Myrtle Beach at Potomac - 7/28 & 7/29

So, following the cue set by cbwilk and his trip to Potomac to see our A+ affiliate Myrtle Beach Pelicans, I just so happened to be at the two games after the one he had attended. And in typical fashion, I'm not the autograph afficionato that he is, nor am I as tight with many players as he is, so my perspective of things are slightly different. More geared towards the experience of being at different ballparks and places, and doing a whole lot of little instead of a few concentrated things. This most recent trip of mine unfortunately turned out to be incomplete, which I'll touch on towards the conclusion, but at least I've got something to share with you folks.

So Pfitzer Stadium, home of the Potomac Nationals, or as they call them up there, the "P-Nats." (said quickly, almost resembling the sound of "peanuts")

So, despite having lived up in Northern Virginia for so long, I never really made any effort to go visit this place. The whole "visit as many parks as I can" thing occurred only a few years ago, when I realized how financially capable of it I really was. Besides, back then it was the Potomac Cannons, and I can't really remember them being that much more impressive to go see.

Anyway, every year, I take my dad to at least one ballgame, and since I didn't feel like haggling with Natinals fans who have an overblown opinion of how much their Natinals tickets are until the day of game, I decided that since the Pelicans were in town, I would take him to a Class A+ minor league game, where we wouldn't have to deal with (as much) traffic, and we were guaranteed to get some great tickets.

This is the immediate "plaza" after entering Pfitzer Stadium. The team store is to the left, funnel cakes and lemonade straight ahead, and general concessions to the right. I guess I haven't been to enough A+ or minor league parks in general, because this was probably the smallest and most "intimate" park I've been to yet. Scariest thing is that this was 30 minutes prior to first pitch, and there was nary a soul in sight.

I can't remember for the life of me what this drill was called, but here's massive Cody Johnson soft tapping to Chad Lundahl, CJ Lee, and Robert Marcial.

All under the watchful eye of hitting coach, Rick Albert. After the shot, he noticed the Pelicans hat that I was wearing, and tossed me a baseball for my support. Funny thing is that I didn't imagine that there would be anyone in the entire park other than myself that was here to support the Pelicans, but it turns out that I saw one other guy wearing the same hat I was, and one other lady who not only had a hat, but a July 4th Pelicans jersey on. Whoa.

PNats dugout, where 2B Michael Martinez is the only player with trainer Jeff Alfred. One funny moment was that after we got to the park, my dad and I both hit up the men's room, and right as we were walking out, Martinez was coming in. I didn't realize that the place was so small that the players had to share the same restrooms as the "fans." It was just funny to see Martinez emerge from what looked like the locker room from my high school, spit out a nasty puddle of dip, and head off into the communals.

Lee, Lundahl, Marcial, and Cole Miles, heading back to the dugout after pre-game stretching and warmups.

A still-frame of the much analyzed breathing ritual of Cody Johnson, moments before gametime.

Cole Rohrbough, warming up in the "bullpen." Out of all the guys that were either demoted, or promoted, I was glad to get a glimpse of Cole, since I was beginning to lose track of who was playing for the Pelicans recently.

ONE-LEGGED ROHRBOUGH

This is the vantage point from where I was sitting. Right beneath me was every single Pelicans batter warming up at some point throughout the evening. Here, is catcher, Jesus Sucre, whom I recalled fondly for his stint at Rome, where he hit for good average, but not a whole lot of power, and I spoke with his adopted "mom" who had a pretty close camraderie with Sucre on and off the field.

The PNats scoreboard. I was hoping to see Cody's 27th homer at some point in the two games I was at, but alas, his supposed hip problems were really lumbering the big fella, and he was striking out a lot more than he was actually even connecting with any pitches. He laughed off his final strike out from Tuesday's game, by talking about how good Drew Storen's last pitch was - "That was a fine pitch. A mighty fine pitch." Also please note the 6-run explosion the Pelicans uncorked on the PNats pitching. Also, if you look carefully, you can still see that the analog clock on the top of the scoreboard still has "Cannons" on it, back from the PCannons days.

This was the attendance on Tuesday's game. I swear, I'm not joking when I say that it was under 100 people. It was the quietest game I've ever been to in my entire life. Some have seen me rooting on the Braves when on the road. Just because it's minor league, it's not much different. Except for the fact that this time around the entire place was so quiet and empty, that I didn't want to do anything other than clap when the Pelicans made an out, or drove in some runs. So clap loudly, and proudly was all I did.

