Yakima Bears 5, Tri-City Dust Devils 3

September 1, 2008

The city of Yakima, Washington was a ghost town on Labor Day. Even some of the wineries were closed on a Monday of a three-day holiday weekend. They must have known what they were doing. The kid at Wineglass Cellars said we were the first touristy types to happen by in quite a while that afternoon. But were the crowds thin because the wineries were closed, or were the wineries closed because the crowds were thin? We had all afternoon to make the major trek from Pasco to Yakima, and managed to find enough open wineries in between to stretch out the trip and amuse ourselves (and re-stock the cellar a bit, thank goodness!) Still, we rolled into Yakima around 5 p.m. before a seven o'clock game, and we were hungry. Alack and alas, there were precious few eateries open. Weisenheimer is not a real businessman, but I've got to figure that if I were in the hospitality business, I'd try to be open on a holiday Monday.

Finally we managed to find a place that was not fast food and still open. As Gasperetti's was shuttered, the best we could do was the Depot Restaurant, which is in the old train depot in downtown Yakima. The food was decent but unremarkable. At least they had a nice list of local wines, some of which we'd run across on our way into town.

The ghost town tale extended to the baseball game between the Yakima Bears and the Tri-City Dust Devils as well. The announced number of tickets sold for the contest was 1,536. If there were more than 500 people at the ballpark, then I'm your aunt Tillie.

Yakima County Stadium is kind of cool. For one thing, it's not named for an insurance company or credit union. For another, it has some interesting dimensions: just 293 feet down the lines, though it gets deeper in a hurry, especially down the left field line, where it goes to 340 no more than 20-25 feet from the line. While the actual scoreboard was on the blink, the giant video screen was functional. Norm Johnson, a candidate for State Representative, had a video commercial on the board at one point between innings. I don't really recall any political ads sponsoring games before. One other ad at the ballpark was for someplace called Bi-Mart, advertised as "The right fit for the Northwest." I thought that was rather enlightened.

A few other ballpark notes: The Yakima mascot, Boomer the Bear, wasn't very active. Maybe he is already ready to hibernate. The stadium also had a best and worst. They had the best vendor of the Weisenheimer 2008 ballpark tour. He was once heard to holler, "You can run away now, but eventually you're going to have to come to grips with the fact that you need some peanuts." Freud would be proud! They had the absolutely worst rendition of Take Me Out to the Ball Game in the history of the song. They brought a bunch of kids out to sing in the middle of the seventh. This is well and good so far as it goes, but they were off key, off beat, and off the charts horrible. Aren't they teaching music in the schools over there?

The game
Those of you sick souls following closely may have noticed that Yakima and Tri-City also played yesterday, but in Pasco, not Yakima. The two natural rivals, separated by less that 70 miles (call it the I-82 series) closed out the Northwest League schedule with six games against each other: One in Pasco, one in Yakima, another in Pasco, two more in Yakima, and the finale in the Tri-Cities. The Labor Day game, the fourth of the sixth, was won by the Bears 5-3 in front of the home "crowd." The Dust Devils scored a run in the top of the first inning to take an early lead, but the Yakima came back with three in the bottom of the first and led the rest of the way. Shortstop Justin Parker struck the key blow for Yakima in the first, a tie-breaking two-out, two-run triple. Tri-City made a couple of errors that helped the Bears score two more in the fifth to go up 5-1.

The Devils made a game of it, scoring two in the seventh, with the help of an error, to pull within 5-3. They put the tying runs on in the ninth thanks to a couple of walks by Yakima hurler Jordan Meaker, but couldn't bring them in, leaving the win for the home team, again.

A couple of pieces of free advice for Tri-City. The pale yellow lettering on the road gray uniforms just wasn't working for Weisenheimer. They need unis that are more legible. Also, given the success of the Tampa Bay club of the American League this year after they dropped the "Devil" from their name and became, simply, the Rays, I believe the Dust Devils should drop all demonic references and simply become the Tri-City Dust for next season.

