43 Parks in a Year : June

The Louisville Bats: This was the time that I splurged for the more expensive seats upstairs behind the guarded elevator (saw this at a few stadiums, but this was the only one I bought a ticket for). The view from behind and above the plate was perhaps the best I had all season and the private concourse for upstairs looked like it could be good, but on that day seemed like a ghost town with only one concession stand open.

The Bats had some lame entertainment between innings consisting of some guys running around with trash cans pretending they were drums - interesting the first time, maybe two, but not the seventh or eighth. However, much of it was salvaged by the mascot. The purple bat ran around like a maniac keeping every break entertaining. Still, the highlight of the day was when two birds were fighting over territory and the younger one flew under the row of chairs, including mine, to get away from the older.

The Lexington Legends: A really nice park once you get inside, but not exactly in the nicest part of town. Sitting behind home plate you get service to your chair which is nice. The Legends have moved away from the old kind of classy logo with an "L" encompassing Kentucky and a star over Lexington toward an old fashioned mustache. This blue on green, goofy thing was everywhere. On the other hand, I did like the fact that they used a different soundtrack from the generic one most stadiums use. Most notably, at the beginning of the game they played the call to post rather than having someone yell "play ball." It was cool.

The Potomac Nationals:  When I thought of baseball in Northern Virginia, I thought I'd be arriving at a really fancy, really nice stadium. Instead, I got there and there was a stadium that would have fit in nicely in the middle of the pack in a the Appalachian rookie league. It's located on a municipal park and you walk past several local league softball fields to get from the parking lot to the stadium. The stadium itself seems to be one of the municipal fields converted over. It wasn't a terrible experience; it just wasn't what I expected. However, the Potomac Nationals do have a really cool logo.

The Richmond Flying Squirrels: Okay, it's a goofy name and the logo is poor (I usually have to explain what it is to people). However, the mascot - a superhero squirrel - is downright awesome. The Squirrels are in the old AAA stadium that the Braves abandoned and they get really nice size crowds because they are in an overly large stadium. It felt about what it felt like going to a Richmond Braves game did back when I lived in Richmond. The Squirrels keep making noises about a new stadium, but they are doing quite nicely where they are now and don't have nearly the realistic expectation that the AAA Braves had.



The Norfolk Tides: Everybody kept telling how cool it was that the Tides had ferry boat service across the water, but it was closed down (at least the day I was there). The stadium was out of the way, but had parking under the elevated roads and regular bus service so everybody could get there. I accidentally drove on a toll road on my way there (billed by mail 4 months later thru a letter with a picture taken of my license plate and car). The crowd was a hard working bunch and there was more beer being lovingly consumed here than I recall at other fields, but everyone was having fun. They had a weird squid mascot which kept trying to get some drunk lady a couple rows in front of me to flash her tatas at him (to be fair she was trying to him to throw prizes to her and encouraging him). I wonder if the squid survived their rebranding over the summer.

The Carolina Mudcats: One of my favorite logos in all of sportsdom. It's almost unforgivable that the Reds let themselves get pulled away from this team for the Pensacola Blue Wahoos (one of the very worst logos in baseball). The stadium was a bit out of the way, but well worth the trip. It was a sweet stadium for an A+ team and everybody was extremely friendly and I had a great time despite a lightning storm which hit mid-game and put the power out for about ten minutes. While we were all huddling in the concourse area, they played their major league affiliate's game on the monster sized scoreboard (converted to a mega-big screen for the duration of the rain).

The Winston-Salem Dash:  From one of my favorite logos, I went right to my least favorite logo of all the teams I actually visited last year. Every time I look at the Dash's logo all I can think is "constipated baseball." The stadium was nice enough and the experience wasn't bad, but this team really needs to rethink its name (too cute by half) and logo. What was wrong with "Warthogs" or "Spirits?"