Saturday I had the chance to see my first minor league baseball game. It was the Lake Elsinore Storm versus the Stockton Ports. They’re A league teams. My roommate’s niece’s boyfriend plays Shortstop for Stockton, which is one of the Oakland A’s farm teams so I was looking forward to seeing him play. That didn’t quite pan out but it was still a fun time.
It took almost two hours to make the drive out to Lake Elsinore but I pretty much slept the entire way. We grabbed a quick bite at Subway then hit the stadium, Pete Lehr Field. It was a pretty cozy stadium, seated about 8,000 or so with an absolute monster wall in right field. It was like Fenway park, the right field fence was 3X as high as in field. You really felt close to the action. We had good seats behind the visitors dugout and you had to pay attention to make sure you didn’t get clocked by a foul ball. I did pretty much land on roomie’s niece while jumping for a t-shirt which I didn’t even come close to actually catching.
Justin didn’t play even though he’s normally a starter. I guess he missed a gym session earlier so the coach took him out of the lineup to teach him a lesson. He does need to gain some weight if he’s gonna make the majors anyway. Stockton ended up getting crushed 11-3 or something. They had two homers but that was pretty much all the offensive production. Baseball can be a very slow moving game and by the 5th inning I was really wishing I was drunk or at least buzzing pretty good.
I would really like to see a AAA game somewhere. I wonder what the crowds are like there. I need to figure out where the nearest team is.