7.14.01 BATAVIA MUCKDOGS vs JAMESTOWN JAMMERS
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The Red Wings notwithstanding, the state of New York is something of a minor league baseball paradise, boasting no fewer than 18 teams—only Florida has more, and who wants to watch summer baseball in Florida?—and with my wife away on business and the short-season leagues having finally kicked in, I figured it was high time I started exploring. First stop: Batavia, half an hour southwest of Rochester if you take the dreadful interstate, forty minutes if you do like me and go gorgeous back roads instead, top-down through the countryside, a new roadside produce stand every mile.
The Batavia Muckdogs are the Philadelphia Phillies’ representatives in the short-season Single-A New York–Penn League. These guys are kids, and I don’t mean that in the way that once you turn 25 anybody more than a year your junior becomes a “kid.” I mean they’re literally kids, 18, 19 years old. This is minor league baseball that resembles more than anything a major-league sponsored summer camp. And you know what else? It rules.
Maybe it’s just something endemic to Triple-A ball, the listlessness and lethargy to which I’ve grown accustomed over the last few months. Half of the guys at this level are on their way back down the ladder, and they know it, and there’s little urgency in their game; the rest of them, having made it this far, are confident that they’ll be called up once there’s a spot for them, so they’re just marking time. And the prevailing attitude that, well, this is a developmental league—that we’re here to learn and to polish our skills, and not worry so much about, you know, winning or anything—it can’t help but make for a slightly blunted brand of baseball. Tepid. Dull. Bad, even.
Not so in Batavia. Too young to be jaded, many of them away from home for the first time and scared shitless of blowing their big opportunity, these guys are out here playing their blessed hearts out. And, not having been around long enough to realize how little bearing it might have on their long-term success, dammit, it matters to them if they win! You can tell just by watching them. They’re into it! It’s do or die, and they’re having a blast, and holy crap if it wasn’t the most refreshing thing I’ve seen all year.
Professional baseball has been happening on this site since 1939, through numerous name and affiliate changes and a rebuilt ballpark five years ago, but you sure don’t get the feeling it’s changed much. At all. Seekers of authenticity, connoisseurs of the simple pleasure, listen up: It is all about Batavia. This is small-town, small-time baseball at its most honest, unpretentious, and expansively, irrepressibly genial. And not to get all reactionary and sentimental and bullcrap-nostalgic—I mean, nothing grates on me more than hearing some geezer, old or otherwise (I’ve heard this garbage from people my own age too), pining for an imaginary yesterday that never existed, when sports, cars, movies, music, morals and everything else were not only infinitely better than they’ll ever be again, but so much better I couldn’t possibly imagine what it was like, poor me—but, I gotta say, it’s pretty hard to come out here and look around and not feel like this is baseball as God intended it. Grandstand benches, ancient telephone poles for light towers, neighbors looking after one another’s kids, the whole deal. And the park situated oddly so that the sun goes down over left field, which can’t be much fun for hitters but once that sun gets low makes for the most beautifully lit diamond tableau I have ever seen.
It wasn’t hard for me to go along with the partisan crowd and root for the Muckdogs, as they were playing the Atlanta Brave–affiliate Jamestown Jammers, and so deep is my loathing for the Atlanta Braves that I can find it in my heart to despise even a bunch of teenagers who have but the remotest chance of one day playing for them. It was easier still once the game started, and Il Kim, Batavia’s Korean-born starting pitcher, sent down 14 consecutive batters, carrying a perfect game well into the fifth inning. In the meantime, Muckdogs center fielder, lead-off guy and all-around stud Rod Perry was scoring runs, knocking in runs, and hustling his way to a 3-for-5 evening, as was his left-hand man, right fielder and number two hitter Erick Rivera, who accounted for three RBIs of his own. Credit Tim Davis (two scoreless innings) and Mike Nall (one) with preserving the shut-out. Well done, men.
A Batavia Muckdogs fan is born.
FINAL SCORE: MUCKDOGS 7, JAMMERS 0
FOOD CONSUMED: Five bucks for their take on the classic Rochester garbage plate, consisting of a couple hots, some beans, and some macaroni salad. They’re missing a great opportunity here by not calling it a Muckplate—if you’re gonna have a cheesy name for your team, you might as well capitalize on it—but it was actually pretty good. A dollar beer special, so one of those too (may have been Labatt’s, I wasn’t paying much attention).