Return to Cold Spring

All photos of Cold Spring Baseball Park available on Flickr.

For the final ballgame on our 2-week visit to Minnesota, we traded the grandeur and luxury of Target Field for an evening of Town Ball in my wife's home town of Cold Spring.  Megan and her mom stayed home with the kids while my father-in-law and my parents who were also visiting headed down to the yard.  Anyone who is married understands the constant grandstanding between the parents on who will pay for anything, but my father-in-law was gracious enough to let my dad pay for the tickets this evening.  After he promptly figured out the rouse that admission is free, a $4 Miller Lite sufficed and we crammed into a bench a few rows behind home plate for the game.

I visited and documented Cold Spring Baseball Park almost 4 years ago to the day, so I won't re-hash all the specifics of the park nor the romanticism of Town Ball here.  Anybody familiar with Town Ball understands that there is certain element of the game being "frozen in time" that is a large part of the appeal, but you wouldn't know that from visiting Cold Spring.  There is a major amount of civic pride and community involvement that has gone into some pretty significant renovations to their park over the past 10 years or so, including new lighting, the renovation I wrote about in my 2018 post, and on deck for our next visit to the ballpark - a proposal for a new field house for updated batting cages, restrooms, and a community room.  It's not the flashiest or most comfortable park to watch a ballgame in the world (all of our backs and knees could attest to that by the 6th inning), but it's absolutely incredible to me that a park and team with almost zero sustainable income to speak of has not only existed for nearly a century, but that it exists to the quality it is.  Many folks that enjoy Town Ball would be perfectly fine with just a folding chair and a chain link fence, but Cold Spring has a park that I'm actually excited to visit every summer we visit.

As was the case with my last visit, there are no real stats kept for this team nor the league, unless you subscribe to one of the local papers.  The website is very "hit or miss" to put it lightly and all I can really tell from it is that the Springers have a record of 10-2 on the year.  It's always an adventure just finding out if the team is even playing ball that day.  There have been times we've tried to go where a game was cancelled or moved on a whim with very little notice, sometimes the day of.  I'm not joking when I say that a game might be cancelled if a couple of players need to work late at their day jobs or they can't find an umpire.  This particular game had only one ump, who did more walking to and from his house across the street than he did during the actual game.  But somehow, I did remember one particular player from my last visit - Jordan Barth.  Probably because I wrote about him last time and he stood out among the players, but at that time he was just finishing college and now he's still on the team so obviously Augustana College is not heavily scouted.  I would estimate that there were about 75-100 people there and it was a brisk game as you might expect, about 2:20.  Cold Spring held on for the victory against the Raymond Rockets by a score of...Christ, I can't find it...the hell with it.

STANDINGS AND UPCOMING SERIES AS OF 6/21/22:

Brewers 39-30, +1.0; 4 v. Cardinals, 3 v. Blue Jays, 2 @ Rays, 4 @ Pirates

Twins 38-30, +1.0; 3 v. Guardians, 3 v. Rockies, 5 @ Guardians, 3 v. Orioles

2022 GAMES ATTENDED:

Erik - 1

Peter - 9

Summer in The Cities

All photos of Target Field available on Flickr.

Megan and I reached another parenting milestone this past Tuesday when our daughter Molly completed her first year of school - only 18 more to go!  As any parent knows, along with that comes how the hell we are going to figure out child care for 12 weeks until school starts again.  Our first leg of our jam-packed summer kicked off the minute we picked her up from school and headed to Minnesota for 2 weeks to stay with the in-laws - and of course, to take in a couple of Twins games.

The first game of two was last Thursday.  My company's annual Twins outing happened to coincide with when we were home, so my wife and I took advantage of that.  It was great to put a human in-person face with many people I had only talked to over Zoom for the last year, if at all.  We had seats in on the third base side of the 3rd level, which may have been pretty high up but also boasted a great view of downtown, and a nice wind-tunnel effect channeling its way between the tall buildings to cool us on a warm night.  My second Twins game of the trip came yesterday with the entire family in tow, including both kids and newborn nephew.  For this game we sat in the 4th row of the 200 level directly behind home plate, which is one of my favorite places to sit in the park.  It's got one of the best views of the entire field, but it's also the upper deck so not terribly expensive.  It's also one of the sections that falls into the shade first with the setting sun during a day game, which is crucial in the Minnesota humidity, but if that is not enough there are two publicly accessible indoor bars right above that section with a great open view to the field - something that AmFam Field needs to take note of.  We spent a fair amount of time with our son in the bar area, letting him walk around and not be confined to a seat while we could still grab a beer and keep an eye on the game.  I say "bar" but it really feels more like an enclosed standing area that happens to serve drinks, just in case there is anybody reading this and judging that I would let my 1-year old crawl around in a bar.  As you can see in the headlining photo, it worked quite well and he tuckered himself out enough for us to actually pay attention for a few innings.

