Futures at Fenway
Saturday some friends and I went to Futures at Fenway (Presented by Filene’s Basement) at Fenway Park. It was a double header where the Single-A Lowell Spinners (Red Sox) took on Hudson Valley Renegades (Tampa Bay) in ther first game, and Triple-A Pawtucket Red Sox (Red Sox) played the Charlotte Knights (White Sox) in the second.
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It was a lot of fun. We had great seats (grandstand section 24, just to the third base side of home plate). Lots and lots of kids. There was a little kid next to me who must have been about 2 or 2½ who was very bored and climbing all over his mom. So I offered her some peanuts. She said he didn’t like them, but took them anyway. He spent the rest of the time stomping on the shells. I asked if she wanted any more and she said no, but could I throw the shells over her way so he could stomp on the rest of them.
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The games were pretty good, but I do have to say the difference in skill between single and triple A is very noticeable. The A game pretty dramatic and you could really tell that both teams were really excited to play at Fenway. And after Lowell finally won, 12(!) innings later, they celebrated like it was the world series. Lowell was ahead for most of the game until HV tied it in the top of the 9th sending it into extra innings. We were pretty ready for it to be over in 9.
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One thing we noticed was that Single-A games have two umpires, Triple-A games have three. Major league, of course, has four and playoff games have six.
The AAA game was more, well, I hate to use the word “professional” because that’s not what I mean. Not to disparage the A players, but the difference in play is noticeable. Faster and better pitches, farther batted balls, far fewer fielding errors. But it has to be major pressure for them to play in a place like Fenway. One distraction was that the Knights’ uniforms look almost identical to the umpires’. The just have a slightly different shade of grey pants. It made it look like there were an awful lot of players on the field.
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We were all mystified by Lowell’s mascot which looked like some kind of dinosaur thing until Greg whipped out his Blackberry and found it was a “Canalligator“. (Lowell is an old mill town with several canals.) The Pawsox mascots, we already knew (Paws and Sox).
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In between innings there was, I guess, family friendly entertainment which consisted, mostly, of the mascots running around the infield track or throwing t-shirts into the crowd. Twice they had a frisbee dog fetching in the outfield which surprised at least one of the outfielders who, I guess, didn’t know they were there.
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It was a fun, if long day. The first game started at noon, and with the three extra innings, it wasn’t over until 7 at night. I’d do it again though. The families, especially those with small children, couldn’t sit through seven hours of baseball, so seats kept opening up as the day went along, and we kept moving down closer to the field. By the last inning, we were about five rows back from home plate. Pretty sweet.
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As it should be.
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It did make me want to go see some more minor league games, though. Unfortunately, the T doesn’t make that easy. It would probably be easier to see a Portland Sea Dogs game by Amtrak than it would be to try to get to Pawtucket by T.
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August 10th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Wow – I’ll jus tpoint to your blogs form now on.