They Can Totally Hear You: Spectating in the Minors

When I was a kid, I was brought to a Scranton-Wilkes Barre Red Barons game while visiting relatives in the area.  I didn’t really know what was going on.  Who were these teams?  Why do their uniforms look sort of but not really like teams I’ve actually heard of?  Why are some of them teenagers?  Why is the Red Barons mascot called “The Grouch” and why did he just hurl my hat twenty rows away?

Ah, the ignorance of children.  In scientific circles, its what’s known as “natural selection.”  […]

This past week, I found myself at a Triple-A Sacramento River Cats game, a team whose namesake was equally perplexing.  Were they fishing a lot of dead strays out of the river around here?  That doesn’t seem very appealing for the name of a baseball team.  You’ve got to focus on the positive aspects of the area, Sacaramento team-namers.  There’s a reason we don’t have teams called the “Detroit Abandoned Warehouses” or the “Baltimore Homicides.”

But this is part of the experience of minor league ball.  This is a level of sports with teams like the Ironpigs, Sky Sox, SeaWolves, and Diamond Jaxx.  Half the battle is out-crazying your opponent with a nickname from outer space or another dimension, or whatever the hell is the origin of a Diamond Jack (singular form?)

The other half is a desperate grab for the rest of your life.  Not you, of course.  As a fan, you are merely there to sit in less comfortable seating, take advantage of spectacular promotions (there’s a ridiculous amount of Dollar Dog Nights on the minor league level), or, if the drunken, flipped-up collar brigade three rows ahead of me at the game are any indication, harass the hefty bat boy with vulgar and increasingly irrational insults.

And there’s only, like 3000 people in the stands, so he can totally hear you.  Which became obvious in the bottom of the ninth, when, with the game on the line, I screamed “YOU CAN BE A HERO” to the batter, at which he point he promptly struck out to end the game.

No, no.  When I say “you,” I mean the minor league player.  He is tired.  He is scared.  He can be confident, but from what I’ve read, the multi-talented first round picks can be met with harsh criticism and resentment in the locker room, so they best keep their mouths shut.  These are guys living on a few hundred dollars a month, dreaming to one day have their bags carried for them and to fly in first class.  What’s fueling them is the chance to play baseball for money, which is a tantalizing concept, even if you’re just typing it.

There’s a reason these guys are still playing ball, and its not the lifestyle.  Everybody knows that not everyone makes it to the big leagues; in fact, most minor leaguers don’t.  That’s what brings beauty to this level.  Players clawing tooth and nail for a chance to be a part of something bigger gives us as spectators a chance to watch baseball players at their most human, their most pure:  when they’re playing baseball for the sake of baseball.

This is also the level when a lot of players are introduced to performance enhancers.  So, yeah.  But let’s take the “Selig Route” on that aspect and ignore it.

As a Phillies fan at heart, I knew all about prospect Michael Taylor, a 6′ 6″, 260 lbs behemoth who uses a telephone pole for a bat.  He was a large facet of our farm system, responsible for shouldering offensive hopes in the future.

And then, he was traded away, which is a barely a ripple to the casual fan; when a team can acquire a player while giving up “just” prospects, it feels like they’ve given up nothing at all.  You hate to see the players on your team go, so to find out that they will all be sticking around in favor of filtering a handful of younger might-have-beens away is a wave of relief.

The sting of a minor leaguer, and a top one at that, being funneled to another organization doesn’t come through until much later, and even then, that same casual fan does not recognize it as the cause of their club suffering.  They see a team that was good now being bad, and the invisible men who were cast aside in favor of the household name a few years back are not only forgotten, they’re disregarded.  They don’t even get the credit for what might have been of their might-have-beens.

Its tragic, so to see Taylor swing the bat was almost a Dickens-esque, “ghost of baseball yet to come” vision.  Now with the A’s, chances are I would not get to see him play ball in person again, even if he made it to the majors.

“Wow,” I thought.  “This could really be something special.”

A shooting star flashed across the night sky.  A cool breeze whipped through Raley Field.  Taylor strode to the plate in a baseball moment so nostalgic, I expected Kevin Costner to barge in and poorly-act the scene into oblivion.

Well, Taylor singled, I think, and then popped out and fouled out and did some other shit that in the end meant nothing. Which is sort of the nature of the game.

However, Josh Donaldson, the River Cats catcher, slammed two home runs, both of which gave Sacramento the lead again.  Which they then lost a third time, permanently.

Permanent.  Not a lot is in the minor league realm.  Which is why, if you find yourself on the metal bleachers or $7 grass lawn seats of a First Energy Stadium or Jerry Uht Park, appreciate it.  Hard.  Because the guys on the field certainly are. And don’t yell at the bat boy.  He’s trying, too.

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