After attending some friends' wedding on Friday, I began my 4th of July travels on Saturday morning. I loaded up the truck and set out for Clinton, Iowa to start the weekend. My buddy Erik Johnson offered to tag along and hit a couple of Midwest League baseball games. He wanted to extend his lead in most games attended this summer. I stopped drove through rain to Clinton, picked up Erik and drove through more rain. The radar showed that it was breaking up near Cedar Rapids, so we were not worried.
What an appropriate place to spend Independence Day, Veteran's Memorial Stadium. Veteran's is also now known as Perfect Game Field. I figured this was because of a perfect game being pitched there, sadly it is a corporate naming rights deal for a stats company.
Cedar Rapids has a long history and is proud of the championships they have won over the years. There was a lot of community pride on display that night.
4th of July and it is a pretty full house at Veteran's Memorial. 5,004 was the announced attendance. That being the case, we still got decent walk up seats a little to the left of home plate. $9 for tickets.
The Kernels were honoring our military, and specifically honored two local sons with an introduction and they each got to throw out a ceremonial first pitch. The standing ovation was heartfelt and touching.
The managers delivering the line-up cards. The Cedar Rapids Kernels of Cedar Rapids are the single A affiliate of the Los Angles Angels of Anaheim. The Quad Cities River Bandits are the single A affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals. The Kernels have gotten a hot start to the second half of the season and are sitting in first place in the Western Division while Quad Cities is bringing up the rear of the division. The odd thing was there was a lot of Twins gear in the crowd.
A pretty standard site at a minor league game is the white board with the days line-up posted ahead of time.
The Kernels mascot is a unique character. Mr. Shucks patrols the field and the crowd spreading his corny act to the whole crowd. Yes, I made the corny joke. I felt it had to be done.
Another part of the 4th of July celebrations was the use of special jerseys. The home team Kernels donned camouflage jerseys to show their support of the military. The jerseys were then auctioned off during the game.
The crowd rises for the national anthem.
Panoramic view of the ballpark from behind home plate. Another good looking park and piece of Americana.
Where else, but the middle of Iowa, will you look out past the outfield walls and see grain elevators standing tall.
Chicago style hot dog is what the menu board said. The fact that the hot dog was a foot long was intriguing. Not really a signature food, especially since I just drove out from Chicago this morning and could have grabbed a dog at home, but the sheer size of the thing was worth trying. Very filling and being grilled was a nice touch. No sport peppers, but a peppercini on the side. Sadly at the Kernels game, there was no grilled corn to be had. I guess we could have got popcorn, but that just didn't seem to original.
Quad Cities at the bat.
One of the promotions is a tooth fairy that comes out and brushes the bases, sponsored by a local dentist.
Casey's General Store is a chain of gas station/convenience stores that really dot the countryside of Iowa. Here they sponsored the pizza slice race. Champion Cheese was the winner in this Sausage Race knock-off. What is really interesting is that the sausages at the park are supplied by Klements who sponsor the Sausage Race in Milwaukee.
The game was moving along rather quickly. Part of that reason was that the Quad Cities hurler was throwing a no hitter through 7-1/3. A walk in the eighth put a man on, but the no-hitter was still intact.
However, it looks like they left him in one pitch too many. A two-run home run broke up the no hitter in the bottom of the eighth and the 2-0 score ended up holding up and being the final margin of victory for the home town Kernels. The entire game only took 2:15.
The evening sky provides a picturesque backdrop for the flock of kids that made their way on to the field to run the bases and get autographs from the players.
Game #12 Attendees: Erik Johnson and myself. This marked Erik's 3rd game of the summer.
Since it was the 4th of July and fireworks could not begin until dusk, the fans were treated to the musical stylings of the Large Midgets. They were a cover band and played a varied selection of popular music. They even had a bit of a local following.
Here I am posing with the tank in Veteran's Memorial Park outside the stadium. Seemed like a good place to finish a day celebrating our country's Independence.
The Kernels hat is a pretty unique design and really evokes the Iowa corn belt and a really stylized "K". Once again, hats and logos like this are much more interesting than their Major League counterparts.
I missed Zach Johnson Bobblehead Day by a week, but they still had some left in the team shop, so I grabbed a bobblehead of Cedar Rapids most famous native golfing son for my office.
The last stop of our day was a quick run down to Iowa City where we stopped at the Phi Kappa Psi Iowa Alpha chapter house at the University of Iowa. It was fun to stop in and see some fellow brothers and visit another chapter house. We then headed to our hotel in Coralville and caught the Iowa City fireworks before retiring for the night with another day of baseball coming up tomorrow.
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