Royal Park

All photos of Royal Park available on Flickr.

One of the many things I love about baseball is its accessibility.  Unless you are purposely trying to get off the grid (in which case you probably wouldn't read what I'm writing anyways), chances are that just about everywhere in the lower 48 states will be within a couple hours of some level of collegiate or organized baseball.  I love that whether I am going to a wedding in a remote mountain town in Colorado, or driving through a wind farm in the middle-of-nowhere Indiana, I can always find a ballgame if I want to - and in both of those cases, I have.  Even visiting my wife's family in rural Minnesota, which is over an hour from the Twin Cities and 20 miles from anything resembling an urban area, I am never short on ball options.  Thanks to the magic of the Minnesota Baseball Association - colloquially known as Town Ball - I will have literally hundreds of ball fields at my disposal after we move out here.  My father-in-law and I visited one in the neighboring town of Richmond yesterday for a Sunday matinee.  It was one of the most perfect weather days I have ever spent at a ballpark - 70 degrees, sunny but not hot, with a steady cool north breeze.

Richmond is a part of the "Ro-Co-Ri" school district along with Rockville to the east and obviously Cold Spring.  The population is roughly half of Cold Spring, and it is about 5 minutes down MN-23, or roughly 15-20 minutes west of I-94.  It's definitely a much more rugged and sleepier town than Cold Spring, and that could not be more evident than comparing the Richmond ballpark experience to the Cold Spring experience.  Cold Spring Baseball Park very much feels like a civic gathering place, part of the community fabric in the center of town, where most people walk or bike to the park and are mostly there to chat with neighbors or support friends and family in the game.  Royal Park seemed more about the baseball and doesn't have that "buzz" that watching a game in Cold Spring does.  I don't intend that as a slight to fans of either town, I just got the sense that people really come out to support the Royals because there isn't much else to do in Richmond.  It's off the beaten path - quite literally as it is ringed by a dirt road - so it's definitely not just a park you stumble upon while walking through town.  It's an interesting setup as you kind of drive right up to the park and there isn't really a distinction of where the parking ends and the field begins.  You enter on either the west or east side of the dirt road which loops around the south end of the field, and then you just kind of park where you feel like on the grass behind the fence.  Some people literally pulled right up to the fence and watched from their car.  The ballpark consists of a small grandstand that was donated by the local Lions Club in 1990, a section of metal bleachers on each side of the grandstand, a standalone masonry concessions building, a pressbox/dugout/restroom buliding, and a tally scoreboard, which is all very impressive for a town this size and was quite unexpected.  Greg and I actually brought lawn chairs and our own beverages as we were not expecting much more than some rickety wood bleachers and a chain link fence.  We were also not expecting admission to be $5 per person.  At first I was appalled that I had to pay to watch town ball, but I quickly came to realize that this money likely went right back into the upkeep of the ballpark.  It's very clear from hodgepodge nature of the park and the city center itself that Richmond just does not have the financial resources and tax base that Cold Spring has, so I assume they cannot afford the luxury of offering free admission.  But the thing both parks have in common is an immense amount of pride in both the team and the facility, which I am sure is true of every town ball park.   There had to be over 100 people there, not to mention another dozen or so volunteers working, which for a town of 1,500 people on a Sunday afternoon is again pretty impressive.  My favorite part of the park by far was that they sold entire 12-packs and cases of Busch Light for $25 and $45 respectively.  I had not seen a stunt like that since Erik and I bought a pitcher of beer in Sheboygan, which is ironically also a home to an amateur league team.  A lady in the bleachers next to us actually bought a case for the New Munich contingent that made the trek into town to see their SilverStreaks battle the Royals.

The game itself was a win by mercy rule for the visiting New Munich team, by a score of 12-0 in 7 innings.  As you can imagine it takes some time for the box scores for these types of game to make it online or into the local paper (if at all), so as of this post no game stats are yet available, but Richmond was pretty outmatched from the beginning.  Both starting pitchers faired pretty well; I want to say the Richmond starter lasted about 4 innings and gave up only 1 of the 12 runs, and New Munich starter went about 6 innings.  But outside of the starter, not much else to write home about for the Royals.  They had more errors (6) than hits (5) including several just plain dropped fly balls.  They seemed to be operating at just an entirely different gear than New Munich and were incredibly slow off the ball on both offense and defense.  New Munich beat out quite a few infield hits, including two on grounders to 1st because the big fat reliever could either not make it to first in time to cover the bag or just chose not to.  The aforementioned big fat reliever was who the SilverStreaks broke the game open against.  They put up a 9-spot off of him in the 5th inning, mostly clobbering his fastball that was so slow it had an arc to it.  I'm probably being a little harsh on the Royals as this is just amateur baseball, but at least I can say it was entertaining.  Had the game not gotten so far out of hand, the lone umpire probably would have been the story of the day.  He had an enormous neck-to-shin strike zone that was almost as wide, and he got nailed in the face several times by foul balls, but remained committed to staying in the game and calling just about everything a strike.  The players I remember most on New Munich were the leadoff hitter #20 and the 3-hole hitter who wore #00.  #20 had at least 3 hits on the day, and #00 came in from right field to finish the game on the mound in the 7th.

Our move to Minnesota is still a year away so I don't want to get too sentimental just yet, but let's just say that Town Ball is in the "PRO" column and will help soften the culture shock from Milwaukee to Cold Spring.  No matter if I am living in a metro area with 1.5M people, or a town with two stop lights, it is nice to know that a constant I can count on in my life besides family is baseball.

park rankings and statistics

(for purposes of amateur/town ball rankings, some categories are changed to just yes/no questions):
aesthetics - 2
views from park - 2 (trees)
view to field - 9 (dangerously close to and unguarded by fence)
surrounding area - 1
concessions - yes
nachos - no
beer - yes
vendor price - 10
ticket price - 1 (I know the money went to a good cause...but $5 for town ball come on)
atmosphere - 4
walk to park - 1 (run-down residential)
parking price/proximity - 10 (could literally park in foul territory)
concourses - 2
team shop - yes ($20 hats)

best food - 24-pack of Busch Light for $45
most unique stadium feature - press box on top of dugout
scoreboard - yes

lights - no
best between-inning feature - n/a

field dimensions - 330/350/330
teams - Richmond Royals v. New Munich SilverStreaks
time of game - 2hrs-ish
attendance - 100-ish
score - 12-0 L
Brewers score that day - 8-6 L

STANDINGS AND UPCOMING SERIES AS OF 6/12/23:

Brewers 34-32, -1.0; 2 @ Twins, 3 v. Pirates, 3 v. Diamondbacks

Twins 33-33, +1.5; 2 v. Brewers, 4 v. Tigers, 4 v. Red Sox

2023 GAMES ATTENDED:

Erik - 0

Peter - 7