Target Field remains one of my favorite parks in the league, I would still say 2nd place behind PNC Park in Pittsburgh, but a close 2nd.  All of my favorite parts of the stadium remain and are even improved from when it opened in 2010 - an abundance of standing room/social spaces, a great 360° view of the field from just about every part of all levels of the concourse, an outstanding food and beer variety, a wide array of seating options, and an urban setting that is unmatched by almost every park in the league.  I'm not the type of person that remembers a detail like a food I ate twelve years ago, but I had a vivid lasting memory of the Tony Oliva Cuban Sandwich I had during our inaugural season visit and was on a mission to find the lonely stand that sold them.  I finally did on Sunday and it was even better than I remembered, especially when paired with a frosty Killebrew Root Beer.  The park is not without its flaws however, but one of the major deficiencies that has been remedied since the park opened in 2010 is the pinch point from the main entry in the right field corner.  They've pushed the gate back I would say a good 50 yards further towards the street to allow for a formal entry plaza.  It's geared as a kids area, which was also a lacking feature of the park, but it also serves as a much needed buffer zone between entering the stadium and the main concourse.  It's pretty normal to walk into a large stadium and just kind of look around and take it all in, and get your bearings a little bit, and now there is a great space to do just that and not having to worry about being in anyone's way.  This existed during my last visit here in 2019, but this was the first time we actually spent any time in the space, as the kids got their wiggles out here for 20 minutes before we headed to our seats.

The Thursday game pitted the Twins against the Yankees, and the Sunday game versus the Rays, and both unfortunately turned out to be losses.  We got to our seats just in time on Thursday to see the ABC's go 1-2-3 with homers to lead off the bottom of the 1st - Luis Arraez, Byron Buxton, and Carlos Correa.  Even a total of 5 homers off of one of the best pitchers in baseball, Gerrit Cole, was not enough to hold on for the victory, and the Yankees came back to win 10-7.  On Sunday, the Twins sent Cole Sands and his 9+ ERA to the mound to go for a sweep of the Rays, but ended up falling short in the 6-0 shutout.  This game featured a rare hitless performance from Arraez, who still leads the league with a .359 average as of this post, and most notably for me also featured an appearance by former Brewers closer and 3rd-round draft pick Tyler Thornburg.  He has faded into obscurity over the last few years dealing with a malady of arm issues that cost him a couple of seasons and a tumultuous time in Boston sandwiched in between (he was a part of the original Travis Shaw trade), and to be honest I didn't even know he was still playing.  The Twins picked him up recently after having been released by the Braves and he was called up just in time on Sunday to throw 2 1/3 scoreless innings of relief.

These two games at Target Field really helped affirm for me the decision my wife and I made to move to the Twin Cities in a couple of years, not just because of the ballpark but just generally being in downtown Minneapolis.  "The Cities," as the locals call them, are two vibrant, eclectic urban centers with two top-notch ballparks that I cannot wait to visit on a regular basis, and it felt great to purchase a new Twins cap in the team store in preparation of my future fandom.  But not to worry, no matter how much objectively better Target Field is than American Family Field, the Brewers and their ballpark will always be #1 in my heart - particularly in those April ballgames.

