The Seattle reports begin...

I decided to break this down into three parts. Today I'll write about our trip to see the Everett Aquasox. The next entry will be about the Mariners game we saw at Safeco Field. Finally, I'll talk a bit about some of the other cool stuff we saw in Seattle.

The day, August 24, didn't start out so well. R. had picked up some kind of bug somewhere along the line and had thrown up three times since the previous evening. Amd my kids very rarely throw up - probably less than a dozen times between the both of them since they were born. So A. and R. had to stay at the hotel while J. and I drove up to Everett to see the game.

Everett is about 30 miles north of Seattle, a straight shot off I-5. Unfortunately, with rush hour traffic the ride took about an hour, but we had left plenty of time so we got to the ballpark about 1/2 hour before game time. Everett Memorial Stadium, home of the Aquasox, is a pretty typical minor league ballpark.



It seats about 3,700 people, mostly in plastic seats, although there are some metal bleachers with backs in the outfield sections. Concessions are located behind the seating bowl on the ground level, as opposed to in a concourse under or behind the seats. The stadium is on Broadway in Everett, is just off I-5 and seems to have ample parking in the area. It's fairly generic as minor league ballparks go, but has a couple of nice touches. In particular is a "Hit Sign, Win Suit" sign painted in the middle of the scoreboard. Of course, this echos the famous Abe Stark sign in Brooklyn's Ebbets Field.

As far as the game itself, it was made extra special by the fact that J.'s Peanut League team was called the Aquasox this year. Once we found out that the Aquasox played near Seattle, we decided that we needed to see a game there. Even better, we ended up with fantastic seats. They were just behind the Aquasox on-deck circle and really couldn't have been better. J. got a really close up look at the batters preparing to hit and seemed to be really into the whole thing. The season ticket holders sitting behind us were really nice, and gave us some good hints about things happening around the ballpark.

The Aquasox play in the short season Class A Northwest League, which is similar to the NY-Penn League in the Northeast. The players are mostly guys who were just drafted out of high school or college, so they are pretty inexperienced. This didn't prevent the game from being very entertaining, especially at the end. The Aquasox blew a 6-4 lead in the 9th, as the evening's opponents, the Salem-Keizer Vocanoes picked up two runs. Saving the night for the home team, however, was left fielder Alex Gary, who hit a two run, walk-off homer for the the Aquasox, as they won the game 8-6.

The Aquasox let the kids run around the bases after the game, and J. got quite a kick out of that.

The only problem we had was that the Aquasox underestimated the walk-up ticket sales, so they were a bit short on help at the concession stands. We missed an inning getting a snack around the 5th, but we couldn't do much about it.

So, although the stadium was fairly nondescript, we had a really fun time at Everett Memorial Stadiu