Cale Iorg went deep over the left-center field wall for the walk-off HR and the 2-0 SeaWolves victory. What an ending to a very closely-played game.
Side Note: Some computer issues have held up the ATL Draft, but that should take place any day now when I can get everyone free at some time. I didn't get quite as many teams as desired, but this should still be very fun.
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.
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.
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