Now that we're all back, it's time for Part 1 of Red Reporter's journey to the southwest!
Travel mishaps (Scrabbles and my delayed flight) caused us to get to the ballpark around the 2nd inning. On our drive over, we couldn't believe that they had even started the game. Some rain and lots of lightning, all the way until we got to the ballpark. Needless to say, once we got there, we got to see about an inning of baseball before the tarp was put on and the game was banged. Good news? We traded our tickets in for tickets to Saturday's game.
The weather Saturday was much nicer. We got to the ballpark with plenty of time to visit with players beforehand, including our buddy Donald Lutz. We tooled around and took pictures, and settled in at a picnic table in RF to grab food/drinks.
The food selection at Goodyear was pretty decent, actually. The out-of-towners enjoyed serviceable Skyline chili, and they had a good selection of standard ballpark fare. Cheap beer prices, compared to most places I've been. Open on the concourse, and despite being a Saturday afternoon game, it really wasn't crowded at all.
We spent a lot of the game in the OF, and then headed around the concourse to check out the rest of it. There was where we saw Walt Jocketty and had a quick interview about the weather (seriously, and it was about 11 seconds). He then decided he had somewhere to be, and the Red Reporter name didn't carry much weight with him. Go figure.
We were then able to head over to seats in RF, where Lutz was playing for the later innings. He had a quiet game defensively, but we made him laugh a couple of times as we were the only ones in the ballpark chanting.
Seriously, that ballpark was pin-drop quiet. We didn't even experience that in the busted stadium in Sarasota. The seats were about half full around game time and decreased from there, which I don't really get. Our lawn ticket was $8, which is about as much as I'd expect to pay to see a minor league team. Not outrageous. Then again, maybe they checked the lineup beforehand and decided not to come. We were going to stick around, but we had a short afternoon before our next adventure, coming up in the next post...
Have any questions for us? We'll do our best to answer them in the comments.