Right behind homeplate, was a New York Yankees scout, from what I surmised from speaking with him, and the Yankees bag and the Yankees notebook he was toting around. It should be worth mentioning that the radar gun and attentive stares only seemed to come out when the PNats were at bat, and seemed to disappear once Cole Rohrbough was removed from the game. Hmm.

Also, since I can't jockey for recs from sdp unless I make some reference to girls girls girls, the four chicks (two in the back, two in front of them) on the bottom right of this picture were all lookers whom I would have most certainly made a bad attempt to speak with, if not for the simple fact that I was there with my dad. But damn, it was hard to not constantly look for excuses to glance back at all of their golden tans and short shorts ahem

But I'm an equal opportunist. Here's the oft-discussed Randy Gress, fresh from his assignment in Danville, back up with the Pelicans. SO fresh, that he doesn't even have his own jersey, helmet, or even bats for that matter. The scoreboard had him listed as #6, his jersey is #20, and has a distinct mark where the previous owner's nametag went, and his helmet is the navy/red style of the Braves, without the actual "A" on it, and has #10 on it. This is also a good shot of some man-ass for the girls, and I swear it wasn't taken with this in mind, but serves as a convenient excuse to balance out the comments about girls with some dudes as well.

I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I for one, look forward to the day when this guy is pitching for the Big Braves. Craig Kimbrel, whom I saw out in Rome, now for the Beach, and hoping to see when I go to Mississippi at some point this season. Pitching was the big story for this particular game, as mentioned in the Minor League Recaps, Rohrbough absolutely fell apart in the 5th inning, and had to relinquish the pitcher of record, because he just couldn't throw strikes after he allowed Chris Marrero to walk, and the defecit was being chipped away on. Tommy Palica came in and had himself a little bit of an adventure finishing out the 5th inning, but then slammed the door on the 6th. But it was Kimbrel who impressed me the most, by entering in the 7th and 8th innings, and mowed down five via strikeout, and had a low-effort two inning outing only allowing a single hit. After the 8th, he walked back into the dugout with this huge shit-eating grin on his face, quite proud of his recent efforts. Some might construe it as cocky, but I like the attitude and the way he carries himself. Sure, intangible stuff, but clearly others see something good about him like I do, based on the recent promotion to AA, ahead of Cory Gearrin, whom had an adventure of himself closing out the game.

That's right, despite the huge 6-0 cushion early on, the Pelicans faltered and stumbled through the rest of the game, but managed to hold on to the very end, and win it 7-6. After the game, my clapping was clearly not overlooked, as Tommy Palica came back to my vicinity, looked up, saw me in my Pelicans hat, and immediately tossed up a game ball to me. Pretty cool, I didn't realize that the Carolina league had their own official baseballs. I for one, have never noticed like, the International League, or the Sally League to have their own baseballs, but then again, I wasn't really looking.

So on Wednesday, I went to the game with some friends, and this was what we had to endure early on. There happened to be this very minor-league promotion called "Belly Busters," where the were all-you-can-eat food from Moe's Southwest Grill and Bob Evans (while supplies lasted), and considering one of our tickets was free (with a Wendy's receipt), we figured the upgrade was peanuts, and it knocked out the necessity to scrounge for food later on. And since I'm apparently 567 lbs, this was most certainly up my alley. This picture is taken from the picnic area just outside of RF, where the catering was.

Fortunately, the rain did not last long, and this beautiful sky emerged from behind the clouds. It was turning into a beautiful evening for some baseball, after all.

Oh hey, look, David Eckstein was here too.

And here's a herd of corpulent food fans swarming the lines repeatedly for their thirds, fourths, or fifth helpings of belly-bustin' foods.

Randy Gress again, warming up with Jesus Sucre. Notice on even alternative jerseys, the guy can't get a break and get his own stuff. This is when I called him out on it, and he just mentioned that it's because "I just got back here!"

Flipside, here's Jesus Sucre playing catch with Randy Gress.

Here are the boys, during the National Anthem.

