Check Out a Baseball Game (or Practically Anything Else) at Dickey-Stephens Park

I took in my first Arkansas Travelers game on Saturday night at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock. I’ve lived in central Arkansas for over six years now and had yet to attend a Travelers game before 

Saturday, which I now know was sheer idiocy on my part. When you live only a half hour away from a minor league baseball stadium, you’ve got to go experience the joys of minor league baseball.

Saturday night’s game was certainly quite a game, in fact it was darn near two games as the game went 17 innings and lasted almost six full hours before the Travelers, the Los Angeles Angels AA affiliate, finally fell to the Tulsa Drillers, the AA affiliate of the Colorado Rockies.

Now there are two key reasons for attending a minor league baseball game. The first is the reason that many attended on Saturday night. It’s a great social event where you can go hang out with friends or family and buy overpriced stadium beer and food and maybe even get some free promotional tube socks (like on Saturday night). I knew these people weren’t actually at the baseball game for the baseball game, because they pretty much did or talked about anything and everything non-baseball related (thanks, by the way, to the girl who discussed for multiple innings how sweaty she was that day). Some people even left the game as early as the second inning and that was after they missed the entire first inning getting their kids some nachos. The second reason is, of course, to watch America’s national pastime and the greatest game that God or man ever created: baseball.

I found myself enjoying the marathon that was the Travelers/Drillers game the longer and longer that it went on, even well into the extra innings as the giant Timex clock on the stadium’s scoreboard creeped closer and closer to one in the morning. The game became more enjoyable because the crowd of probably a few thousand had thinned and cleared and what was left toward the very end of this epic game where nobody could score or even hit for that matter were the true baseball faithful, maybe 250 people at most. The kind of fans who refuse to leave before the very last out is recorded no matter what. The fans that even though they’ve been yelling, “Bad Call Blue!”, for close to six hours still bellow out with glee and cheer for their home team. This is truly the best part of the minor league baseball atmosphere. Those who don’t care about the beer, the hot dogs, the social scene or even the hot chicks that roam the stands (by the way, the more times they make you stand up so they can go get food throughout the game the less attractive they become) … these are the true baseball fans.  

There really is something special about true baseball fans and there really is something special about minor league baseball.   

So, if you want to enjoy a nice baseball game than go on out to Dickey-Stephens Park. And, if you want to enjoy practically anything else, well, you can also go on out to Dickey-Stephens Park.