Cheney Stadium, Tacoma

Tacoma Rainiers 1-5 El Paso Chihuahuas
(Pacific Coast Baseball League)

20th August 2017

A trip to Vancouver and The Rockies forded me the opportunity to tick off another event from my Bucket List cliche: to whit a baseball match.  Ideally the Seattle Mariners would have been at home when we visited, but regretfully not.  Fortunately their little brothers, the Tacoma Rainiers were.

The Rainiers compete at what is termed Triple-A Minor League baseball; one level below the Major League lads.  However, there is no promotion between the two grades; so instead Tacoma have a tie-in affiliation arrangement with their neighbours whereby, I assume, they act as a feeder club for the Mariners.

Rainiers participate in the Pacific Coast League.  Although this set-up includes teams from the likes of New Orleans, Nashville and Memphis – each located the better part of 2,000 miles from the Pacific Ocean.  The sixteen teams in the league are split into four geographically convenient conferences, but nevertheless each side has to endure a small number of inter-conference matches in some far flung places.

Each club plays a whopping 142 matches crammed into a 20 week regular season, before the four section winners play-off to determine the Pacific Coast League Champion.  There is, I believe, a subsequent single match with the winner of the other Triple-A organisation, the east-coast based International League, to ascertain the overall Triple-A baseball champion.  Did you follow all that?

Tacoma were playing the reigning Pacific League Champions this afternoon: the frankly silly sounding El Paso Chihuahuas.  As an aside, I noted another team in the set-up was called the Albuquerque Isotopes; which as a biochemist I just found wonderful.

Cheney Stadium - Tacoma Rainiers

Cheney Stadium - Tacoma Rainiers

Ben Cheney, after whom the stadium is named, was a successful lumber businessman
who helped to fund the building of the stadium

Tacoma Baseball Hall of Fame

Panorama of Cheney Stadium, Tacoma Rainiers

The Rainiers play at the Cheney Stadium, which had enjoyed a major refurb as recently as 2011.  The capacity of the ground (according to the club's own website) is 6,500, but the same source later quoted the attendance at my match as 7,303.  Not quite sure how that works.

Queueing to enter the venue beforehand, in addition to the now obligatory bag searches, there was one of those airport type metal detector door frames to walk through.  Aware the match was about to commence, I became a touch frustrated when the line appeared to cease moving totally.  Looking around puzzled, I saw everyone had stopped still for no apparent reason.  It was only when I noted many folks were doing the eyes-closed, hand-on-heart thing, did it dawn that the national anthem must be being played.  And sure enough, from within I could just make out someone squawking The Star Spangled Banner.

Now I have nothing against patriotism and, indeed, nationalism, but this just felt a touch weird.  It was as if everyone had momentarily gone into a trance, and the whole business reminded me of nothing so much as the closing supermarket scene from The Stepford Wives.

There had been plenty of tickets available on the club web site, with the vast majority towards the rear of the second tier.  But a single good one behind the home plate was still conspicuously available.  I had bought this one, but looked on with dismay when I arrived at it.  For in the next seat to mine was one of those very well-nourished Americans - a large middles-aged man, spilling over into my seat from his own.  I remember thinking: “he and I are going to become very intimate over the next three hours”.  Fortunately whoever had purchased the next seat along had chosen not to attend, so I was able to take this one and maintain a bit of distance between us, allowing us both to spread out, as it were.

I was sort of surprised the batsman (Franchy Cordero, here) did not keep two hands on the bat,
This looked dangerous to the blokes behind him.

Christian Villanueva's swings looked equally wild.

Rainiers' Andrew Moore pitches to Franchy Cordero...

...who not only managed a Hit, but succeeded in scampering safely to first base

Cordero did later manage to attain second base, but his side's innings
was over before he had the opportunity to get any further.

Andrew Moore - Tacoma Rainiers.

Evan Marshall - Tacoma Rainiers.

Behind the grandstand.

It's a BUSY schedule!

El Paso Chihuahuas vs Tacoma Rainiers

Cheney Stadium Tacoma.

