I'm back

Once again, the summer Minor League Baseball trip was a success! Every year I think I have just about wrung all the fun I can from this trip, but each year I'm proven wrong. Plus, I think Thailand Jeff may be a good luck charm. For the second year in a row, no games were rained out. That's always nice, but it was especially surprising this year, given the horrible weather all around us at each stop. Anyway ...

This year's trip started in Louisville, KY. We saw the Louisville Bats defeat the Indianapolis Indians 5-0. I had heard great things about the park (Louisville Slugger Field) in Louisville and it did not disappoint. It was everything a downtown minor league stadium should be. Plus, the game was pretty good -- as might be expected at the Triple A level. Unfortunately, that's the tradeoff inherent in watching more "advanced" minor league ball.

You get the nicer stadiums and a higher quality of baseball, but you have to put up with more of the distractions: bigger crowds, families with no interest in the game, the "cool set" there just to flirt with the opposite sex, etc. Seriously, we saw one young lady in impossibly high heels and an incredibly short skirt parading all around the concourse area before the game. In what kind of world is that a good outfit to wear to a BASEBALL GAME? I know I'm going a bit overboard on this, but I propose a baseball literacy test before one is allowed into a game. I've even got the questions picked out: Explain the infield fly rule. I know the rule has a reputation of being incomprehensible, but it's really pretty simple. Heck, I wouldn't even make you quote it; just explain the gist of the rule. That's all I ask.

Oh, we also made a couple of stops at the Bluegrass Brewing Company. I was afraid I had exaggerated the quality of the BBC's offerings, but that was not the case. I still think their Dark Star Porter is one of the finest beers ever.

After Louisville, we headed over to Charleston (WV, not SC) to check out the West Virginia Power's new park (couldn't get pix to post). It was nice. The game, unfortunately, was a debacle. WV scored 4 runs in the bottom of the first, then managed to lose 17-11. It was ugly! I did, though, see a couple of unusual things. First, there was almost a force out at home by the right fielder. The ump ruled the catcher's toes slid off the plate before the ball arrived, but I SO wanted to record a FC 9-2 on my scorecard. We also saw TWO catcher intereference calls against the Power catcher -- against the same hitter! That's odd. Oh, I did have to look up the scoring rule for catcher's interference -- evidently it is an error on the catcher. Seems to me that penalizes the batter's stats, but ...

Next we were off to Salem, VA. We took the back roads and we got to see The Bridge again. It's still darned impressive. In addition, I enjoyed the game in Salem. It was Thirsty Thursday, so the big open area just inside the entrance basically was a singles bar, but the game was good, the dogs were great, and the beer was cheap. All-in-all, a good night.

The next day we decided to do something non-baseball, so we headed over to Appomattox Courthouse. I was so underwhelmed I'm not even going to provide a link. It was very cheesey and just plain boring. I enjoy the battlefield parks (e.g., Vicksburg or Shiloh) much more. We did, though, find a cool bookstore/coffee shop in Appomattox. It reminded me a lot of Square Books in Oxford. They had interesting books, eclectic CDs, good coffee, and they were playing Gilian Welch over the sound system when we went in. I give it a thumbs up.

Finally it was time to turn toward home. Of course it rained and rained during our Friday drive and we did have to crawl through a wreck on Interstate-81, but we made it to Elizabethton right on time. I really like visiting Elizabethton. It's one of those small towns where the baseball team is THE entertainment in town. The folks just seem to care more in those places. Plus, we ending up sitting beside two former major leaguers -- Manny Trillo and Nate Oliver.

Well that was my summer vacation. Now it's back in the office. We have lots of "duty days" this week and they make me sad, but next week I'll be back to imparting knowledge. Wish me luck.