You're welcome!

Box score

Tri-City Dust Devils 7, Yakima Bears 0

August 31, 2008

When we drove up to Gesa Stadium in Pasco, Washington I expected it to be built in the shape of a pyramid. It was standard stadium shape with the exception of an interesting feature, visible at some distance, that Chris Mulick of the Tri-City Herald called on his blog the "Margarita Prentice Memorial Sun Shade." As Mulick points out in his post, Sen. Prentice is not dead, but he named the sun shade for the chair of the state Senate Ways & Means Committee, who two years ago helped secure funding for improvements, such as sun shades, at a number of minor league ballparks in the state, most of which Weisenheimer and his Sweetie, the scorer, have visited on our 2008 ballpark tour.

The shade's purpose is what you'd suspect: to prevent fans in the third-base stands from roasting to death. That's all well and good. However, on this last-day-of-August game, Weisenheimer noted that, as we sat in our seats behind third base, the sun was well to the first base side of the shade. We didn't roast, because it was breezy and cool, but we couldn't see much until the sun ducked behind the stands shortly after the game started. Still, it might be worth looking into getting a bigger shade! Tough budget year coming up, though.

Gesa is not a mis-spelling of a city in Egypt, it's actually a credit union serving the Tri-Cities. Only one real beef with the ballpark experience, beside the too-small sun shade, and that is that Gesa Stadium has one of those hollering announcers that make one suspect they're on meth, or borrowed from rasslin. Plus one minor beef. My Sweetie opines that "Dusty," the mascot of the Tri-City Dust Devils, "looks like a broken teacup." That's not a very scary mascot.

Fans at Gesa were chatty, as we found in Boise as well. My Sweetie's baseball shoes get noticed wherever we go, and that's always a conversation starter. We're also amazed at how many people think you're up to something when you're keeping score, probably advance scouts for another team or something. Or maybe some sort of blogger writing stuff only he will see. Also, why isn't there kettle corn at any of the parks? We haven't found any on this trip.

The game
I wrote the lead for the story about this game in the second inning. It was: We are diehards.

The Dust Devils scored seven runs against the Yakima Bears in the second inning, on six hits, two walks, and a Bear error. By the end of the frame, the game was nearly an hour old, by which time the previous night in Boise we were probably through five. I pictured us enduring a five-hour sloppy game, by the end of which we'd be among the 12 remaining fans sticking it out.

Happily, it didn't turn out that way. In fact, there was no more scoring, and the Dust Devils beat the Bears 7-0. Tri-City pitcher Sheng-An Kuo who, according to the game notes, had been "roughed up" in his previous start, against Spokane, for six earned runs on eight hits in two innings, was stellar. Kuo worked 7 1/3 innings and allowed just two hits while striking out nine. He was yanked after throwing 93 pitches without walking a batter. Nothing wrong with a complete game, though. J.R. Murphy finished up the two-hitter, fanning three of the final five outs and getting the other two on pop-ups.

Tri-City could have had more than their seven runs, as they stranded 10 runners, leaving the bases loaded in the third and the fifth. Yakima never got much going, only twice getting a runner as far as third base: once in the seventh and again in the eighth. The hurlers did a decent job after starter Ian Harrington was bounced in the second. The contest ended at a reasonable 9:55 p.m. I didn't have to use the diehards lead. Or lede, as the cool kids seem to be calling it these days.

After the game we had a brief chat with a gentleman and his young son, who thought us a little confused. I was wearing my Spokane Indians cap and a Mariners windbreaker. My Sweetie, the scorer, had on a Tacoma Rainiers jacket. None of those teams were playing. We explained our tour. Turns out the pair were on a quest of their own, a week-long trek to see six games in Washington. Not quite our "international" tour, but a nice trip anyway.

Onward to Yakima!

Box score