He Knew He Was Right

Growing up in the 70s, my Yankee heroes were Catfish, Goose, Guidry, Jackson, Munson, Murcer, Nettles and Piniella. The late 70s had a lot of great moments for the boys in pinstripes. Some tragedy too, but some great, great memories. Then, in the 80s, it was Mattingly, and also Randolph, Winfield and Rickey too. Aside from those guys, though, these were bleak years for the Yankees. Also, during those same 80s, I was lucky enough to spend some time with the likes of Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle, as I caddied for them on a Long Island country club.   I wondered what it must have been like to witness these guys playing—to actually witness baseball legends in the field and batter’s box, to actually see players who fans still talk about so many years later. To that point, I merely knew of the careers of such legends via the few highlights available, reading stories about them and hearing my parents talk about seeing these greats play, along with the likes of  DiMaggio...

As a follow up to my last post, here is a current list of my MiLB venue visits. Short Season Single A Hudson Valley Renegades SI Yankees Vermont Lake Monsters Boston Cyclones Tri City Valley Cats (Aberdeen and Lowell are the two others on my wishlist for this division) AA Eastern League Trenton Thunder Binghamton Mets New Britain Rock Cats Manchester Fisher Cats Portland Sea Dogs (Altoona, Bowie, and maybe Reading, are the others on my wishlist) AAA International League Scranton-Wilkes Barre Yankees/Railriders Syracuse Chiefs Pawtucket Red Sox Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs Louisville Bats (Durham, Toledo, Columbus and Rochester are all on the wishlist) AAA Pacific League Oklahoma City Redhawks (rain out) Omaha Storm Chasers Iowa Cubs  (hmm, haven't really come up with a wishlist for the rest of this group...) Single A Carolina League Wilmington Blue Rocks Short Season Single A Midwest League Quad City River Bandits  Independent Leagues Bridgepo...

It's been a while since I put up one of these old-fashioned blog posts...I think that is mostly because, for better or worse, I can squeeze into a Facebook post what I used to put up here. But, for old-times sake, I thought I would turn to Blogger, as I miss my "And here I am..." launches on this page. With Labor Day Weekend behind us, the regular season of the 2014 MiLB season is over. I could have done "And here I am..." a bunch of times this summer, as it has been a great season for me seeing Minor League venues. I've visited another seven this year, plus one more independent league game, and have seen ballgames in six new states. (Really, I've seen quite a bunch since posting this in 2011.) I'll mention quickly that, with the Major League ballpark crusade done , I don't have any similar Minor League goals. Nope, no desire to see all of the AAA venues or all the AA venues, or even all of my more local NY-Penn (short season, single A) venu...