In the competition for
"Longest drive made to meet Paul at a baseball game," the nominees
Brian, a fellow teacher, a guy
I call "my hero and mentor" (and he thinks it's tongue-in-cheek), has
a daughter who is working on her medical residency in Yakima. I had
forgotten this when I jokingly invited him to join me in Yakima for a
ballgame. I was pleasantly surprised when he agreed, saying he's always looking for an
excuse to visit his daughter Rachel. Given that we're both teachers (yay,
summers off!),
The Bears' people did well to keep things active The ballpark itself has some
nice quirks. It's incredibly short--293 feet--down the lines, and Yakima's
dry, relatively high air must make those foul poles inviting
targets.
However, the short porches at the poles become longer in a big hurry, as the
outfield wall juts more or less straight out from there...the dimensions go from
293 to 340 in a big hurry. The views of nearby mountains are charming,
and if you're heading to Yakima, you might note that the first-base side is home
to the hot, sunny, uncomfortable seats.
On the whole, I'll remember a fun night with my buddies in the middle of nowhere--one old friend with whom I can talk baseball and shoot the shit, his kind wife, and a woman who's working on bringing health care to the Yakima Valley. What more can you ask than that? July 2005--I returned to Yakima with my fiancée during the month of our wedding for that year's July 4th Minor League Baseball trip. And in the process, I managed to make my baby feel wonderful--nearly crying--and make a silly rookie mistake at the same time. A local florist had a promotion called Sweetheart of the Game...basically an essay contest. Write a few sentences about why your date should be the Sweetheart of the Game, and the winning essay's sweetheart gets flowers delivered to her at her seat. I wrote that Michelle and I were getting married on the 29th of that month, that we were on our third annual 4th of July Minor League Road Trip, that said road trip was originally Michelle's idea (this is especially impressive to those who believe I'm dragging along an unwilling partner to all these ballparks), and that I loved her very much. Well, they picked Michelle as Sweetheart of the Game (of course they did...I'm a poet, dammit), and Michelle was surprised and touched...she confessed later she nearly cried. So what, you ask, was the rookie mistake? This was...I wrote the wrong damn date for our wedding. We were getting married on the 30th, not the 29th. The 29th was the rehearsal dinner...where Michelle threw out the first pitch at an Everett AquaSox Game and where I sang the National Anthem. We'd been spending the whole weekend talking baseball and playing catch, so the baseball on my brain led me to write the wrong date down...so Michelle corrected the announcer, saying "Actually, it's the 30th." What a doofus move. But she pointed out that this was short-season A ball, and so it was fine that I made a rookie mistake. I'm thankful for that, because I want to spend my whole career in her organization.
BALLPARK SCORE:
BASEBALL STUFF I'VE SEEN HERE: Two homers for Chris Carter set the table for the Bears' win in my inaugural visit. As of July 2004, Chase Smith had two losses in professional baseball, and I've been there for both of them: the first in Eugene a week earlier, than this one. Chase--send me a few bucks and I'll not show up anymore. For July 4th weekend of 2005, Michelle and I saw Yakima's Angel Rocha give one of the poorest pitching performances imaginable. He made it two-thirds of an inning...faced ten batters. Two outs, six walks, and two hits--all of them scored for 8 earned runs, or an ERA for the outing of 108.00. It didn't get much better for Yakima thereafter. Incredibly, in a 17-run, 17-hit onslaught, John Mayberry Jr. managed to go 0-for-6 for Spokane. Next stadium (chronologically) Back to minor league stadiums page Written July 2004. Updated May 2005. |
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are: 3. My dad, who took an airport shuttle two hours to get from
Columbia, Missouri to a fine game at 
he did, in fact, meet me in Yakima for Northwest league
baseball. His daughter joined us, and somehow, I wasn't bothered when she
studied during the game for tests she'd be taking shortly. My answer to
the questions about people with difficult medical challenges was always the
same: "He should be seeing a doctor." Strangely, it was
never the right answer. The Yakima crowd made it easy
for her study--there were few of them and they were quiet, even on Thunder Stick
night. (By the way, there is precedent in my life for studying at sports
venues. My brother claims he studied in college at the bowling alley...the
general cacophony there was easier on him than the complete silence of the
library. Me? The library all the way. I had a carrel way down
in the dusty bowels of the place. Perfect.)
during the game. They featured loads of promotions, and wacky ones, such
as attempting to throw toilet plungers into a toilet, a cream pie eating
contest, and an attempt to catch high-slung T-shirts with butterfly nets.
There were probably other promotions as well, but I couldn't hear them--the PA
system was awful. On the whole, the atmosphere wasn't exactly electric...a
routine seating bowl which, as I said, is mostly empty.
The sun can be such a problem for
spectators and fielders that they have put up a big screen past the third-base
seats to block it.
