[Business Day One] Sent Down
Until this weekend, I’ve never seen a minor league baseball game. It was one of those things I felt bad about as a fan of the sport, but not bad enough to remedy the situation. I compared it to a movie buff that just never got around to watching the Manchurian Candidate or the third Godfather film. Unfortunate, but assuredly not inexcusable. Still, with spring slowly taking on the shape of summer, it was time to get sent down to AAA.
McCoy Stadium, home of the Pawtucket Red Sox, was built in a quirky little town in New England. Pawtucket sits in the northeast corner of Rhode Island, but might as well be in the middle of the country. It’s a town with one big factory, a diner, and an old mill, all easily accessible off I-95, which splits it down the middle. In other words, the Perfect Place for a minor league stadium. I drove down, parked for $2 in a lot a block away, and followed the crowd into the park.

There was one main concourse at McCoy, which stretched from first base line to third base line. While the legends of $1 hot dogs and nearly free sodas at minor league ballparks were grossly exaggerated, the prices at the concession stands were still reasonable. Six bucks for a personal pepperoni pizza, four for fried dough and another four for ice cream in PawSox batting helmet dish. Not a bad investment at all.
Aside from the abundance of decently priced food, the thing that struck me immediately was the sheer volume of children there. Bringing an entire little league team to Fenway or Yankee Stadium would break the bank. But at $6 a ticket, the place was teeming with kids. The impact of a much higher percentage of pre-teens in the stands to the fan experience is dramatic. There’s less average sports knowledge in the stands, so questions bounce around with regularity. Nearly everyone has a glove. Though there isn’t as much emotional investment in the game, there’s just as much cheering per capita, since children like the yell loudly in a consequence-free environment. Read more »

I decided to find all the spare electronic parts that I could find around my apartment and build a baseball projections robot. Some of the things I found include: an alarm clock, TI-83, a broken toaster, a VCR, an Apple IIe, a PlayStation, a watch with a calculator on it, and a car phone (with carrying case). Armed with my trusty soldering iron and a wondering imagination, I put together ProjectoTron 3000.
Hey internets, remember me? I’m the webmaster for this site and I was writing on Wednesdays for a while. Well, I have been a bit busy. In my real life I switched jobs and that was stealing most of my free time. I am now a “web development engineer” as opposed to my previous job where I was a “software engineer.” For some of you I basically just said I went from being a “computer guy” to being a “computer guy,” but the truth is I went from being a “MS SQL guy” to an “ASP.NET guy.” Don’t worry, I’m not going to switch from WordPress to a 
With the Red Sox having their opening day over in Japan, I dutifully set my alarm clock for 5:50 AM so I could kickoff baseball season in style, i.e. in pajamas in the dark with the sound turned real low. Co-editor Willis had suggested trying to talk via interweb as the game was going on, but I’m not fancy enough to have a laptop. I did, however, keep notes throughout the whole affair, and am presenting them to you now.
