It only took three years, but finally everything worked out as they should of, and I was able to make my long-awaited visit to sleepy Danville, Virginia, where I could get to see the Danville Braves rookie-level squad.
With Danville visited, I can now say that I’ve seen every single level of the Atlanta Braves minor league system, to which I am very pleased with.
Two more minor league baseball parks are added to my ballparks site, with the entries for McCormick Park, the home of the single-A Asheville Tourists, and Smokies Stadium, home to the Double-A Tennessee Smokies.
One was pretty awesome, and one was kind of pedestrian. If baseball parks interest you, read about them on my ballparks site.
So, Asheville. I was looking forward to visiting this place more than about any other place I had thought about visiting throughout the 2014 baseball season, because to my understanding Asheville was a town known for interesting dining, lots of local breweries, and it happened to be a place within reasonable driving distance that had a minor league ballpark I’ve never visited, AND they just so happened to be giving out a bobblehead, AND they were also playing against an Atlanta Braves affiliate. Needless to say, it was the no-brainer of no-brainers that I would be looking forward to this particular trip.
Much to my expectations, Asheville was a lovely place that I enjoyed a great deal. The drive to get there wasn’t the least bit difficult, and it frankly just felt good to get in my own car and drive somewhere I’d never really been to before.
Continue reading “Photos: Minor League Baseball in Asheville, North Carolina”
Prior to the start of the baseball season, this past weekend was one particular weekend that I had mentally earmarked as one of weekends that I was looking forward to the most. Sure, I have ambitions and plans of grandeur when the summer arrives, and in a perfect world, I make every flight, the weather is never an issue, and I’m able to tackle four new MLB and six new MiLB ballparks before the start of July. However, things haven’t worked out so kindly throughout the span of the last few weeks, and be it poor weather, unlucky flight conditions or both, a lot of my trips have been derailed and ultimately cancelled, leaving me kind of distraught, and with more time to brood and go crazy.
But this past weekend was undoubtedly the one weekend I was looking forward to immensely, because it combined several things going for it that if they all worked out, would lead to a successful good time.
Fortunately for me, with the weekend now a time frame in the past, I can say that basically everything did work out, and it was a successful good time, and I’m quite pleased with it, to the extent that it’s worth writing about, because frankly, I think a lot of my posts throughout the last few weeks have kind of had an undertone of disappointment or an unhappy sentiment to some of them.
Last Sunday, I visited Minute Maid Park, the home of the Houston Astros in Houston, Texas. This makes #25 of the 30 Major League Baseball teams visited.
As for the ballpark itself, it was nice. It’s not going to be my favorite, because I personally think baseball is best played in true outdoor fashion, and a retractable roof doesn’t really count. But it’s also not the worst ballpark I’d ever been to before either.
Read about it, and many, many more ballpark experiences on my sporadically updated ballpark site.
For those of you who actually look at the pictures I take on my random travels, whom might have been curious to why there were pictures of me in front of a Wendy’s while I was in Houston, this was not a coincidence, nor was it a spontaneous moment of having to take goofy selfies right then and there.
That particular Wendy’s was the Wendy’s where former five-time, five-time, five-time, five-time, five-time WCW champion Booker T worked at for two years when he was a teenager. This is notable, because it was around this time when aside from working at Wendy’s, he also had a separate career going on simultaneously, robbing them.
Yes, the wrestling Hall of Famer, Booker T, was a convicted felon in his youth, and this information is ironically riotous to a guy with a twisted sense of humor like me.
As I’ve always said, baseball is the perfect excuse to get out and travel, and see places that I never gave much thought to. I’d never been to Texas before in my life; it’s not that I’ve never wanted to go to Texas before, but I’ve never really had any excuse to go prior to the pursuit of baseball parks. I don’t know enough about the areas and cities, and there’s never been any sort of event or occurrence in any Texas that has drawn my attention to demand a warranting trip (that I’ve been able to make happen). But thanks to wanting to visit all the baseball parks, I have reasons to visit Texas, when the opportunities present themselves.
And as my schedule revealed, I had the opportunity to make a day trip to Houston over the weekend. First time visiting the state of Texas, seeing a city I’d never been to before, and take in a ballpark that makes me one ballpark closer to having visited all 30 Major League teams. I didn’t spend a tremendous amount of time in the city, since I had a few small objectives, and with a baseball game, there wasn’t a massive amount of free time to simply explore and wander too much, but for what it’s worth, I had a pretty decent afternoon in Houston.
