Outside of Lynchburg, there is the National D-Day Memorial. For $7, we were able to go and view this very well kept, informational and moving memorial. 9 acres of plaques, flowers, statues and granite. Tomorrow being Memorial Day, they were setting up chairs for something. It apparently has been around since 2001, and is very much in the middle of nowhere(Bedford VA). We stopped in downtown Lynchburg, which calls itself “Hill City”. Well named. Lots of hills to climb up and down. This was a Sunday afternoon at 1pm, but the downtown seemed very empty. But it had a lot of potential, and a lot of historic buildings.
The Hillcats’ stadium had free parking, and was nice brick on the outside, looking very much like the early 2000s minor league park that it is. Or at least it was refurbished then. Apparently it has been around since the 40s, One of my favorite parts of this park was the general admission tickets. There was a lawn area out the right field foul line, but 90% of the tickets were GA, including the seats right behind home plate! One of the few ballparks where the screen goes all the way to the ground rather than a solid wall for the backstop. And the overhang of the press box was huge, so basically all of the seats behind home plate were in the shade! Kind of reminded me of Damaschke Field in Oneonta. There were some people sitting on the metal benches in the sun. Not sure why. Food was good, although they only had one permanent stand open. But there was a small enough crowd that that wasn’t an issue.
Another wonderful mountain view, this time past left field. Although since the seating seemed lower than the ball field the mountain views were a little obstructed. In the guide book they handed out for free (thank you very much) they said they had installed state of the art video screen in 2004. I think it was the state of the renaissance. Not that there’s a problem with that. I love Wrigley and the lack of the video screen. Nice dark green hat with Hillcats logo on it. The team store was nice with a very helpful attendant.
The game only lasted 2 hours and 8 minutes, due in part to the fact that the Hillcats pitcher pitched a five hit shut out. Tim Anderson went 0 for 4 with 2 errors for the Winston-Salem Dash.
Overall I really enjoyed this game experience. For a small stadium it really delivered. They didn’t try to do more than they needed too. I got to high-five their mascot, Southpaw. Good family friendly atmosphere that Lynchburg should be proud of.
No comments:
Post a Comment