For the Love of Minor League Baseball
Travel Blog • Jenna Schnuer • 05.18.09 | 3:15 PM ET
Kane County Cougars. Photo by The Albuquerque Isotopes. The Clearwater Threshers. The Dayton Dragons.
Ah, minor league baseball. The team names alone are joy. The experience? That much better. While I’ve always found it a bit ho-hum to attend a major league game for a team that wasn’t my hometown favorite, minor league games feel more neutral.
They’re about hanging out eating stuff you shouldn’t eat on a (hopefully) beautiful spring or summer night and (hopefully) getting to see a little magic when some not-so-known player smacks one out or looks like he has the potential to pitch a perfect game. They’re about relaxing. And just kind of being in a place with, mostly, the people who live there.
Minor league games feel out of time. They feel hopeful.
No, not trying to be all Pollyanna-ish about it. Well, maybe a little. (I’ll admit to a bit of MLB overbloated stadium, ticket price, and player news fatigue.) In the minors, the stadiums may have some minor bells and whistles but there are also bouncy castles (at some) , decently priced hot dogs (at most), and, the best bit of the bunch, entire teams of players who still seem to get at least some joy out of playing baseball. Oh, and cheap tickets. And local fans who don’t start bitching about the ticket prices the minute the team falls a few runs behind. Instead, they root for them harder. They will them to win.
And then there are those names. No matter where you’re from, you can’t tell me you don’t want a T-shirt proclaiming your love for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs.