I came back a day early from my trip to Glacier NP, so I was able to scoot down to Tacoma for the Rainiers, the AAA affiliate of the Mariners. I think it is good when the AAA affiliate is so close to the bigs geographically. The ballpark is nice with the wood overhang and such, but it doesn’t seem at the AAA level. Capacity is 9600, somehow, but it seems small, and doesn’t have tons of amenities. The food and beer prices are at big league levels though. Yikes. Also the parking lot they feed you to is by the slowest ticket office ever in left field. Seems weird. Also a lot of steps to climb once you are in the park. The game started, and Ryan Langerhans, who has big league experience, played bush league first base, dropping two pop flies to him, one of which opened up the inning for 4 runs. Ergo, they lost 6-2. Nice, simple hat. Their alternate had a mountain on it, which seems even better. But I don’t do alternates. If you look carefully in some of the pictures, you can see mt Rainier in the background. Impressive.