STANDINGS AND UPCOMING SERIES AS OF 6/13/22:

Brewers 34-28, -0.5, -0.5 WC; 3 @ Mets, 3 @ Reds

Twins 35-27, +3.0; 3 @ Mariners, 3 @ Diamondbacks

2022 GAMES ATTENDED:

Erik - 1

Peter - 8

Anaheim, KC Moving in Opposite Directions on New Ballpark Proposals

(image courtesy of from unsolicited study by Pendulum)

Other than the Brewers, I think I've probably written about the A's and Rays the next most on this blog, just because they have both been talking about new ballparks pretty much since we started this blog in 2007.  So long in fact that 7 new major league ballparks have opened in that span, and there is now at least one more serious contender that is throwing their hat in the ring as well: the Kansas City Royals.  It's been no secret and I've written before that the Royals owner John Sherman has made a new ballpark one of his top priorities since he took over the team.  Not necessarily because the Royals need one - fans, players, media, and myself included will all tell you that Kauffman is a gem - but because of a desire for surrounding development, a la The Banks in Cincinnati or Ballpark Village in St. Louis.  Kauffman Stadium is sited well outside the CBD amidst a sea of parking, not unlike American Family Field here in Milwaukee, with little to no opportunity for revenue streams outside of gameday operations, and the drive from many teams nowadays is to maximize profits and development any way they can, not just in baseball but in all sports.  More areas to shop and eat and drink means more fans and money for the team, and a larger tax base for the city on undeveloped land, so it's kind of a win-win for most people (save for gentrification and the poor, but I won't get into that here).

The team recently announced they had narrowed their new ballpark to two downtown sites, and with the NFL Chiefs also pursuing a move to the Kansas side of the city, it sure seems like the demise of the Truman Sports Complex is a matter of when, not if.  One of the sites would be in a neighborhood called the East Village, which is near the famed downtown Power & Light District, and the other site would be a mile further east in the Jazz District, near the Negro Leagues Museum.  Both have their pros and cons - the East Village site has existing infrastructure but is a much more confined area, and the Jazz District site is the current home to the KC Area Transportation Authority in a more diverse part of the city that could really use the development and help bridge the racial divide to downtown (i.e. - again, red flag for gentrification).  The Kansas City Star actually has pretty cool interactive maps of the sites that were put together by the Urban Land Institute and UC-Berkeley respectively.  If all goes perfectly and an eventual vote is approved by various entities to approve a share of public funding, the Royals could be playing ball downtown as soon as 2026.  However, it is worth noting that the city already just funded Kauffman Stadium upgrades barely a decade ago.  It's far from a given that citizens would have the appetite to extend a sales tax for a team that one could argue doesn't even need a new home, not to mention during a time in our country when it's pretty ballsy for a wealthy baseball owner to be walking into the capitol with his hand out.  It's also worth noting that the Royals are contractually bound to Kauffman through at least 2031 as part of the terms of said renovation.

While the wheels are in motion in Kansas City, they have come to a grinding halt in Anaheim.  If you would asked me a couple years ago, I would have said without hesitation that the Angels would be the leader in the clubhouse for next new ballpark.  Nothing like a good old-fashioned bribery scandal and the California politics to send things back to square one.  After the Angels had the framework of a deal starting through the chain of approvals that would have brought millions of dollars of development into newly acquired parcels surrounding a new stadium on the same lot, the California government stepped in with some concerns about the lack of affordable housing that is required by state law in any land transferred from municipal ownership.  Oh, and just one other small detail - the mayor of Anaheim resigned over allegations that he offered owner Arte Moreno a sweetheart deal in exchange for campaign contributions.  None of these allegations have been proven, and there is no indication that the Angels were in any way a part of this foul play, but the sale of the land was effectively cancelled and is now starting from scratch.  I still think it is inevitable that the Angels get a new stadium as, unlike the Royals, they are in desperate need of one, but this process is going to drag on for many years before we see any real traction.

It's always exciting to think about what new major league park Erik and I will be seeing after Globe Life Field, and as of today it certainly looks like Kansas City has pulled neck-and-neck with Oakland.  And speaking of new major league parks - we've settled on September 8-11 to make attempt #3 at seeing Globe Life Field!  Flights are booked as of this morning and here's hoping the country will not be in complete shambles by then.

STANDINGS AND UPCOMING SERIES AS OF 6/7/22:

Brewers 33-23, +0.5; 3 v. Phillies, 3 @ Nationals

Twins 32-24, +4.5; 3 v. Yankees, 3 v. Rays

2022 GAMES ATTENDED:

Erik - 1

Peter - 6