The Vacation: Day Eight

This day was a couple hours of driving followed by attendance at the West Michigan Whitecaps game. They were hosting the Bowling Green (Ky) Hot Rods and it was a pretty good game with the Whitecaps getting two runs in the third and doing the same in the fourth. Then they held off the Hot Rods who scored individual runs in different innings, including the ninth.

The park was full and the crowd was into it, but somewhere around the 3rd or 4th inning something started bugging me and after looking around a bit I figured it out. Almost nobody in the stadium was wearing Whitecaps stuff. I noticed at the souvenir store that there was more stuff from the Major League affiliate than I usually see - a lot more. The Whitecaps are the the single A affiliate of the Detroit Tigers and there were a lot of people wearing Detroit hats/jerseys/t-shirts. However, not even all the ushers were wearing Whitecaps stuff. There were at least two ushers walking around completely decked out in Tigers stuff. I think this is a reflection of two things. First, Detroit is the mothership, has an extremely loyal fan base, and is just down the road a couple hours. However, if that were enough then nobody at Dayton would be wearing Dragons stuff (instead wearing Reds stuff), but the stands there were filled with people in Dragons gear. I think the second factor was the most important: the Whitecaps logo sucks. It's a wave withe eyes crashing over a baseball. It's not the worst logo I've seen, but it's in the bottom ten percent. In comparison, the "D" that Detroit uses as well as the tiger are classics. The test of this theory will come tonight when I'm at the Toledo Mudhens game (Tigers' AAA affiliate) with their well established logo.

When the game ended and we were all walking out the gates they were handing out loaves of bread. Let me rephrase that . . . They were aggressively handing out loaves of bread. Kids were running everybody down and basically throwing bread at them. I barely had time to realize what was going on before a girl ran up and shoved a loaf at my chest so I had to grab it. It wasn't like I was trying to avoid the kid. It was kind of providential; I'd just used up the last of the bread in my cooler (but still have P&J and lunch meat). However, whether I wanted it or not that girl was going to make sure I took my loaf of bread.

Next up: The Toledo Mudhens on Saturday and the Columbus Clippers on Sunday. However, I doubt y'all will get updates from me because the Mudhens are playing a double header against the Bats tonight and the Clippers game is at 1 p.m. on Sunday. Then comes the 5 hour drive home. Not going to be much time for anything other than sleeping or driving for the next couple days.