On a whim, I contacted the Kleins, friends from Illinois with whom we often went to baseball games. My purpose was just to say hi, but it turned out they were coming through Little Rock and planned on seeing a game. We met them downtown and had a good time catching up at Dickey-Stephens Park.
Our seats were on the first base side, between home plate and the dugout. The Travelers were playing as the Diamantes de Arkansas in an attempt to be relevant to Spanish-speaking fans and sell more stuff. There was nothing else about the game that was Spanish or Hispanic in anyway, so it seemed odd. Here’s the view from our seats.
The game began with a string of lucky hits and wild pitches, and the Travelers gained an early 7-0 lead. They scored two more in the fourth. The Naturals, who didn’t seem like a very good team, scored three meaningless runs in the last two innings and lost 9-3, but we weren’t around to see it. It had rained hard all day — to the point where we really thought the game would be called — and started up again in the eighth, so we left.
I wasn’t into the game much and didn’t care which team won. But we had fun with the Kleins talking about baseball and old days.
The highlight for me was when I noticed that the Traveler’s pitcher was named Woo. I immediately thought of the old term for flirting, “pitching woo,” but when I cracked the joke, nobody got it. I took a photo of the scoreboard and sent it to several people, but none of them had ever heard the term either. Still, I got a kick out of it. And he pitched a perfect game through six.
It was our first visit to this ballpark. It had a nice view of downtown Little Rock over the right field wall, for what that’s worth, but otherwise was a pretty conventional AA stadium.
Our tire light was on when we got back in the car. I checked quickly to make sure none of the tires was already flat and made it home OK. the next morning the tire was flat. There was a nail in it, so I had to put on the donut and take it in for a patch.
Here’s a news article on the game.
The Arkansas Travelers (19-11) scored seven runs in the first two innings Thursday while starter Bryan Woo carried a perfect game through six innings of a victory over the Northwest Arkansas Naturals (15-15) in front of an announced crowd of 4,028 at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock.
The Travelers scored three runs in the first inning on an RBI double by Robbie Tenerowicz, who along with Spencer Packard scored later in the inning on wild pitches from Naturals starter Jonathan Bowlan. Packard added a two-run single in the second inning and the Travs got RBI singles from Jonatan Clase and Robert Perez Jr. to push the lead to 7-0.
Tyler Tolbert broke up the perfect game bid in the top of the seventh inning with a single on an 0-1 pitch. Tolbert and Tyler Cropley both hit RBI singles in the eighth inning to account for two Naturals runs, with the other coming on a Jeison Guzman solo home run on a full-count pitch in the top of the ninth inning.
Further note: Less than a month after this game, Woo was called up to the Seattle Mariners.