As Opening Day for Major League and Minor League teams is upon us this week, I get set for two constants of my life during the month of April: attending the AAG Annual Meeting and attending some baseball games during the opening week of the season.
The 2017 AAG Annual Meeting is in Boston, so that will serve as the base of my journeys over the next week.
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| Map of my upcoming trip to New England. |
I arrive in Boston on Wednesday, April 5, so I will start my trip by seeing the Red Sox that night. It’ll be a harried day, as I am also making my presentation that afternoon. My research presentation combines two of my great pleasures in life: craft beer and Minor League Baseball (read about it here). I will have to virtually sprint from my session to Fenway Park if I hope to make it in the gates before the first pitch. So I may also go back for the game on Thursday, which is a day game.
I hoped to make it to Portland, Maine, for Opening Day of the Minor League season, but my academic responsibilities prevent me getting there on Thursday evening. So I will instead lead a small field trip of geographers from Boston to Portland to catch the Sea Dogs on Friday night. At the game I’ll get to meet up with Josh Pahigian, and chat baseball.
There are several Minor League teams in New England, and naturally I’d love to see them all. However, I’m at the mercy of the schedule in deciding what teams I can see. So the only other team I will be able to see on this trip is the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, who I will catch on Saturday, April 8. I’m not leading a field trip to see them, but instead getting a rental car for one day and maybe taking a friend or two with me.
Although I’ve seen games at Fenway Park (in 1999 when I attended the NHL Draft), and Hadlock Field and Northeast Delta Dental Stadium (when visiting a friend who lives in Connecticut), all of those visits were before I considered blogging about my baseball adventures. So I won’t get to add any new states or stadiums to my tally, but I’ll get to add three new parks to my blog.
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Natalie
Hi! I picked this one out of all of your many posts because we’re doing a tour of New England in 2019. Found it very interesting. We’ve only ever been to one baseball game in the USA (we’re from the UK) and that was a Yankees game back in 2017. The stadium was breathtaking and we enjoyed the game, although we weren’t 100% sure on the rules or what was going on half the time. We did work out that Aaron Judge seemed to be the one the fans had their eye on! We still had a blast but was rather disappointed that more people weren’t singing their heart out for the national anthem. Really wanted to get up and belt that one out, haha. Maybe we caught everyone on a bad night? We thought you guys did that at every ball game? Maybe we’ll see how the Red Sox fans do next year!
Steven On The Move
It depends on circumstances are the ballgame, but in my experience most fans do not sing along during the anthem.