Saturday, July 3, 2010

Toledo Mudhens

 

This morning, I went back into Pittsburgh to do a little sight seeing.  I went to the Heinz History Museum.  There was a good exhibit about George Washington, as well as some good Pittsburgh History, and the Western PA Sports Museum.  Good place, although a bit hard to find your way around at times.  And of course, a whole exhibit on the history of Heinz.

On my way to Toledo, I took a little side trip through downtown Cleveland.  Nice little place, has the Rock and Roll HOF right on the lake, next to Browns Stadium, and some museum or something.  Not far away are the Indians park, and where the Arena where the Cavs play.  I must say that I love the fact all these new stadiums tend to be built downtown.  Definitely better than in the middle of the suburbs.  They should be an integral part of the city.

I got to Toledo a bit early, so I decided to go to Ned Skelton Stadium, where the Mudhens used to play for a few pictures.  I ended up seeing a grounds crew guy watering the field, and he let me on the field to take a few pictures.  Apparently they still play some baseball there.  It still looked good.
Downtown was the new Mudhens stadium.  Another nice new one, and it had some cool quirks.  There was a short porch in RF they called the Roost, which I think they used old Tiger Stadium as that idea, and they had a building just past the RF fence also that looked old, and I believe had a restaurant.  The Toledo '”skyline” was out past the centerfield fence, but as the sun went down, it didn’t light up much.  Two big scoreboards, with good graphics and plenty of info, but oddly enough, couldn’t (or wouldn’t?) show video.  The place was packed, a sold out game almost.  But unfortunately, it didn’t seem like the crowd was very into the game.  They had some between innings games, but not much during gameplay to get the crowd involved, so it was a quiet 9500 people.  The Mudhens ended up losing 6-3. 
After the game, there were fireworks!  Unfortunately, we had to wait for probably 20 minutes at least for them to start, and there wasn’t much entertainment during that time.  And then when it started, it was pretty weak.  Only 3 1/2 minutes, and the fireworks were short.  As a neighboring fan said, “They were leftover from the Superbowl” (Where they would have to be shot in a dome, thus the low altitude.)

But in general, it was a nice park, and good to see a game in Toledo again.

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