Settling in to watch the action, it swiftly became apparent to me I had not realised how difficult it is to hit a baseball back in the direction it has come.  Rounded bats are, I suppose, hardly designed for such an achievement.  On the majority of occasions the batter did succeed in hitting the baseball, it invariably flew behind him, either into the guard netting or over it into the crowd.  On each latter occasion my portly neighbour would yell “Uh-oh.  Heads Up!”, perhaps feeling as an elder statesman of the club this was his civic duty.

Actual hits into the field of play were surprisingly rare, and the majority were easily caught by the fielders.  A few batters did manage to reach first base following a “hit”, but as innings followed innings with little sign of a run (far less that semi-mythical beast, a home run) being scored, I decided to go for a wander.  It was whilst I was in the merch store purchasing a cap for a testicle-squeezed eye-watering sum, that I heard a roar from the crowd.  Clearly Tacoma had scored.  Back to my seat I noted the scoreboard was stating 1-1, both scores I later learned being home runs i.e. bashed straight out the park jobs.  And I had missed them!

In the ninth innings I finally saw a couple of runs being scored, although to be honest I could not really work out what was happening.  The home crowd clearly could though, as there was an audible sigh of disappointment from the folks around me as two visiting players appeared to casually amble around the bases, to make the score 3-1 to the Chihuahuas.

Cheney Stadium Tacoma.

Cheney Stadium Tacoma.

El Paso's Jose Rondon decides to leave this one.

Rocky Gale has clearly hit this one skywards.

Is this called a dugout in baseball?

Lots of player info on the big screen
Not that I had any clue what much of it meant.

The Coors Light Landing.

This may well have been the Jose Rondon hit which allowed Goris and Ortega to complete runs.
Rondon himself succeeded in travelling around all four bases moments later. 

I think this shows Chihuahua's Diego GORIS running in for the third score.
His teammate Rafael ORTEGA (No 13) who has just scored his side's second, awaits to offer his congratulations.

The score moves to 3-1.  It would soon be 5-1

Perusing the programme for no more than a couple of minutes to glean some details about these guys who had just scored these runs, I was astonished to glance back at the scoreboard to see the score had moved onto 5-1.  How the heck had that happened?  Clearly a consequence of there being no (or very few, if any) away fans in the ground (it would have entailed a 3,400 mile round trip), El Paso had succeeded in stretching their lead to the sound of silence; unnoticed by this slightly distracted novice to the sport

The match sort of just dribbled to a close after that point.  And I was taken by surprise by the prompt conclusion, me not realising only nine innings were played – that tenth one on the scoreboard there just in case scores were tied after nine.

There did not seem to be much in the way of hand-shakes between combatants at the end, and the Tacoma chaps barely even seemed to acknowledge the crowd as they skulked off.  I appreciate this was just the second match in series of four on consecutive days, but nevertheless it seemed just a touch disrespectful by the players to those individuals who help pay their mortgages.  I did like the way the playing field was subsequently opened up to allow kids the opportunity to run around the bases before going home.

But it had generally been an entertaining afternoon, despite the fact I had never totally got to grips with how the game is actually played.  I had not realised, (or strictly speaking had not taken the time to learn beforehand) for example, that a “Ball” tallied against a pitcher on the scoreboard did not represent a bowl as in cricket, but was actually a foul-ball.  And any batter receiving four of these foul-balls could walk unhindered to first base.  Not knowing this fact, as you can probably imagine, led to me being baffled at unfolding on-field events on more than one occasion.

Mount Rainier (40 miles south-east of Tacoma) was Out this afternoon, I was delighted to note.

 The benevolent weather had led to Mount Rainier, (that impressive snow-capped still-active volcano, after which the team had been named) being “Out today”, as the locals say.  And I think I shall be for the rest of my life an honorary Rainiers' fan, keeping a casual eye out for their results.

And I have my $25 cap.

At the end of the match the El Paso players all congratulated each other,
but there was not much in the way of handshakes between the teams.

Although much of the ground was rebuilt in 2010/11, the original grandstand from 1960 was retained.

All the kids in the crowd got to run around the bases after the match was over.
Note the grassed picnic area to the right of the pic.