New Hampshire Fisher Cats (TOR) @ Erie SeaWolves (DET)
June 9, 2024
HR: Andres Sosa (NH), Chris Meyers (ERI), Julio Rodriguez (ERI)
Attendance: 1,646
Time of Game: 2 hours, 26 minutes
Stadium Facts
Location: Erie, PA
Opened: 1995
Capacity: 6,000
Level: Double A
League: Eastern
Attendance: 1,646
Time of Game: 2 hours, 26 minutes
Stadium Facts
Location: Erie, PA
Opened: 1995
Capacity: 6,000
Level: Double A
League: Eastern
My first extended minor league baseball trip of the year took me all over Pennsylvania and New York. It was a seven stop trip covering four AA and three AAA parks. Most of the drives between cities were quite short as there is a lot of high level minor league baseball in this part of the country. By far the longest drive of the trip was on the first day, from home up to Erie in the very Northwest corner of Pennsylvania for a Sunday afternoon game.
Unlike all of the other ballparks I had visited up to this point this year, Erie's UPMC Park is located right in the heart of downtown, only about a mile from Lake Erie. While I wouldn't exactly say the city was bustling on this particular day, there did appear to be a lot of dining and entertainment options in the area. The park is built right up against Erie Insurance Arena, home of Erie's minor league hockey team. In fact, the arena effectively is the left field wall, with a yellow home run line about 2/3 of the way up the side of the arena. This whole park has a uniquely asymmetric layout, not just the playing field with the short dimensions to left. If you split the park in half from straight behind home plate out to center, the seating areas on each side are quite different. A majority of the seats are on the third base side, which has an expansive grandstand above the concourse walkway. On the first base side, there is a second level above the concourse, albeit not a large one, and a party deck further down the line. This park has received a number of upgrades over the years as it was not originally designed to be a AA stadium. It is still one of the smaller ones I've been to so far. There was not a very big crowd at this sunny but cool and windy Sunday afternoon game.
This game between Toronto and Detroit's AA affiliates was a well pitched affair on both sides. Erie's starting pitcher Troy Melton threw five strong innings, allowing just one run with six strikeouts. New Hampshire's lefty starter Trenton Wallace has had an excellent season in AA so far this year, but wasn't quite as impressive as Melton in this one, surrendering a pair of home runs and three runs allowed in 4 1/3 innings. The teams traded solo home runs in the second inning. Fisher Cats catcher Andres Sosa took one out the opposite way to right center to get the scoring started. Then SeaWolves outfielder Chris Meyers answered in the bottom half with a homer of his own, his tenth of the season. The only multi-run frame of the game came in Erie's half of the fifth. Julio Rodriguez (no, not THAT Julio Rodriguez) led off the inning with a home run to give the SeaWolves a lead they would keep. They added a second run later in the inning on a RBI groundout by Trei Cruz. Erie scratched out another run in the sixth on Rodriguez's second RBI hit in as many innings, this one a single. That made the game 4-1 Erie, which was the final score.
While there was a steady breeze during the game, it was nothing compared to what I experienced at an outdoor beer garden near the lake about an hour or so after the game. For a solid 10-15 minutes, huge gales of wind blew through, requiring anything that might move to be tightly held onto. Fortunately, there was no precipitation accompanying this wind as the front moved through. Other than the unique weather occurrence, my first time in Erie was a quite pleasant experience. The next day, I drove along Lake Erie towards Buffalo.
Next ballpark: Sahlen Field in Buffalo, NY
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