Here's the crowd on this day - despite the fact that there were good numbers in the picnic area, most of them didn't really make the little trek out from their food heaven and into the stands. I'd be willing to guess that there was just a little over 150 people at the park this evening, but I don't really think that it exceeded 200. Apparently, all the fans hang on to their game-attending urges until Mondays, when grandstand tickets are a dollar, according to one or two ushers.

If you guys haven't noticed, I often take cloud shots when I see fit. This is the definition of me "taking a few steps back" and admiring the beauty that is baseball.

Jacob Thompson didn't have a particularly good night this night, as evidenced by the lead-off homer he gave to the diminutive, tar-spitting 2B Michael Martinez. So it was a relief when I saw the Pelicans bullpen actually get started warming someone up, as Michael Broadway started his loosening up, what felt was way too late, but the Pelicans were already down by like seven runs at the time. I was interested to see how the bullpen kind of managed itself, with a few hand signals here and there from Rocket. Lee Hyde was acting as the bullpen coach at this time, and every now and then Guy Hansen and Jesus Sucre would jog in to help warm up a pitcher, and give some advice.

It was an interesting experience sitting right at the bullpen that night. Throughout the evening, there was some singing, a whole lot of gum-wrapper darts, and some chatting about UFC. It makes me wonder just how boring life in the 'pen can be, especially during a rout. I think my favorite was when Rocket made a signal to the bullpen, which was something along the lines of sidearm or sinkerballer, but the motions were so similar, and they were far from the dugout, there was some confusion on who should be warming up between Gearrin or Rudy Darrow. Eventually it was Darrow, but there was some complaining about the lack of a bullpen phone, and just the facility in general, prompting Benino Pruneda, to mention that "it's not like we're baseball players or something. This place is a piece of shit."

And the Pelicans were more or less routed that evening, despite some late-game feeble scoring by the Pelicans. At least Gress snapped out of his streak of bad outs, and got a big double, to get some good support from the boys in the pen.

And that was more or less my trip. I originally had some plans to make a day trip into Pittsburgh to see PNC Park with the WNats on Sunday, but that fell through, when my standby flights to Pittsburgh were all suddenly jam-packed after being seemingly wide-open, days prior. I couldn't figure it out, but then I heard on the news that there was some unfortunate traffic in Ashburn, because of all the fanatics hanging out for Redskins Training Camp. And then it dawned on me - if things were considered "bad" in Washington, I could only imagine the fustercluck that is out in Pittsburgh. And then, the lack of available flights to Pittsburgh completely made sense.

So I made a last-minute Plan B - the Mississippi Braves were playing a day game that same Sunday, so I made plans to go to Mississippi, hopefully get Jason Heward to autograph a baseball, and catch some M-Braves baseball, and then come home and post the mother of minor league photo fanposts. So I wake up early on Sunday, fly out of Reagan National, with a layover, in of all places, back in Atlanta, where my flight to Jackson would land with time to spare.

So I get to my gate, and the cleared list is alerady showing me as good to go, but there's a delay in the flight, because well, it's Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson. There doesn't have to be any logical reasons. So the plane begins boarding, and I go to the gate, and the agent in some incomprehensible accent tells me that standbys are not cleared. Puzzled, I look back up to the screens, and my name is not on the list anymore. For the matter, it's not on the waiting list, either. I wait, feeling a little concerned about my day-trip, but then I hear my name. I'm called up, to be told that I'm being bumped to the next flight... wtf!

"So, are there no seats available?"
"No sir, there are three seats left."
"So, I can't get on this flight despite there being three seats left . . . why?"
"The plane has reached its weight restriction point."
"So you're telling me that I can't get on this flight with open seats because there's too much weight on the plane right now?"
"Yes sir"
"When's the next flight to Jackson, Mississippi?"
"12:00"
"Which, with the time-change, lands at 1:00 pm local?"
"Yes sir"
"*expletive deleted* this"

The game started at 1:05 pm. Factor in the landing, the herding, shuttling, car renting, driving, ticketing, and arriving, and I'd miss a good chunk of the game. Best part was that the ticket agent tried to admonish my language, and told me that he could revoke my flying if I kept it up, to which I simply responded that he already did. And then I left. Defeated, and disappointed. All I really wanted was to visit a new park, be it PNC or Trustmark.

But oh well. Much like my attitude towards our Braves, there's still some time this season yet.

Thanks for reading.